Killer Move

In the morning you wake up, and bang—there you are, back in the world: and Hazel has gotten used to doing this in a bed with no one in it but her. She opens her eyes and stares up at the ceiling while she waits for reality to settle upon her. It is not a reality of her choosing, but it seldom is, despite the promises of the self-improvement industry. She’s read her share of the earnest books available on bereavement and guilt. None has helped, regardless of the hectoring assurances of whichever airbrushed robot graces the cover. They’re all the same. Snake-oil sellers in a hope industry.

She eventually gets up and puts on a robe—Phil liked the AC ferociously high, and it’s a habit she hasn’t gotten out of, and never will—and pads into the living room. At one end is the kitchen. It’s small, so as not to dominate the space (and also because The Breakers has two restaurants that would appreciate your custom, so why make cooking any more attractive a proposition than necessary?). She brews a cup of Earl Grey tea. She showers. She dresses. She fixes her makeup and hair.

On her way out of the condo she glances at the calendar on the inside of the door. This tells her how long it is until the next chunk of her life begins, before she goes to stay with one or other child. This morning the calendar tells her that it is three weeks until she goes to Klara’s house over in Jupiter, and gets to be grandma (and free babysitter, and occasionally tolerated advice giver) for a spell.

Three weeks.

Twenty-one days.

She spends her mornings wandering around a mall or taking a look in the (only, and not great) downtown bookstore, occasionally lunching with a friend. These are people she has met in the last few years, since Phil died and her life stopped being wrapped up in what she now thinks of as “the club.” Her friends are kind to her, and they meet up and talk and laugh, and Hazel finds it hard to understand why the world nonetheless feels as though someone had turned the volume down to zero. Maybe, she thinks, precisely because of the club years. Their entertainments go on, she supposes, but without her, like so much else. It is one thing to know the world will continue when you’re gone, another to observe it doing so while you’re still around.

Once in a while she will do something off the beaten track, like taking coffee with that handsome but smug Realtor the day before. She knows full well that he is using her to gain advantage in what passes for his career—knew it the moment he came strolling toward her with his hand outstretched—and she doesn’t care. She wants to redecorate, and has known the Thompsons long enough to understand that it would be easier to levitate than to influence their behavior. Phil could do it, having known them longer and better and being no stranger to bloody-mindedness himself, but Phil ain’t around no more.

So fine, let the boy wonder Realtor see what he can do. Hazel doubts he’ll achieve much. At his age, Tony and Phil were already very wealthy, men of action and result. It might be amusing to watch Tony Thompson wearing the little asshole down to dust, however, dust that Marie will then disperse with a single smoky exhale.

It’s something to do.

And maybe, Hazel realizes, she’s still playing games after all—albeit small and lonely ones of her own.

The evenings aren’t bad. She’ll take a glass of wine in the bar and eat something. A little television, a spot of reading, and early to bed. The evenings, oddly, are okay, possibly because the essence of the evening is the promise of the end of the day.

It’s those endless afternoons . . .

Hazel has fallen into the habit of spending them in the condo. In high season, because it’s hot and humid outside and the resort is too busy and she finds she no longer enjoys being among groups of people. At other times of year . . . perhaps because she fears, below the level of conscious choice, that if she spends too much time in the world, there’ll come a day when she’s used it all up. Better to mete it out. Doing nothing of consequence feels less like defeat than deliberately doing something arbitrary, to fill the time.

She reads. She watches boxed sets of TV shows. She enjoys a few rounds of Sudoku, so long as she can stop herself remembering how pointless it is. She and Marie discovered the craze together, back in the old days, though Marie was always much better at it. She chats with the maid who comes in every other day.

The afternoons do pass, in the end. There has never been one yet that hasn’t eventually come to a conclusion—though there have been a few that felt like they might not, as if time had actually stopped and might never start again—leaving her alone forever, sitting in her chair, in a dry, cool room.

But they drag. They really drag, which is why, when Hazel hears the knock on her door at a little before three, she’s happy to get up and go answer it.