Maloney peers up from his catalog. “Junkies?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe it was a while ago.”
“But it looked recent.”
“How could you tell?” Maloney sets his feet on the floor and inches closer. His gut bumps against the edge of the table.
“There was an apple core on the floor. It wasn’t dried up, it was fresh. Only a tiny bit of brown.”
Maloney leans all the way back in the boss’s chair: one long, fluid motion. “You sound like an amateur detective. Some kid could’ve tossed an apple core there, especially in that neighborhood. Don’t you think you should close the book on your father’s story?” A strip of Maloney’s stomach is visible between the elastic of his pants and his shirt, which has slid up.
“He never did a goddamn thing for you while he was alive, and I’m sure it’ll be the same now that he’s dead. You look like someone who needs a drink. We can ask Annie to lock up.”
They sit at the bar. The bar wraps around them in a very safe and inviting way. Thomas is on his second martini, while Maloney slurps the last of a piña colada. The girl behind the bar smiles at them under sharply trimmed, bleached bangs, and the music is just their style—as if she knew precisely what they liked. And now they’re acting kind of goofy, unrestrained. Thomas has nearly forgotten about the break-in and Jenny’s naked, frightened face. His glance lingers on the girl’s eyes, which are dolled up in black. Are they blue or gray? Maloney says, “Maybe Peter’s gay.” And Thomas says he thinks Peter’s a virgin. “But the kid’s twenty-two years old, for God’s sake.” And Thomas says, “You can’t talk about anything but sex.” “What about you?” Maloney answers, and then Thomas’s cell phone rings for the third time—he’s ignored it until now; it’s Patricia. “I need to take this,” he says, pushing the door open and stepping onto the sidewalk as he grapples with his cell. Cool wind whips at his face.
Patricia’s already home, she says, it’s past 8:00, and they’d agreed to have dinner. Did he buy wine? Bread? Chicken? Vegetables? Thomas stabilizes himself against the wall with his left arm. “I’m coming,” he says. “I’m taking a taxi right now. I’ll bring Chinese. And beer. I’m sorry, hon, I lost track of time.”
“I don’t want Chinese,” Patricia says angrily, “and you sound trashed.”
Maloney isn’t at all happy that Thomas needs to go, but he doesn’t even stand up when Thomas gathers his things and pays the bill. They say their goodbyes. Maloney calls out, “See you later!” Thomas trudges up and down the street, but there’s no available cab. Through the steamy glass door he can see Maloney seated among a group of younger men and women, whom he’s already begun to entertain with wild gesticulations. Out here it’s cold as hell. Thomas heads toward the wider boulevards, buys beer and cigarettes at a deli. He’s freezing and shivering, and finally a taxi pulls along the curb. It’s a pleasant ride through the city. I love the lights and the darkness, he thinks, lights and darkness, and just like that they’re at the door of his building. It’s all too quiet here, he thinks. And I haven’t bought any dinner, I can’t go home without any dinner. Thoughts like flies and stinging insects: Where are my keys? An apple core, the stench in the kitchen. If she doesn’t want Chinese, I need to go all the way down to the tapas place, it’ll take at least fifteen minutes.
When he balances through the door with a tall stack of takeout containers resting on the palm of his right hand, he drops his key and is almost dumb enough to bend down and pick it up and thereby drop the containers with all the food, but he manages not to. His head’s buzzing. He licks his lips, a raspy dryness in his mouth. The long hallway is high-ceilinged, painted white. He hears Patricia approaching from the living room in her bare feet. She pauses a few feet away. “Sorry,” he says, forcing himself to smile. “It’s been a strange day.” She tilts her head. The light lands on the left side of her face, the high cheekbone, the ear. “I was wearing a dress, but I took it off.” She tosses her hair back, lifting her chin. “I thought we were going to have a nice evening.”
With his back he pushes the door shut, then sets the containers on the low table under the mirror.
“And we will, won’t we?”
He catches a glimpse of himself, ruddy-faced, bags under his eyes. Then he advances toward her, and reluctantly she falls into his embrace. “You smell like alcohol,” she says into his neck, “and I’m hungry.”
She’s wearing something that looks like pajamas, but he’s not certain they are pajamas. Silk that hangs loosely from her, no doubt very expensive. Patricia spends a lot of money on clothes. Patricia wants a baby. Patricia’s ambitious, but she wants a baby. She crawls onto the sofa and bites into an artichoke heart. She raises her beer to her mouth and drinks. Then, shifting herself, she points at the tapenade. She’d like some of that, too. In the blue armchair Thomas sits arching forward, longing for a cigarette. But then he’d have to go all the way down to the street, and that wouldn’t be the best thing to do right now; it’d be downright rude. He shovels some lettuce into his mouth and bites into a hunk of bread, realizing that he hasn’t eaten anything since lunch. When Patricia’s full, he eats what’s left in the containers, and when he’s emptied the containers, he leans back, lethargic and sleepy. Patricia, apparently no longer angry, asks how his visit to his father’s apartment went. He can’t muster the strength to tell her how it looked, so he tells her about Mrs. Krantz instead, trying to make it sound light and funny. “Her voice sounds like . . . like some screechy kid pissing in a potty.” Where that came from he doesn’t know, but Patricia smiles, her eyes growing friendlier. “Did she sound like the screechy kid or the piss hitting the potty?” she asks. Thomas returns the smile. Staring into each other’s eyes, they are in harmony, everything they have together is in that moment, a fraction of a second. Then Thomas glances away. “I have no interest whatsoever in going to the funeral. I’m considering not going. Why should I go? For whose sake?”
“For Jenny’s, I guess.”
He doesn’t answer that.
“Do you think your aunt and Helena will go?”
“No. But Jenny’s probably invited them. I can’t deal with Jenny either, for that matter. All of this means nothing to me, I don’t want to be involved.”
“But Thomas. Isn’t it best that we go, get it over with? At least then you’ll never regret not going.”
“But I can regret that I went,” he says, standing. The city glimmers in the darkness, under a yellow half-moon. Patricia sighs and collects the containers.
“We’ll go out afterward and have some champagne, just you and me. We’ll celebrate when it’s over,” she calls out on her way to the kitchen. Slap, slap, the soles of her bare feet against the wooden floor. Water running in the sink. She’s rinsing the plates, no doubt. Thomas opens the window and lights a cigarette. He leans across the cornice and blows smoke into the cold, damp night air.
Patricia returns to the living room. She stops, preparing to say something, but hesitates. Instead she says, “Want me to put my dress back on?”
He turns toward her, making sure the hand holding the cigarette remains outside. “You don’t need to. I’d be fine if you just took your clothes off.” She regards him solemnly. Then she smiles and begins to undress. He doesn’t have any desire for this at all, but now there’s no way back. So ridiculously compliant of him, just because he felt guilty for coming home late, for smoking indoors when he’s agreed not to, for not making dinner for her, for not talking with her. For coming home drunk like a loser. Now she’s naked and standing in the center of the room, her fair skin almost golden in the half-light of the reading lamp. He looks at her hips, her pubic hair, her smooth thighs. He looks at her belly, a little distended. Her