The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

It was just as well. Chad flew back that evening instead of spending the night in New York as he had planned. He was drunk. He also professed to be happy. They had a handshake deal on the book with a good publisher. He named the publisher. She had never heard of it.

‘How much?’ she asked.

‘That doesn’t really matter, babe.’ Doesn’t came out dushn’t, and he only called her babe when he was drunk. ‘They really love the book, and that’s what matters.’ Mattersh. She realized that when Chad was drunk, he sounded quite a bit like Winnie in the first months after Winnie’s stroke.

‘How much?’

‘Forty thousand dollars.’ Dollarsh.

She laughed. ‘I probably made that much before I got from the bench to the playground. I figured it out the first time we watched—’

She didn’t see the blow coming and didn’t really feel it hit. There was a kind of big click in her head, that was all. Then she was lying on the kitchen floor, breathing through her mouth. She had to breathe through her mouth. He had broken her nose.

‘You bitch!’ he said, starting to cry.

Nora sat up. The kitchen seemed to make a large drunken circle around her before steadying. Blood pattered down on the linoleum. She was amazed, in pain, exhilarated, full of shame and hilarity.

I sure didn’t see that one coming, she thought.

‘That’s right, blame me,’ she said. Her voice was foggy, hooting. ‘Blame me and then cry your stupid little eyes out.’

He cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard her – or couldn’t believe what he’d heard – then made a fist and drew it back.

She raised her face, her now crooked nose leading the way. There was a beard of blood on her chin. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘It’s the only thing you’re halfway good at.’

‘How many men have you slept with since that day? Tell me!’

‘Slept with none. Fucked a dozen.’ A lie, actually. There had only been the cop and an electrician who’d come one day while Chad was in town. ‘Lay on, McDuff.’

Instead of laying on, he opened his fist and let his hand drop to his side. ‘The book would have been fine if not for you.’ He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘That’s not exactly right, but you know what I mean.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘I’m going to leave you and write another one. A better one.’

‘Pigs will whistle.’

‘You wait,’ he said, as tearfully childish as a little boy who has just lost in a schoolyard scuffle. ‘You just wait and see.’

‘You’re drunk. Go to bed.’

‘You poison bitch.’

Having delivered himself of this, he shuffled off to bed, walking with his head down. He even walked like Winnie after his stroke.

Nora thought about going to Urgent Care for her nose, but was too tired to think of a story that would have just the right touch of veracity. In her heart – her nursely heart – she knew there was no such story. They would see through her no matter how good her story was. When it came to things like this, ER personnel always did.

She stuffed cotton up her nose and took two Tylenol with codeine. Then she went outside and weeded her garden until it was too dark to see. When she went inside, Chad was snoring on the bed. He had taken his shirt off, but his pants were still on. She thought he looked like a fool. This made her feel like crying, but she didn’t.

He left her and went back to New York. Sometimes he emailed, and sometimes she emailed back. He didn’t ask for his half of the remaining money, which was good. She wouldn’t have given it to him. She had worked for that money and was still working with it, feeding it into the bank little by little, paying off the house. He said in his emails that he was subbing again and writing on the weekends. She believed him about the subbing but not about the writing. His emails had a strengthless, washed-out feeling that suggested he might not have much left when it came to writing. She’d always thought he was pretty much a one-book man, anyway.

She took care of the divorce herself. She found everything she needed on the Internet. There were papers she needed him to sign, and he signed them. They came back with no note attached.

The following summer – a good one; she was working full-time at the local hospital and her garden was an absolute riot – she was browsing in a used bookstore one day and came across a volume she had seen in Winnie’s study: The Basis of Morality. It was a pretty beat-up copy, and she was able to take it home for two dollars, plus tax.

It took her the rest of the summer and most of the fall to read it cover-to-cover. In the end she was disappointed. There was little or nothing in it she did not already know.

For Jim Sprouse