* * *
Before my wife married me, she was married to a man. He liked his shirts ironed and his blankets tucked, which were two of the things they didn’t see eye to eye on. On our first date, I took my wife on a boat — one of the ones that go around the city making everything look pretty. Even though she was still married, I already knew she would one day be my wife, so I planned well.
* * *
They say the past is the best predictor of the future, and what I say back is that it’s actually the other way around: the future, if you work hard enough at it, slowly changes your past. But there are times, and that night on the boat was the first, when I look at my wife and for a fast moment see that she belongs to no one, not even herself. She is always leaving someone.
16.
I’m sorry this is happening so fast, my wife said. She was all packed, and Dominique was picking her up in an hour. I wasn’t sure what she meant; it didn’t seem she was talking about the seminar. Well, you don’t control the schedule, I said and tried to smile, and her chest dropped. I took a deep breath. Is he picking everyone up, I asked. No, my wife said. She was looking straight at me; that was the question she wanted. Are you meeting the others at the airport, I asked. No, my wife said. Everything was quiet then, very quiet and still, and it seemed the world would be that way for a while. We’re hooking up with them at the resort, my wife said finally.
* * *
Even Dominique’s car horn was quiet, a small bee in the distance. I do love you, my wife said with one hand on her suitcase. She kept her lips on my cheek for a bit.
17.
After my wife left, I slept for two days. My dreams were mostly about money: I was making a lot of it now. The curtain business took off, or I joined a start-up at just the right moment and made CEO, or, in one dream, I became a successful lawyer. And in all the dreams I was either showing off my new money to my wife, who was no longer my wife, or trying to win her back with it. In some dreams we were still together, and I was buying her diamonds and making her quit her job. I would wake up between dreams, sweaty and puzzled. My wife never complained that the curtain business wasn’t making enough. My wife loved her job. My wife hated diamonds.
18.
When I got out of bed, I walked straight to my shop without brushing my teeth. I erased my poem, except the line I stole: my wife in converse. Then I took the pile of papers and marched over to the dining area by our kitchen. I stood there for a moment, holding my papers, and looked at the large mahogany table no one would be dining on for some time. The shop is for curtains, I thought, not for poems. Maybe that was the problem all along. Now, in this new space, I would start all over again. And this time I would get it right.
PHONETIC MASTERPIECES OF ABSURDITY
Sometimes after the men leave, Nadine’s body tells her to wait awhile for the water. Make that bath count more. She lies still, and her skin feels too tight on her bones, like someone gave her the wrong size. With a finger that smells of them, she looks for sharpness where she knows she will find it: elbows, knees, shoulder blades.
The edges of her bones comfort her, but it’s a feeling that passes quickly, and soon there is need for more, for proof. So Nadine gently touches her cheek with her knuckles; her knuckles are her secret weapon. She thinks: These knuckles could make a peach bleed.
* * *
She should probably charge more by now, but she can never figure out what to say, or how to say it.
* * *
The men smell of baby carrots, because their five-year-old son mistakes baby carrots for candy, and of sweat, because they are always nervous when they see her, even if they’ve been coming for years. Or they smell of ice cream, because last night their wife tried to revive the marriage with some innovative foreplay, and have Viagra breath, because they stopped trusting their body long before it failed them. It doesn’t matter.
* * *
Thursdays are the busiest. She never understood why. On Wednesdays, her BlackBerry keeps buzzing with men’s anticipation until she feels like there are bees inside her ears. So on Wednesdays, saying no is important. I miss you, too, Baby; really wish I could. Every man is Baby, no exception; that she learned early on. Even the sophisticated ones appreciate the gesture: the implicit warmth, the promise of anonymity. But she does know their names, of course, sometimes even their last name, and on a few occasions the name of a wife, a mother, a sister they haven’t spoken to in six years. It pains them, that the sister won’t return their calls. They ask, Why won’t she fucking let it go already? Nadine doesn’t want to look for answers. If they insist on talking, she touches their hair, lets her eyes scroll up and down their torso; she waits for their body to remember what it wants. Really, she waits for the chatter to stop, but the trick is still giving it the space it needs. Once, when it was absolutely necessary, she made tea.
* * *
Generally speaking, she remembers more than she should: the bump on the back of their neck, the sweat behind their ear right before they come, the scar on the toe of their left foot and the story behind it. There is always a story behind it. They tell the stories and then retell them. Because, welclass="underline" if she doesn’t truly exist, surely she doesn’t remember; they desperately need to believe that she isn’t real. But then there are times when she can see sadness in their eyebrows, in their lower back, and suddenly they want her to remember. Temporarily, they acknowledge her presence in the world. It’s funny, but you are the most stable thing in my life, you know? In these moments, she has learned, a nod goes a long way.
* * *
The woman, the photographer, Mia, has been dominating her thoughts. Now Nadine even dreams of her. Last night, Mia was elected World President.
Nadine wants to know things like what’s Mia’s favorite fruit, what she looks like when she cries. Mia. She rolls Mia’s name on her tongue until she sounds like a cat. Mia wants to know her, too: the first thing she said was I’d like to get to know you, if you’d let me. But Mia wants to know her the way a painter wants to know her canvas. Besides, there is always a lens between them.
* * *
Mia reached her through a friend of a friend of a friend, someone Nadine hadn’t talked to in years. On the phone, Mia sounded aggressive, and Nadine wanted to say, Sorry, I don’t think I’m interested. But for a few minutes she chewed the words like she chews her gum before falling asleep, unable to spit. Finally she said, Okay. She said it softly, and Mia didn’t hear her, so she had to repeat. Okay. Nadine assumed they would meet at some bar or café. I work on the Lower East Side, she told Mia, plenty of places to choose from. But Mia said it would be helpful, for the project, if she could see Nadine’s apartment. She may have used the words natural environment. As in: seeing you in your natural environment.
* * *
Nadine cleaned her natural environment even though it was already clean. She bought a new plant for the spot between the TV and the sofa that always looked naked. She made cupcakes, but also got cheese and wine, because she wasn’t sure what the occasion called for. And all the while she was asking herself why she cared so much. People never want to come all the way up to Washington Heights, and there weren’t many people in her life these days anyway, so maybe that’s all it was, she wasn’t used to hosting. But then, in the shower, where her thoughts are always honest, a different answer came: it was the word the photographer kept using. Interview. As in “Last week, Madonna sat down with us for an interview…” or “In a recent interview, the secretary of state expressed her concern…”