But my computer was there, sitting in full view on the table, the only existing copy of my novel saved as a file on the desktop. I cursed my stupidity—why had I not thought to save it to a flash drive or email it to myself? I thought about waking Vladimir, but I was afraid that the thief might hear our voices and run, my laptop in his arms. And so as quietly as I could, I took a large umbrella from the floor of the closet. I knew it was laughable, but I figured I could stab the trespasser if he tried to lunge at me, or open the umbrella to confound him. I walked lightly and slowly down the hall into the living room and flicked on the overhead light.
The refrigerator door was open, and the intruder was crouching in a way that blocked them from my view. I called out, loud, and he rose and hit his head on the bottom of the freezer door.
“Jesus Christ, woman,” said my husband of almost thirty years, and I dropped my umbrella to the ground.
* * *
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” John said, after I had yelped, cried a little, thoroughly berated him for the fright he’d given me, and fixed him a plate of leftover frittata and salad and a glass of wine.
“We have to move that table from the front,” he said, rubbing his shins to signal he was injured. I sat down on the far side of the couch. I imagined Vladimir still behind me, his arms gripping me.
“What are you doing here?” I tried to ask the question kindly, with a smile.
“I wanted to see you. I didn’t know if you were here or not, but I thought I’d try.”
He said he missed me. That he’d been going over resigning with Sid and Alexis when he’d felt a gut punch of longing. The college was where we’d come together to start our mutual careers. We were a partnership, and his resignation didn’t feel like a decision he should make on his own. He knew we were so distant these days, but he believed what we had was salvageable. He proposed we leave the college as a team. He could try and figure out some sort of consulting career—in advertising or corporate communications—some field in which nobody knew who he was. We could sell both houses and move to a small apartment in a city where we could spend the days going to museums, readings, theater. I could write if I wanted, or get another teaching position wherever we landed. Or we could relocate to Mexico, where our dollars would last forever, and live that yellow-dusted expatriate life, wearing linen and hats and crisping in the sun. We didn’t need to stay shackled to this town of prudes and hypocrites.
I nodded, humoring him. He was addled and loud and uncharacteristically chatty. It felt like a matter of time until Vlad would hear the commotion and come into the living room and I didn’t know how any of us would react. The more he spoke the more frustrated I became. It was so like John to come in with solutions without taking the time to see what I wanted or how I was feeling. He didn’t ask, during his monologue, or even entertain the thought that I might want to stay at the college. He didn’t ask how I wanted to live out my retirement, and if I might want to do it with him. It was assumption, always assumption that he could sweep in with some solution and I would simply go along with it.
I rose to pour myself some bourbon, then sat back down beside him as he went on about the cancerous strains of fascism that were infecting the academic campus. In the middle of his rant he interrupted himself. “I want you,” he said, and lurched toward me, trying to kiss me with a wide, spread mouth.
I blocked him and turned away. “Stop it,” I said. “You show up in the middle of the night, unannounced, what do you think you’re doing?” He sat primly for a moment and apologized, but there was a slight bit of mirth in the way he sat, in the lift around his eyes. After everything, he was still funny, and I gave him a pursed-lip smile. He leaned toward me, and using the top of his head and the bristles of his hair, he rubbed up and down against my bared skin like an animal might, tickling and murmuring in a gravelly, playful baby voice he hadn’t used with me for years. When he heard my breath catch he started using his hands, pinching and grabbing at parts of me he knew would make me shriek upon contact. I wriggled, leaning back on the couch. He took this as a sign of encouragement and began to pull up my nightgown. But no, I didn’t want that, it was all too fast, I had not replaced my underwear after Vlad. I recoiled and yelled, louder than I intended.
I heard movement from the small bedroom and kneed John away from me, just as Vladimir Vladinski, junior professor and distinguished author of negligible generalities, emerged naked holding a lamp. After being kneed, John rose to his feet and stood there bemused, looking from Vlad to me for several seconds, until he sat down in the beer-hall chair （the chain still pooled on the floor around its feet） and began to laugh.
“Jesus,” Vlad said, and immediately left the room. John kept laughing, putting on a big show with gasps and heaving breaths as I finished my bourbon, smoothed my skirt, patted at my hair, licked my fingers and ran them under my eyes in case of mascara drips. Vladimir returned wearing his T-shirt and the pair of John’s pajama bottoms.
“Are those my pants?” John was wheezing and clutching his stomach. “I was wondering where those went. Sorry,” he said, and started breathing as though to calm himself.
The whole display was so cynical. “Enough,” I said. “Get it together.” He pressed his palm to his sternum, closed his eyes and shook his head, then opened them and nodded at me with an artificial look of appreciation. “Nice work,” he said, and to my surprise I glimpsed a trace of hurt in his expression.
Then he turned to Vladimir and said, “What’s up, man?”
I intervened before he could reply. “Vladimir’s in the guest room, John. He needed some space. We both did.”
“Oh, okay,” John said, nodding. “That explains it. I mean, it doesn’t explain why you smell like another man’s jizz—”
He could be so crass. I blushed to my forehead. Vladimir looked wounded.
“I do not—” I protested.
“Please.” John gestured to interrupt me and smiled. “Who am I to judge.”
“I didn’t know you were here, Vlad,” he continued. “It’s truly a surprise. I love it, actually. I’m very infrequently surprised.” His face was screwed up and mean.
I told him it was only fair. I felt unexpectedly moved, resentment swirling in my chest.
“Only fair?” He crossed his legs and leaned on his hand like Rodin’s Thinker. God, he was so bellicose and pompous. “What do you mean?”
“You and Cynthia.” Tears were hot against my eyes and I didn’t understand why.
“Cynthia and me?” he said, and began laughing again, then repeated it several times in different intonations—“Cynthia and me, Me and Cynthia.” He bobbled his head around, his double chin as bulbous as a frog’s.
I snapped at him to stop. I felt like taking the chain from the floor and wrapping it around his fat neck.
“I saw you together.” He wouldn’t do this to me—shrug me off like a hysterical woman. He wouldn’t turn me into the paranoid wife. I wouldn’t let him.
“Oh, my friends,” he said, dropping into a solemn register, “let me reassure you. Cynthia is far too far above my pay grade.”