Vlad was quiet again, then said, “I need to sleep.” He looked at the puddle at his feet and said, “I’m sorry about the mess.” I told him not to give it a second thought, that John had left some clothes here, that he could change and lie down in the guest room and after he rested we would get our bearings. He nodded like he had given up all agency, and then asked meekly if I wouldn’t mind undoing the restraints. I acted shocked, as though I had forgotten they were even attached to his body. I kneeled between his legs （avoiding the urine） and undid the combination lock, unwrapped him, and then got a pair of kitchen scissors and slid the blade under the zip tie. I struggled a bit as the plastic was hard to cut and I didn’t want to hurt him. I was thrillingly close to his body, and as I moved from the first zip tie to the second, he whispered, sadly it seemed, that I smelled good. I smiled and impulsively kissed him on the temple, like a mother, and then he took me with his left hand by the back of the neck, drew my face down to his, and kissed my mouth. I pulled away, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but I said nothing and cut through the final tie. I led him to the guest room, and handed him a pair of John’s pajama pants. Without waiting for me to leave, he started pulling off his sodden jeans and briefs. I looked away. When he finished changing I kicked the jeans out the doorway of the room and told him I would launder them. “They can’t go in the dryer,” he murmured, then took off his blazer, hung it over the back of a chair, and lay down on the bed. I stroked his face for a moment. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him.
“Will you stay with me?” he asked. He was already dropping off, his pelvis shifting back and forth in an unconscious rhythm. I sat on the bed, gave his hand a squeeze, and told him that he would have a better sleep by himself. I drew the curtains in the room—it was nearly dawn, the dark was lifting.
I returned to my bedroom and arranged my pillows so that I was sitting up in bed. A sad and strange disappointment settled on my chest. I craved John and his cynicism and his massive form. I craved Sid and her body, still young, unfettered, and free enough to occasionally lay herself against me and gather succor from my warmth. I rose and looked in the mirror—scrunching my face so I could see every possible wrinkle. Vladimir’s breath had smelled awful, but then again, mine probably did as well. My face hadn’t melted from the bone when we kissed—I hadn’t felt much of anything, though that may have been simply because I was so surprised. I couldn’t tell from his weariness how much he believed me versus how much truth he intuited. Was the kiss, the invitation to lie down, a gesture of affection? Or was it a gesture of condescension, for the old, lame woman who didn’t follow through on her kidnapping plans? Was it true that John was spending nights at his office helping Cynthia with her memoir and not pressing his lips against patches of her private skin? John had never read any of my manuscripts. When we were younger and I would ask him to look at something I wrote he would say he didn’t want to interfere with my voice, that he didn’t want to unduly influence my style. But I always knew that he was conflicted about my writing. Though he was slightly more august, and his publication and teaching style （affairs included） lent him a Harold Bloom–like gravitas and stature, he and I had the same job, were the same level of professor throughout our career, once junior, then associate, then senior. He had achieved some power when he became chair, and he was good at the business machinations of the college, but I never wanted that kind of influence. Meanwhile I managed to publish two novels along with my academic work. He did quite a bit of rereading of his own juvenilia but could never force himself to spit out enough poetry to fill even a small chapbook. I knew that every time he read my work he would have been battling against wanting to truly help me and wanting me to fail, if only to justify his own flaccid failure. Still, he could have saved me, I thought. He was a merciless critic, and my books, particularly my second, could have benefited from his slashing pen. Cynthia was already the better writer. If her book was a wild success, or even just a literary one, would I be able to withstand my jealousy?
Like moving the volume dial on the radio, I tuned my thoughts down to a low buzz and concentrated on the sounds of birds that were gathering fortitude with the rising sun. They must have built a nest somewhere close. I closed my eyes and slept for about an hour. The house was quiet when I woke. I thought perhaps that Vladimir had left, run for the hills, hitchhiked or stolen my car, done whatever he could to get away from me, the psycho bitch. But when I went to check the guest room, he was there, still asleep, the covers thrown off, his shirt shed, his rippled torso gleaming.
XVII.
He woke a little past noon. I heard him stirring in his room and packed the moka pot with espresso and started it on the stove. That morning I had taken the glass of water with his phone in it from beneath my bed, pulled out the waterlogged device, and put it in a bowl of rice. When he asked for it, I would tell him I had found it in the toilet and was trying to save it.
It was cold in the cabin. I wore wide-legged corduroy pants and a silk turtleneck beneath a fitted cambric work shirt topped with an oversized woolen cardigan. My hair was plaited and pinned on top of my head like a German. In the morning, when I realized Vlad would not be waking anytime soon, I spent an excessive amount of time applying my makeup so that it did not look like I was wearing makeup.
“Whoa,” Vlad said as he entered the room. He wore his blazer over the pajama pants and his arms were crossed and shivering. I pointed to a sweater of John’s I had selected for him—a lambswool pullover made for the coldest of winter days. He took off the blazer and put it on—it billowed and flowed girlishly around his hips.
“The coffee is almost ready,” I said. He thanked me, then went to look out the glass doors that led to the lake. He seemed subdued, philosophical almost. I poured him the coffee, and not knowing how he took it and feeling too shy to ask, I filled a small pitcher with cream and made a tray with a bowl of sugar cubes. I placed it on the coffee table, and he turned toward the sound, sat down without speaking, and fixed his coffee with an obscene amount of milk and sugar. He looked bloodless and withered, a movie star playing a sick scene.
“This is so good,” he said as he finished it, and I replenished his cup.
I waited for him to ask where his phone was, or suggest we leave right away, or propose some sort of plan that linked us with the outside world, but he drank his coffee and said nothing.
“Would you like some eggs?” I asked hesitantly.
“I will eat whatever you give me,” he said.
I found the classical station on the radio and fixed him scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage links, raisin-bread toast, and a glass of orange juice in silence. Ravel’s “Boléro” played, and he hummed along, staring into the middle distance.
When the food was ready he came to the kitchen table and ate with fixed intensity. It was like watching a time-lapse video of an invalid recovering strength. As he ate, in a steady rhythm, color returned to his gray face, and his limp limbs seemed to plump with renewed energy. When he finished, having consumed the meal in silence, he leaned back and ran his hands up and down the sides of his abdominals.