What if he hadn’t?
That question was like the fleeting thought in the dressing room at Hamburger’s—thrilling, awful, wonderful. When he married Lucy, he had been “promising.” Now he was beginning to fulfill that promise. This was only his first book, not his last. Would Lucy really be the last woman he ever had sex with? Of course she would, that was the promise made. He didn’t believe that adulterous thoughts counted. He was pretty sure that a marriage’s only chance was in each partner having a lively inner life, fantasies that could never be shared. But it had not occurred to him that professional success could nudge those fantasies closer to him, like someone moving a plate of brownies toward you when you were adamant that you were dieting. Just have one. What could it hurt?
The female juror, the one with the tits, had seated herself on Gerry’s right. It was almost impossible to speak to her without staring into her cleavage, and he had to speak to her, he had to be polite. Thiru’s orders.
Lucy, under the cover of the tablecloth, put her hand on his groin. It felt more like a threat than a come-on.
“It’s funny how obscure our prize is, when it’s so richly endowed,” the richly endowed juror was saying. “I can’t help thinking that it’s about location—if our foundation were in New York or Chicago, it would be a much bigger deal. Why, the Pulitzer gives its winners only three thousand dollars and the judges are newspaper editors. Our jury is comprised of past winners, critics, academics.”
“Comprises,” Lucy said.
“What?”
“The correct usage is ‘comprises.’ The whole comprises the parts. Not ‘comprised of.’ Lots of people get it wrong. It’s one of my bugaboos.”
The female juror eyed Lucy thoughtfully. “I’d almost forgotten,” she said. “You write, too.”
“She’s a wonderful writer,” Gerry put in. “Fiction and poetry.”
“Have you—”
“Have I published anything yet? Not outside of literary journals.”
“She’s been working on this book of interconnected stories, it’s really marvelous.”
“How lovely,” the female juror said, putting her hand on Gerry’s forearm. “You two are the loveliest couple, so perfectly matched, in brains and beauty. I mean that.”
She excused herself to speak to someone on the committee about the evening’s program.
“Do you want her?” Lucy said.
“What? No! What are you talking about?”
“Because you can have her. If I’m in the room.”
“What are you saying?”
“I know you, Gerry. I can feel how restless you’re becoming. I’ve been thinking—if we do these things together, we’ll be okay. It’s how we’ll survive your … restlessness.”
“Lucy—no, you’re wrong. Ever since I’ve had this modest success, your emotions have been all over the place. This isn’t about us, as a couple. Please don’t worry. I’m not leaving you behind, in any sense.”
Lucy has never looked more like Barbara Stanwyck than she does in this moment. Cool, appraising, plotting.
“Let’s invite her back to the hotel with us, after the event, to have a drink. Let’s see what happens.”
“You’re being very silly.”
“What do you have to lose? If I’m wrong, or if you decide you want no part of it, we have a drink with the nice lady who helped hand you eighty thousand dollars and I can make up for being so rude to her just now. If I’m right—”
What do I have to lose?, Gerry thought.
What do we have to lose?, he thought, two hours later, when he allowed his wife first crack at those magnificent tits, the three of them giggling in the fussy canopy bed at the hotel. Maybe this is how a marriage lasts. Maybe Lucy is onto something. What do I have to lose?
“Just remember,” Lucy said, lifting her lipstick-smeared mouth to his, “I always have to be in the room.”
“Of course,” Gerry promised, “of course.” He bent down so his head was next to hers and they suckled at the juror’s breasts like two hungry kittens.
April 2
“I SUPPOSE,” Aileen says the next day, when Gerry has finally admitted to himself that he will be denied the solace of sleep no matter how many drugs are in his system, “you want to know what’s going on.”
Does he?
“If you must.”
“I’m going to tell it in chronological order. I’m sure you won’t respect that as an artistic choice—”
“No, I think that’s fine, under the circumstances.”
He’s not sure of the time, only that he has not slept. Early morning, he judges by the light. He can hear traffic, the sounds of a city coming to life, but it’s not yet rush hour.
She takes her usual seat. “Tory and I have been friends for years and roommates since we left Goucher. When she applied for the job as your assistant, she was gutted that you had no memory of her. It tore her up. We talked about what kind of man forgets someone he taught only seven years ago and we realized—the only students you cared about in that workshop were the boys and that one girl, Mona, because she was gorgeous.”
And the best writer in the class. Also, not all of the boys, only the two who were good. But he’s in no position to argue. He’s literally in no position to argue. He’s in his bed, incapable of walking, barely capable of holding a seated posture for more than a few minutes, and his “caretaker” has bashed in the head of his assistant, who is also her friend and roommate.
“We realized you don’t see women unless you’re attracted to them, that it was such a joke that you had gotten all this praise about some ‘dream girl’ who changed a man’s life, that there was no way Aubrey was really your creation because she was too real, and you didn’t know anything about real women. There’s always been this rumor that you stole some woman’s life, maybe even stole her literal story. We decided to gaslight you.”
“But—how could you know I would have an accident?”
She sighs, hitches her chair closer to his bed. He can’t help himself, he flinches.
“That was never the plan. It was going to be all letters and phone calls. But then you fell.”
There was a letter! Then he realizes how silly it is to feel triumphant about being right about the letter.
“So we improvised.”
“Are you a nurse in real life?”
“No, I was working as a barista at the Fort Avenue Starbucks. But you’d be surprised what you can learn on the Internet. There’s a lot of information for people who have to be caretakers because someone in their family has had a fall. Most people can’t afford private nurses, you know.”
Is she actually resentful of the fact that he’s been paying her a good wage for a job she’s not certified to do? Is this some kind of boomer-millennial warfare?
“But—why—what happened tonight?”
“Victoria found Margot’s phone in your office when she arrived yesterday morning. I had left it out by mistake.”
“Why would Victoria call me on Margot’s phone, then? It was Victoria, right?” He is hearing the voice now, pitched lower than Victoria’s mousy squeak, capable of declarative sentences. How easily he had been fooled. Maybe the problem was that he didn’t hear women.
“No—I mean, yes, Victoria was the one who usually called you, but I was the one who called the last time. I guess I left that part out. Margot’s phone was in her bag. I had wiped it, it was safe, I was going to sell it to Gazelle for a little money. I don’t know why I played that trick on you that night. I guess I wanted to see where your head was at. Anyway, I left Margot’s phone out in the spare bedroom where I sit at night because I didn’t think Tory went in there. Yesterday morning, she did.”
“Yet the phone was”—what was the word she had used?—“wiped. Why would Tory even notice it?”