Come Closer (5 page)
“Which crappy French restaurant?”
“The one where we went with Marlene, and she got the soup with the—”
“OH! Right, right, right. Near the Tibetan place.”
“Right.”
“Sure, let’s go there.”
In the big drugstore, a quarter of a city block, Ed waited on line to fill his prescription while I found my toothbrush and then my conditioner. With time to kill, I browsed the cosmetics section. I was looking at a cute red lipstick when Ed found me. He had his pills. We paid and left to go to the Tibetan restaurant for lunch.
On our way out of the drugstore we heard a rapid, high-pitched beep.
“Step back.” A teenage security guard ordered us back through the alarm. Ed and I rolled our eyes at each other and stepped back into the store. After a nod from the security guard we stepped back out.
Beep-beep-beep.
The guard waved his hand for us to step back in. We stepped back in.
“Open your bags, please.”
We rolled our eyes at each other again. Ed opened his bag, which held the pills, toothbrush, and conditioner, and fumbled in his pocket for the receipt. The guard nodded approval and then turned his attention to my purse. I held it open with an exaggerated sigh. He peered down into the bag and poked a hand in to rummage through the contents: wallet, keys, scraps of paper, change purse. After a quick minute he pulled his hand out, a black tube of lipstick held between his thumb and forefinger. It was sealed in clear plastic and had a wide white alarm strip wrapped around it.
“You have a receipt for this?”
I stared at him, shocked. “That’s not mine.”
“I’m going to ask you to come with me, ma’am.” He put his hand on my arm to lead me toward the back of the store. I pulled my arm free.
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
The guard looked at Ed and me. “Do you want to tell me how this lipstick got in your purse?”
“I have no idea,” I told him truthfully. “It must have fallen in. I was looking at it, but then I put it back. Seriously, I have no idea. Look—” I opened my wallet, which held a few hundred in twenties. “Do you think I would steal a four-dollar lipstick?”
“It’s in your purse,” he said.
“Listen,” said Ed. “We’ll pay for it. How’s that?”
“But I don’t even want it!” I protested.
Ed ignored me and looked at the guard, a come-on-we’re-all-men-here look. “I’ll pay for it.”
After a dramatic pause the security guard nodded. He escorted us back to the cashier, where Ed paid for the lipstick, and then we left.
Outside the store we looked at each other in astonishment, shaking our heads as we walked towards the Tibetan restaurant. I lit a cigarette and for once Ed didn’t scowl.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. I really couldn’t. “I haven’t stolen anything since seventh grade.” When I was twelve and my stepmother said I was too young for makeup I went on a shoplifting spree, ending when I was caught red-handed with a contraband eyeliner.
“Maybe he put it there,” said Ed. “Thought you wouldn’t put up a fuss.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
We were silent for a moment, contemplating the possible motivations of a rogue security guard.
Ed shrugged. “It must have fallen, like you said.”
“Yeah. I guess when I put it back in the dispenser it fell back out.”
“It must have.”
“Must have.”
“Yeah. It must have.”
First Ed burst out laughing, then me. Almost arrested in the drugstore, over a four-dollar lipstick I hadn’t even wanted! We told the story again and again to friends and coworkers, and even to Ed’s mother, over the phone. It was too funny. Hysterical. And even funnier was that at the end I was glad to have the lipstick; it was a dark, brick red that I never would have bought, far from my usual neutral, pinkish brown, but for the rest of that summer and fall I wore the red lipstick almost every day and when it ran out, in mid-November, I went back to the same drugstore and stole another tube.
L
EAVING WORK A FEW days later I walked by a hole-in-the-wall bar between my office and the train. I had walked by it a hundred times before without a second thought. Suddenly I wanted a drink. One drink, I thought. Just one. It had been years since I stopped into a bar, alone, for a drink. I stood in front of the door. It looked filthy inside.
One drink,
I thought.
Just one quick drink.
EAVING WORK A FEW days later I walked by a hole-in-the-wall bar between my office and the train. I had walked by it a hundred times before without a second thought. Suddenly I wanted a drink. One drink, I thought. Just one. It had been years since I stopped into a bar, alone, for a drink. I stood in front of the door. It looked filthy inside.
One drink,
I thought.
Just one quick drink.
An hour later I was on my third tequila, sitting at the bar with a man whose name I had instantly forgotten when he introduced himself to me. He was about my age, with short, scruffy black hair and an appealing, slightly wrinkled face. His arms were wrapped in tattoos; Japanese goldfish with bulging eyes and a mermaid with a sweet face and waves and waves of water in between. This was the kind of man I liked in my early twenties, before I met Ed.
“How about four,” the bartender said. I nodded. The man I was sitting with smiled. He had a once-in-a-lifetime smile. The bartender gave us two more drinks.
