“I’m glad you think so.”
In the bathroom mirror she looked at the red lines in her eyes and the bags below them. She didn’t feel beautiful. But at least this hangover was a piker compared to the one that had welcomed the morning after in Dubai. She wondered if Buckley would want to go to brunch. She rather hoped not. She liked him, but she really wasn’t hungry. The fact was, she was almost never all that hungry. After years of boozing it up, it was as if her body craved its calories from alcohol. There was a reason she was likely to have canned soup and stale crackers for dinner.
She considered bringing him two or three of the red pills, but then wondered if he was similar to her and downed them like peanuts or the sort who followed the instructions on the label and would begin with just one. So she brought the whole bottle along with a glass of water. She opened the blinds and squinted at the way the cone of the New York Life Building shimmered in the sun, and then crawled back under the sheets. She watched a plane as it crossed the skyline outside her window, flying north before banking east to LaGuardia.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“You sound sad.”
“One syllable gave all that away? Nah. Just not hungry.”
She heard him put the glass and the bottle down on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
“When you’re in Germany, do you ever begin the day with eggs in mustard sauce?”
“No. Never. And what in the name of God made you think of Germany just now?”
“You were in Berlin yesterday.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re a fan of eggs.”
“Not with mustard.”
“They’re hard-boiled. And delicious,” he insisted. Then: “I like your apartment.”
She wished she could will into existence the woman she had been last night. The one who danced barefoot and made this very gentle actor happy. The one who wasn’t repulsed by the idea of brunch and his hints about eggs and food. But that person didn’t exist in the morning. Most of the time, that person didn’t exist sober. It was almost fascinating how rapidly her resolve not to drink could dissipate: it was like the thin coat of ice on a Kentucky pond in late January, there one day and just gone the next. And yet she knew in her heart that she wouldn’t drink today. That wasn’t how it worked for her. She’d send Buckley on his way, go to the animal shelter and nurture the depressed cats—the new arrivals that had just been deserted by their owners for one reason or another and were shocked to be living in a cage in a loud, strange world—and then finish the day at the gym. Tonight she would cocoon, her body clock happily adjusted once again to Eastern Daylight Time. She would read and she would watch TV. She would see no one tonight. She would be fine. She had until Tuesday here. Then, with a crew full of strangers—not even Megan and Shane would be on the plane—she would fly to Italy. The August routes she had bid on were Rome and Istanbul. Both were direct flights from JFK. No Dubai.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked. She needed to scare him away to get on with her day and, more importantly, with her life.
“Sure. But this sounds ominous. Will it be as sad as all that melted ice cream?”
“No. Maybe. I’m not sure. I don’t know yet what I’m going to tell you.”
“Wow. It sounded like you had something in mind. Usually when a person begins, ‘Can I tell you something?’ they’re thinking of some pretty specific revelation or pretty specific bit of news.”
She was still on her side. She brought her knees closer to her stomach and rested her hands together under the pillow as if she were praying. “I was just thinking about my day and what I’m going to do this afternoon. The main thing is I’m going to the animal shelter. I love the shelter. I go when I’m home because my mother wouldn’t let me have pets as a girl, and now I’ve managed to pick a career where I travel too much to have one—at least in good conscience.”
A moment ago, he had sat up to swallow the Advil and drink the water. She imagined if she rolled over, she would see he was watching her. Perhaps he was propped up on his elbow, looking down at her.
“I mean, we did have a pet when I was little. Very little. We had a dog. My parents had gotten him before I was born. Years before I was born. But when I was five, my father ran him over. The dog was old and asleep in the grass beside the driveway, and my dad was so drunk when he came home that afternoon, he missed the pavement and—quite literally—ran him over. Didn’t just hit him. Crushed him. And so we never had pets after that. My mom was afraid something would happen to them.”
She recalled her parents’ fights about pets—about cats and dogs. She and her sister would cry, and her father would lobby with slurred words on their behalf. And he would fail. Did her father feel demeaned? Emasculated? She assumed so now. Her mother once said if her father stopped drinking, they could consider a cat or a dog, but that was never going to happen, even after his DUI or after the high school fired him as the driver’s ed teacher. (Much to everyone’s astonishment, he was still allowed to teach P.E.) As a girl, she had felt only the unfairness of her mother’s edict. It was as if she and her sister were being punished for their father’s misbehavior.
“I think it’s really sweet that you go to the shelter on your day off,” said Buckley.
“I guess I do it for me.”
“And for them.”
“I should get dressed,” she told him.
“Is that a hint?”
“Yes.”
“Got it. You know, if you want me to leave, there are easier ways than dredging up a horrible memory about a dead dog. I’m pretty chill, trust me.”
She didn’t roll over. “Oh, I never seem to do things the easy way.”
“No?”
“No.” Then: “And I’m sure you have someplace you need to be, too. Right?”
She felt him swinging his feet over the bed. She expected him to stand up. But he didn’t. He sat there a long moment and then said softly, “Just so you know, I don’t usually do this. I don’t sleep with strangers when I’m on tour or in a theater out of state, and I don’t when I’m home here in the city.”
She sighed. “I do.”
“Okay, of all the things you’ve told me in the last twelve or whatever hours, that’s got to be the saddest.”
And with that he finally stood. He picked up his clothes from the floor by her closet, his body angular and taut. She heard him go into the bathroom to throw some water on his face before going home, but she kept her hands under her pillow, her knees bent, and tried to lie there as quiet and fixed as a corpse.
* * *
? ?
And in the night, she wept. It was, she tried to convince herself, because of the cats. They always got to her. The thirteen-year-old calicos that had lived together their whole lives, discarded because their owner had a new boyfriend and he insisted he was allergic to them. The rough and ruddy orange tom, dropped off because the family was moving. He probably weighed twenty pounds, all muscle, and now was unwilling to lift his head and emerge from his cage. There were rail-thin black cats from a crazy hoarder, one with her ear half gone from a fight, all of them awash in fleas and ticks when they arrived.