them in every drawer.
After having a few drinks and not hearing from him, she pays her tab in cash and gets into her brown Bonneville, which used to belong to Ed’s parents and now smells like both elderly people and children.
She’s going to the river, just in case. She’s going to hang out in their spot for a little while.
Though she loves it there it’s cold out and she would prefer to make love in a hotel. But the hotel costs $129 and needs to be booked ahead of time. With Aidan there is no ahead of time. At the hotel you also have to put down a credit card and neither one of them can do that.
She would meet him anywhere. There’s no place he could be that she wouldn’t find a way to get to. One time he was in St. Louis and she almost made the four-hour drive in the middle of the night. The only reason she didn’t was because he told her not to.
Another time he asked her to meet him at the river and she was happy because it was early in the morning but then she realized that for him it was just late at night. She wakes to his texts and replies the instant they come in. When he texts her and she’s in the shower she writes him back while she’s dripping wet. She takes pictures while the water’s running and sends them.
On the way to the river, Lina follows close on the tail of a police car and after a few miles the car pulls off to the right and she passes him gaily. Next come the lights and the sirens and she’s being pulled over.
At first she’s nervous. The officer gets out of the car. He’s young and kind and asks her if she knows she was tailgating him and then sped past him and she said that she didn’t.
She likes men in uniforms who seem as though they might be able to take care of her. She wants a man to say, I will take care of all of your problems today. Lie down, I will manage everything. Even though she’s never known a man who has done that for her, she believes it’s out there. Her mother never let her be alone with her father. So in a way she has no idea whether her father might have been the sort of man to ease her troubles.
The officer lets her go with a warning and that makes her want to make love to him.
She pulls back onto the road and drives for another five minutes before turning west onto County Line Road, a public access road for the river. She could make these turns in her sleep. She knows the bumps of these roads better than she knows the slopes of her own body.
She parks in a lightly forested area. The river itself is slow-moving and pretty. There’s a muddy pontoon boat on the water with raffia skirting its bottom and two men drinking beer. Because it’s still winter you can see the cars on the main road in the distance.
While she’s here, waiting, Lina decides to take a profile picture of herself for Facebook. In the back seat of the Bonneville she changes into a new outfit she bought at Macy’s. Her hope is that he’ll see the picture and get in touch with her right away. Every time there’s a new picture of me, she says, he responds.
Lina thinks that everything one does on social media is for one other person. Maybe it’s for several other people. But usually there is at least one person you have in mind. If you are a married woman and your friend has the richer life—if, say, she has moved to Westchester before you thought to leave the city and she has a horse at a stable and her husband buys flowers every Friday just because it is the weekend and she is the love of his wealthy life—then everything you do for the stretch of your obsession revolves around evaluating her success and looking for chinks in her armor while posting your own olive oil cakes on farmhouse tables and pastel bicycles in tropical places.
Every single thing Lina posts on Facebook is for Aidan. Every pair of Aviator sunglasses and every new haircut. Then fifty people comment and they are like extras in a movie. She doesn’t even have to pay them and if she acknowledges them, it’s