The name doesn’t register. With all the thoughts running through my brain, I can barely recall my own. Her expression tenses as she waits for my response. “Um. Beth.” I force an I’m okay smile. The effort squeezes more tears from my eyes.
“And what about this little one?”
I smile harder. “Victoria.”
“Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
My baby’s complexion reddens into an overripe tomato. Her toothless mouth opens wider. Motion is poor medicine for hunger. I pull down the scoop neck of my tank so that her cheek may rest on my bare skin. Instinctively, she roots for my breasts, both of which sense her presence and swell with a searing rush of fluid. The woman watches all this. Her expression relaxes into something more friendly.
“Victoria is for victorious,” I explain. “We had trouble conceiving. She’s our . . .” My voice catches. Will there be an “our” after tonight? Not if I confront Jake like this: him, enjoying appetizers with his lover, and me, makeup a mess, shouting about broken promises while an infant howls in my arms. I will be the shrew, overwhelmed by the baby at my bosom, uninterested in sex, dressed for a spin class that hasn’t happened in months. This other woman, meanwhile, will remain the sexy thing in a body-sucking sheath.
The stranger’s smile has faded as she’s waited for me to finish my thought. I cough. “Vicky’s my little miracle.”
That sells it. She gives my upper arm a supportive we girls got to stick together pat and continues down the street. Victoria starts fussing again. I pull a nipple beyond my top’s neckline, and she latches immediately. I twist my head as I nurse, spying on the happy couple, trying to remain in the shadows and simultaneously project my pain through the restaurant’s window. I want Jake to sense me without seeing me, just as I can feel him when he enters a room, recognize his presence by his scent, the length of his stride, the shape of his head as he approaches a restaurant with his hand spread on the small of a stranger’s back.
After an eternity, Victoria releases my nipple, exposing my breast to the warm air. I adjust my shirt, and she settles against my sternum. Her lids lower. A satiated smile curls the sides of her mouth. Love, painful as a contraction, rips through my chest as I marvel at her chubby cheeks and double chin—the bond between Jake and I made flesh. Our victory.
Again, I turn my full attention to the restaurant. The waiter stands beside their table, a black leather folder in his outstretched hand. They’ve split an appetizer rather than shared a meal. Perhaps my staring has served a purpose. My husband realizes his mistake. He’s calling this whole thing off. His biggest indiscretion will prove to be a misplaced hand and inappropriate whispering.
I retreat from the curb in anticipation of his solo exit. Jake passes cash to the waiter and then offers his hand to the woman, helping her stand from the bistro chair. I count the seconds until he releases her fingers. One. Two. Three Mississippi. She matches his stride out the restaurant, hip brushing his side.
There’s laughter as the door opens. Hers. He’s amusing her. It’s been months since he’s made an effort to do the same with me. They walk up the street. I follow on the other side, weaving around the downtown tourists with my head tilted to the sidewalk. Vicky’s socked feet strike my stomach. My walk is too bouncy. I could wake her.
As I slow my stride, an illegally parked Ford Taurus flashes welcome on the opposite corner. A door opens. The officer slides into the driver’s seat.
Come on, Jake. Say good night. Say good-bye.
He glances behind him, sensing me at last, perhaps.
Say good night. Say good-bye.
My husband walks around to the passenger’s side. I look away, fearful that he’ll see me. When I look up, Jake is no longer on the road. A blue police light flashes on the Ford’s dashboard as it speeds off in the opposite direction.
An internal voice tries to calm me. Maybe everything I have seen has an explanation. They are coworkers, of sorts. They were talking shop, had too much to drink. Maybe they’re flirting, not fucking. Maybe they’re headed back to the office.
Maybe I already know the truth.
I turn around, sniffling and swollen, imagining my husband’s thick hands cupping this woman’s sides, his fingertips brushing back her dark hair, his voice telling her she’s beautiful, exciting, enticing—so much more so than boring Beth, his overtired wife.
The traffic light turns. Cars race to beat the next red signal. Their headlights form halos in the darkening sky. For the briefest moment, I consider stepping off the curb.
LIZA
I stare at the white screen, hands arched above the keyboard, a pianist waiting for a cue. Voices crescendo from Eighty-Sixth Street through the open window above my desk. Horns blare, traffic jammed on the FDR Drive. The target length for a romantic suspense story is eighty thousand words. To make my deadline, I must write 50 percent more than my daily average.
I’ve gotten as far as chapter two and a carriage return. Beth, my protagonist, has happened upon her cheating husband. A mild nausea gnaws at my gut as I consider how I’d handle her predicament in my life. Given my nonconfrontational personality, I’d probably try ignoring the affair at first and keep playing the happy wife, hoping that my husband would soon outgrow his “midlife crisis.” Eventually, though, my lack of acting skills would show. I’d become sad and withdrawn each time David came home late, until he stopped wanting to come home at all. Ultimately, he’d leave for good, and I’d be left huddled beneath unwashed covers, unable to drag myself to the shower. I’d probably pity-eat to the point where my clothes wouldn’t fit. Friends—Christine, mostly—would demand that I “get back out there,” dragging me to “hot spots” in the city sure to nuke whatever dignity I’d managed to maintain during the divorce. I recall a makeover intervention that she’d staged when we were fifteen. She’d insisted we slather on eye shadow and sneak into some seaside dive sure to make me forget about my dad. “We need to toast to his departure, not get depressed about it,” she’d said. “Let’s make the tourists serve us for a change!” I’d ended up puking behind a dumpster while Chris held my hair. Not the night that she’d envisioned.
A shudder crawls from one shoulder to the other as the bittersweet memory is replaced with the bilious image of me back at the meat market, flaunting my depression weight gain before men my age who are too busy salivating at twenty-year-olds to notice. Meanwhile, David—the man upon whom I’d bestowed my own twenties—would be busy making beautiful babies with his surely fertile husband-stealing bimbo.
I shake the sickening thought from my head and breathe deeply. David is not cheating on me. He’s stressed about his missing friend. That’s all.
I drum my fingers on the black keys, not hard enough to type anything. What will be my opening line this time? For a suspense writer, even one who fills her pages with licentious liaisons, the first sentence of every chapter is like an AA meeting. It demands the immediate confession of a problem by a specific someone. My name is Liza, and I’m a . . . I obviously know Beth’s issue, though I don’t yet know how to solve it. We’ll figure it out together, two friends fumbling toward a solution. My main characters are more extensions of my social circle than figments of my imagination. Each is fleshed out with characteristics of myself or my loved ones, endowed with unwritten pasts stitched together from my own experiences and the secrets of those closest to me. These embezzled backstories dictate my characters’ actions as much as my own personal history decides my emotional responses. I don’t invent my characters. I steal them from my surroundings. To be a writer is to be a life thief. Every day, I rob myself blind.