was working late at the store and I wanted to surprise her with pasta, a late dinner. I followed the woman to the parking lot, she slid inside her car and sat there for a moment, face turned to the left, abstractedly toward the trees. She looked ahead, challenging me, even though I couldn’t quite see her features. She flashed on her headlights, then off. On and off. I did it back. Was this all that was required? God help me. Soon I was tailing the red lights of her car as it wound through the streets of Lumina.
Miraculously, we’d been able to keep things tidy, the rule being as little talk as possible, which was fine because I wasn’t even sure I trusted the sound of her voice. She fucked like a woman who’d been around, which was exactly what I’d wanted. I knew she had a husband, a husband who spent a great deal of time away from home, probably with the military, a spy? There were flags flying about the house, little medals in dishes and trays, but I tried my best not to take it all in, as I was afraid we might get ourselves into trouble if we started talking. All that mattered was that she had a body completely different from my wife’s. (The tight and shallow navel, the lightest blonde hair on her calves, her downy underarms.) We’d figured out a way to do what we’d needed to do without being entered by our history, the world, and that was no small thing.
I looked on the sheets for fluids spilled but everything felt dry.
The little girl—whom I never saw and never hoped to see—slept in the next room, quiet as a mummy.
I stood. I kissed her chastely, on the top of the head, only vaguely aware that I had only five more minutes to get home. She smiled ruefully, extravagantly naked, picking at the stitches of a pillowcase. The room felt stale now and stuffed, a drawer shut up with forgotten clothes. I wanted to throw open the window, to let in the smell of the lilacs and the bay, the hose water on the leaves, but I knew it was time to get on. I was needed elsewhere.
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