Olivia nodded, keeping her fingers on this David, thinking how that other one, laid out in a cold room on a metal table, was just that: the body.
Winnie began to turn the pages, to narrate what lay before them. There were other pieces of their lives: a New Year’s Eve party, the two of them walking through Washington Square Park, smiling over a pan of lasagna, nestled on their couch in their apartment on Bethune Street, and finally the two of them here, in Rhode Island, dramatically posed in each room like Disneyland tour guides.
“It’s hard to believe he died the day after this,” Olivia said, looking down at a picture of David in khaki shorts, shirtless, standing in front of the house.
She touched that picture, too, her fingers remembering the feel of his ribs and skin and muscle, the way his hair grew coarser as it crept down his belly. And then she remembered all of it: the citrus smell he seemed to carry on him, the dimple in his chin, the lightning bolt–shaped scar that ran across one knee. If only she could remember the exact pitch of his voice, the rise and fall of his laugh, she would have him back again, even for this small moment.
“Olivia?” Winnie said, her voice soft.
Olivia closed her eyes, lost herself in these sensual memories. She ached for him, all of her, the way a person who has lost an arm or leg claims they feel pain in that missing limb. She imagined—no, she actually felt—the particular way it was to be in his arms, how her head settled in the crook between his shoulder and chest, that smell—limes, or orange blossoms?
“Olivia?” Winnie said again, louder.
Olivia wasn’t crying, but she trembled; all of her was trembling.
“Good idea,” he’d said. But it had been the worst idea she’d ever had.
Winnie and Ruby wrapped their arms around her, held her as close as they could. But she did not fit against them the way she had with David. She could not stop trembling for a very long time.
There was a storm that night.
Olivia listened to the trees scrape the windows, to the waves pounding the beach, to the wind howling. Beside her, Winnie slept, curled up in a tight ball, snoring. She heard Ruby snoring across the hall.
When lightning scratched the sky, Olivia got up. She was sore, as if she had been hurt somehow, bruised. Barefoot, she walked around the house, pacing, searching for something that she could not possibly find. Then more lightning flashes, and she saw all of her hats, left on the lawn to dry, sitting there, soaked.
Olivia ran outside, into the rain, and picked them up, crushing them to her.
“Happy birthday, man,” said a voice from the driveway.
It had that California accent that Olivia loved so much. She ran toward it.
“Oh, darling. I’m drunk and wet and lost without him,” Rex said, swaying before her in his leather jacket and faded jeans. “But I had to come. Took a bus all the way from Boston. Left the lighting to my assistant and drank an entire bottle of tequila. Well,” he said, rain dripping from his chin, “not quite an entire bottle.”
He held up what was left and Olivia took it from him.
“Have I ever been so glad to see you, Rex?” Olivia said.
She put the hats in her car and then sat on the wet grass in the rain with David’s best friend and drank a hot, heavy swallow, then another.
“Remember your cat? Arthur?” Rex said. He draped one arm over Olivia’s shoulder. “Now that was a cat.”
Olivia raised the bottle. “To Arthur,” she said.
Except for Winnie, there was no one she would like to be here with more than Rex. Happy, on her way to drunk, she sighed and leaned against him.
“To David,” Rex said.
They both took a drink and then sat watching the storm recede.
“I kept telling myself that when I got here, he’d be waiting. That all of this dead stuff was a joke,” Rex said.
“Don’t make me cry, okay? Promise me?” Olivia said.
“Shit, honey, I can’t promise you that.”
“Then let’s go walk on the beach.”
“A plan!” Rex said. “I always liked that about you.”
He pulled another bottle of tequila from his duffel bag and they walked arm in arm down the grassy slope to the beach. But they couldn’t get too far; they were too tired, too drunk. So they sat and watched the waves, not talking. Later, Olivia wondered if she had been surprised when Rex leaned over and kissed her or if she had known as soon as she saw him standing on her lawn that they would get to that point.
His face was scratchy from needing a shave. He tasted sour. But his kisses felt good, almost familiar, and she let him kiss her for what seemed a long time. She let him kiss her until she knew that if they didn’t stop, they would make love on this beach, both searching for David in the other. She knew that they wouldn’t find him.
Olivia pulled back and said, “Now I know.”
“Do you?”
“I know what it’s like to kiss my husband’s best friend.”
“Oh, honey,” Rex said, “I’m drunk and sad.”