“Not yet,” he said.
It was a reasonable and honest answer, but it greatly upset her. The distance to her house was diminishing as he drove, their time for talking dwindling, the cube filling up with water.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said.
“Have you tried?”
“All I can think about is you.”
“That’s all I can think about, too. I mean—you.”
“I just don’t know if I can do it.”
“I know you can.”
“Not writing,” he said. “This. I don’t know if I’m cut out for loving two women at the same time.”
Less than a mouthful of air was left in the cube. All Marion was able to say with it was “Oh.”
“It’s tearing me in two,” he said. “I’ve never met anyone I’ve wanted like you. Everything about you is exactly right. It’s like I was born with your face imprinted on my brain.”
She didn’t have the same feeling about him. If she’d passed him on the street a year ago, she wouldn’t have looked twice. For a moment, as if from outside herself, she could glimpse the outlines of the thing inside her, the obsession that was growing in her, and recognize it as an object foreign to a normal person’s desires. But then, in a blink, she was inside it again.
“Let’s go back to the motel,” she said.
“We can’t.”
“It wasn’t enough. I need more time with you.”
“I want more, too, but we can’t. I’m already late.”
Late meant Isabelle. The prospect of relinquishing Bradley felt so life-threatening to Marion that if she murdered Isabelle it would be an act of self-defense. She began to hyperventilate.
“Marion,” he said. “I know it’s hard for you, but it’s even harder for me. It’s tearing me in two.”
He said more, but her breathing drowned it out. Black cars and white buildings, winos with paper bags and women in sheer stockings, loving two people and tearing me in two. Either she breathed so hard she passed out or another slippage was occurring. The hand that Bradley put on hers, in front of her rooming house, was burning cold. She still couldn’t hear what he was saying, she only knew she had to get away.
The second slippage was worse, the number of hours unaccounted for greater, and afterward she found scrapes on her knuckles, a red bump on her forehead. She was an hour late for work the next morning and wept disproportionately when Mr. Peters mildly chided her. At lunchtime, fearing suffocation if she stayed inside, fearing death if Bradley tried to speak to her, she fled the dealership and walked randomly on named and numbered streets. Snowfall from the storms extended down the spectral mountains, but the March sun was strong, spring already in the air. She was beginning to breathe more freely when she caught sight of a familiar face. Coming toward her, in the crosswalk at Grand Avenue and Ninth Street, was Isabelle Washburn. Marion lowered her head, but Isabelle stopped her by the arm.
“Hey, kid. Aren’t you even gonna say hi?”
Underneath a light coat with a sheen both lavender and green, Isabelle wore a green-on-white polka-dot dress, not cheap. She’d side-curled her hair and adopted a slack-jawed way of speaking that sounded copied from the movies. It transpired that she blamed her nincompoop cousin, rather than her utter lack of acting talent, for the failure of her plan for being discovered, but she was making okay money as a photography model and living with some other gals in a bungalow behind the Egyptian Theatre. It could have been Marion’s imagination, diseased by her own wantonness, but Isabelle’s repeated references to her landlord gave her the impression that he was more than just a landlord. Her artificial new way of speaking suggested a heart hardened by rough experience. “So anyways, that’s me,” she said. “Whatcha been up to yourself?”
“I’m well,” Marion said, which was so funny to her she almost laughed.
“Landed on your feet and all that?”
“Fine, fine. Yes. I have a steady job. Which I should probably get back to.”
Isabelle frowned. “Whadja do to your head?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
Isabelle dug in her purse. “Lemme put some powder on that.”
Right there on the street corner, Marion let her erstwhile friend apply makeup to the bump on her forehead. The casual sisterliness of the ministration choked her up. Isabelle raised her chin with her finger and inspected her with a professional eye. “That’s a little better,” she said, closing her compact. “You know, we really ought to get together sometime. You used to crack me up so much. Remember Hal Chalmers and Pokie Turner? Dick Thtabler? You ought to just drop in if you’re ever out my way. I’m literally right behind the Egyptian, on Selma, it’s a bright-red house, you can’t miss it.”