1
She was taking pictures of the concrete bulk, wishing to find it more attractive. Even in the evening warmth, there was something inhospitable about it. The size, so vast Nora couldn’t see the end of it, its monotony, its lack of vegetation. Just miles of concrete dressed up in stucco, yellow like an old raw egg. It seemed as if it had emerged from nothing in the midst of the anonymous, soulless residential blocks— the one and two-story buildings screened by the palms of Boca Raton.
The retirement community was silent. Nora was hiding from the sun under the central arcade while the staff welcomed the newcomers. They all seemed decent. She pretended to look elsewhere, worried that she would seem to be judging them. She caught herself thinking that they were going there to die. Nobody willing to take them home; they were told that this was the best place to be, and they believed it. What else could they do? That thought crossed her mind. She could hear Diana from the sales office, her voice certain and high, how she must have reassured them all, relatives and future residents. “It is a home like no other,” she must have said. “It’s like being at the Caribbean. Have you ever been to the Bahamas?”
Nora had never been to the Bahamas, but she imagined the ocean being clear and crystalline as far as the eye could see. In Boca Raton, the luckiest residents would stare at a couple of muddy little manmade lakes, animated by a feeble fountain in the center. That was Florida’s problem, the artifice.
One of the residents, a woman on the ground floor, was sitting in the tiled area of her private porch with a leashed poodle on her lap and the sun against her face. They were both immobile, gazing at the sun and the weak spray. Nora felt crushed deep down. Five years of work and now this place crushed her. She told herself that it would never happen again. A solemn promise, this was the last time.
The woman had a bandage on her nose, as white as the dog’s hair. She had fallen right there at the entrance, on the corner of the sidewalk that had since been painted yellow to prevent other accidents and possible lawsuits. It was hard to predict the ways in which the residents might injure themselves in the building. The sidewalk, Nora thought, almost deceived. She could hear the fall and see the blood, a spray of bright red on the bleached concrete, surprisingly alive. The broken-nosed woman’s husband had died just days later. They were fragile, old people, like sheep. A relocation, a new place, and they could quickly and irreversibly decline.
Under the oversized porte-cochère, a woman surfaced slowly from a cab. She had a large red smile, with a silver cloud of thin hair diligently pinned to her head. She was alone. The valet quickly placed her luggage on a cart while she looked around with a semi-open mouth. Her whole life fit right there on the cart.
Nora was looking at her, hoping she wouldn’t notice, her eyes squinting despite the hard hat shading her from the sun. The woman lowered her head and turned toward her. She looked through Nora as if she couldn’t see her.
“Oh, those hats,” she said. “Those are the best hats.”
2
“Did you see the dog?”
Mary Annie was pointing at the artifacts that residents had placed on the small shelves at the entry door of their apartments.
“What dog?”
“A Dalmatian,” Mary Annie clarified. “One of the residents brought a Dalmatian, full scale. You can’t miss it.”
The shelves were meant to help seniors find their belongings, as if the apartment was a true home to come back to, with keys and grocery bags. Someone decided to damn that farce by leaving a vase. Ceramic kittens. Small plants. Encouragement phrases written on wooden blocks. The best is yet to come. If the item was too bulky for the shelf, it was placed on the floor below it. It was odd what the residents had chosen to represent themselves, objects of little value that said nothing more than that they had been avid mallgoers. Nora couldn’t guess where they were coming from, where they had traveled, what they had loved. Anonymous.
“This is the one,” said Mary Annie, “if we work together, we can be done in half an hour.”
It would take longer because Mary Annie was comfortable with being lazy and loved to talk. She was wearing a sheer teal blouse with a busy pattern and a tiny ribbon tied over her chest. Nora could see right through to her beige bra, not what she would expect on a construction site. The outfit reminded Nora of her mother, who was fond of sheer blouses despite being prude. She would have picked an eggplant color though, Nora thought. She wondered if Florida had inspired Marie Annie or if she planned to meet someone after work. She had heard Mary Annie was a divorcée.
“Apologies, I need to take this,” she said as soon as they walked into the generous kitchen, opening into a bright living room empty of furniture. Mary Annie took the call, leaning over the synthetic quartz countertop, her cleavage on display. Nora couldn’t help but stare at it. “You can stay,” she mouthed to Nora, as an invitation.
It was true what Peter said, Mary Annie’s eyes were a clear blue that should have commanded attention, but they were small and recessed into her round, doughy face, her skin dried out by cheap make-up. Nora could never understand middle-aged women who refused to pay good money to care for their decaying skin, a particular form of denial. Mary Annie wasn’t as pretty as Peter had made Nora believe.
“Oh, you can call me Marianne. It’s French, you know.” Marie Annie said to the phone. Nora had never heard of that before. “Oh, I know, it’s a lovely name. That’s how my girl got to be Antoinette. Adorable, right?” Nora started to inspect the kitchen cabinets, signaling that they should be working. Mary Annie stood up and looked for damage on the kitchen counter, still on the phone, as if that was acceptable.
“No, no, I’ve never been to France…” she rolled her eyes at Nora as if she wasn’t enjoying the chat.
Mary Annie had been assigned to the project from the Stamford office, to help punch-list the hundreds of units soon to be occupied. The rumor was that Mary Annie’s boss wanted to get rid of her without having to fire her, out of sheer compassion, a sentiment that she inspired in many. Nobody wanted to work with her, but no one had had the heart to send her home after all the years of unimpressive but tenacious dedication.
“Oh, you’re a lifesaver. I love my girl, but I could not survive coming home to her ocean-feast flavored excrement filling the place, that would just kill me,” she said, bursting into laughter. Nora thought that was an odd topic of conversation. She too had a cat; the thought of that smell made her gag.
“I know! You don’t think that’s the most disgusting smell ever? Oh, you’re too sweet!” Mary Annie seemed more delighted as Nora grew annoyed.
If only Peter was there instead, she thought. He was to arrive in a few days.
“We have to get going,” Nora whispered, and Mary Annie finally hung up.
“Sorry, that was my cat sitter. Sounds like Antoinette is doing alright,” she reassured Nora. “She misses me so much.”
She still looked distracted, pensively staring at the ceiling. Nora wondered if she was ever going to help.
“If only he could have afforded a place like this,” Mary Annie’s voice weakened. “My father. He died a month ago.” Nora knew about her father but had hoped that she would not discuss it. She wasn’t ready for someone else’s pain.
“I’m sorry, it must not be easy to work here,” Nora said. Mary Annie nodded while tightening her lips, her pale eyes reddening. “In a place like this he wouldn’t have let himself go. I have so many regrets. We should have been closer, me and my brother, we left him alone too much.” Mary Annie began to cry, and Nora wished she would stop. Did she think she was the only one to mourn?
“I gave it all to my job.”
Nora thought that wasn’t true at all. Mary Annie was a mediocre architect who worked without effort or ambition.
“I didn’t have any children, my career has been my life.”
She was so far from reality that Nora finally felt pity for her.
“There’s never enough time,” Nora said, trying to make her feel better. “We all have the same regret.” Mary Annie seemed relieved. She smiled and nodded.
“Ninety. It would have been quite a milestone.”
“Yes,” Nora said. “Quite a good one.”
3
To the disappointment of Mary Annie, that evening Nora came up with an excuse to be alone. She thought to drive to the closest beach and wait for the sunset with a glass of chilled white wine. Or maybe she’d wear a two-piece bathing suit and float in the hotel pool after dinner, concentric curves, and underwater lights by the interior courtyard, surrounded by five stories of galleries and palms like some movie about drug trafficking. She was determined to find some pleasure, some unexpected beauty, even in Florida.
