The connection crackled on Archie’s end. He said something Anna couldn’t fully understand and she asked him to repeat it. It was still unintelligible. He was in a room with other people. A bar, maybe. Anna couldn’t distinguish the competing voices. She barreled forward. Talk to me, Archie. I am drunk and cold and alone and horny and in the dark and drunk and lonely and Bruno’s asleep and talk to me, talk to me please, please. She knew he didn’t owe her this. But she could ask, couldn’t she? Talk to me. Please. Please?
There was a pause during which Anna heard Archie turn away and ask the people around him to be a little quieter. Anna couldn’t differentiate between individual responses but she did make out a woman’s laugh, rowdy and high-pitched. “Sorry,” Archie said. “It’s loud here.” Anna nodded as if he could see her nodding through the phone. “Hey,” he cleared his throat. “Can I call you later?”
“Are you on a date?” The note in Anna’s voice accused. She had intended it to.
Archie pretended not to hear her. “Can I call you tomorrow? I can’t talk right now.”
“No,” Anna said, and reminded him she’d be at home with Bruno and her kids and if he didn’t talk to her just then, he wouldn’t be able to until Monday.
“Then I’ll talk to you on Monday, all right?”
“Okay,” Anna responded. But she didn’t mean it. It wasn’t okay. She ended the phone call quickly, before Archie could end it himself. An immediate, unfair jealousy possessed her. Hot tears welled in her eyes, then boiled over, then slid down her face. Dammit, Anna. In her heart she heard the unbidden, disembodied voice of Doktor Messerli: Your histrionics cripple you.
Yes, yes, Anna said aloud to the inner voice. He’s trifling. A nothing. A no one. But her heart hurt anyway.
She opened her telephone again and in a darkness illuminated only by the bright gray screen she scrolled through her address book until she found Karl’s entry. The SMS was easy. Wo bist? She received an almost immediate answer. Basel. Tomorrow in Kloten. Hotel? Karl’s father lived in a convalescent home there. That’s what brought him to Kloten so often. And he always stayed at the same hotel. Isn’t it expensive? Anna had asked. It was, Karl said, but the sister of one of the men he cut trees with was a manager and always found him a room in the off-season and gave him a deal. Most often the deal was Don’t worry about it. Anna assumed he paid her in other ways. Maybe he fucked her too.
Yes, yes, Anna replied. Text me. I’ll meet you anytime.
“ARSON AND PYROMANIA AREN’T the same,” Stephen said. “Arson’s a crime. Committed, usually, for insurance fraud.” Stephen often testified in criminal court as an expert witness. He would take the stand and attorneys would question him about the behavior of fire. What it did under stress. How it reacted. What things set it off. “Pyromania, on the other hand, is a disease. I’m not a shrink so I can’t say much more than a pyromaniac sets fires on impulse. It goes beyond his common sense. Also, it’s rare. It’s not something he can easily help.”
“Pyromaniacs are always men?”
“Overwhelmingly, yes. Most all fire setters—arsonists included—are male.”
“And what about pyrologists?”
Stephen grinned. “Ah. The overwhelming majority of pyrologists are men who know how to channel their impulsivity into avenues of potential orgasm.” And with that he put his head beneath the blanket under which they lay and began sucking Anna’s nipple even as he ran his hand between her thighs. Anna purred. It was a good afternoon.
ANNA WOKE WITH A hangover. Her head throbbed, her eyes pulsed, her stomach was sour and brackish. It was seven A.M. The children were at Ursula’s and Bruno was still asleep. Anna took some aspirin, drank a liter of water, and had two cups of coffee. By the end of the first cup of coffee her equilibrium returned. The morning came into slow focus.
She’d left her cell phone in the pocket of her coat when she returned from her walk. When she retrieved it that morning the message light was blinking. It was a text from Karl. She squinted. The memory of the night before rolled slowly into focus. The sex. The bench. Archie. Karl. She blushed against the recollection of her frantic scrambling to keep from being alone.
Bruno’s mood was coltish when he awoke—without a hangover—forty-five minutes later. He brushed by Anna on the way to the bathroom and gave her bottom a smack. Minutes later he was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, whistling as he fried eggs and bacon for the pair of them. Anna marveled at this man. Where’d he come from? How long is he staying? She pushed those questions from her mind. It was better not to know. As in the case of a magic trick, once the ruse is learned, the spell dissolves.
They flirted over the meal like newlyweds. Bruno ran his hands up and down the outside of her thighs. She sucked butter from his thumbs. Anna blushed when, leaning in to kiss him, she smelled herself on Bruno’s face. That was enough. She was done with the food. She was ready to fuck again. She was ready for Bruno to fuck her again. She mentally drafted an SMS to Karl: Change of plans. That would be all she needed to say. Bruno bit her lower lip then drew little circles on the tip of her tongue with the tip of his own tongue.