“Sorry, my friend, you lost it in the settlement.”
“I didn’t lose it, I just didn’t want to fight over it, because you were in such a state I knew it would cost us another twenty thousand dollars in legal bills. My lawyer advised me to wait until you calmed down and then to ask you for it, since it’s a family heirloom.”
“Well, your lawyer screwed you,” said Izzy. “Because you’re not taking that desk.”
“Izzy.”
“Besides, why did you break in here? If you were going to ask me for it nicely.”
“Because I didn’t think you’d be reasonable. I’m sorry, I made a bad call. I’m willing to pay you for it, Izzy. It’s important to me.”
“You’ll give me actual money for it?”
“I will,” said Christopher. “Name a reasonable price.”
“A gazillion dollars? How does that sound?”
“Jesus, Izzy—”
Izzy picked up the phone and dialed and then said, “Hello, yes, my name is Izzy Radford and I have an intruder in my home.”
“Hang up the phone, Izzy,” Christopher said.
“Fifty-five Riverview Lane,” Izzy said.
“Hang up the phone, I’m leaving—”
“Describe him?” Izzy said. “He’s five foot eight, he’s wearing a green windbreaker, and he has a potbelly. Oh, and he’s about to start losing his hair.”
“He’s leaving,” said Owen. “Hang up the phone, Izzy. I’m escorting him out.”
Owen opened up the front door and followed Christopher onto the porch. Christopher took two steps down to the sidewalk and then turned around and looked up at Owen.
“I don’t know you, dude. And believe me, I don’t care what’s going on with you and Izzy. But here’s a friendly heads-up. She’s five kinds of crazy.”
*
Lucy was naked and lying in Ben’s bed, gazing out the window at the top of a chestnut tree. It was simple, now, getting to Ben’s every Thursday, claiming French lessons, and Lucy found herself looking forward to Thursdays the way you’d look forward to a day at the spa. Or maybe a little more. Maybe just a little bit more.
Ben was running his fingers from her neck to her waist to her hip in a deliciously slow, postcoital figure eight.
“Sometimes I think, This could really be something,” said Ben.
Lucy’s heart rose and sank at the same time.
“I know what you mean,” she finally said.
“Do you?” said Ben. “I guess I’m asking, is it just me?”
“It’s not just you,” Lucy said.
Even saying that was farther than Lucy wanted to allow herself to go. Already, this conversation was bigger than any infidelity. No falling in love.
This is not love, Lucy said to herself. I’m in love with my husband. I’m temporarily infatuated with Ben.
“I think about you when you’re not here,” he said. “Like, the other night, I was making dinner and I wanted to tell you something. I don’t even remember what I wanted to tell you, but I had to fight the urge to pick up the phone.”
“You could have texted me.”
“I guess I don’t know the rules,” said Ben.
“The rules are, you can text me,” said Lucy.
“Okay.”
Ben was quiet for a moment, and then he rolled over on his back and looked up at the ceiling.
“Can I text you constantly?”
Lucy stayed at Ben’s apartment fifteen minutes later than usual that night, and by the time she made it to Grand Central, she’d missed the ten o’clock train. She wandered around inside the station aimlessly, wishing she were still in bed with Ben, wishing she had timed things better so she didn’t have to waste an entire hour in the city and not be touching and talking to Ben.
She got on the next train early, took a seat by the window, and stared out at the rusty brown wall.
I’ve finally got juicy, she thought. That’s what this is. It’s just perfectly, unbelievably, stupendously juicy.
“Look at you. You are smiling out the window at nothing, like a woman in love.”
Lucy looked up and saw Andrew Callahan standing in the aisle, suit rumpled from a long day at work, tie rakishly askew.
“Hi, Andrew.”
“Lucy,” he said. “What are you so goddamn happy about?”
“I just had a good day, that’s all,” said Lucy.
“Mind if I sit?”
Please no.
“Of course not,” said Lucy. “I’d like it.”
Andrew had a bottle of good red wine he’d picked up in Grand Central, and he even had two small stemless wineglasses in his briefcase. He was gallant, Andrew Callahan was, and a happy, carefree, almost gleeful drinker, and he always made a point of having enough booze to share.
“Cheers,” he said after he’d uncorked the wine and poured.
“Cheers,” said Lucy.
“I wish my wife smiled like you when she was heading home to me,” said Andrew. “I wish she had that look on her face.”
“Your wife is a very happy woman.”
“Listen to me, Lucy,” Andrew said. He put his arm on the back of the seat and leaned in and lowered his otherwise booming voice. “You gotta help me with this one thing that’s been bothering me.”
“What?”
“Okay. The other day I came home, and Margaret was trying to open this box, this, like, big huge cardboard box her mother had sent her. And she had a box cutter in one hand, and there were packing peanuts flying out all over the place, and she was saying, ‘Fuck this shit! Fuck this fucking shit! I can’t take this goddamn fucking shit anymore!’”
“What did you do?” asked Lucy.
“I pretended I didn’t see it. I just tiptoed back into the garage and hid in there for ten minutes,” said Andrew. “Do you think she should be on a pill for that kind of thing?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy. “Sometimes being a mom of little kids is hard.”
“Yeah, I can see that, I guess,” he said.
“Is she like that all the time?”
“No! That’s what was so weird about it. Otherwise she’s pretty normal. It was like a weird window into her that made me think, um, my wife might be batshit crazy.”
“Margaret is not crazy,” said Lucy. “She probably just had a bad day.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Andrew said. “What are you doing on this late train?”
“I had French class. I take French. On Thursday nights.”
“Ah,” Andrew said, nodding his head knowingly.
“Ah what?”
“That’s why you look so happy,” said Andrew. “Owen’s finally letting you out of the house.”
Twelve
All paradises fail.
—Constance Waverly