Her phone vibrated by her elbow. A text from Brian. She opened it. She smiled.
There stood Brian, still in the clothes he’d worn today, smiling big, if a bit blearily, his hair mussed from travel. Behind him, a facade of brown wainscoting, wide double doors, large yellow lanterns hanging from either side of the entrance, and above it all the name of the establishment, COVENT GARDEN HOTEL. He’d sent her a few pictures of the street over the years—a curved tidy London street of retail shops and restaurants, red brick and white trim. The doorman, or whoever took the photo, would have had to step off the sidewalk to get the full facade of the hotel into the frame.
Brian was waving, a shit-eating grin dominating his handsome, weary face, as if letting her know he understood this wasn’t just an ordinary selfie, she didn’t just “miss him.” This had been a test of sorts.
And damn, she thought as she slid the phone into her pocket, did you ever pass.
She and Caleb did end up sharing a cab. He had the farther trip; he lived in the Seaport District. On the short ride back to her place they kept the conversation on the rain and the effect on the local economy. The Red Sox, for example, were approaching a Major League Baseball record for rainouts.
At her place, Caleb leaned in for the kiss to the cheek and she was already turning away when his lips landed.
In the condo, she took a shower and the hot water hitting skin pickled throughout the day by cold rain was so exquisite it felt sinful. She closed her eyes and could see Caleb in the bar and then in the pantry, and she flashed on Brian the last time they’d been in this shower together, just a few days ago, and he’d slipped up behind her and run the bar of soap over each nipple, then up one side of her neck and down the other and caressed her abdomen with it in an ever-shrinking circle.
She duplicated his efforts now, could feel him hardening between her legs. She could hear her own breathing mingle with the shower spray as Brian became Caleb and Caleb became Brian and she dropped the soap to the tile and placed one hand to the wall. She thought of Brian in the shower the other day and Brian in front of the Covent Garden Hotel, that shit-eating grin of his, those blue eyes filled with boyish glee. Caleb vanished. She used a single finger to bring herself to a climax that moved through her body as if the hot water had entered her and flushed her capillaries.
After, she lay in bed and was drifting to sleep when an odd thought occurred to her: When he’d decided to order dinner, Caleb had said he’d spent the entire day—10 A.M. to 5 P.M.—behind his desk. Said he never got up. Never went out. But when she’d shown up outside the building, he’d just been exiting. He still hadn’t stepped out from under the overhang above the door.
Yet his coat and his hat had been soaking wet.
16
REENTRY
Friday. The return.
She thought about picking him up at the airport, but she didn’t own a car anymore. She’d sold it when she moved in with Brian; the condo came with only one parking spot. After that, she’d driven Zipcars if she needed to get somewhere. She couldn’t believe how convenient they were actually—one lot was within a block of the condo—but then came the Dunkin’ Donuts and the food court and the vomiting on the Scientologist. After that, Brian asked her not to drive for a bit.
When it came time to renew her license, they had one of their fiercer fights. She couldn’t imagine not renewing, but he countered that he was owed—owed—peace of mind. “It’s not about you,” she recalled shouting across the kitchen bar. “Why do you think everything’s about you? Even this?”
Mr. Unflappable slapped the kitchen bar top. “Who did they call when you couldn’t leave the food court? And who did they call when—?”
“So this is about intrusions on your time?” She twisted a dish towel around one hand, tightening it until the blood bloomed under her skin.
“No, no, no. I’m not going to play that.”
“No, no, no,” she mimicked, feeling like an asshole, but feeling good too because the fight had been building for a week by that point.
For a microsecond, she thought she caught a rage bordering on hatred slip through his eyes before he took a long, slow breath. “An elevator doesn’t go sixty miles an hour.”
She was still back at that flash of rage. Was that the real Brian I just saw?
Eventually she realized it wouldn’t return. Not today anyway. She dropped the dish towel to the counter. “What?”
“You can’t get mortally wounded if you have a panic attack in an elevator or a mall or, I dunno, in a park or walking down the street. But in a car?”
“It doesn’t work that way. I don’t have panic attacks when I’m driving.”
“You only started having these things a few years ago. How do you know how the next one will manifest? I don’t want to get the call that you’re wrapped around a pole somewhere.”
“Jesus.”
He said, “Is it an unreasonable fear?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Out of the realm of possibility?”
“No, it’s not.”
“What if you started having trouble breathing, you’re sweating so hard you can’t see through it, and you hit somebody in a crosswalk?”
“Now you’re bullying.”
“No, I’m just asking.”
In the end, they reached a compromise. She renewed her license but promised not to use it.
But now that she’d strolled through a mall and ridden the subway, walked past old South Church into Copley Square, taken a cab through the rain, and sat in a crowded basement bar and all of it without a single uptick in her heart rate, not a single twitch in a throat vein, wouldn’t it be cool to show up outside baggage claim at Logan? He’d freak, of course, but would his apprehension be overwhelmed by his pride?
She went so far as to update her Zipcar account info—the credit card she’d first used had expired—but then remembered he’d driven himself to the airport and left the Infiniti in long-term parking.
So that was that. Her gratitude at being able to pass the cup induced some guilt—she felt gutless, weak—but maybe it was better she not drive if even the scantest trepidation remained.
When he came through the door, he wore the mildly surprised look of a man trying to reacquaint himself with the part of his life that didn’t include airports and hotels and room service and constant change but the opposite—routine. He glanced at the magazine basket she’d placed by the sofa as if he couldn’t place it, because he couldn’t; she’d purchased it while he was gone. He wheeled his suitcase to a corner and took off his copper raincoat and said, “Hey,” with an uncertain smile.