Then I call the liquor store and I order a twelve-pack of IPAs to be delivered to her apartment. The kind Grace loves. The kind that tastes like soap. The kind she’s always trying to get me to drink, waving the neck of the bottle under my nose. Fucking try it, Miranda, who knows? Maybe it will cure you. Maybe it will help.
But nothing helps me, right, Grace?
And then because I can’t resist, I add a bottle of pink champagne. Veuve Clicquot. Veuve, French for “widow.” Grace and I drink a bottle of it together every year, after the last wretched performance of the season. God, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? I always ask Grace as I pour it for us into paper cups.
For not-beer, she always concedes.
See, Grace? We’ve had some good times.
When I hang up, I feel happy. Flowers. Balloons. Booze. Groceries. She’ll know I care now. She’ll remember how long we’ve been friends. How much we’ve been through together.
After I hang up, I see some texts have come through. Grace! I think. Oh, Grace, thank god, thank god.
I look down at my phone.
Not Grace. Hugo.
I want to see you. I’m on campus right now, tying up some loose ends. Come visit me?
Another one from Paul.
Miranda, all okay? Haven’t heard from you in a long time. Getting worried.
It surprises me to hear from him. Paul almost never texts or calls. But then I remember how frequently I used to text and call him in my darker days. Not so very long ago, those darker days. The days before All’s Well.
To my ex-husband, I type, All’s well
To Hugo, Coming now.
CHAPTER 24
A DAY AND a night and a day fucking in Hugo’s basement. Then sleep. Sleep for Hugo, that is. Not sleep for me so much. My eyes are still wide open in the dark, in the smoke of his bedroom. They won’t close tonight. Or is it tomorrow already? It might already be tomorrow. Can’t tell by the light. His windows are high and small, very close to the ceiling. It’s a nice basement place. He’s set it up nice. Fixed it up, as my mother would say. All white and shining, not at all like I imagined. The wooden furniture gleaming in the dark. Has a woman’s touch, but it’s Hugo’s touch, I guess. Earth-toned rugs here and there that warm up the cold floor. Candles everywhere, plants that don’t need much light at all. More books and records than I would have thought. A framed poster of Johnny Cash wearing black on the wall. The house is owned by a widow who lives on the ground floor. Mrs. Lee. She lets Hugo pay rent in pot and landscaping, some handiwork around the house. Her own little handyman for free. Hugo’s nothing but grateful.
She really helped me get back on my feet, Hugo said of her. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without Mrs. Lee. I owe her so much.
She sounds wonderful, I said, knowing already we would be enemies.
I was right. Mrs. Lee didn’t like the look of me at all when she saw us approaching her house, all over each other already. My mouth was a red smear from making out with Hugo in his truck, my mascara bleeding black tears down my cheeks, and my hair was wild. I saw her sitting on the front steps, a crouched silhouette and a plume of cigarette smoke in the black of the evening. Beside her was a large, very white dog who glowed in the dark. Miranda, this is Hester and Tulip, Hugo said. Tulip was the dog, I guess. Tulip growled at me. And Mrs. Lee said nothing at all.
Hello, I said cheerfully. Too cheerfully perhaps. The dog began to bark.
And she and the dog went into the house, letting the door shut pointedly behind them.
Don’t mind her, he said. She’s been through a lot.
Oh, it’s all right, I said.
I was extra loud during our fucking, for the benefit of Mrs. Lee. I moaned at the ceiling.
Now I hear the dog scampering around up there as I watch the light change through the windows, go from blue to pink to peach to flaming red to blue again. Eyes still won’t close. Eyes still wide open. It’s all right, I’m wonderfully rested. I wonder if Grace is resting like this in her own bedroom of rose froth, her dragon dreaming beside her. I hope so.
I look at Hugo lying beside me, eyes shut tight and fluttering, his eyes roving beneath the lids, mouth open. Dead to the world, wide awake and wandering in another. His blond hair haloed by the dawn or is it the dusk? The shadows in his face cavernous. Making him look so much like Paul in this light and in the next light and in the next and the next that comes through the windows. Just tricks of the light, I know. Casting these shadows over his face, over the room. Telling me that I’m back in my old house. Back in my old red bed. Paul lying beside me, my arm around him, I’m breathing in the honeyed scent of his neck. I never fell off the stage. I never walked out the door. Soon he’ll wake up and we’ll have a lazy day together like we used to, won’t we, Goldfish? Morning sex and then maybe Dutch pancakes, Paul’s specialty. After, we’ll curl up on the couch in the bright living room, each reading a book. Maybe he’ll play the piano and maybe I’ll work on that garden that I never let go to shit. Maybe I’ll rehearse because I’ve got work again; I’m in a show. I’m Cleopatra or Lady Anne; maybe I’m Helen again. Paul will run lines with me, read Antony, Richard, Bertram.