She was feeling especially restless that evening. She had been admiring her thin figure for several minutes, silent in the semi-dark air-conditioned coolness of her room. It must have been the first time she was in an American hotel alone; it smelled like carpet that couldn’t be cleaned, a mixture of mold and bleach. She caressed the skin stretched over her torso, holding her heavy breasts in her arm. It still felt elastic like that of a woman who never carried a child. Her belly had always been flat, something that she appreciated about her body, but her belly button had stuck out her entire life, defeating the luck of having such a perfect stomach. Now, she realized, her belly button had retracted under a bit of skin folded over it. Must have been the laparoscopic surgery – that’s where they got in – through the belly button. She should have been grateful, she thought, she had the belly she always wanted. Her moles still covered her, constellations of tiny and large ones, from too much sun when she was a teenager. She went over her ribs with her fingers, she could count them now. One by one. She didn’t think her body could ever be so skinny, even her pubic bone seemed more pronounced. She tilted her head, sweeping her wet hair to the side, not realizing it was falling out. She thought her scalp tingled because of the cool air, maybe the humidity. It had been years since she wore her hair short, but after the surgery she felt the compulsion to change something. To not recognize herself.
Two years earlier Nora and Charles stopped using the pill. It was his idea. They discussed the decision at their minuscule tripod table by the fire stair one morning, while the southern light shone spectacular patterns through the window gate. It reminded Nora of her kitchen’s tiles growing up. They were having coffee, hours of it, like every Saturday morning.
“We should start. Who’s to say we won’t have issues conceiving?” was Charles’ argument. “Don’t you want to have kids? I always thought you did. I know I do. A family, like the one I had. I wouldn’t want to regret it. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Nora guessed that he was revisiting a childhood memory in his mind, like the one of his father showering him and his brother outside, under the gutter, during a summer thunderstorm on the farm.
“But why? What if we miss this life, as we have it? You and me.”
Nora didn’t feel ready the way he did. She was still finding her place in that foreign country, in that relationship, despite being married for a decade. She still had selfish desires. Being thin, carefree. She thought she had done enough for him already, moving to America. She suspected that for Charles it was as much about not changing their plans as anything. Before they even put an offer on the apartment, they’d planned to renovate it, to turn the kitchen into a kid’s room. Not following through would have felt like failure.
“Our life will expand,” he said, as if they were to embark on an epic adventure, “we will still have each other, and more. We are not going anywhere,” he said with an open smile on his face, poking her gently on the hip, to suggest putting the plan in action. That’s how he would often initiate sex, with a joke.
It took a few more weeks of his enthusiasm for her to give in, but eventually she embraced his lack of fear. It was early spring, and they were about to leave on a road trip across America. The trip was Nora’s idea. She wanted to see the country, and to her surprise Charles had never traveled that route before either. They planned to drive for three weeks, from New York to Santa Cruz. They left on a rainy afternoon, the usual, nasty traffic on Staten Island, Charles’ frustration growing in the driver’s seat as Nora’s anxiety simmered in the passenger’s seat. She thought people were right, they would despise each other by the end of it. They’d be lucky to still be married, let alone with a child.
“I think we must have forgotten something,” Nora said for no reason, looking for some simple reassurance.
“Nora,” he said tenderly, without a hint of impatience or dismissiveness, turning his eyes to her and away from the road for a moment, “leave your worries here. Leave it all here.”
Charles would rarely use her name, blaming his faulty pronunciation. He couldn’t roll the “r” the way she could. It was usually dear, or love. Maybe babe. It felt serious, a self-fulfilling prophecy. As if it was possible for Nora to be a completely different person for just that trip. Unafraid. So she did, against her most natural, ancient inclinations, she let go. She had done that rarely in her life, once being a decade prior when she stepped onto the plane that took her to Pittsburgh, where she first met Charles in architecture school.
He hadn’t changed much since. He still had the narrowest hips she had ever seen, the hips of a rock star, his pants and boxers falling off at every step. When he would pick up his shirt to clean his glasses, thick black frames sitting on his small nose at all times, the gesture would invertedly reveal the willow tree on his hip, the first step toward disobedience at eighteen, his first tattoo. His body was lean as if they were still in college, unaffected by age, alcohol, and lack of exercise. He wasn’t muscular, but he was strong, determined. He was like a live wire, run through by an enduring agitation. The way he’d jump instead of walking, slam the door of the car every time, attack the steering wheel, and get excited about the next destination. He was loud and talkative, unless the conversation was about them, or feelings. Then she would do all the talking. She would talk and stare at Charles’ horseshoe tattoos stretching around his neck while he drove, three upturned horseshoes and the word p o p written in them. His father was a blacksmith, alive and well in Pennsylvania where he grew up. “He’s my hero” were the only words Nora understood when Charles first tried to explain the symbols to her over a beer, in a noisy dive in Pittsburgh.
She could still feel the infatuation of their first encounters when she’d stare at his horseshoe tattoos or at the Pennsylvania keystones on his shoulder. On an ordinary working day, he would cover his tattoos, but on vacation he’d wear t-shirts so old and worn out that you could see through them. She would tuck her hand under the short sleeve and on his skin, always warm, or behind his shaved neck as if they’d just started to date. She remembered thinking he was different from the others when she felt safe in that passenger seat, on their first dates in Pittsburgh. She trusted him, an instinct that turned out to be accurate.
They stopped at dive bars all throughout their trip, as if they just met in every place. The red and green glow of Christmas lights pinned on picture rails, the sticky floors, the noise, the locals. Charles was particularly taken by people, as he always was. He loved people, smoking or drinking with them, or both. He would engage strangers, as if they’d been friends all along. Nobody seemed to mind. It was what had made him so charming at first, an unbound love for life itself, a curiosity. It made Nora jealous, and eventually resentful over the years, the way he seemed more excited about the world than about her, the way she seemed to never be on his mind. On that trip though, Nora didn’t mind. She didn’t even mind seeing him curved on a smoke, or the smell of it on him. It was foolish, she knew— her father smoked three packs of cigarettes daily from the age of seventeen till he got cancer in his mid-thirties, their age. She should have hated it. She did hate it. But Charles was so sexy when he was smoking, like a Thelma-and-Louise unknown Brad Pitt. And perhaps, that was their last season of transgression, they didn’t have children after all. They were the couple on the road, and people’s admiration when they would learn about their adventure was worth a conversation. Getting married, buying an apartment, and now this, they were doing this together.
That trip felt like stepping into the sun after surviving another winter in the Northeast, a slow reviving of the senses, the warmth growing as they drove first South, then West. They marveled at the wet vegetation thickening through Louisiana and Texas, and then drying into desert. They hiked through the White Sands to set camp between the dunes, gleeful like children because of the freezing cold and the starry sky. They hadn’t slept in a tent in years, and never in the desert. In the morning, Charles asked Nora to shoot a video of him jumping off the top of a dune with a cheap circular sled they’d bought at the park rangers’ station. It was as if he was fifteen years old. When he reached the bottom of the dune he was laughing gloriously. How he could preserve all that innocence she couldn’t tell, but for a moment Nora thought that invincible excitement would make a good father of him.
They drove through red and brown wide curves, leaving New Mexico into Utah. The open, otherworldly horizons. The mesas. She cried at the view of Monument Valley from the open road, in awe, and Charles loved her more. They had coffee at dawn, at the Goulding’s Lodge by the Valley. They stared at the dark mountains while sitting on their balcony, hungover after sneaking a couple of bottles of wine into their room the night before. She brought home a coffee mug from the hotel, illegitimately. Charles had encouraged her, nobody would care. He liked seeing her breaking obvious rules.
