“It’s not even a conversation! I was telling you about my appointment. It’s been a month, Dave. Our life can’t remain on hold indefinitely while we—”
“On hold?” He slaps the table and stands. Ceramic rattles against the glass surface. I wince as a knife clatters to the floor. “You think life has been on hold? In addition to my own caseload, I have all of Nick’s work falling on top of me. It’s impossible to get a continuance for everything. And the police are doing nothing to find him! I don’t know whether he had a mental breakdown and is hiding out somewhere or if he was the victim of a hate crime—”
I pat the air, trying to calm him and myself. Yelling will push him out the door. “Why would Nick be the victim of a hate crime?”
David throws up his hands. “Why? How can you ask that?”
“Well, he’s a white male. I don’t see—”
He gestures to the side of the room, appealing to an invisible jury. “We won a ten-million-dollar suit on behalf of a transgender teen that held public institutions accountable for allowing toxic environments for LGBT people. Our names were in the paper. The firm has been inundated with hate mail ever since. At least two people have threatened to kill us if their daughters ever have to use a bathroom with a transitioning girl. It’s a two-second web search to find our pictures. For all we know, someone stalked Nick to his apartment and is holding him hostage. But the police are doing nothing!”
I misjudged his mood. Grief stage three is not the time to bring up infertility issues. “Please sit. Let’s just have dinner.” I reach out toward him. “I’m not your enemy here.”
His look casts doubt on my statement. Still, he collects the knife from the floor and settles back into the seat. He palms his fork and stabs his pasta until each prong is overloaded with noodles.
“I know you’re under a lot of pressure. Maybe we should get away for the weekend. The house is free.”
David’s nose flares at the affected way I refer to the Hamptons place. The house is nothing more than my childhood home, a cedar-shingled two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath in Montauk, on the water. It is worth a significant chunk of change, however. Whatever I think about my father, I must concede that the man knew real estate.
“Why didn’t you get a renter?” He points at me with his loaded fork. “August is prime time.”
“I got that insane offer from the trader who only wanted mid-June to the first week of August. What he paid alone will cover taxes and upkeep for the entire year, so we didn’t need another guest.” I proffer a smile. “I thought we might enjoy it.”
“You should have put it on one of the short-term B and B sites.”
David’s frown saps whatever was left of my appetite. Though his salary has always covered our expenses with plenty to spare, things have been tighter since my books stopped making any significant financial contribution. The fertility treatments haven’t helped our bottom line, either.
“Well, I didn’t so . . .”
David jams the food into his mouth. “I can’t commit to a vacation right now.”
Talking with his mouth full is an act David only performs for present company. I should probably take his lack of basic social skills around me as evidence of a solid marriage. He’s so secure that there’s no need for basic courtesies. Still, I long for the days when he felt I was worthy of a conversation that didn’t involve the view of chewed particles.
“You go.” A fleck of basil lodges between his teeth. “The quiet will help your writing, and you can hang out with Christine.”
A familiar tension twists in my temples. As much as I’d love to see my best friend, the whole point of staying at the house is for David and me to be together, away from the distraction of his job or Nick’s disappearance. Also, I hate sleeping in my childhood home by myself. It makes me inexplicably anxious. Perhaps something about the crash of the sea outside, like a persistent knock on the door by someone intent on coming in. Or maybe the way the wind whistles through the rafters at night. All I know is, when I’m there alone, the house feels angry. The presence of other people purges the bad energy.
“I don’t need quiet to write. I want you there.”
David’s eyes roll. Though he knows I dislike staying solo at the beach house, he thinks I’m insane for it. Montauk, as he so often insists, is one of the safest places on the planet.
“I mean if you’re really concerned that you have a bull’s-eye on your back because of that case, don’t you think it would be good to get out of the city?” I walk behind his chair. He bristles as my palms land on his shoulders. I massage his neck for a beat before hugging him from behind. Once, he’d lean into me as I did this. But something has shattered between us, something invisible that I sense deep within me, the way a broken bone detects coming rain.
“Come on, David. We need this. Your trial will start next month, and I’m leaving for the MWO conference Sunday. I won’t see you. We won’t get to try . . .”
He exhales, a long, drawn-out sigh, something from anger-management therapy or yoga classes. “I have Nick’s cases.”
Again, the conversation has returned to Nick. The missing man sits in the center of a corn maze, and I keep getting turned around trying to find the exit. Nick. Nick. Nick.
When Nick and David met in law school, it was as though my fiancé had found a long-lost twin. Here was a man who could relate to his fundamentalist upbringing and his conflicting desire to challenge the rules he saw as unfair. Someone who understood—unlike his single mom–raised, New York–bred progressive wife—how it felt to be a Southerner surrounded by Northeasterners. As long as what happened to Nick remains a mystery, David will think of nothing else. The month that’s passed hasn’t dulled the pain of his friend’s disappearance. A year could go by and David would probably still be focused on him, holding out hope that the man he considered a brother might turn out to be alive and well.
I drop my chin onto David’s shoulder. “Hey, the police academy in Flushing is on the way to Montauk. I could talk to my contacts from that writers’ police workshop. This one cop, Sergeant Mark Perez, was a twenty-year veteran. He might know something about violent crime in Nick’s neighborhood, or someone who can tell us something.”
David reaches up and pats my cheek. “Thank you.” He exhales, an audible surrender. “Maybe I will try to get away for a couple days. I could come out Friday and Saturday, get back to work on Sunday.”
I kiss his neck and thank him. Two days. Intercourse, maybe twice a day. Between two hundred million and five hundred million sperm per ejaculation. Seven or so ripe eggs in my ovaries ready for fertilization. All I need is one to stick to my uterine wall. The odds seem in my favor.
David seems to sense where my mind is. He sighs again and tells me how tired he is from “everything.”
I decide not to push my luck. “I better get back to my book.”
I scrape my dinner into the garbage and then put the plate in the dishwasher. Afterward, I grab David’s jacket with a promise to toss it with the rest of the dry cleaning, like I always do. It smells of his sweat and cologne, a mossy, musky mix that I recognize as his signature.
My open laptop waits for me on the bedroom desk. I sit on the rolling chair and stare, again, at the near-blank page. What is Beth’s main problem this chapter? What does she want? Her husband to renounce the other woman, beg her forgiveness, and tearfully renew his pledge to be faithful, for starters. But that’s not happening this chapter. Maybe it won’t happen at all. I swirl my finger atop the trackpad. What does Trevor want? A troubled ingenue falling under the spell of her Jungian therapist as he interprets her dreams?
Before my better self can block the image, I see my editor lording over a leather couch. The light from a reading lamp reflects off the sweat beads on his bare brown chest. The image lingers like a hot flash. I force it back into the trash bin of my memories and rejected fantasies, blinking until I regain focus on the glowing screen in front of me. I press the keys.