He slipped on the ring, which fit as neatly as Cinderella’s glass slipper.
When they got home that night, they made love. It was good, and slow, and for a little while, she thought maybe it would all work out, and they really would live happily ever after. But after he fell asleep, she was restless. She got up and rearranged all the dishes. Saucers in front, bowls in back. Then she took everything out, and relined the cabinets. Then she put the dishes back, and stopped eating.
Two days later they went out to Daniel Restaurant for a fancy French dinner to celebrate their engagement. They split a bottle of wine. On an empty stomach, the booze hit her fast. She turned into a blabbermouth. Everything she’d held in since they’d started dating gushed out. “I need a break,” she said, “Not from you. From my life. I’m so tired, all I want to do is sleep. Don’t you ever get sick of this city? It’s so noisy. It never stops. I thought I’d move out for a while. Find a sublet or go to a hotel. Just to catch up on my sleep, you know?” The worst part was the shock that resolved into puckered hurt on his face, like she’d punched him, and he was trying to show he could take it like a man.
“Okay. I understand,” he told her while smashing his wild okra into mush. Still drunk, unaware he was close to crying, she’d continued. “It’s not that I don’t love you, but you drive me crazy, you know?”
That was when he covered his face with his hands so she didn’t see his tears. She felt so bad that she stopped talking. The rest of the dinner, she didn’t look up from her plate because she was afraid that if she saw him crying, she’d start crying, too.
He slept on the couch that night. In the sober light of morning, she was ashamed. What a terrible way to break such news. Most of the time, she liked him just fine. More than anybody else, at least. She’d considered crawling onto the couch with him. When he woke up, she’d eat as many runny Velveeta omelets as he cooked, if that was what made him happy. “I’m neurotic and have limited interpersonal skills,” she’d explain. “You know that. Next time, don’t take me so seriously.”
Then again, sleeping alone for the first time since they’d moved in together, she’d noticed a change. The bed was deliciously spacious, and the walls stayed where they belonged. Without Saraub, she could breathe.
So she moved to the Golden Nugget and told him it was temporary, when in fact, she was pretty sure it was permanent. She stopped wearing the ring on her finger, and now carried it in her pocket wherever she went, because she didn’t trust the hotel staff not to break in and steal it. Probably, she should give it back to him. But she wasn’t ready to, just yet.
And here she stood with a packed bag, checking out of a fleabag flophouse. Not so different from the Midwest no-tell motels her mother had dragged her through like a rag doll when she was a kid. Maybe this was how Betty had started her descent, too. A relationship that got too close. A move too many. And then the inevitable red ants of madness that had followed them from town to town, like they’d developed a taste for her scent.
Audrey took one last look at the room. She’d straightened, of course: folded white sheets, a Bible, and a sparkling ashtray. The blinking red message light on the phone and the letter “S” traced into the glass-topped nightstand with her finger were the only evidence that she’d lived here at all.
She imagined going back in time. Picking up her suitcase, and walking rearward out the door. Reversing the order of this thing she’d done, so that she’d never signed the lease for The Breviary, never done anything that couldn’t be undone. She’d return home to Saraub and fall asleep alone in their futon, and when she woke, she’d be on a date at a fancy French restaurant, only this time, she’d take it all back. He’d talk about moving to Yonkers, and she’d tell him, “I hope we have enough kids for a football team!”
Yes, she decided. She would go back to him. It wasn’t too late. If she stayed on this desolate road she was carving for herself, she knew what