“Yep, home early.” She fights back tentacles of embarrassment while rummaging for cash in her purse. “Get in, let’s go.”
The babysitter sits in the back of the car, behind Camille and the doctor. It’s only a five-minute drive to her house—easily walkable, but nobody lets their kids live anymore—and Avis is safely asleep in her bed. Camille has no patience for the kinds of people who consider it criminal to leave a sleeping child alone for ten minutes. Those are the kinds of people whose lives are governed by fear, or at least fear of vilification by their peers. The kinds of people who, with all the late-night news they watch, remain ignorant of the practices of the real world outside their bubbles: the contortions and improvisations of those without resources, the risible logistics of single parenthood.
Still, the awkwardness inside the car is painful. Camille feels a slight irritation with the doctor for forcing her into this situation. She would rather screw in a fumigation tent for twenty minutes than go through this whole production. After dropping off the babysitter, they drive back to the house in silence, toward a flat moon netted behind tree branches. Camille watches her feet pass over the concrete walkway and, inhaling the sharp night air, is stunned for a moment by her own autonomy, the giddy sweep of her jurisdiction, so completely and finally adult. She can choose whatever she wants. And she chooses this. There is a feeling like expanding helium in her as she thinks of it, filling her head and groin.
A draft comes through the bedroom window, itself marked with dried edges of paint and the residue of old decals. Usually, while dressing and undressing, she prefers to leave the window shade open, just for kicks, but tonight she pulls it down. Her bed is a futon on the floor, the same she’s had since graduating from college, the same she and Nick shared for ten years. Beside it rests a stereo and vintage turntable, and above hangs a battered poster for Le Chat Noir, its slanted yellow eyes like a call to a more instinctual, hedonistic time. This futon and poster have been pillars of Camille’s environment for decades. She hasn’t bought a new item of furniture or decor in years—just entering a Bed Bath & Beyond gives her an anxiety attack—but that’s all right. It’s better to keep her bedroom minimalistic, unobtrusive, deferential to the sovereignty of its inhabitant.
Tonight, she goes through her box of vinyl and settles on Nina Simone. The doctor smiles in comprehension, and they fold together onto the futon. Camille is grateful not to be one of those women for whom beds are ruined by past partners. For her, history is continually erased so that each man is the first. There is no trace of Nick on this mattress. The doctor puts his hands in her hair and presses his fingertips into her scalp.
Only once does she think of Avis, asleep in her bed, but this comes to her from afar. There is nothing to keep her from falling, spiraling back to the raw sensations of her younger days. Each touch of this man is a discovery, and she nearly cries with gratitude for this renewal, this unexpected springtime.
He does not spend the night. This is an important trait, Camille recognizes, this unspoken consideration of her circumstances.
They spend an evening in the city. Camille drops Avis off with the housekeeper at Nick’s apartment, wishing that her date were beside her instead of waiting downstairs in his double-parked BMW. She wants the housekeeper to see him, so that she might describe him to Nick. Looking over the woman’s shoulder, she glowers at the loft’s furnishings, the antiseptic white and chrome, backlit by a wall of blinding windows. She nearly throws Avis’s toy bag inside, and presses a baggie of cookies into the housekeeper’s hand.
Within an hour, she is on a hotel bed with the doctor, talking about Paris. He’s been there several times, it turns out, and speaks workable French. There may be opportunities for him abroad. Camille expresses disbelief that he’d be so easy to sway, so amenable to adventure.
He kisses her. “If not now, when?” As simple as that.
When the night is fully dark, they wander down White Street to a new restaurant with black leather banquettes and brushed nickel sconces. She appreciates the gesture, but her head is already in Paris. The preening patrons of this restaurant—of Manhattan, of America—strike her as uptight and vainglorious. Even the food is pert and prude. She longs for the bloody steaks and stained-wood bistros of the Left Bank. She longs for the rancid smell of the Métro. She grips his hand under the table, and he gives her the thundercloud look.