his throat, and Lena visualizes his neck lengthening, his Adam’s apple sliding up, then down and up again, his arm bending to show the luminous dial of his watch. She had not thought of that concert in years or the feeling she’d had of being complete and whole. Stretching her own arm again to the glass beside her, she glares at the TV and the dip Randall’s body has worn into his side of the mattress.
“She’s on TV. Right now. I wish you could see her. She made me think of our first date. That was the first time we made love, remember?”
“Of course, I remember, Lena, I was there, too. Are you drinking?”
“It calms my nerves.”
“Maybe you can frivol away the day—and that, coincidentally, is compliments of this trip and all that work you’ve been complaining about—but I have to get up in two hours.”
For the first time in twenty-seven days, Lena wonders if this abruptness is because she has disturbed more than his sleep; if some woman has gone to where Lena should have. No invitation had been extended to join him, like other business trips to New York, Rome, Berlin, and more, savoring free moments between conference calls and meetings. No matter what he has told her, his work—the complexity of TIDA’s pending acquisition—allowed Randall to escape. He needed to be upbeat, he told her, to be ready to think clearly, to strategize, to make decisions—or change them on a dime—and he did not have time, or the desire, to deal with the irritability that seemed to plague her.
Sharon? Not four months ago, at a TIDA dinner, Randall’s colleague insisted he taste her béarnaise-smothered steak. Lena watched the very sexy Sharon risk a death knell for her career, and maybe her boss’s, by leaning into Randall and offering her fork to his willing and open lips. Randall is friendly, she thinks, but that gesture went way past friendly.
“Are you alone?” Her lips tighten, shoulders hunch; Lena presses the phone hard against her ear, as disarmed by the question as she hopes Randall is. Tossing back her drink in one, swift motion, she slams the glass on the nightstand. The table creaks with her protest, her alarm.
“No, my mistress is here; right beside me: the TIDA contract. Hundreds of pages all over me, all over the bed, all over the floor. I’m doing her every place I can. Sorry she can’t talk now, but if you want, I can fax her to you.”
“That’s not funny.”
“And neither is your question.”
“I’m going to call your secretary and make our next appointment with the therapist.”
“Fuck no. If that leaked to the board… they’d assume I’m incompetent. That’s all the ammunition they need to keep from appointing me CEO. Just figure out what’s going on with you.”
f f f
Before Randall left, Lena suggested a marriage counselor to help get to the root of the heightening tension between them. She described to him what he called her indifference and watched his eyebrows knit together in what she assumed was his indifference. Both let go of their unspoken routine. Never going to bed angry. Apologetic embraces that turned to lusty sex. Revering the gem they called love, considering each other’s opposing points of view until they reached truce or, even better, agreement.
“Therapy,” he said, “is what white people do.” Lena reminded him that he had quickly agreed to therapy for their son, and that, the last time Lena looked, Kendrick wasn’t white. Randall agreed to a session before he left and one more when he returned.
After introductions, Dr. Brustere opened his hands like a priest ready to bestow the sign of peace, to balance the power in the room, and asked about their marriage. Randall eyed the therapist as if determining a battle-ready opponent. Good brotha, bad brotha. Dr. Brustere pressed his expensive pen into the dimple in his chin—his signal to Randall that he was expected to talk.
Randall told the therapist that most people who knew him would be shocked to know that he considered himself a simple man, given the thick gold bracelet on his right wrist and the Rolex on his left (his only jewelry), his designer suits, and luxury four-door sedan. He believed goals were essential to success—personal or business—that only through hard work and consistency could a man, or woman, meet those goals. He valued loyalty as the most important quality in human nature (his father taught him that, if nothing else) and jazz as an imperative for sanity