That was the beginning of their dawns together. Not the dawn Charles would catch accidentally after a night of drinking and smoking weed out in Pittsburgh, but rather an intentional act. He resisted that idea, because he liked to stay up all night and sleep in the morning, like young people did. But Nora liked to wake up early, always had, even when she was young. The dawn was her only advantage over the world, and over Charles.
They camped at the top of the Grand Canyon on Good Friday, and by Easter they were in Joshua Tree, among the hippies that lived there all year long. They wondered if they could live like them too and forget about Brooklyn and their office jobs once and for all. On their way to Los Angeles, they stopped for a couple of nights in Palm Springs, in a mid-century hotel by a slick pool. That’s how they wanted to live, like Elvis and Priscilla. They would design their own home in that architect’s heaven and grow old between the desert and the mountain. By then, they’d forgotten about ever wanting to have children.
“So, there is beauty in America,” Nora told Charles when they arrived in Big Sur. It was a place like no other Nora had ever seen. Miles of rocks, waves and purple lupines blossoming on the cliffs. Halfway between the Amalfi Coast and Ireland, halfway between the two of them.
They set up camp for the last time, in the dark, under Route 1. In the morning, the sound of cars and waves woke them up. They carried the coffee Charles had brewed on the portable gas stove with them to the beach, on the west side of the bridge. The sun was rising, somewhere behind the majestic coast. The warmth spread through the thick fog that was lingering over the pebbles and sea lions, like fire.
“I wasn’t hiding it from you,” Charles said.
“Hiding what?”
“The beauty. I didn’t know either.”
After that trip, the months went by without surprises. She was never late. At last, in the winter, a second pale pink line appeared on a pregnancy test. They held each other in the bathroom. It was a few weeks of fervid imagination and not being able to sleep at night. Two months later, doctors had to scrape her womb.
When she got pregnant again, a year later in the winter like the first time, they held each other again, but longer and tighter. Nora cried, out of pure fear this time. The next day she bled a little, and less than a month later she was taken into surgery again; their second non-life had grown in the fallopian tube. Three inches of stubborn cells. They sent her home the same night, bent like an old woman. Charles took her upstairs, three flights to their apartment, and into the bathroom so that she could pee, without turning the lights on. He smelled like he did after a busy day, a metallic sweat as if he didn’t just sit at a desk for ten hours. Nora was fond of that comforting smell, his body alone. He was wearing a thick beard because it was barely March. They cried, something Charles rarely did. Nora could only remember him crying when his best friend died, or the mornings after he drank irreparably. It sounded like a suppressed scream, like something muffled by a pillow. Without real tears, his hazel eyes filled with a compassion she didn’t think he was capable of. They spent the night hanging on to each other, arms and legs wrapped around their warm, tired bodies like every night, except that night Nora could have been dead.
At first, a fierce desire to survive had prevailed but once she did, a quiet apathy took hold. A silent numbness. She’d read it was a normal biological reaction, the body tuning down as a healing mechanism. But it had stayed dull. The failed pregnancies had taken something away from her — the illusion that things would work out for the best. For thirty-six years, everything had worked out for the best.
It had been a few months since the surgery, and Nora was feeling a reckless desire to cheat that evening. For the sake of feeling something, anything. To have her senses awakened. To have her body loved again, by someone who knew nothing about how she failed to become a mother twice. People cheat out of mere depression, she thought.
Maybe Charles was to blame, how he had grown impatient toward her, distant. She remembered the fight they had one night before she left to travel to Florida, already in bed. You think I’m happy about this? That I can’t have my own children? That nothing of mine is going to be left behind?
He screamed aloud while punching the mattress. She let him, resenting that it was just a matter of legacy for him while she was grieving her malfunctioning body. But now that thought was taking hold of her too. What if they could never have children? What if they would leave nothing behind?
Maybe her hormones were to blame, rushing back without permission. She hated that thought, the idea of being fertile again, vulnerable to more unpredicted pain. She looked at her body one more time, checked the key card in her pocket and left the room.
4
Roads in Florida were all palms and speed limits. She decided to go to the closest beach, Delray. She was sweating, worrying that she would get distracted and miss her turn despite knowing the road would proceed straight to the ocean for several miles. It was unusual to be driving alone. She rolled down the window, turned the volume up and started to sing Gaga, who blasted from her phone and interrupted her directions. Nora put both hands on the wheel like a freshly licensed teenager and it made her think of the man who taught her how to drive. She looked outside and let the breeze cool her. At the red light, a man looked her over from his car. He had a thick, dark mustache which Nora despised, but she let him watch, directing her black sunglasses up at the light as if she didn’t know or care.
She remembered herself before Charles, before ever wanting children. Hills and tiny homes and vineyards back in Italy. She was young but not free. She remembered how she would flirt with men in the same juvenile way back then, at a red stoplight, a safe peek into her world of fantasy without risk. She had been too ashamed of her own unknown body, afraid of other bodies, especially naked. She wondered when she started to feel that way, undeserving of pleasure. Perhaps it happened after years of her mom letting her believe sperm could get Nora pregnant in mysterious, unwilling ways. What a waste that worry seemed now. Or maybe it happened after her breasts grew at thirteen, or after she lost her virginity at seventeen with the man who taught her how to drive, twenty years her senior. Her only other man. She could still feel his heavy body pressing hers in the darkness of his room, slivers of light coming through the shutters. That wasn’t love, she knew now. It felt more like her surgery, an insult.
In the car her right leg hurt, a sharp pain that had become familiar. Hitting the pedal had intensified it again, the soreness of her tissues where they had extracted the tube, scratching her nerves and muscles on the way out. Her stomach burned at that thought, like a glass of bad wine. She wished she could use her body now, in that very moment, in any way, with anybody. Maybe she could have stepped out of the car and kissed that mustachioed stranger. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing.
When she arrived at Delray the sun had just started to go down. There were people everywhere like summertime, overflowing from the hotel restaurants and the boardwalk, sitting on large condominium balconies, occupying the beach, every bit of it, groups of friends, families, children, locals, and snowbirds too. All that swarming life made Nora wish she could disappear. She walked to the pier.
“It’s two dollars but we’re closing in half an hour,” said the man in the small booth.
What a waste of life that was, she thought, distributing two-dollar tickets all day. But she wasn’t going to turn around, not for two dollars. The pier was full of visitors, just like her. They were staring at the sunset, content to not have missed it, or bent toward their cellphones, the horizon at their backs.
When she arrived at the end of the pier, she saw a metal construction floating on the water in the distance, the articulate profile in front of the setting sun. It was a dredge, and Nora had never seen one before that evening. The dredge was working slowly, searching for sand to bring back to the shifting shore. The beach was destined to disappear; she envisioned it flooded over time. Abandoned buildings, no trace of humanity, no more echoes of bathers. The vision of mad cheerfulness would be wiped away by nature. Nora thought that they deserved it, all the humans, to be washed away. Her project deserved to be washed away, sinking in an ocean rising by tons of melted ice. Florida deserved to be washed away.
Now that the sun was low on the horizon, the dredge’s monstrous shape silhouetted as big as the sun. She looked elsewhere, behind her and away from the dredge, toward a pink resort. The delicate color made her reconsider for a moment, the bright sand wetted by a thin sheet of sparkling water.
5
The next morning Mary Annie arrived late with a perfect blowout. Nora was surprised; the hard hat and the humidity would erase her effort in minutes, an hour if she was lucky. Mary Annie was the kind of woman who refused to believe she was old, even though the color had long been sucked out of her hair. Not the gray hair, not the peach t-shirt, not the jeans tightened by a belt on the belly button. Nora thought that she must have been pretty when she was young. Nothing extraordinary, just enough above average to make her believe life would always be easy. Twenty-five years and a divorce later, she still behaved as if no one could see how she had faded, and the universe still gravitated around the hope of dancing with her at prom.
