The Cloud of Unknowing

by Mimi Lipson

  “Are you in a hurry to get home? I’d like to pull over for a bit.”

  “You want to pull over?”

  She turned into the station and parked at the far end of the lot, where there were no other cars. They sat silently for a moment, looking out the windshield at a row of dusty sumac bushes.

  “I kind of figured I wouldn’t see you again,” he said.

  “Can I be honest? I don’t think you will.”

  “I didn’t expect it. You don’t have to explain.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. That’s not why I wanted to stop here.” She turned in her seat to look at him. A delicate nimbus of late afternoon light surrounded his large head and narrow shoulders. She unbuckled her seatbelt, moving slowly and carefully, as she would around a skittish animal. “I’m going to come over there,” she said. “Okay? I’m coming over to you now.”

  He took off his glasses and looked at her with large, grave eyes while she undid his seatbelt and lowered herself onto his lap, resting her knees on the seat on either side of him. She saw now that he wasn’t lashless: his eyelashes were almost translucent, but they were long and gently curled. She kissed him, and he kissed her back tentatively. His breath tasted of the coffee he’d nursed for the entire hour they had spent at Starbucks. She could feel his heart beating beneath his tropical shirt. Pressing into his lap, she felt a slight movement in response, but his arms stayed at his sides.

  “These angles won’t work,” she said. “Let me make some space in back.”

  He stayed up front while she moved Isaac’s shop vac to one side, and his tool cases, and the milk crates full of sanding disks, and the boxes of nail cartridges. She found a heavy furniture pad and shook the sawdust out the side door, then spread it out in the space she’d cleared. “Okay,” she said, peeling her T-shirt off. “Do you want to come back?”

  She kneeled in her bra and panties and looked up at him while he undressed. He was very thin, covered everywhere with fine, reddish-blond hair. She reached for his hand and pulled him down next to her, and they lay side by side kissing. Sucking his lower lip to stop his hard little tongue from darting around in her mouth, she felt him relax. She guided his hand inside her panties, willing herself to think of him, the_lettuce, Eric, and no one else as the light dimmed, softening the outlines of the tool cases and crates around them.

  “Thank you,” he said over and over as they made love. At first she shushed him, but she felt it too: gratitude. After a while, his words became sighs.

  Kitty waited at the curb while the_lettuce unlocked the door to his apartment. He looked like a little kid with his backpack and short pants. He turned and waved, and she waved back until he was inside. The light came on in the living room and a cat jumped up on the windowsill—the one with feline leukemia, she supposed. She did a three-point turn in the wide street and drove past the train station. The lot was empty now.

  Kitty thought of the strange movie about the Scottish fishing village—the one that made her and Isaac cry. At a stoplight on Montgomery Ave she dug her cell phone out of her pocketbook, but then she remembered the bumper stickers. Best not to risk a ticket. She pulled up to a meter and put the van in park. She considered whether to tell Isaac about the_lettuce. After all, they were nothing like that couple. Isaac wasn’t paralyzed and she wasn’t a young bride.

  While she dialed Isaac’s number, she pictured the_lettuce shrugging off his backpack, pouring himself a glass of milk, uncapping his rapidograph pen at the kitchen table. She wondered if he would move to Delaware. She hoped not. She didn’t know what she did hope for him, but not that.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First thanks go to Mike McGonigal and Steve Connell, and to Caleb Rochester for being my muse and my buddy. Thanks also to Leslie Epstein, Sigrid Nunez, Xuefei Jin, David Brainard, Soo Yeon Hong, Joy Harris, Bonnie Jo Campbell, James Parker, and Peter Doyle for their advice and moral support; to Jenny Davidson, Katya Apekina, and Mairead Case for their help with the manuscript; and to the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the membership of one or more secret cabals. Most of all, I am grateful to my mother, Joanna Herlihy; my siblings, Sonia, Nate, and Sam; and my first literary role model: my father, the late, great Alexander Lipson.