What astonished him most was how easy it was to be with her, how little guilt he felt. He had thought of her often since that drunken night they spent together, of course, but he had known to push any feelings toward her down to a deep, untouched part of himself. The day Frank told him they were getting married, he had felt a strange kind of betrayal—by Frank or Cleo, he couldn’t tell—and had vowed to keep his distance from her. And he had managed for almost a year. Until now.
Every evening after work he raced home to see her, anxious to fold her back into his arms. They barely left his apartment. They ordered platters of sashimi and ate them with their fingers. They smoked weed out of an apple and had slow, trancelike sex. They watched movies, enfolded in each other. They ignored the snow softly falling through the window. They took baths. They drank tea. They squeezed each other’s feet. They played each other music. They built a snowman on the balcony. They made soup from scratch. They snorted coke and stayed up talking until the morning chased them back to bed. They slept next to each other, sometimes fitfully, sometimes peacefully, every night for two weeks.
On the day Frank was to return, Anders woke with the light. Cleo was beside him, a bar of sunlight striping her face. Her expression, even in sleep, was worried. He pulled his arm out slowly from under her back and rolled out of bed. He thought about showering, but he wanted to smell Cleo on him all day. He dressed quickly in his usual dark jeans and turtleneck, then went to the kitchen. Tea and porridge, that was what Cleo liked in the mornings. Whistling between his teeth, he plugged in the kettle and pulled milk from the fridge. A plume of steam funneled into the room. He stirred the oats, added a swirl of granular brown sugar. Frank would be landing in a few hours.
The postcard Frank had sent him was propped on the kitchen counter. On the front was a picture of a man being mauled by a lion. The caption underneath it read “Send more tourists to South Africa!” Anders had received it with a jolt of fear—was Frank the lion?—when he remembered a long-standing joke between the two of them to each send the other the worst postcard they could find from every country they visited. On the back, scrawled in Frank’s nearly illegible hand, were four words: “Thought of you, brother.”
Anders checked his watch; he didn’t have much time. Today was his day with Jonah, his ex-girlfriend Christine’s son. Jonah wasn’t biologically his child, but Anders had lived with him from the ages of four to ten and loved him in a fierce and uncomfortable way that he imagined was close to paternal. He looked forward to seeing him, though he didn’t make time for it as often as he should. On this occasion, he was happy for the distraction. It would be good to take his mind off Frank’s plane making its slow descent back into New York.
Cleo was spread like a star on the bed when he returned with breakfast. She’d thrown the covers from her, leaving her pale chest exposed. He liked her this way in the mornings, unadorned. Her silvery eyelashes gave her face an open, unguarded look. He sat down on the edge of the bed and very gently leaned over to kiss her nipple. She gave him one of her drowsy smiles, like a sunbeam struggling through an overcast sky.
“How did you sleep?” he asked.
“Pipes were clanging.”
“It’s an old building,” he said. “I made breakfast.”
Cleo sat up and gave him a serious look. “What do you think of Eleanor?”
“Who?”
“The copywriter at Frank’s firm.”
“She’s nice, I guess? Why on earth would you ask?”
“I think Frank’s in love with her.”
Anders put the porridge and tea mug down on the bedside table with a plunk.
“Why are you bringing this up now?”
“You think he is too?”
“I think you’re being ridiculous. Eleanor? She’s … she’s not Frank’s type.”
“I saw their emails.”
“Just now?”
“No. A little while ago.”
“So?”
“They send each other these jokes. Things they find funny.”
“And?”
“It’s the kind of thing people in love do.”
“Or bored coworkers. You’ve never had an office job, Cleo. That kind of stuff is normal.”
“It doesn’t feel normal.”
“Is that what all this was about then? You think Frank’s having an affair, so you wanted to have one too?”
“I don’t think they’re having an affair exactly. I think he’s … they feel for each other.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Don’t call me crazy.”
Cleo sat up farther against the headboard and yanked the sheets around herself. Her face was pinched and white.
“Look—” He wrestled her hands away from where they were knotted at her chest and took them in his. “I know this is difficult, what with Frank coming back and us not knowing … Well, how to proceed. But we’ve had such a happy time together. Let’s not fight now, please.”
“I’m going to say something to him,” she said.
He dropped her hands. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t—” She stopped, trying to find the right words. “Something has to change.”
Anders felt a pull in his stomach, as though a plug had just been yanked out.
“Cleo, please, whatever you do, do not say anything about us to him. Not yet. I need … I need more time.”
“I won’t bring you into it.”
“Then what do you want to say?”
“I don’t know! That I’m not happy. That I’m moving out. I have to do something. Can you just promise me one thing?”
She reached to pick up his hands from where they had fallen in his lap. Anders could feel himself physically inclining away from her as she grasped for him. He had to resist the impulse to leap up off the bed and out the fire escape.
“What?”
“Promise me you’ll be there. You don’t have to come out and tell everyone we’re together. Just promise you’ll be there for me.”
“Look, I have to go,” he said. “It’s my day with Jonah, I told you. There’s porridge for you there. Just please don’t do anything rash, Cleo. Please.”
He kissed her hastily on the cheek and pointed to the porridge, as if eating that would solve everything.
“Stay,” she said, but he was already heading out the door.
He hailed a cab and headed west. He was running late. As they turned onto the West Side Highway, Anders relaxed his head against the back of the seat. Runners bundled against the cold jogged along the water, beyond which the unglamorous skyline of New Jersey stood. Eleanor was from New Jersey, he remembered Frank saying. Anders did not give much credence to Cleo’s theory concerning their feelings for each other. Cleo was sensitive, imaginative, slightly paranoid; she read too much into everything. Frank would have told Anders if he had fallen in love with someone else. Anyway, what would possess him to pursue a woman like Eleanor when he had Cleo?