Nora was both annoyed and fascinated by how shamelessly she would flirt with every man on site —young, married, or too old didn’t make a difference. Mary Annie would look at them purposely with her light blue eyes and thin smile, and tell uninteresting, uncomfortably private stories of her life while blatantly disinterested in other’s stories.
“I did nothing last night after all, just some television,” Mary Annie said, twisting her mouth. “Sooo depressing.” She stretched out the word, but Nora wasn’t feeling empathy that morning and said nothing back.
“Did you make it to the beach?”
“Yes, at dawn,” Nora lied.
“If only I was a morning person.”
Mary Annie asked nothing about Nora’s visit to the beach, sparing her from having to lie any further.
“Where do we start then?” Mary Annie asked.
A woman with a curved upper back was running toward them from her room down the corridor. She stopped suddenly when she came across them.
“The AC is freezing, that is why I run!” she screamed and took off. It was true about the AC, but Nora couldn’t help wondering if the old woman was all right.
“The corridors?” suggested Mary Annie, unfazed. “We can start with the corridors and the theater.”
"Oh, the theater. I’ll take the theater if that’s alright with you.”
The piano was there. Alone and close to the storefront, it gave the room a certain splendor, some dignity. The sunlight laid across the black tail. The man she had never had as a teenager, she liked to say. Now that they didn’t have room for it in Brooklyn – or so Charles said – she missed it dearly. She who played the piano. She imagined touching it, just barely, the smooth feel of lacquered paint on her fingertips. She thought of her living room growing up, how she was only allowed in there to practice, the sound piercing the afternoon silence, the bright reflections of sunbeams shining on the keys, and stretching on the wallpaper.
Nora wanted to make sure this piano was real, not an electric keyboard, or worse, the kind of piano that could play by itself as if there were ghosts. She could never play for an audience, but there was nobody there, not a soul. It felt like there was nobody anywhere at all. She sat down. A blinding light penetrated the room, softened by the arcade. It lit the keys. She smelled the felt, she touched one key, just one. That soft, endless sound, reverberating deep where she had been damaged. She started to play lightly, the only waltz she still knew by heart. Chopin.
“It’s beautiful.”
Mary Annie was done early, or she had grown bored of being alone.
“You’re good Nora. Play, play again.”
She wasn’t going to, but she thanked Mary Annie, who seemed sincere for the very first time.
“That’s all I remember.”
"I always wished I could play an instrument. I didn’t know you were this good.”
“I’m not anymore, I haven’t played in too long. I just wanted to make sure it worked.”
“Sure,” Mary Annie smiled.
“Are you done with the corridors?” Nora asked.
“Yes...a disaster. Can you smell it?”
“No, I don’t smell anything.”
“I can smell it, I can smell everything.”
In the last two days, Mary Annie had complained about every smell, describing them with maniacal accuracy, Nora realized. Like when she claimed that she could tell Nora was wearing Chanel, though she guessed it was Number 5—it was Chance. Or when she couldn’t stop talking about her cat’s litter. Or when she smelled mold in some of the units, those below the courtyards, which turned out to be true and became another lawsuit years later.
“I have an incredible sense of smell. Which is an issue, except for the one time it saved my life.”
Nora didn’t ask why; she knew Mary Annie would tell her anyway. She started inspecting the room again.
“My mother. She always drank too much. Once she fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand and almost set the house on fire.” She paused, then smiled. Nora was perplexed that she had told that story with such nonchalance. She outdid herself that time.
“What luck...” Nora said.
“Yes. Now you understand why it didn’t work with my dad,” Mary Annie asserted with pride, as if she had saved more than the house. She stared at the ceiling. “This chandelier is tilted, write that down,” she said without looking at Nora, as if suddenly she was serious about what she was doing. That evening Mary Annie would leave, and Nora was terribly relieved.
“What time will you leave tonight?” Nora asked.
“Seven. I’ll be home quite late. I can’t stand being home that late, Antoinette will be up waiting for me. You know, my cat,” she said.
“Sure…” Nora nodded.
“Are you here till Friday? Peter should arrive soon, today right?”
“Yes, I believe so. It’s the first time we’re on site together. After all these years.”
“I’m not his favorite, he’s been crystal clear about it.”
It was true, Peter had complained about her once and it had been the final time. He was like that, decisive, and with Mary Annie it had happened almost immediately, despite his sweet disposition for women with azure eyes like his wife’s.
“Well, it’s been a pleasure working with you Nora, a real pleasure.” Mary Annie hugged her with her whole body, unlike most Americans. Nora felt comforted by the unexpected touch and suddenly guilty. She wondered when her compassion had dried up, when she’d become so arid.
“For me as well, Mary Annie. You have a safe trip home.”
6
Peter and Nora agreed to meet at the hotel bar. When she arrived, he was waiting at the table and had already finished his first beer, the dried foam at the bottom of a tall glass. He was sitting back, with his elbow over the chair, at ease. Nora saw that first, his arm and his wide hand without a wrist, muscular and a bit tanned as if he had arrived in Florida a month ago. His skin underneath the beard looked a bit tanned too, and she remembered he had gone skiing in Utah with his family. Around the mouth his beard was denser, but it was otherwise sparse, not thick like Charles’. Nora glanced at his face — his thin lips, the straight pointy nose, his confident dark eyes. She found his Mediterranean features appealing, the familiarity of them. There was always a moment, before they would meet, when Nora would question whether or not this time she’d find him attractive. She did.
“I couldn’t wait any longer, I’m sorry, you’ll have to catch up,” he said while standing up. “You got a haircut. It looks good,” he said as if it had all to do with her hair and nothing to do with her. He paused to look at her face for a moment, then leaned over to greet her with a kiss. “You look good,” he declared quietly when he was close enough to her. The proximity stirred her, an excitement she had not felt in months. Against his body, she realized how she had become all bones and wondered if he noticed. She felt the sudden urgency to cry.
“You look good, too,” she said. “I see Utah treated you well.”
“Indeed. I’d take it any day over Florida. What are you having?”
“White. Pinot Grigio if they have some.”
“Pinot Grigio it is, lady. I’ll be right back.”
The bar was just a step away; a small group of guests gathered around it, a few stools and a handful of tables. The bartender had already filled Peter a glass, just above the edge, a chilled lager like he liked. Peter thanked her with a certain friendliness.
“I can see that she knows you pretty well.”
“She sure does. The cheapest drink as fast as possible, it’s not hard.”
One of the visiting retirees tripped while reaching out for the bar; a worried ripple followed the slow fall.
“I’m alright, I’m alright…those chairs,” he said with a broken smile, the humiliation of being unable to hide age and deterioration in his eyes. That look shook Nora through.
“That’s going to be me at some point,” said Peter, failing to diffuse the discomfort of the moment. He laughed while bringing the beer to his mouth. Nora thought that was insensitive; he was too young to worry about his decline, though he was not as young as she remembered. He had started to show gray on his head and face, and lines around his eyes. Must have been that habit he had of smiling often, or maybe the children. It was hard to believe how much that half of a decade had aged him, so much more than it had aged Nora even though they were the same age. It must have been the children, she thought. She was diligently looking for reasons to find him less attractive.
“Oh, stop it,” said Nora.
“Why not? I wouldn’t mind living here if I could afford it. Maybe the Federation would give me a deal?” he said, only half joking. He liked a comfortable life, that half was true, but it wasn’t true he couldn’t afford it. He married into money.
