“I hope so. It’s difficult to deal with Duncan on three hours’ sleep,” he added, laughing.
“You will,” she said, stifling a yawn. “You are heroic. You can do anything.” She was teasing him, but Vivien did believe it. She had watched him in court, the way he argued cases, the way he saved men’s lives.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” he said, kissing her again.
Vivien listened to his footsteps move away from her. She imagined him downstairs eating bread and jam, drinking a cup of espresso he had made from the temperamental machine he used. Finally, the door opened on its hinges that needed oiling, and closed shut.
She snuggled deeper under the blankets, and closed her eyes, knowing that in a few hours Fu Jing would arrive noisily, banging doors and shaking dishes. Fu Jing would appear in the doorway with her breakfast tray, muttering in Chinese about Vivien’s laziness. And about her immorality. Vivien wondered which of the angry Chinese words Fu Jing muttered meant mistress or whore? Which meant homewrecker, kept woman? She didn’t care. If she did, she wouldn’t be here in this lavish apartment that her lover paid for while his wife woke alone across town in their house in Pacific Heights.
Vivien closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Less than an hour later, she woke not to Fu Jing rattling about and cursing, but to the entire house shaking and rolling as if it were riding waves across the ocean. Vivien sat up with great difficulty, and clutched the sides of the bed. The clock, the one that chimed so beautifully on the hour, the half, and the quarter, with whimsical paintings across its face of all the astrological signs, said 5:12. Outside, people had begun to shout and things had begun to fall—streetlamps and stairways and windows. The noises grew louder and more frantic. The light grew brighter outside her window. But all Vivien could do was sit holding on to her bed, as if it were a life raft keeping her safe.
The clock chimed and Mrs. Benton shifted in her chair. Vivien pushed away the memories. And that small illogical part of her rose, the part that believed, ridiculously, that perhaps David was still alive somewhere. Perhaps he had hit his head during the earthquake. Hadn’t entire walls and columns and roofs fallen that day? Wasn’t it possible that he had hit his head and had amnesia? She had spent hours in the library researching that condition. The word came from the Greek, amnestia. Not remembered. She knew it was, in simple terms, the loss of memory, and that it came from a head injury or psychological trauma. She knew too, that it was possible that David suffered one or both of those that terrible day of the earthquake.
It sounded foolish, Vivien realized that. But she clipped articles from newspapers and journals about amnesia, about people who suffered from it, and people who had recovered. She clipped these articles and pasted them in a large leather book and kept it by her bed. There was hope in those stories. One of them discussed a different kind of amnesia, one in which a person has the inability to imagine the future. Funny, Vivien had thought when she read that, how she and David were perhaps both suffering from amnesia. His, the more common type, and hers this other one. The inability to imagine the future.
Mrs. Benton sighed. She glanced toward the window and touched her own powdered cheek as if to prove that she was still alive.
“People always say how nice his feet are,” she said softly. “Isn’t that the craziest thing? A man’s feet? Once we were on Stimson Beach and a man came up to us and asked Frank if he could take a photograph of his feet. The man said he was a photographer and that he was certain that Frank could be a foot model for catalogues. Do you know that I think for a minute Frank considered it?” She blinked and then narrowed her eyes at Vivien. “Listen to me go on about nonsense,” Marjorie said. “But they were beautiful, my Frank’s feet.”
It was dusk. The sky was turning violet and the lamps on the street were lit.
“I think I have enough,” Vivien told her.
Already a person was taking shape. Mrs. Benton had arrived an hour and a half ago, her hair and coat wet with rain, and she had brought with her a dead man, a blank thing without breath or life. But she had left behind a living man who could perfectly imitate a bird’s unique song.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Benton said, surprising Vivien by pulling her into a suffocating hug.