“I have something important to say,” said Boris.
“Really?” What I should have said was that I couldn’t bear to listen to anything important because I was too drunk. But I was too drunk to think of this. I decided I should just keep talking until Boris forgot what he was trying to say. “How beautiful!” I made for the edge of the building. “What could be more glorious than a sky studded with stars? Nothing but wide open air and concrete. I often thought, when I was a little girl, that I’d like to live in a place like this. I’d pitch a tent in one part, have a little camp stove close by, and do nothing all day long but feed pigeons and watch people crawl like ants down the street. That’s all they’d look like, ants, so small down there. Of course, there would be the bathroom problem, but I never thought of that, just the sky and isolation. Sky and isolation. Sky and isolation.”
“Katherine, what are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. You make me nervous when you’re serious.”
“I will ignore that,” said Boris, smiling to himself. “Katherine,” he said, “you have changed my life.”
“I have?” This really wasn’t that hard to do. Changing his brand of coffee was—to Boris—life-altering.
“I am the luckiest man in the world.”
“You are?” I watched Boris shortening the distance between us. “Well, I suppose you are. You have your health and a rent-controlled apartment…”
“Katherine! Shut up please!” Boris composed himself. “What I have to say is simple.”
I was silent.
“I must have you with me,” he said. “I can’t be parted from you any longer. It is too sad for me to be waiting, eating alone, not having anyone to talking.” Ibid. Boris was very drunk, but the fact that the whole thing seemed premeditated was eroding my confidence. “No more time apart,” he said.
I began to panic. “You’re moving to Maine?”
“No, no, no,” said Boris, smiling.
I was greatly relieved.
“I want you to marry me.”
I pulled my hands from his and took a few steps back. Boris went down on bended knee. He produced a felt-covered box from his pocket and opened it. The box held a ring, a gold one with an impressive diamond that leered out from its setting.
“Will you marry me?” asked Boris.
“Marry you? My God, Boris. You know I love you, but I just can’t marry you.”
“Marry me,” Boris coaxed, holding out the ring.
“Boris…”
“Marry me!”
“You see, Boris, it’s not that I don’t want to marry you. I can’t marry you.”
Boris got up. “You have some explaining?”
“Well, yes.”
“Why? Why can’t you marry me?”
“Because,” I said fidgeting with my skirt buckles, “because I’m already married.”
“Married?”
“Yeah.” I looked up at the sky. I didn’t want to see Boris’s face.
“Married?” Boris repeated. “To who?”
“Well, actually,” I looked at Boris out of the side of my face, “I’m married to Silvano.”
“You are married…”
“… to Silvano Falconi.”
“Who is that?”
“Oh, someone I knew in Italy.”
“And who is this man?”
“Well, he’s in leather.”
“Leather.”
“Yes, and, oddly enough, he’s in your apartment.”
“Now?”
I was beginning to feel cavalier.
“This is not the truth,” said Boris.
“Why would I lie?”
Boris looked deep into my eyes, hoping for a lie, but I was feeling decidedly unsophisticated and I’m sure it showed. “The old leather guy?”
“He’s not exactly leather… Well, I suppose we’re all leather, aren’t we?”
“Shut up,” said Boris. “Is that legal?”
I nodded again.
“How? When?”
“It just kind of happened. I was in Italy and then I was married to Silvano.”
“For how long?”
“I guess it will be a year in another, oh wow, a year at the end of the month. Yeah.”
Boris wasn’t taking it very well. His hands went up to the sides of his head. I think his blood was all rushing up there, making his complexion blotchy and pink. “You are, you are evil,” he said.
I considered this and lit a cigarette. Alcohol had made me frank, which was good. If I’d had my wits about me, I might have accepted Boris’s proposal and become a bigamist. Were bigamists ever women? I took a long drag, hazarding a peek at Boris, who was pacing in an agitated yet drunken manner. “Boris, where’s your sense of humor?” I said.
“Sense of humor is when you see the funny thing and you say ‘That’s the funny thing.’ Sense of humor is not for this. This is for the grotesque.”
“Grotesque?” Despite myself, I was getting a little offended.
“That leather-peddling, pedphile, Guido…”
“You mean pedophile. A pedphile is a lover of feet.” I didn’t think there was any such thing as a pedphile and I didn’t care. Boris was hardly a youngster. And he had no business calling Silvano a Guido when he would have gladly traded his so-called Romanov roots to be Italian. Boris stomped around for five minutes. He paused looking onto the street. He was snorting like a bull, then he came back. “How long were you with this guy?” he asked.
“Before or after we were married?”
Boris said nothing.
“Well, I guess about a month and a half.”
“But you’re married to him?”
“Yes.”
“He’s your husband?”
“Yes.”
Boris looked at the ring, then shut the box with a snap. He began massaging his head. “I hate this,” he said. “Is there anything else I should know about you?”
I considered this. “No.”
“Anything that I should not know?”
“Look, Boris,” I took his wrist. “I need a drink. Let’s go downstairs, all right?” I led him over to the stair well. It was a mild evening, the kind of weather that makes even the weirdest, most difficult things seem funny. “It’s really nice up here,” I said. “Maybe the next time you have a party, you should throw it on the roof.”
Back in the apartment, the party continued. Full swing would have been nice, but that evening lacked any kind of fulcrum. Ann was seated by herself, her legs splayed out in complete relaxation. She had a drink resting on the arm of the chair. When she saw Boris and me walk in, she made as if to get up, but then gave up. Boris went stomping off to the bathroom. I went to rescue Ann’s drink before she knocked it over.
“Ann, are you all right?” I asked.
“What if I’m not?”
I squatted down beside her partially to show support, but also because in that little corner, ducked down beside the chair, I was hard to spot.
“I think I’ve lost my mind,” Ann said. “Let me tell you a story.”
“What’s the story about?”
“It’s about me, a Great Dane, and some carbonara.”
Ann had been in her apartment fixing dinner. She was disturbed from her cooking by an incessant howling coming from the street. Peering out her window, she caught sight of a Great Dane, leg raised, who had been bound by an electric current while in the process of urinating on a lamppost. Ann banged on the window with a wooden spoon, leaving white globs of carbonara on the glass, desperate to save the dog but too far away to be of any real help.
“I felt like I was having a bad dream, screaming like fuck-all, but no one could hear me.”
Finally, a man armed with a two-by-four had walked up the sidewalk. He struck the dog hard, disengaging him from the current. The dog whimpered on the ground for a short while, then got up and started limping down the street.
“That’s what I need,” said Ann. “I need a man with a two-by-four to hit me and hit me hard.”