by Jack Fuller
If he had looked through the fish-eye, he might have snuck back to the living room, but he did not look. And when the sticky outside air rushed in at him, there she was, the summer sun behind her, a roller bag on the doorstep at her side.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“There was no other way to reach you,” she said.
“There’s a reason for that.”
“May I come in?”
He looked at her roller bag.
“I came straight from O’Hare,” she said, “with no strategy.”
He stepped aside, leaving his arm outstretched to hold the door. Once she was inside, he watched her take in the pizza disk congealed on the table, the smudged glasses with amber residue, the unopened boxes.
“What happened?” she said.
“I stayed loyal this time,” he said.
“It isn’t a repetition.”
“Except the part with the man on the Wall of Stars and me running to you.”
“I seem to have run to you,” she said. “And nobody died.”
He cleared the couch for himself and let her stay that night. The next day she gathered up the garbage and put it in the Dumpster. Then she picked up a rag and began to wipe down surfaces. He began to vacuum.
When he was ready to listen, she told him his story her way. Introducing him to himself, she called it: He had resisted the deal as too expensive. He had urged Joyce to disclose their security problem. He had been steady when things had started to unravel. If he’d had his way, Day and Domes would have been a lot better off right now.
They began walking together every day along the lake. Finally she led him back to his bed. Then he opened the boxes and eventually got many more so that he could load the other things in the apartment and go to New York with her.
Now here he was on the Upper West Side, taking the air on the greensward along Riverside Drive, marking his days by a calendar of books that moved from one side of his chair to the other. Occasionally he allowed himself a regret that he had come to this place so indirectly instead of straight from New Haven a long time ago. It had apparently required disgrace.
When she returned from court, she wept. He held her.
“Why am I so sad?” she said. “I wanted this.”
“I guess what a person wants sometimes comes with loss inside,” he said.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“So am I,” he said.
“Even now, after everything?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s why.”
