her death, she would not care. A bridge, an amusement park, hills sprinkled with trees. Forty-two miles in forty-two minutes. To do to him before he does it to her. Not like sex: no sweet anticipation. No hunger for his touch, his broad shoulders sexy in the dark, his fingers and tongue working to please, not berate.
The rain pours like December instead of early May. Rain sheets on the windshield so hard that even the fast, swiping wipers cannot make the windshield clear enough to see more than twenty-five feet ahead. Headlights sweep in motion, cars blur midnight blue in the black of 9 p.m.
At the double doors of TIDA’s executive suite, the carpet beneath her soaking-wet flip-flops is plush and thick. Framed posters of San Francisco and the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge line the corridor’s walls; glass sconces light the doors. Lena breathes in one, two and out one, two and tries to formulate her words. No more pretend. She will not ask Randall why he puts his wife last, work and grown children first. She fears his answer: wife like ice, distant as the moon, rose thorn in his side like the white man and the glass ceiling above his head.
It seems stupid, formal, to knock on the door when the corporate apartment key is in her left hand. Knock. It is a red key. She raises and lowers the key, then returns it to her pocket. With that one gesture she feels the change, the shift. Knock, knock—have they come full circle? Randall opens the door with the confidence of a big man who knows he can handle whatever awaits him beyond the threshold. There is no astonished look on his face. No smile or hug or happiness like the times when Lena visited this same suite for no reason except that she missed him, or surprised him in silk nighties and no panties beneath, for no reason except that she wanted him. He stands aside without concern for the wildness in her eyes, the intention in her step. The smell of burning wood reminds Lena of home: Irish coffees, music, conversation, Kendrick and Camille’s fights over who could stoke the gamboling flames.
Lena scans the long hallway: two closed doors. She pushes open the door to the left, a closet, and the door to the right, a bedroom, and peers inside each one. Heat from a raised vent tickles the hair on her neck, but she is in no mood to laugh. From this end of the long hallway to the combined living and dining area Randall appears small and far away; a slight figure at the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. There is nothing small about Randall. She allows herself to be sidetracked by the pale green walls and the art she’d seen in a San Francisco gallery that would look perfect there so that she can gather her thoughts and slow her hammering heart. Lena wipes her wet hands on her sweats and sits on the angular sofa on the opposite end from Randall. She picks up the remote and clicks off the TV, and this time, he does not complain.
Randall waits and watches. His silence says, “You first.”
Her words fall, like cards from a dealer’s hand, easier than she thought they would. “I love you, but I can’t be this way anymore.”
“And, I love you, I always have.” Randall’s forehead creases so that little veins snake across it. “But, I don’t feel loved. Why do you think I didn’t ask you to come on this last trip? I needed a break. From the tension, from the anger.” He rises from the couch and paces from the window to the small dining table and back, from the heavy coffee table to the fireplace in front of it.
Rain thrums against the sliding glass window. Its rhythm beats their message. Only when Kendrick and Camille were born, when Lena walked down the church aisle toward him, has she ever seen this kind of reaction on Randall’s face. His eyes are tight, his lips fixed, his posture sloped in a way that only she would notice. Her hands tremble. They ache to reach out in a gesture all their own to take Randall’s hand and make everything all right. She furls her hands tightly in her lap.
“Either we go back to counseling… or… separate.” Lulu will say that separation never happens in their family, that Lena is inflexible, that she won’t know how