“I forget what your husband does?” says Henry.
It isn’t a sarcastic question. It’s real. Can he really not know what Bruce does? Is that really all he cares about after all the stories I’ve just told him?
“He’s a communications technician,” I say, bracing myself for comments about my husband and my pretending he actually goes to a job every day. “How could you not know that?”
“How? Because I always think of you as mine and Bruce doesn’t really exist for me.”
Silence follows. Our heels on the sidewalk pavement seem noisy in this awkward moment. We have to stop for traffic and standing without moving is extraordinarily uncomfortable.
“Sorry,” Henry says, and clears his throat. “Well, it sounds like he gets to be home more than you do,” he continues truthfully. “I think you’re still doing most of the kid work even though he’s home most of the time.”
“I wasn’t talking much about my home life, Henry. I was speaking about work.” And then, even though I knew what the answer was, I ask him the same thing: “What about your home life? Is Danielle working?”
I know his wife doesn’t work, but it feels more respectful somehow to pretend to not know this. I choke down the idea that he thinks of me as his. “Because she exists for me.”
Henry laughs. “No, she loves to play,” he says, but there isn’t scorn in his voice, it’s admiration. “She knows exactly what she wants and what she wants is to not work a day in her life.”
This makes sense to me. Of course Henry prides himself on taking care of a woman, kept by her father and then by him. He would never get the chance to do that with me and it is suddenly so clear how much he needs to be that sort of man. Henry lets her keep living the cared-for life she has always known. Danielle is the opposite of me.
“She must be very happy,” I say, like a smarmy Hallmark card and feeling no jealousy at all. “Does she ever get a wifey bonus?”
“Two million a year and she accounts for every penny.”
“No.”
“Yes. She has one-third for fun, one-third for charity, and one-third for clothes and gifts.”
“I imagine seven hundred fifty thousand dollars can buy a lot of fun.”
“They take great trips.”
“They?”
“Her girlfriends. I’m too busy.”
“And she’s able to squeak by on a seven-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar clothes budget?”
“Well, she buys the boys’ clothes too.”
“That’s tough,” I say, and we both laugh and then are silent.
“Henry, about those emails—”
He interrupts, “Belle, baby, everything is okay.” He turns and looks directly into my eyes. “Please don’t make me stop. I need this. You don’t have to read them. I’m asking you to not ask me to stop. It doesn’t come from a place of disrespect. I’ve grown up since we knew each other. I don’t cheat on my wife. I just . . . I just . . . need this.”
“Henry, we slept in the same bed not that many weeks ago,” I point out. “What was that? We both don’t want that.”
“It was close to something I want,” he said, “but it wasn’t cheating. I think that I should let you know that we didn’t have sex, in case I’m that unmemorable.” He laughs. “It’s just that you fit me.”
Henry steps away from me and there is an angle of sunlight hitting his dark eyes, which makes them come alive. If we were in a movie, this is the part where we would have gotten a room, but this is real life, our bizarre, real life.
Henry squeezes my hand and dashes across Madison Avenue, against traffic, disappearing in a crowd of boys with rolling backpacks and acne and their entire lives still before them.
CHAPTER 29
Short Squeeze
THE TRADING CLOCKS, LED lit with giant numbers, note the precise time a trade crosses a buyer with a seller. Each trade is clocked in every time zone in the world. We keep the clocks clean and lit here because time is money. When the clocks pass 5 p.m., my guilt grows in tandem with the flipping of the numbers.