“I would recommend the Sullivan’s apartment. It is as ugly as it is huge. It’s disgustingly huge.”
They laughed; the wine was working.
“Cheers, Peter. Congratulations to you and your wife.” Her eyes teared up as she lifted the glass. She despised herself for feeling so vulnerable.
“Another girl, cheers to that.”
They drank and stayed quiet. Peter tasted his lips, and then stretched them in a satisfied smile.
“For a moment I wished that we were having a boy. But the truth is, I don’t think I am man enough to raise one.”
Peter laughed hard, Nora thought he was insinuating just the opposite. She thought of the time he claimed birth was traumatic for men. You can forget physical pain, but you can’t forget emotional pain, he declared while laughing in terror at the recollection and making her laugh. Nora thought it must have been his wife to convince him to have another child, just like she did the first and second time. He couldn’t have initiated it, as loyal as he was to an easy life.
“I’m kidding. I love my girls. I am the proudest father on all of Staten Island.”
He sipped some more.
“Something does happen to you when you see that child for the first time.”
Peter reached for his phone but knew better than showing Nora pictures of his youngest jumping in the pool with no fears, or his oldest following him downhill on a snowboard. Hearing about his children made Nora feel inadequate and cruel, but also moved. He had this whole wisdom about being a parent she did not know anything about and longed for.
“And you? How are you?”
Nora didn’t expect the question. She swallowed the wine that was left and felt lightheaded. Frisky again, which felt like a relief.
“Let’s go somewhere. There must be a better place to be than this hotel.” Nora needed to go someplace darker, the LED lighting was unforgivingly bright in there, and she needed a better drink.
“Besides, I can’t toast with an empty glass. It is terrible luck where I am from.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want, Nora. I’m all yours tonight.”
They went to a steakhouse nearby, the place smelled like AC and stale alcohol soaked into the wood floor, Nora could feel its stickiness under her heels as they entered the restaurant. She walked in front of Peter so that he could look at her bare back — she chose to wear a jumpsuit open on the back — and maybe touch her. Peter did, to direct her toward a particular table, a light brush of the knuckles against her skin. He lowered his hand around her hip gently, lightly, as to wrap her. Nora felt an explosion of nerves around her breasts. She wanted to hold him already. Or rather, be held. She wished he had wrapped her more firmly, her whole body. Maybe he would do it that night, maybe she would. For all the evenings they spent in the city after work, drinking beers and shots at as many different bars as they could walk to, they always went back to their homes and partners. That night they were away and alone. Nora wanted something strong, to impress him, and to get drunk rapidly.
“So, what do you want?” Peter asked.
“Oban. I’m going to start with some scotch.”
“Already?”
“Already.”
“Alright, as you wish. We’ll make it two.”
It was a ritual for them, the liquor. She was so skinny now, she would regret the choice even faster than usual. She was worried it would hit her too hard, ruining her chances to be in control, but she needed to get close to Peter fast, while she still desired him and felt desirable. A chesty blond young woman in a ponytail brought the scotch, two neat pours. Nora hated competing for attention.
“Let’s shoot this,” she said. “It’s so smooth you won’t even notice.”
“You’re planning for trouble, I see.”
“I’m planning to forget my trouble.”
He smiled at his drink, not aware she meant it. He always did that, the smile into his glass, and it always made her weak.
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said.
He chugged his drink with just a slight pursing of his lips.
“Now catch up,” Peter said, “you’ve been behind all evening.”
“Fair. This was my idea.”
She breathed through her open mouth, to let the smell burn her first, then she swallowed the liquor. It felt as instantaneous as she’d anticipated, the warmth through her body, from her throat to the back of her neck, her empty stomach. It brought her back to life as if she could move again, smell. Touch him. It was working, she thought, and she wasn’t worried anymore. About Charles and what he might have thought if he had seen her so loose. He probably wouldn’t mind her having some harmless fun, he would have done the same thing. He never doubted her, she never doubted herself.
They had picked a high table, so that they could stand. The idea was to be close to the bar, but in truth standing allowed them to be close to each other without looking like a couple. Not that anybody knew them there, but they had gotten used to those little tactics.
“Well, I’m impressed, Nora.”
Peter put the empty glass back on the table. He was wearing one of his soft button downs. Nora could still remember the feel of it from the one night they had gotten a bit too close. She imagined laying her face on it again, burying it, while wrapping her arms around his neck.
“There, I forgot about the debate.”
Peter was a fervent Democrat. If you looked at the voting map of Staten Island, you could see a blue dot, and that was him. Nora had little patience for politics, but she was attracted by his commitment to the cause, or maybe it was the fact that they could talk about anything, like a real couple but without any accumulated resentment. She was happy to let him talk and argue with the TV, at least for a little while. He wasn’t a fan of Hillary, Nora wasn’t surprised.
“Bernie, we have to vote for Bernie,” he said. “Socialism, I’m all for it. Give me something for my taxes, come on man!”
He was getting fired up, Nora had anticipated that. She felt lightheaded again, and an awful corrosion in her stomach. She felt the sudden impulse to tell Peter about her ectopic. She should have opted for some water, but that idea was inconceivable, instead she went over to the bar and ordered beer to chase the scotch with. She touched him on the shoulder as she came back to the table.
“You really want to watch this debate?” she asked him.
“We have to vote, do we not?”
“Well, sure. But I thought we were out to have fun. I could have watched this in my room.”
“Let’s go. Let’s go watch it in your room. The office will pay for the room service, right?”
Nora could never tell when he was suggesting something seriously. He was like that, he would find a way to say something that made her feel desired but would still leave her guessing. He was never overt. She wondered if Peter’s ambiguity was the reason for the desire lingering through the years. It stirred up an equal amount of pride and contempt in Nora, she wanted to prove him wrong and give up altogether. It made her wonder why she liked him in the first place, question the validity of their game. Charles had never played games. It was good to doubt her feelings for Peter, she thought. She wondered if he had ever cheated, if there had been others or if it was her bringing him close to that possibility. However unlikely, she liked to believe that it was her.
“Have you ever cheated on your wife?” She asked, looking at him.
Peter burst into a genuine laugh as if he was enjoying Nora’s audacity. Nora thought that must imply guilt.
“You really are looking for trouble tonight.”
“I’ve been looking for trouble for years, but you’re too good.”
“I am too good,” Peter said while looking at her a bit longer. “I am a family man.”
“What about before kids?”
He laughed again. He wasn’t going to answer and that was for the best. Finding out that she hadn’t been the first would have been more of a turn-off than an encouragement.
“Before kids, before marriage. Yes, I had fun then. Lots of it.”
Nora felt strangely jealous. Of his past, of the women he might have had and of the freedom. Especially the freedom. She wished she could have bragged as much.
“That’s not an answer.”
He moved closer to Nora, unexpectedly, and then said quietly in her ear I’m not going to answer. At another time of her life the suggestion that he might have cheated, that anybody might, that she herself was willing to, would have been incomprehensible. But she was amazed how little she cared now.
“What about you? Have you ever cheated on your husband?”
“No, never. Not on him, not on anybody. I don’t cheat.”
It felt like a provocation. Nora could at least brag about that, her stoic righteousness, or innocence, or simple inadequacy all these years. She had never smoked a cigarette, done cocaine or had a one-night stand. None of that, she was pure.
“Really?”
He was looking at his drink again, as if this was an exchange and he had lost.
“I’m going to miss you when this project is over,” he said.
“Miss you. That’s quite the statement.”
