When Watched (17 page)

He was quiet a second. “Sometimes I hate your honesty.”

“I thought you missed me.”

“I
do
.”

“Well.” She took a long drag. “This is me.”

 • • • 

The next day Lenora arrived at their door with a bruisey look of exhaustion around her eyes, brown hair tucked back at the ears. She wore a long sand-colored coat and knee-high leather boots. Hank kissed her on the mouth, tasted mint and a cigarette. He looked into her tired eyes.

“Will you help me with this?” she asked.

Hank wheeled her suitcase in. He was always surprised by how sexy his wife was, long-limbed with a soft galaxy of freckles over her cheeks and nose. It was a little like seeing another woman every time she appeared—like she was continually being replaced by one of her more beautiful sisters.

He watched as she clacked to the hall mirror and shot it a quick glance, then went straight to her office.

Numbly he floated to the kitchen for more coffee and within minutes, she was shouting.

“What?” he yelled.

“Nothing,” she said when he appeared in the doorway. She had stripped down to a sleeveless gray dress and stared fixedly at her laptop, an unlit cigarette waiting between her fingers. The room was dark, save for a standing iron lamp with a slim green shade.

“What?”

“This little baby novelist got a huge review in the
Times
.”

Hank walked over to the laptop. “Oh him.”

“He's a crashing bore, this guy. I met him once . . . years ago.”

“You have such a teeming, growing shit list.”

“That's what a career is.” She scrolled down to the bottom of the screen. “I'm sure he
adores
my work.”

“Who cares.” Hank backed away from the computer. “You'll get one. You always do.”

“But it won't be like this. It'll be smaller.” Lenora pulled a book of matches from her purse and lit the cigarette, savagely pulling smoke into her lungs. “The best thing I could do for my career at this point is hang myself.”

“That's not funny.”

“It wasn't meant to be.” She tugged one boot off and dropped it to the floor. “It's a
fact
. I won't be famous till I'm dead.”

“But you are famous. You're famous now.”

“Not like I will be.” Lenora had entered an unblinking trance. “All the biographers will fight over me.”

“Come on.”

“That's how it works. They eat corpses—all of them do.”

He stared at her. “That's a disgusting way of putting it.”

“It's true though.”

Hank backed out of the room, watching her as he went. Lenora was leaning forward in her cracked leather chair, shoulders gleaming in the lamplight. She stared straight ahead with a violent look of contemplation, cars going off cliffs in her eyes.

He brought his laptop to bed and Googled the poet he had dated in his twenties, Grace Lampert. In an instant he identified her on Facebook, looking rather unhealthy next to a man,
presumably her husband, who also looked unwell. The image disturbed him. He clicked it shut.

Hank heard the front door slam and knew where Lenora had gone. To see the drug mule.

 • • • 

She returned at dusk. She walked to the bed and stared down at Hank, who lay in the same spot with his laptop balanced on his stomach, its cool blaze cast over him.

“Did you get some writing done?” she asked.

“No,” he frowned. He had done nothing but masturbate. “I drank too much coffee,” he said. That was true too. “Wound up paralyzed . . . grinding my teeth.”

She laughed.

“How's Angie?” he asked.

“You know. Fine. Terrible.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think that's what prison is like. You're fine and then you're terrible.”

“Right.”

“She told me a lot more about her childhood.” Lenora shook her head. “It all made so much sense.”

“What did?”

“The abuse.”

“She was abused?”

“By her father. He beat her with a belt. She said it had a scene of the desert on it.”

“Are you putting that in the book?”

“I'm not sure yet.”

He stared at her. “Do you think she likes you?”

“She doesn't get a lot of visitors, Hank.”

“That's not what I asked.” He tried to dock her gaze with his
own but it rushed away. “Does she
like
you?” he said and realized his question was really:
Does she hate you?
Because in that moment he did.

“Why would she agree to see me if she didn't like me?”

“I don't know.” He threw his hands up. “Boredom? Loneliness?
Desperation?
”

Lenora cut her eyes. “What are you getting at?”

“I just wonder how she feels about her life going into a book—
your
book. Of fiction. I mean, at least if it was nonfiction—”

“I think she likes that I'm so interested,” Lenora said. “Her whole life people have rejected her.” She climbed into bed and pushed the laptop off his stomach, then ran one manicured finger down his chest and over his navel, pausing at the waistband.

Hank's head drained of all thought. He waited for her finger to move farther down but a second later it was gone.

She'd gotten up and opened the closet door. “John and Susan are having a party.” Lenora surveyed her clothes, then withdrew a gray dress. It was almost identical to the one she was wearing.

Hank felt his excitement sputter and die—shrink down to a pit of rage. “I hate those two.”

“There'll be food.”

“What kind?”

“I don't know. Cheese and crackers?”

“There aren't enough cheese and crackers in the world.”

She shrugged. “You don't have to go.”

So of course he went.

 • • • 

They were both pretty drunk when they left the party. In the cab they stared out opposing windows, flat blobs of colored light flying over their faces.

“I didn't know it was Susan's birthday,” Hank said. “We were the only ones without a gift.”

“They live in Brooklyn. The gift is that we
came
.”

He laughed.

“It was weird seeing all those guys I went to college with,” Lenora said. “They all looked so different.”

“You mean bad. They looked bad.”

“Sort of.” She patted a yawn. “They're just older—they aren't cute. Like, the
exact
thing I identified as cuteness is now gone.”

“We're older too.”

“I know that.”

“It's so awful.”

“What's so awful?”

“That we feel uglier because we
are
uglier.”

