*
On Wednesday at 4:22 P.M., Anna knocked on Sam’s apartment door.
“Hi Anna,” said Sam.
“Hi Sam,” said Anna. He placed his hand on her elbow.
“Your knee doing okay?”
“Not really, Sam. They think it might be a sign of hemolytic anemia.”
“That’s terrible, Anna. Come on, sit down, sit down.”
She sat.
“I’m just tired. I’m tired all the time. I wake up and I’m tired, I go to sleep and I’m tired.” She looked at him; he looked slightly to the left of her.
“You know I love having you here, but there are other volunteers in the program and if you’re too—”
“No, please,” she interrupted. “Really, I’m fine.” Anna brushed past Sam and settled on the sofa. “Did I ever tell you I could do Black Swan’s thirty-two fouettés en tournant without breaking a sweat?”
Sam smiled.
“I’ll put on some tea.” The kettle needed washing and Anna was wearing a dress, so by the time he sat down at his desk, her clothes were already piled neatly beneath the armchair.
He looked at her. She loved when he looked at her. Loved imagining Martin imagining him looking at her. As he sat at his firm’s desk, too good to retire, staring at a case as his wife parted her bare legs in the apartment of a younger man.
Anna hadn’t made love since Martin un-retired. Or for that matter since her knee started hurting and the nausea began. But her pulse would quicken like it did in her twenties. Sometimes, when she’d finished a sentence, or a letter, she’d pause for a minute, letting Sam’s clicking fingers catch up, and close her eyes. Sam couldn’t see the way her breasts hung down in pockets of thinning skin. Or the way her pubic hairs had begun to thin near the bottom. So she imagined that they didn’t and they hadn’t. Anna just sipped her tea and let the years fall off her with her clothes. She was twenty-five. Her skin was taut and her hair strawberry yellow. Her joints were smooth and her voice was crisp.
That morning in her closet Anna sorted through options. Straps were preferable. Cottons and silks were quieter, skirts and dresses easier to remove. Buttons were practically essential. Her knuckles struggled with detail, mandating a patient delicacy in sliding the tiny polished plastic through their knitted holders. She started with a hand on her neck, lingering on the divot above her collarbone before sliding her fingertips under the strap and letting it fall off her shoulder like a leotard. Sentence by sentence, she fingered the circles, tossing them aside with the periods, semicolons, and dots from the i’s. Sometimes, though, the anticipation was too much. Sometimes Sam would turn toward her at the right moment and her lips would part, and her back would hurt, and she’d lose her place on the page—looking back at Sam like she’d looked at Brian from Conservatory or Lev from her summer in Moscow or Martin before he’d taken the bar. It was these times that she ached to rip off her straps and to let her buttons crack off like tiny moons.
*
“I miss dreaming forwards,” Anna said.
“What?”
“I dream backwards now. You won’t believe how backwards you’ll dream someday.” She cupped one of her breasts in her hand, sliding it up her body and closer to her neck.
“I didn’t think dreams had directions.” His broken eyes managed a smile.
“You’re teasing me.”
“Anna, I would never tease you,” he teased. She liked the way he said her name. It rolled off his tongue to say I’m talking to you, to say I’m listening to you.
“I dream of the past, of things that could have happened, or should have happened or never happened. You dream of the future. You’re so young, Sam. You don’t realize it now, but you’re so young.”
“I dream in sounds and tastes and textures,” he said.
She paused for a moment, studying his half-lidded eyes.
“Future sounds.” She reopened the book. “Future tastes and textures.”
*
Sam wasn’t lonely. Not completely. His mother came up from Jersey every few weeks, and some of his college friends still lived in the city. They’d warned him about enrolling in a “normie” program. His college had been filled with dark classrooms and Braille keyboards, audio books and hallway railings. A college where students left their red-striped canes at the bottom of the staircase, feeling forearms and cupping faces. Pressing together to the vibrations of the speakers, dancing and slipping back to unmade beds based on the smell of someone’s hair or the curve of their wrist or the way their breath tasted. From time to time, Sam would sit awake in his living room, drink a Bordeaux, and blast these half-forgotten rap songs. He couldn’t stand to have a roommate, to subject some Westchester graduate student to the role of perpetual babysitter. After all, he already had nannies. Women who came and read to him like he was some charity case. But Anna was different. She never asked about his classes or his family or what it was like to be blind. It wasn’t about him. She just sat down and read. Read until her voice got dry or her eyes got tired and they would merely sit in silence for a while. She understood silence the way he understood darkness—running from neither as the sun set and the words ran out.
*
Sam stayed on his side of the room. He always did. After three weeks, Anna realized his pattern, and with it how easy it was to take off her scarf without notice. How easy it was to do the same with her sweater. Her blouse. Her beige cotton underwear. Three months later the routine had evolved. At around 6:30 P.M. she’d excuse herself to the bathroom, bunch up her pile, and emerge fully clothed and fully satisfied. Even as she sat in her kitchen, Martin-less. More satisfied that she was Martin-less. Itching as she ate her dinner to ask how his arthritis was, how his hemorrhoids were doing, and how very exciting his day was.
One night, as she waited, Anna fantasized about choking to death. Martin would come home from work and find her dead on the kitchen floor, a giant slab of steak still warm in a puddle of watery blood, a single fatal bite missing from its side. Her funeral would probably have a slide show of pictures back from the opera house; perhaps her nephew would read one of his poems. Beef would be banned from all hors d’oeuvres. Didn’t you hear, people would whisper, that’s how she died. I just can’t imagine, they’d sob, died in her own kitchen. Anna wondered whether an article would run in the Times, or if she’d just get one of those one-liners in the Westchester Daily. Alone, in the evenings, when Martin was at the office and her daughter was living in London and her Portuguese cleaning lady was gone and her Chinese dry cleaner was gone and Sam was somewhere dark, Anna thought about such things. Thought and thought until she felt the satiating company of the guilt she’d inspire and the soothing comfort that surely she’d be missed. But then she’d think more. Think and think until she started cutting her steak into smaller and smaller pieces, overchewing each bite before she tentatively swallowed.
*
Anna read Sam a wedding invitation and peeled off her socks.
Anna read Sam a chapter from The Tao of Pooh and unclasped her bra.
The heating vent chocked.
The tea percolated.
The clock hit 6:30, and Anna went to the bathroom.