“It means whatever you want it to mean,” said Frank. “Now, why don’t you come down here and get yourself a drink on me. Jacky, take this off me, please.”
The reporter was still speaking as he handed the phone back to her. The music surged back on. He made his way to the rear of the room, accepting congratulations and handshakes from the throng around him. He was looking for Eleanor. He couldn’t help it; he was always looking for Eleanor. He found her perched on a stool at the far corner of the bar, where the crowd was thinner and less raucous. He leaned on the wooden countertop next to her.
“Look who it is,” she said. “The prodigal son.”
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” he said.
“I got contacts,” said Eleanor. “I was sick of seeing dead animals.”
“What?” said Frank.
“Nothing,” said Eleanor.
“Well,” said Frank. “You look good.”
“I think the real bar of adulthood is the willingness to touch your own eyeballs on a daily basis.”
“That,” said Frank. “And owning things like a wine aerator.”
“You have a wine aerator?”
“I have two,” said Frank. “We got given another one as a wedding present.”
“Such maturity,” said Eleanor.
She sipped her drink and smiled to herself in that funny, secret way she had. She always seemed to be keeping up an amusing dialogue with herself in her head, one that he was constantly hoping to become a part of.
“Anyway, as a man—,” Frank said.
“Oh, you’re a man?” She gasped. “I wish you’d told me earlier.”
“Piss off,” said Frank.
“A British man no less.”
“That’s Cleo’s influence,” said Frank. “Anyway, I was saying that yes, as a man, I always thought that contact lenses were kind of effeminate. I don’t know why. But I keep losing my glasses at the moment, and if you’re really near-sighted, like me, when you lose your glasses you also lose your source of finding them. Sight, that is … So, it’s a conundrum.”
What was he even talking about? He was blabbering. He had just wanted to talk to her.
“Truly,” said Eleanor with her ironic half smile.
“What I mean is,” he said, “it might be time for me to switch, too. Life is a constant renegotiation with one’s own vanity, after all.”
“Now that I agree with,” said Eleanor.
“We agree on a lot,” said Frank, realizing, as he said it, that it was true. “What are you drinking?”
“Soda with lime.” She shook her glass. “Zesty.”
“You’re zesty.”
Eleanor laughed and looked away. Frank cleared his throat.
“That sounds great,” he said. “I’ll have the same.”
She raised an eyebrow as he ordered. “You’re not drinking?”
The bartender shot soda from the tap and plonked the glass in front of him with a dehydrated-looking lime on the rim. Frank took a long, unsatisfying sip.
“Doing my bit to keep the bill low. This lot are going to bankrupt me.” He nodded toward the crowd at the other end of the bar, where one of the account execs was already, inexplicably, shirtless with his tie secured around his head.
“Is that right?” said Eleanor.
“And.” Frank gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m thinking of stopping.”
“That’s a lot of thinking,” said Eleanor.
“You’re telling me.” He tapped his forehead. “Most dangerous neighborhood I know.”
Eleanor laughed again. Her laugh was the sound of a slot-machine jackpot, a soda can cracking open, fairground music in the distance, a Corvette engine coming to life, a thousand hands applauding all at once. It was one of those truly beautiful sounds.
“You should try it,” she said. “Do the things you’ve never done to get the thing you’ve never had. Or whatever.”
“Whoa,” said Frank. “Where’d you hear that? Oprah?”
“My mom has a magnet with it written on it.”
“You should say you came up with it.” Frank took another gulp of seltzer.
“But I didn’t,” said Eleanor. “So I wouldn’t.”
“You are so not cut out for advertising,” said Frank. “It’s a good thing, trust me.”
Her hand was resting on the barstool between them, just beneath the view of anyone passing by. He patted it, then let his fingers linger on top of hers. The smooth planes of their palms rested one over the other like two tectonic plates shifting, finally, into position beneath the earth’s surface. Eleanor looked at him with her funny, intent gaze. He felt it all the way through him.
“I cannot lie, Frank,” she said quietly. “Even … even if I wanted to.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he said.
“Then what are you asking?”
If he could, he’d ask her if she remembered how the first time they met a current had passed from his hand to hers, an electric shock. It was a detail seemingly inconsequential, but which had come to signify everything to him. He would ask her if his emails were the highlight of her day, like hers were of his. He’d ask if her father was dying and if that was why she was always a little sad, even when she said she wasn’t. He’d ask her what it was like to have a father. He’d ask her if she believed you could be in love with two people at once. If she knew what it felt like to love someone you shouldn’t. If she knew what it felt like not to love yourself like you should.
“Nothing,” said Frank. “Just, um, that you step up on the real estate account, since I’m going to be focusing my time on Kapow! now.”
Crestfallen. That was the word for a face like hers. She pulled her hand out from under his.
“You got it, boss,” she said. She swallowed the remainder of her drink, slammed the glass on the bar between them, and belched loudly. “Look at that, I’m done.”
She shrugged on her homely puffer jacket and turned away. He watched her push through the crowd to the exit. Her curly hair was stuck in her hood. He watched her leave. The bartender came over to scoop up their empty glasses.
“You want another?” he asked.
“Sure,” Frank said. Then, in spite of himself, in spite of everything, he added, “This time with vodka.”
He must have left the bathroom door open when he got back. It was past midnight, and Cleo was already asleep. He’d stumbled home and taken a shower, trying to get the smell off him. He could hide it. If Cleo didn’t smell it, he could hide it. He’d woken up a few hours later needing to pee. He was still in the shallow end of sleep, bleary from the hangover, when he’d glanced down to see the sugar glider bobbing in the toilet bowl beneath him. Her body was pitching in the stream of his piss. She was face down, unfurled in the shape of a star. She looked like a fallen star.
He’d flushed her down. What else could he do? He’d flushed her body away before Cleo could wake up and see what he’d done. She spiraled, resisted, and disappeared. Afterward, he’d vomited for the first time in years, that familiar bent-kneed position bringing him back to the summers of his youth. Oh, Jesus. He looked into the foul, frothing water beneath him. He flushed. It would not go down. He flushed again. It didn’t work. The sullied water kept rising.
CHAPTER TEN
February