“We're not ugly,” Lenora said, a wound in her voice. “And maybe those guys aren't either. It was just a
shock
. Their faces looked so different without the same fat there. Or with—you know—
sudden
fat.”

Hank laughed. “It didn't just appear there.”

“Well that's how it looks if you haven't seen someone in a while. Like they just got hit with fat.”

They both laughed, then went quiet.

Hank looked up at the moon. He said, “What were you talking to John about?”

Lenora froze in profile. “Why?”

“Because you were talking to him all night.”

“So.”

“You know I hate that guy.”

“I still don't understand why.”

“He's a creep. And he's a terrible writer.”

“I didn't think his book was bad. It could be vastly
corny
at times but I thought the ending was very moving.”

“I didn't get that far—I just didn't
believe
it. He's like Kevin Spacey doing Bobby Darin,” Hank huffed. “Some cheap commercial rendition of hipness.”

Lenora groaned.

“It's okay for me to hate this person. You hate everyone.”

“No I don't.”

“Yes you do. You only like him because I hate him. It's a turn-on for both of you.”

“You're really starting to sound crazy.”

“Right—because you're such a cheerleader for sanity.”

“Why would I hit on someone in
front
of you?”

“I don't know. There's obviously something wrong with you.” Hank faced the window once more, the harsh red light of surrounding cars cast over him.

“Well you were glued to what's-her-face all night. The one with the tits,” Lenora hissed.

“You know her name.” He turned to see her expression but she was facing the window, arms crossed. “I like her,” he said. “She's nice.”

“That's her thing. I'm nice! But really she's just boring.”

Hank laughed in spite of himself.

“And she looks like a fetus,” Lenora said. “I mean pretty but . . .”

“Unformed?” he offered.

“
Yes.
Not fully formed.”

“That's the thing about fetuses.”

 • • • 

Once home they stripped down to their underwear and climbed into bed. Hank stared sideward at the freckled contours of
her body, the red spoon glowing somewhere under her lacy black bra.

She lay there like paradise itself, he thought.
An island all her own.
He rolled on his side and thought maybe the trouble with paradise was tasting it. Maybe he could only touch the door—crouch before it and wait. Maybe it was
waiting
that he loved—not Lenora.

The thought took shape and died in a matter of seconds.
I don't like waiting
, he decided.
I don't like staring this way—like a man in a museum
.

The woman he loved was the one who loved him back, the one who had been wild for him.

Hank scratched his stubbly chin, then gazed at Lenora's arm—hating its beauty.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Do you need to penetrate my mind every second? I'm having
idle
goddamn thoughts.”

Hank looked away. “Did you tell anyone what you're doing?”

“What?”

“The book.”

“What about it?”

“Do they know you're stealing some poor woman's life?”

Lenora looked hurt for a second. It made her prettier. “Is that really what you think I'm doing?”

“Yes.” He blinked at the white wall. “You're stealing her hell.” He shook his head. “Because you've never been to hell—you wouldn't know how to describe it.”

“I don't know. This feels a little like hell.”

Hank imagined throwing something at the wall. Like a lamp or a chair. Just to change the look on her face. “You think you're so smart,” he said.

“You think you're so
moral
.”

“Does that woman know you'll disappear the
second
the book is done? Did you tell her that?”

“That woman's name is Angie. And who says I'll stop seeing her?”

“I know you.” He trained his eyes on her. “You're a vampire.” He went on staring, coating her with disgust. “It's why your books are so good—they're full of
actual
lives.”

Lenora dropped her chin, stared at her legs.

Helplessly Hank joined her there.

“Do you think we love each other?” she asked.

He stiffened. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because I wonder.”

“You
wonder
? But I say it all the time.” He shook his head. “You mean do you love
me
. That's what you fucking wonder.”

“I wonder about you too. You say it so much—like compulsively. You
need
it.” Her gaze zapped coolly around the room. “That's not love.”

“Well you wouldn't know, would you? Because you don't need anything . . . but fame.”

Lenora had resumed staring at her legs.

“I miss you,” he said. “I wish you missed me.”

“How can I miss you when you won't go away?”

Hank blinked at her a moment. Then he went white, stormed off to the bathroom, shut the door and threw himself down on the blue bath mat. He had come there to sob but instead vomited a dark sauce like blood or chocolate. It seemed there would be more but he just knelt there panting with his chin on the toilet seat.

The room twitched and spun and he tried to remember what the fuck he had eaten. Then he closed his eyes and saw all
the little cheese cubes on toothpicks . . . a single cracker . . . three grapes.

He wiped his mouth and curled like a comma on the rug. He wanted to cry but couldn't. He slept.

 • • • 

In the morning birds chirped and one apart from the rest, screaming a hideous tune.
One bird always sings alone,
he thought.
The one who can't sing—he sings alone.
Hank unstuck his mouth from the blue bath mat. Sunlight splashed into his eyes like Clorox.

A few seconds rolled by and reality assembled itself. He grasped his pounding forehead and remembered Lenora's face, her smeary red mouth, the words:
How can I miss you when you won't go away?

In the mirror a creature blinked back at him. He ducked his face over the sink and shocked it with cold water, massaging his stubbly jaw.
How can I miss you when you won't go away?
The phrase haunted his thoughts until it dawned on him: they were lyrics from a Dan Hicks song.

Anger moved him like a windup toy to the kitchen, where he paused in the doorframe to stare.

Lenora was smoking by the window, fanned-out papers and a small brass ashtray before her on the round wood table. She wore a pale orange silk robe patterned with silvery flowers, her tangled brown hair beaming in sunshine.

“Dan Hicks,” he said.

“What?”

“How can I miss you when you won't go away.”