He makes a list of what he needs for Boston: money, credit cards, socks, underwear…
"This is incredible," she yells from the bathroom. "It's a Jacuzzi. And you can aim it however you want. It's fantastic. It's heaven. Oh God," she says, a little too expressively, and then she is quiet.
He packs his cereal, his powders, his vitamins. He probably can't take the salmon.
Forty-five minutes later, she comes out, wrapped in a thick robe, glowing.
"Do you need to call your family?" he asks.
"Am I making you nervous?" She makes a provocative turn.
He notices her feet as she pirouettes. She has nice feet, good strong, narrow ankles, pretty toes. "They must be looking for you. Shouldn't you let them know you're safe?"
"Where would they look? Would they go to the grocery store and yell, 'Mom, Mom, Mom,' up and down the aisles? Every head would turn; the sound would be deafening. 'What?' every woman would say. Would they call Triple A and ask how many ladies with minivans had flat tires today? Would they call hospitals and ask if any housewives wandered in off the street? When will they catch on, when I'm not there for car-pool, when they come home and there is no dinner? Let's see how long it takes before they really notice."
"Do you feel guilty?"
She shakes her head. "I feel high, like I'm floating, like none of this is real, like if I blink it will be over and I'll be right back where I was."
"Are you afraid?"
"Only a little — I know I'm not supposed to leave my children. Men do it all the time, but women don't leave."
There's a knock at the door.
"Maybe we're making too much noise," she whispers.
Again, the knock. Richard opens the door. A bellhop enters with an enormous vase of flowers. "For you, Mrs. Novak." He smiles.
"I'm not Mrs. Novak."
"I'm sorry." He puts the flowers on the table.
"It's fine," Richard says. "It's not what you think. This is my…" He starts to say "sister."
"Terribly sorry," the man says, backing out of the room.
"Do I even know your name?" Richard asks the crying woman.
"Cynthia," she says.
And he remembers that she told him her name the other day in the grocery store. It seems like so long ago.
"Do you even have a sister?" she asks.
He shakes his head. "Look," he says, "stay as long as you like, don't check out until you're ready to go home. And here" — he writes down his brother's phone number — "this is where I'll be. Call me if you need to. I have to get up early, so I might not see you in the morning."
She folds the paper with the number and puts it in the pocket of her robe. "Thanks." They retreat to their rooms.
His mind races. He's thinking about his ex-wife and this hotel, about the crying woman, about how strange it is to be in his ex-wife's regular hotel room in the city where he lives, with a woman who is basically a stranger.
He thinks of Ben on the road: Where is Ben right now? Driving? He didn't even know Ben had a driver's license. With Barth's aunt in Cleveland? In a motel? Sleeping in the car under the anticrime lights in a truck stop?
He falls asleep, has a horrible dream, the kind that is so awful that while you are having it you're sure that you'll never forget it, a dream that is terrifyingly clear — except that when Richard wakes up he can't remember anything. He wakes up and has no idea where he is — his brother's house, his ex-wife's apartment? Everything looks different. He hears voices, people talking. Cold air blows through the room; the curtains are billowing. He wraps himself in a robe and goes into the living room.
She is there, in front of the television. "I hope I didn't wake you.
"I had a dream," he says.
The two of them in their heavy robes look like marshmallows, like the latest arrivals in a spa called Heaven. He takes a bottle of apple juice from the minibar, opens it, sips. "Too sweet," he says, putting it down.
"You're not going to drink that?"
"I'm used to fresh-pressed, unsweetened."
"Well, you can't just waste it; give it to me."
He hands her the juice, goes back to the minibar, and gets a bottle of water for himself. "There's microwave popcorn," he says.
"How much?"
"Only five dollars," he says.
She stands in the kitchen watching the popcorn turn in the microwave. "This is so decadent," she says. "When we check into a hotel, we ask them to empty the minibar — we buy sodas from a gas station."
"Exactly my point," he says, popping the top on the Pringles. "Let's be real Americans and do the gorge and gouge."
They have the popcorn, the chips, the caramel-coated walnuts, the seven-dollar cookie. They drink the beer, the white wine, and the champagne.
In the middle of the night they have a party, eating and drinking themselves into a stupor. He gets up to go to the bathroom, and when he comes back, she's asleep on the sofa. He covers her with a blanket and sits in the chair, finishing the champagne.
He watches her sleeping. He thinks of his ex-wife, of leaving his ex-wife. There was a crippling stillness, an absence of oxygen; he lived with it until there was nothing left, not another minute. It wasn't like he had the whole thing worked out; he just had to go.
He stood at the door of Ben's room, waving bye-bye, knowing he was not coming back. He stood at Ben's door, etching the stuffed animals, cars, small shoes, pale-blue walls, the sweaty, slightly sour scent of an unwashed boy into his mind's eye.
"Bye-bye," Ben said, looking up.
"Bye-bye," Richard said, and he didn't say anything more.
He went to a hotel, checked in, lay down on the bed. He didn't feel high or like he'd escaped, he felt like he'd left his life behind, like he'd become a ghost. In the morning he got up and went to work. Someone asked if he was all right. "Flu," he said, and no one asked more.
And his wife? His wife didn't say anything, didn't call him at the office, didn't yell or scream, didn't even check to make sure he was all right. After a week, he called her.
"You forgot your pillow," she said. "It's hard for me to take you seriously with your pillow still here — do you want me to leave it with the doorman?" She paused. "What do you want, do you want me to tell you to come back? You're the one who decided to leave; no one told you to go."
He couldn't go back — just the sound of her voice was enough to ensure that. He hung up and didn't call again.
In the pocket of his jacket he had Ben's small stuffed lion. He didn't discover it until later. He couldn't bear how bad he felt about Ben — couldn't bear that he couldn't bear — and so he froze. He did nothing. He rubbed the lion's head and hated himself.
At first he saw Ben a couple of times a week — he'd call the nanny and ask her to bring Ben down, and the nanny would put him in the stroller and push him to the park. And they would play — swings, slide, sandbox. While they were playing, Richard would ask the nanny how Ben was doing, was he going to classes, seeing friends, eating, sleeping, and so on.
No matter what he asked, the nanny always said, "He do good. He do good."
And winter came, and it got colder and more difficult, and Richard saw him less often, and soon it had been six months since he'd left and he called his wife.
"I'm moving to Los Angeles and I want to see Ben before I go."
"Whenever you want, any afternoon after school; I'm never there," she said, as though they had just spoken the day before.
He went back. He walked into the building, past the doorman, rode up the elevator, and went into the apartment, the whole time feeling like he was the creep, he had done something wrong, like no one knew the truth, and either way it didn't matter — truth was irrelevant.