That sudden declaration disarmed her, the sincerity of it. Nora hoped her pale skin wouldn’t betray her, showing the bright redness of flattery and embarrassment. She felt less of an imposter that night though, her body was so unusually thin and sinuous that she actually believed him. She felt even more attractive than he was. Maybe he really would miss her, she thought, if only he knew how truly beautiful she was under her clothes.
“Do you have any idea what happened to me?” Nora said. She regretted it as soon as it came out. She couldn’t explain why she wanted to sabotage the moment or the evening.
“No, I don’t. I know you were off for a few weeks.”
“You didn’t even ask me whether I was alive or not.”
“What are you talking about?” he said with irritation in his voice. Nora knew he cared, but she needed a reaction. She felt emboldened by that miss you.
“I do care. Tell me,” he said calmly.
“I had an ectopic pregnancy. The kind of thing women used to die from. I lost one of my tubes in the process. My left. Here.”
She indicated a spot on the right where the pain was, opposite the missing tube, just above her pelvis. She wanted to grab his hand but didn’t dare. Peter’s face softened, as if he was about to hold her. A fondness she had never seen before, as if he understood what she had been through, the seriousness of it. Nora hated how he could be so desirable and tender at once.
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry Nora. I’m glad you didn’t die.”
“Yeah, I didn’t die.”
Nora drank the last sip of beer and signaled their waiter for more.
“You know, Marta and I, our first two were IVF. They wouldn’t come, so we did what we had to do. We did it all…and it worked.”
Nora was astonished at the revelation. Him too, her fantasy, unable to impregnate his wife. It was an unfair assessment, but she couldn’t help it. She hated him again, for being so unexpectedly empathetic, so earnest.
“And what about the third?” she asked.
“The third. That was an accident.”
Nora imagined Peter having sex with his wife and felt deeply and unreasonably jealous. She couldn’t tell whether she was more jealous of them having sex or them conceiving a child.
“An accident?” she scoffed “You forgot how it worked?”
Peter smiled, abashed but intrigued by her allusion to sex. “It will happen. You’ll have yours.”
The waitress brought beers and shots, courtesy of another table of gentlemen. Nora couldn’t tell whether they were hitting on her given Peter’s hesitance, or if they were trying to encourage them, either way it must have been evident that they weren’t a couple. She drank the shot and walked over to them. They were older than her, by enough to make her feel undoubtedly desirable. That was what she always liked about older men, how easy it was.
“Do you want to dance?” Nora asked.
The gentlemen looked perplexed, they probably had not danced in years. One of them stood up and took Nora to the center of the room where a few people were dancing. She was determined to have this unappealing middle-age stranger put his hands all over her. She was drunk now. The man indulged her, grabbing her by the hips, forcefully, and spreading his hands over her ass to pull her against him. Nora was surprised, the shock woke her up, but she didn’t stop him. Peter came over and took her from the man with a gentle push.
“Alright man, she’s with me.”
He had rescued her brilliantly.
“Are you ok?”
It felt like the first time anybody had ever asked her. Nora put her arms around his neck before she could change her mind. They were dancing, or rather swaying. He held her by the bare back with both of his hands, Nora’s face was pressed onto Peter’s face. They had been that close before, allowed themselves that much at least. Just dancing. Nobody has ever called that cheating.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said.
“Sorry for what?”
“Earlier. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It will happen, trust me.”
“And how do you know.”
“Life is good,” Peter said. “Good things happen.”
“Accidents happen. Oh, I love this song.”
“You love every song.”
“Every Gaga song, yes I do.”
Nora’s lips start singing quietly, a whisper about lovers in the night. He smiled, charmed.
“I have no idea what you’re signing.”
Nora was lost in her silent performance and didn’t respond, didn’t care, lip whispering all over him. They were laughing and swaying at the piano while she was singing away. Her voice started to come out, finally, on the crescendo.
“Do you want to go back to the hotel?” Nora asked when the song ended.
“Yes,” he stared at her face, as if he might not have another chance to linger on it that long. He looked pleased and wistful. “For a good night’s sleep, my friend,” he smiled. Nora felt humiliated and relieved. Maybe he was good after all.
“And please don’t ever wear this again.”
7
When they arrived at the nursing home the next morning, it was early, and the sun was already merciless. The heat made Nora’s hangover even more punishing, along with Peter’s indifference in the light of the day which made her feel unsure. She couldn’t tell if he too was battling a bad hangover, or if he was regretful for what they had done or not done. Nora wasn’t in the mood for it, she’d rather be alone. She kept going back to please don’t ever wear this again to feel vindicated. They had planned to split the vast exterior of the building anyway and to be fast that day. Unlike Mary Annie, Peter was motivated by the idea of a cool noon beer in some air-conditioned restaurant.
Peter would work on the West side, Nora would be on the East. When she walked up to the elevated courtyards, sweat dripped down her neck and around her eyes. She didn’t mind the sweat, but the desolation was stifling. None of the residents were outside.
It was quiet, no sound of living creatures, not even a bug buzzing. It already smelled like melting asphalt at that hour of the morning, it was going to be a solitary, interminable day. The courtyards were nothing like what she had imagined, none of the vivid fountains, shaded trellises, light colored umbrellas, and tropical plants they had designed. That lush and extravagant vision was the first element sacrificed in favor of a more modest budget and a stripped down, disheartening execution. There was nothing but concrete. Nobody wants to go outside with this heat, the developers said, and they were right.
Nora followed her routine, inspecting wall after wall. She had been warned that some of the apartments were occupied on that side of the building, and that she needed to be inconspicuous. But nobody was there, not on the balconies, not at the windows, and not in the courtyard; nothing but the scorching sun.
She noticed a movement, a shadow floors above. She realized it was a couple, two men leaning on the railing of their private terrace, holding hands. They were smiling at her, thrilled.
“Hello! Are you having fun?”
She answered with her hand.
“I’m the architect,” she yelled back, not knowing what else to say.
Behind his patio fence on the ground floor, a man was reading a newspaper alone. He looked to be a hundred years old, and Nora worried that the surprise of seeing her could kill him, right there on the spot. She decided to go elsewhere, walking close to the windows, hoping he wouldn’t notice her. She glimpsed into a living room. It was dark, but someone lived in there. A painting of a couple. Empty chairs. On the windowsill, leaning against the glass, there was a miniature boat, the kind with sails made of real fabric, tiny cannons and ropes, like her father used to assemble when she was a child with militaristic focus. Now that he was retired from the Army, he was building more than ever, boats proliferating everywhere in the garage. She thought of him, comforted by knowing he would never end up in a home like this because that didn’t happen in Italy. He would build miniature boats, trim lavender, and smell oranges for the rest of his days.
The newspaper man moved imperceptibly, startling Nora. She gathered her things and left, in search of Peter, under the beating sun.
8
It was not hard to convince Peter to go to lunch earlier than they had originally planned. He wasn’t the type of person to put responsibility ahead of gratification, or so Nora thought before the previous night. They headed toward the community dining room, empty between meals, because from there they wouldn’t need to drive, they could drink enough to get tipsy and that would help with the few hours of tedious work left for the day. Though he rarely left his cool, windowless office in the construction trailer, Stanley joined them. He was the firm’s local outpost. As eager as he was to leave early and beat the traffic on 95 — the goal of each of his days since moving to the Sunshine State — he was too considerate to decline an invitation from Nora.
Stanley walked toward them. “I recommend the avocado and tuna sandwich,” he said. “Not bad.”
Choices were limited but less disgusting than Nora expected. She ordered a mimosa, Peter his first lager, and Stanley a diet-Coke.
“Cheers,” Stanley said. “To the end of the project.” They raised their glasses. Nora started to feel better in their presence, or possibly it was the alcohol that early in the day. She found herself thirsty for it.
