She abruptly covered her face with her hands. Like one of those three monkeys. She turned around and walked out of the apartment. I caught her at the bottom of the stairs.
“No,” she said. “I did not see you. I do not know who you are. I am leaving. I am not who you think you called for.”
“I didn’t say anything. You have not even let me stop to say anything to you. Stop. Stop walking.”
Then she turned around. She was over thirty now and I saw that she was one of those women who, when the bones of the face finally matured, found the powerful beauty that had almost already been there in their teens and twenties, but not quite.
I grabbed her shoulder. Then I got both arms around her and I held her. She smelled the same as she used to. But I could feel her sinews and the darker hollows in her muscles. My face was in her neck and her hair. She stiffened. Then she touched the back of my head. But it was too gentle, like your mother would touch your head if you were sick, or like when you were little and she was leaving the house and you didn’t want her to go.
“Bobby,” she said, and pulled away.
“Where did you get my number?” she said. “How did you get my number?”
“From Sylvia,” I said. “From that woman Sylvia.” I almost added, From Jim. But I did not want to say his name right then.
She closed her eyes. She kept them closed. I watched her.
“Can you come upstairs?” I said. She opened her eyes, then. “Not to have sex. I didn’t mean that. Can’t we just talk?” Why did you say that, Bobby? Why did you say anything about sex?
She took one of my hands and held it in hers. It was hard, then, not to start crying.
“Lisa,” I said.
“Your face is different now,” she said while we were making love. It was the only further thing she said to me that night.
Some nights later, when we met again, but not at my apartment, at a hotel, after we had sex I said, stupidly, “Don’t take this the wrong way. But why did you become a prostitute?” I didn’t want to say how lonely it made me feel.
In fact I should have just said it, because the question did not bother her. She laughed. It wasn’t a defensive laugh. It was an honest laugh.
“Bobby,” she said. “You are still so sweet. You will always be young for your age.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you say that?” Already Lisa felt more like my girlfriend, again, than some hooker. I couldn’t tell her that, of course.
“You sell jewelry for a living, Bobby. I was in that business once, too, remember? With what I do now, I sleep well at night. I don’t have any complaints about my line of work. I like the way I look in the mirror.”
I had no idea what she meant.
We were playing backgammon outside the coffee shop behind the store. Jim was beating me. I was down four hundred dollars. Sometimes as much as three thousand dollars went between us in those backgammon games. But we only cashed in the debt if one of us needed the money urgently. Otherwise we just let the bets flow back and forth from one game to the next. Usually he carried me, and not the other way around.
I had rolled double 3s and was trying out different moves in my head, watching the board, when Jim said, “Oh-oh.” I looked up and saw his face. He looked like he might laugh, but in that way he laughed when he felt sorry for you. I turned to look behind me and there were Wendy and Claire. Claire was dragging her feet like she wanted her mother to pick her up. She had a stuffed lamb I had bought her at Neiman’s in her free arm. Ever since her first birthday she had always carried a stuffed animal with her wherever she went. I could see Wendy was angry about something.
“You guys are working hard, I see,” Wendy said.
“Hi, Wendy,” Jim said.
“Daddy, I want something to drink,” Claire said. I took her into my lap.
“I wasn’t trying to interrupt your workday,” Wendy said. “But I need some money. They are putting in that underground water filter today and I can’t pay for it. You said we were going to pay for it in cash.”
Jim gave me a look. Sometimes I would need a little more cash than he was ready to divide up. This water filter business had been one of those times. I’d agreed to it when I had the Polack at my desk and was in a hurry to get Wendy off the phone. I would have told Wendy yes to many things with the Polack sitting across from me listening to our conversation with the malevolence on her face that she wore only when I was talking to my wife.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have that cash right now, Wendy.”
“How much cash is it?” Jim was reaching in his pocket.
“No, don’t worry about it, Jim,” I said. I didn’t want him to hear the number.
“It’s thirty-five hundred,” Wendy said.
“Thirty-five hundred dollars? For a water filter?”
“It’s like an underground water filter,” Wendy told Jim. “You never have to buy filtered water again. You even bathe in filtered water. I don’t want to wash Claire in that water with all of that stuff they pump into it. Chemicals and detergents. That’s not healthy. You should have seen our water when he tested it. It was really disgusting. It was frightening.”
“Daddy. Thirsty.” Claire squirmed in my lap. I started dancing her lamb on the table to distract her. With luck the lamb might bump the backgammon board.
“Bobby, why did Emily have your sunglasses on?”
“What? Who?”
Emily was the Polack’s real name, but no one ever said it.
“That Polish saleswoman. Emily, Bobby. Who works in your store. I think you have met her.”
“I better get back to the store, Bobby.” Jim stood and folded up the backgammon board. “I’ll see you back there. Don’t you have an appointment at three? Isn’t Morgan supposed to be in today?”
“Margaret,” I said. “Margaret is coming in at three.”
“Thirsty, Daddy! Thirsty, thirsty.” She started to sing it.
“You do know who the Polack is, right? Are you willing to grant that much? She was wearing your sunglasses. Why would she be wearing your sunglasses?”
Why is she wearing sunglasses at all? I wondered. She is supposed to be picking sapphires for the Stein job.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. How should I know what sunglasses she’s wearing? They’re not my sunglasses. They must be her sunglasses. They must be different sunglasses. You must be mistaken, Wendy. My sunglasses are in my car.”
“That’s true. She was driving your car, Bobby. She was driving away with the top down and your sunglasses on when I pulled in. Did you think she was wearing them in the store? Does she wear your sunglasses in the store while she works? She must be pretty attached to those sunglasses. Is there something you want to tell me, Bobby? I guess she is telling me. I think the Polack is trying to tell me already.”
“Wendy, I don’t know what you are trying to say, but I am going to get Claire something to drink. I don’t want to fight right now. Seriously. I don’t have time for this.”
“Good, that’s helpful. Walk away. Go on, now, and think of some lie to tell me.”
“Come on, honey.” I lifted Claire into my arms and carried her into the coffee shop. “What do you want? Milk? They have milk. Do you want apple juice?”
“Cookie, Daddy! That cookie! Pink cookie!”
After closing, the Polack told me the story herself.
“She pulls up in the car. So, she sees me. She is your wife, not mine! I did not know she was there. What am I hiding?”
Uh-huh, I thought. It was all just ordinary bad luck.