“Have you—”
“Have I published anything yet? Not outside of literary journals.”
“She’s been working on this book of interconnected stories, it’s really marvelous.”
“How lovely,” the female juror said, putting her hand on Gerry’s forearm. “You two are the loveliest couple, so perfectly matched, in brains and beauty. I mean that.”
She excused herself to speak to someone on the committee about the evening’s program.
“Do you want her?” Lucy said.
“What? No! What are you talking about?”
“Because you can have her. If I’m in the room.”
“What are you saying?”
“I know you, Gerry. I can feel how restless you’re becoming. I’ve been thinking—if we do these things together, we’ll be okay. It’s how we’ll survive your … restlessness.”
“Lucy—no, you’re wrong. Ever since I’ve had this modest success, your emotions have been all over the place. This isn’t about us, as a couple. Please don’t worry. I’m not leaving you behind, in any sense.”
Lucy has never looked more like Barbara Stanwyck than she does in this moment. Cool, appraising, plotting.
“Let’s invite her back to the hotel with us, after the event, to have a drink. Let’s see what happens.”
“You’re being very silly.”
“What do you have to lose? If I’m wrong, or if you decide you want no part of it, we have a drink with the nice lady who helped hand you eighty thousand dollars and I can make up for being so rude to her just now. If I’m right—”
What do I have to lose?, Gerry thought.
What do we have to lose?, he thought, two hours later, when he allowed his wife first crack at those magnificent tits, the three of them giggling in the fussy canopy bed at the hotel. Maybe this is how a marriage lasts. Maybe Lucy is onto something. What do I have to lose?
“Just remember,” Lucy said, lifting her lipstick-smeared mouth to his, “I always have to be in the room.”
“Of course,” Gerry promised, “of course.” He bent down so his head was next to hers and they suckled at the juror’s breasts like two hungry kittens.
April 2
“I SUPPOSE,” Aileen says the next day, when Gerry has finally admitted to himself that he will be denied the solace of sleep no matter how many drugs are in his system, “you want to know what’s going on.”
Does he?
“If you must.”
“I’m going to tell it in chronological order. I’m sure you won’t respect that as an artistic choice—”
“No, I think that’s fine, under the circumstances.”
He’s not sure of the time, only that he has not slept. Early morning, he judges by the light. He can hear traffic, the sounds of a city coming to life, but it’s not yet rush hour.
She takes her usual seat. “Tory and I have been friends for years and roommates since we left Goucher. When she applied for the job as your assistant, she was gutted that you had no memory of her. It tore her up. We talked about what kind of man forgets someone he taught only seven years ago and we realized—the only students you cared about in that workshop were the boys and that one girl, Mona, because she was gorgeous.”
And the best writer in the class. Also, not all of the boys, only the two who were good. But he’s in no position to argue. He’s literally in no position to argue. He’s in his bed, incapable of walking, barely capable of holding a seated posture for more than a few minutes, and his “caretaker” has bashed in the head of his assistant, who is also her friend and roommate.
“We realized you don’t see women unless you’re attracted to them, that it was such a joke that you had gotten all this praise about some ‘dream girl’ who changed a man’s life, that there was no way Aubrey was really your creation because she was too real, and you didn’t know anything about real women. There’s always been this rumor that you stole some woman’s life, maybe even stole her literal story. We decided to gaslight you.”
“But—how could you know I would have an accident?”
She sighs, hitches her chair closer to his bed. He can’t help himself, he flinches.
“That was never the plan. It was going to be all letters and phone calls. But then you fell.”
There was a letter! Then he realizes how silly it is to feel triumphant about being right about the letter.