They were sitting in the center of the room, in front of an empty buffet and the vast, curved glass façade facing south, overlooking the empty pool. A dark veneer covered walls and ceilings, absorbing the sun’s glow. The décor was dull, except for one painting. It was a square, aquamarine painting of the ocean, hung against the ochre wallpaper at the east end of the dining room and centered between two empty chairs that were facing each other across a set table, intimately isolated from the main gathering space. The enormous white-capped wave, frozen in the act of crashing, was staring at Nora. It was impossibly still. She felt a pressure against her throat, as if it had begun to swell, a growing sense of panic radiating from her sternum and down her ribcage, clenching her lungs. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to breath anymore, she thought, maybe that’s how it felt to drown. The thought of it made her feel strangely calm. She swallowed her drink.
“Did you see the debate last night?” Stanley asked while agitatedly dipping fries in ketchup.
“Like everyone,” said Nora.
She remembered Peter turning around on his way to his room, taking a few steps backwards like in the movies, telling her in another life. That’s how they would often say goodbye, the missed opportunity hurt a little every time. She thought he was drunk but not insincere. A momentary pleasure warmed up her boney chest.
“She’s too hungry for power,” Stanley said.
“Who isn’t?” Nora said. “Who runs for President who’s not hungry for power?”
“Oh well, I guess so. She’s just unpleasant.”
“You don’t mean she’s a woman, do you Stanley?”
“I don’t mean that. But if I had to choose between her, Bernie’s wife, and Melania, I know who to pick.”
“A shame that it’s not relevant, Stanley. And you’re better than that. You are both better than that.”
Peter had joined by backing up Stanley. They both laughed, further aggravating Nora with the predictability of such jokes.
“Ah, don’t even worry about it. Sanders will win,” Peter said. “Hillary shouldn’t have run. And Trump won’t make it past the primary. We’ll forget about him soon.”
“Maybe,” Nora said. “I hope you’re right.”
A slight bitterness in her stomach was preventing her from enjoying the food, which had been the case ever since the surgery. Stanley and Peter were eating voraciously, and Peter was on his second beer. She felt impatient, eager to match up with them.
“Let’s be honest, I should be happy. If Trump wins, he’s not going after me. Self-preservation, you know. But I hate the scumbag,” Peter said.
Stanley dipped white toast in runny eggs the way Nora would have done now that she was no longer pregnant, had she not been so nauseated.
She used to drink raw eggs as a kid, her mom would poke a tiny hole on each end of the shell and Nora would lift the egg to swallow the gross goo. Her mom insisted it was like drinking gold. Or she would eat them whipped with sugar, which her dad would take great care in preparing, transferring all of his frustrations into the spoon and glass. He whipped the egg so long and intensely it turned into a fluffy, delicious cloud. That was the real gold.
“We count on you Stanley. Our destiny is in Florida’s hands,” Peter said, and he was right, the only votes that counted. Nora wished for Florida’s submersion again, viciously almost. She saw it before her eyes.
“Oh well, that’s why I moved, my friend,” Stanley said with his mouth full. Nora wondered how he could stomach life there. He’d been born and raised in Brooklyn, one could still hear it in his coarse way of speaking. He and his wife had moved South a few years prior, but he had never stopped working for their company. He had worked for them for years in the city, maybe his entire life. He never spoke of New York, neither a memory nor a regret, an entire existence that he seemed happy to have left behind. Or possibly the opposite, it was too bittersweet to reminisce, Nora couldn’t tell. She couldn’t understand how any New Yorker could bear to live in Florida. She could still see the city in his thin, ice-gray mustache which he continued to wear despite the humidity, the piercing intention of his eyes and the slightly neurotic way he had of moving his hands. He came back to the city twice a year, for Passover and Rosh Hashanah, with jeans in favor of shorts. Stanley wouldn’t speak about Florida either, not once a comment about how much warmer it was, or how every New Yorker should move there. He wasn’t trying to convince anyone, unlike everyone else there.
“Do you ever miss it?” Nora asked.
“Miss what?”
“The city.”
“Of course I do. I miss it every day.”
He smiled and went back to his meal, Nora smiled too. The staff brought a basket of oranges, unrequested — a house treat said the waitress. As soon as she left, Stanley shook his hands frantically.
“Take these oranges away from me. I can’t stand oranges, I can’t stand how they stick to your fingers.”
“Are they any good?” Nora asked, wondering if they smelled anything like they did in Italy. She liberated one from the skin, the familiar sweet smell stuck to her fingers.
“Do we want to go out tonight? Do something entertaining? Maybe go to the beach before the world ends?” Peter said. Nora resented the invitation, extended to Stanley. Peter was ruining their last chance and she detested him for that second rejection.
Stanley broke into a nervous laugh, he actually feared the end of the world and was preparing for it in Florida.
“Sure,” Stanley said, unaware of the two of them. “We should go to Delray, it’s not terrible. It’s quite lively, pretty skies.”
“Just promise you’ll buy me a whiskey, Stanley” she says, her turn to provoke.
“And why would I not, Nora? You know I would never let you down.”
9
They went to dinner in Delray as planned. Nora spent the evening observing Stanley and Peter joking and drinking with the dark beach behind them, while revisiting the night before. She went over it in her head, how Peter had greeted her, teased her, and gently let her down. Please don’t ever wear this again, she repeated to herself, her body imploding at the recollection. It could be enough to make her feel alive for a while. It could have been more, it always could be. She felt no hint of guilt. She wondered if her lack of shame was self-preservation or self-destruction. Could it be as simple as an attraction to someone other than her husband? Maybe before the ectopic. Now it was the fantasy of a different life, a different paradigm of pleasures and misunderstandings, of all new sorrows.
Stanley was ready to leave eventually, when traffic on 95 seemed the most favorable. He offered to drive them back to Boca Raton, only a brief detour on his way to Fort Lauderdale and they accepted, planning a night cap back at the hotel. When they got in the car, Nora asked Stanley if he could open the window in the back seat, she was feeling disturbed from the drinking. She leaned over the car door, letting the breeze caress her. She thought that was the most beautiful she had seen Florida since she had been there, in the streetlights.
When they arrived at the hotel the bar was closed. They decided to grab a beer in Nora’s mini-fridge and drink it in one of the empty lounges. The galleries were quiet as they walked toward her room, but she spotted a young couple in the pool, kissing and rubbing bodies. She wished that it could have been that easy for her and Peter, excitement without a second thought. She felt defeated at that sight.
“Looks like I finally get to come in,” Peter said, not entirely displeased or serious. The years of not acting on their attraction had convinced them of the legitimacy of their relationship. They were going to share one last drink.
“Finally!” she said out loud, victoriously. “That’s all I ever wanted,” she mocked him, but it might have been true, a win over his resistance. “You don’t have to come in, I will only be a minute.”
Nora walked in without turning the light on, hoping the darkness would conceal the messiness of her room. She left the door open so she could see. There wasn’t any beer in the fridge, but she found a bottle of champagne, which she thought it was appropriate for the occasion, a final celebration. Peter walked in, a few slow steps, and held her without a word. Nora wasn’t sure if it was a farewell or an invitation, but he lingered, tightened his hold, and she let him, welcomed him. She felt elated and faint, like the instant before she went under. She laid down on the bed behind her, illuminated by the yellow mercury vapor light coming from the adjacent parking lot, and she shivered while he lowered his face to her stomach. It had been too long since she had been with another man, almost her entire life. She had not been with Charles again after the ectopic.
