ISSN 1758-6488
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Stephanie got through her next meeting, with a designer of small patent leather purses; then ignored a warning instinct and stopped by the office. Her boss, La Doll, was on the phone, as always, but she muted the call and yelled to Stephanie, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Stephanie said, startled. She hadn’t even entered the room.
“All good with Purse-Man?” La Doll kept effortless track of her employees’ schedules, even freelancers like Stephanie.
“Just fine.”
La Doll finished her call, shot some espresso from the krups machine on her desk into her bottomless thimble-sized cup, and called, “Come, Steph.”
Stephanie approached. La Doll was one of those people who seems, even to those who know them well, digitally enhanced: the bright blond bob cut; the predatory lipstick; the roving, algorithmic eyes. “Next time,” she said, “cancel the meeting.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I could feel your gloom from the hall,” La Doll said. It’s like having the flu. Don’t expose the clients.”
Stephanie laughed. She had known her boss forever— long enough to know that she was absolutely serious. “God, you’re a bitch,” she said.
La Doll chuckled, already dialing again. “It’s a burden,” she said.
Stephanie drove back to Crandale on her own (Jules had taken the train) to pick up Chris at soccer practice. At seven, her son was still willing to throw his arms around Stephanie after a day apart. She hugged him, breathing the wheaty smell of his hair. “Is Uncle Jules home?” Chris asked. “Was he building anything?”
“Actually, Uncle Jules worked today,” she said, feeling a prick of pride as she said the words. “He was working in the city.”
The day’s vicissitudes had resolved into a single droning wish to talk to Bennie. Stephanie had spoken with Sasha, his assistant, whom she’d long viewed as the gatekeeper of Bennie’s Misbehavior but grown fond of in the past couple of years. Bennie had called on his way home, stuck in traffic, but by then Stephanie wanted to explain it in person. She pictured laughing with Bennie about Bosco and feeling her strange unhappiness lift. One thing she knew: she was finished with lying about the tennis.
Bennie still wasn’t home when she and Chris got back. Jules appeared with a basketball and challenged Chris to a game of horse, and they repaired to the driveway, the garage door shuddering from their blows. The sun was beginning to set.
Bennie finally returned and went straight upstairs to shower. Stephanie put some frozen chicken thighs in warm water to thaw, then followed him up. Steam drifted from the open bathroom door into their bedroom, twirling in the last rays of sun. Stephanie felt like showering, too — they had a double shower with handmade fixtures whose exorbitant price they’d argued over. But Bennie had been adamant.
She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse, tossing it on the bed with Bennie’s clothes. The contents of his pockets were scattered on the small antique table where he always left them. Stephanie glanced at what was there, an old habit left over from the days when she’d lived in suspicion. Coins, gum wrappers, a parking garage ticket. As she moved away, something stuck to the bottom of her bare foot. She plucked it off — a bobby pin — and headed for the wastebasket. Before dropping it in, she glanced at the pin: generic light gold, identical to bobby pins you’d find in the corners of nearly any Crandale woman’s house. Except her own. Stephanie paused, holding the pin. There were a thousand reasons it could be here — a party they’d had, friends who might have come up to use the bathroom, the cleaning woman — but Stephanie knew whose it was as if she had already known, as if she weren’t discovering the fact but remembering it. She sank onto the bed in her skirt and bra, hot and shivery, blinking from shock. Of course. It took no imagination at all to see how everything had converged: pain; revenge; power; desire. He’d slept with Kathy. Of course.
Stephanie pulled her shirt back on and buttoned it carefully, still holding the bobby pin. She went into the bathroom, searching out Bennie’s lean brown shape through the steam and running water. He hadn’t seen her. And then she stopped, halted by a sense of dreadful familiarity, of knowing everything they would say: the jagged trek from denial to selflacerating apology for Bennie; from rage to bruised acceptance for herself. She had thought they would never make that trek again. Had truly believed it.
9
