What He's Poised to Do

At any rate, my dear wife, my memory of these clarifying moments caused me to walk faster along the path. I passed a stable that contained no horses but was rich with the promise of them, and then I passed a house in which I imagined country folk eating a hearty meal and exchanging simple tales of life and its triumphs and disappointments, and then I passed a lake upon which a swan drifted in silent judgment of any place less beautiful. Finally, I overtook Lily, who was huffing and puffing, trying to tug the suitcase through a section of the path that had gone soft from rain. My excitement was mounting, and I made sure she saw so as a form of incitement. She scowled at me to conceal her appetite.

I came to the house, fit the key in the lock, and pushed it open. There was a note on the table in the entryway welcoming us. The note was written on the inn’s stationery, and there were more blank sheets beneath it, along with an envelope. I took the paper and envelope in my free hand and bounded up the stairs. The bedroom was just as Mrs. Pritchard had described it: small, Spartan, with a low table. I set the paper and envelope on the table and went to the window with the leaf I had taken from the path. A leaf contains a world, at least, and I held it there in my hand at the window, watching Lily struggle up the last stretch of path toward the house. She had given up carrying the suitcase and was now dragging it through beds of flowers, some that had recently bloomed and some that would never bloom. She could not see it from ground level, but there was beauty all around her. I twirled the stem of my leaf between my thumb and index finger. She did not see me, as she was not looking up. I let the leaf fall, like an invitation, and it landed in the soft grass just before the porch; as Lily tried to wrestle the suitcase up the stairs, her shoe came down directly upon it. I had given her the shoes—they resemble those I made you wear when we were fully man and wife. The heel pierced the leaf through the heart. It was a kind of murder. At that moment, I decided I would write you an account of the day. I would spare you not a single detail, from the morning train to the events of late afternoon that were about to unfold. I would tell you of Lily’s hot breath, her wide eyes, the parts of her and the whole. I felt the prospect of it all thrum through me, and I undid my shirt and pants, and lay back on the bed, and waited for Lily to arrive.

A BUNCH OF BLIPS (Paris, 1999)

THERE WERE A BUNCH OF BLIPS, ONE AFTER THE OTHER, BLIP, blip, blip. Rough and strenuous Richard was one; Donzac, deflated, another; the professor who called her “kitten,” less ironically than she thought healthy; Jeff, the architect; Jack, the accounting intern; an outraged Iranian rich boy; a professional football player; a journalist; Louis from the Panhandle; Philip from Toowoomba. When Deborah had counted to ten, she stopped. Ten men had been inside her with varying degrees of success. She had held them, fondled, coaxed, teased, mocked, resented, occasionally admired. Now she was tired. Things weren’t getting better. It was time for it to stop. She boarded a plane to Paris, where she resolved to continue her studies in form and composition. She would learn but not paint, and then return to Miami and paint what she had learned. A friend of a friend had an apartment that needed watching for the summer, a small place off the rue Beauregard, and she unlocked the door and pushed hard with her foot, as she had been told to do. “I am home,” she said, trying not to make it sound like too much of a question.