Peter kissed her over her pants, still hesitant. On the bed, Nora saw her ribs and hips emerge from her belly like mountains. It pained her, how empty and cavernous her body was. The thought of her scar, still brown and tender, flared up the sharp pain of her nerves and insides. If only Peter knew exactly where to find it. That was close enough, she thought. When he lifted her blouse and kissed her belly button with the tip of his tongue, Nora started to cry silently, tears dripping by the side of her eye and down her ear, behind her neck. In the semi-darkness, Peter couldn’t see her weeping and Nora didn’t want him to. She didn’t want him to think she was regretting him. She wasn’t. He felt good, that closeness, and she felt her pain softening for an instant. Vanishing, like a single firework, quietly extinguishing in the night.
She wasn’t sure why she was crying. Nora held him against her stomach, his hair felt thick, rough, and not so different than Charles’. She thought of her first night with Charles, back in Pittsburgh, over a decade prior. How he too laid on her stomach first, timid, not knowing exactly what to do. They were barely twenty. He had taken her to his room, a bedroom under a roof in an attic. Nora remembered that she was thin back then too, to afford being in America for a semester. Her hair cut short, she had forgotten about that. She was wearing white that night, so unthinkable now, and they were smoking weed. They ended up not having sex, too stoned to move. Nora never smoked weed, she tried not to vomit all night. She could still remember it though, vividly. The pungent smell of reckless youth, of freedom, the closest she had ever gotten to it. Nora thought of her and Charles, young kids, inexperienced, especially her, in love. The beginning of love. He seemed fearless back then, like he could withstand anything. Do anything. He was everything she wanted to be. Confident, free. Beautiful. American. Nora thought of when she had to say goodbye to him, at the Greyhound bus station, how she screamed out of desperation thinking she would never see him again. It would have been her greatest regret, had she not met him again. But she did meet him again. She missed him, them, who they were before their losses.
“Falling out of love. That would be the worst thing that could happen.” Nora said to herself, aloud.
“Falling out of love? No…not the worst. Friends that die, parents that die. Losing a child. That’s worse.” Peter said, while still laying on her.
“For me it would be.” For me and Charles. “You should go.”
“Don’t do this to me Nora,” he lifted his head and looked at her.
“That’s exactly what you said that night,” she said.
“What night?”
“The night in town, our first night.”
“Oh… tell me what happened that night. I’ve been trying to ask you for years.”
“Nothing happened, I’ve been trying to tell you for years. We just danced. You danced.”
“But I don’t dance.”
“Yes, you do. You do.” He did, she thought, just the night before.
“Did we kiss?”
“Nothing happened. We didn’t kiss. We should have, back then when we thought we’d never see each other again. You were supposed to move to Japan the next day and never be back, remember? That’s what you told me.” They laughed, he remembered that part.
“I wanted to, though, so bad. And ever since,” she said.
“How about now.”
“Now you have to leave. You don’t want me to hate you,” she said, caressing his hair. She didn’t want him to hate her either.
He nodded, smiled.
“Of course.”
As he was lifting himself, he pushed her into the mattress lightly, exhaled in disappointment but without anger, grabbed her face and kissed her on the lips, barely, quickly, before going. A goodbye kiss.
10
“Charles”
“Hey?”
“Can you hear me, Charles?”
“Yes, I can hear you. Are you ok?”
“No...”
“What is it?”
“I had a dream. We were out in the ocean, drifting apart. We were being swept away by the current. By enormous waves. Like that painting…”
“What painting?”
“I was going under. I couldn’t breathe. It was scary…”
“It was a dream, babe.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it…”
“About the dream?”
“No…”
“I thought you were going out with Peter, where are you?”
“I couldn’t do it. I just felt so sad Charles…”
She began to wail. Her lament interrupted by long silences, gasping for air like a child.
“You’re scaring me, Nora…”
She couldn’t help the thought. What if their life would proceed toward its end as it has always been, no change, no tangible proof of their love or existence? Of all the love given, of who they were. Everyone that ever existed before them, the love of their ancestors that brought them there, it would all be forgotten with them. Her mother, her father’s whipped golden eggs and tiny boats. Swept away by a generation of infertility, choices poorly made or made too late. Or simply bad luck.
“Nora, please talk to me.”
Nora. The sound of her name.
“I can’t help that thought, Charles.”
“What thought?”
“What if we can’t have any? What if we never have children?”
“We’ve just been unlucky dear, we will have children.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t know it.”
“But I believe it.”
“But what if you’re wrong. What if we lose each other?”
“We won’t. We have each other, Nora. Forever.”
He said her name again.
11
When she woke up it was pitch black. Nora turned towards the hotel room clock, the red blinking light said 5am. Her eyelids were so swollen she could barely open them, the mascara melted around her eyes. She knew the feeling and didn’t mind. She realized it was early enough that she could catch the dawn at last if she wanted to. She could shower later, nobody would know or care, she wasn’t even sweaty like she usually was, waking up beside Charles. Nora thought of him, how he would resist leaving the bed that early. He would reluctantly brew coffee for the two of them and go back to snoring while it dripped out of the machine. Nora put on a sweater and her black sunglasses.
It was dark, the pool still lit but empty. An old, lean man walked on a treadmill, he seemed to get closer while her glass elevator approached the ground floor. The young woman at reception wished her a loud good morning; Nora waved back like a celebrity, holding her head down. Nobody was around the parking lot, only the beep of the locking mechanism releasing. It was still cool, the humidity still bearable, pleasant even. Fragrant. It tasted like summer and would make her uncombed hair wavy, which she liked. Nora settled in the car, she knew where she was going but checked anyway, although she was too tenuous to worry this time. It would take her about twenty minutes that early in the day, the highway was empty. She started to feel strangely at ease, the landscape becoming familiar. Left, then right at the traffic light. Straight. She turned onto the local road, letting the gentle neighborhood curves of homes and palms and bushes loosen her up. It was dark in the mirror behind her, but ahead it was getting brighter quickly.
She made it back to Delray. She thought she would be alone, no one else around but funny birds, their desperate screams filling the quiet morning air. But she wasn’t alone. Teenage girls cartwheeled on the beach. Good for them, she thought. They brought their towels and no boys, they woke up early just to see the sunrise. Nora wondered which of the three had convinced the other two, she saw herself in that one. The moon was still high and bright, the lamps still shining round pools of light on the boardwalk. She walked to the edge of the pier, by the concrete railing overlooking the water. The horizon had started to turn delicately red, floating boats waiting for the sunrise. She stared at it too, the sun breaking through the water.
“I’ll have a coffee, black.”
“It’s going to take a while to brew, the machine is still starting up,” the waiter warned her. The cafe by the beach had just opened and Nora was the first coffee of the day.
“I can wait. I’m in no rush.”
She sat down facing the water and the dredge, its trusses futilely lifting sand another day. Nora smelled the aroma of the beans being crushed in the humidity, the salty water coming from the beach. Sometimes she thought she had moved to America just so that she could sip a long, bitter black coffee for hours.
“Hey. Where are you?" Charles called while she sat there waiting. He was relieved to hear her voice, and she was relieved to hear his.
“At the beach. I came back to see the dawn.”
“You and your dawn.” They both laughed. “I’ve never even seen a dawn before I met you. Never even thought of it.”
“There’s something special about it. The world before the world.”
“There’s something special about you.”
“I missed you making me coffee this morning.”
“Did you figure out the machine?”
“I didn’t even try.”
The waiter came to ask her if she wanted to order while waiting for the coffee. She envisioned a full American breakfast — sausages, home fried potatoes, small pancakes covered in strawberries and syrup, and toasted white bread.
“Eggs, please,” she said.
“Sure. And how would you like them cooked ma’am?”
“Runny. Two runny eggs.”