I looked around the room. Mostly men, mostly tattooed like my drinking companion. A band was setting up or breaking down in one corner of the room.
“You can drink,” the man said.
“I can,” I answered, but I didn’t feel drunk at all. Just happy to be out, having fun.
I GOT home late and Ed, naturally, was worried and angry in equal parts. I didn’t bother to apologize, or even make up a very convincing lie.
“Worked late, hon.”
Edward sulked, sitting on the sofa in boxer shorts and an undershirt. “I was worried. You could have called.”
I ignored him and went to the bedroom to undress. In a red kimono I walked back to the bathroom and drew myself a bath, ignoring Edward again when I walked through the living room.
Let him worry, I told myself. Let him see what it’s like, sitting alone, watching the clock, waiting for your spouse to come home. I lay down in the hot water and poured in half a bottle of lily of the valley bubble bath, a birthday gift from Ed I had been saving for a special occasion. My spine and neck relaxed in the soft hot water. I knew we would have a fight after I got out of the bathtub. Ed would ask what my problem was and I would say I didn’t have a problem and he would say I was sure acting like I had a problem. Then I would say I guess the problem is that you think one member of the household can come and go as he pleases while the other has to account for every minute of her time. And he would say where the hell were you tonight. And I would say at the office, like I said. Call and check if you want. And he would look at the phone on its little desk by the bookcases, sitting there like a slug, and then look back at me. Forget it, he would say. Fine, I would say. Fine, he would say. We would go to bed chilly and wouldn’t warm up again until the next morning, or the next evening over dinner.
TWO WEEKS later. Another night at home. Another take-out dinner, shared late. We had made up from the last blowout but there was still a chill between us, a polite caution that replaced affection. After dinner we sat on the sofa together and disappeared into our separate worlds. A documentary about World War II was on television. Summer had come on quickly and it was so hot in the loft that Ed, who dressed immaculately even at home, left his usual summer cotton pajamas in the dresser and wore just a clean pair of white-and-blue-striped boxer shorts and a white undershirt. I had on a thin camisole and another pair of his clean white-and-blue-striped boxers. Edward flipped through a magazine. I flipped through a book on midcentury furniture design.
I lit a cigarette. Edward gently rolled his eyes. We had made an agreement that I would keep smoking in the loft to a minimum, a concession to Ed’s tragic allergies. I ignored him. I smoked and looked at my book, half listening to the television. The cigarette was in its usual place between the first and second fingers of my right hand.
I thought,
What if I stuck Edward with this cigarette?
What if I stuck Edward with this cigarette?
Everyone has thoughts like this from time to time: What if I burned my husband? What if I pushed him off this cliff? What if I jumped off this roof? The thought came into my head and then disappeared just as quickly. I lifted the cigarette to my lips for a last drag. Then, in my mind, I took it down to stub it out in the little white custard cup I used as an ashtray. Very nice, French, we had gotten a set of six as a wedding present, I don’t remember from whom. I do know that I never before or after made a custard. In my mind my hand moved towards the table and snuffed out the cigarette in the little white cup. My fingers, with a chipped brown manicure, were at my lips, the brown filter suspended between the first and second fingers of my right hand. I took the last drag and then released my lips. I assumed my hand would move down to the table and put out the cigarette.
It didn’t. Instead my hand made a quick turn to the right and stabbed the burning cigarette into Edward’s leg, an inch above his left knee.
He screamed. I screamed. I ran into the kitchen for ice and Edward kept screaming. He jumped up from the sofa screaming bloody murder.
“Shit! Fuck! What the fuck did you do that for? What the hell is wrong with you?”
I was speechless. Edward sat back down, still cursing. I sat next to him and held a bag of frozen peas over the burn. The screaming tapered off into a muttering, and then silence. He closed his eyes and leaned back.
“What happened?” he asked, after a few minutes. He wasn’t really angry. Just shocked.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t mean to,” he said. “I know that.”
“I don’t know what happened. My arm just moved. I didn’t mean to. How’re you feeling?”
“Terrible,” he answered. “It hurts like hell.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He reached over and ruffled the hair on top of my head. “It was an accident.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too,” he answered.
“I don’t know what happened. It’s like it moved by itself.”
“Maybe it’s tendinitis. Julian’s wife had it in her shoulder and she couldn’t even hold her arm up. It used to just flop all over the place.”
“I don’t think so.” I told him. “My shoulder feels fine.”
“You twitched,” said Edward. “A spasm.”
I knew it wasn’t tendinitis. My arm hadn’t flopped. It hadn’t slipped, it hadn’t twitched, it hadn’t fallen. It had moved by itself. It had moved with a controlled movement away from the ashtray and towards Edward’s leg.
Edward didn’t say anything, and neither did I. There was nothing to say.
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