Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,12
groaned and whispered, “I have to go.” Ezra nodded warmly, softly, not opening his eyes.
Sitting at the table to buckle her shoes:
“You know that homeless man? The one who stands in front of Zabar’s and wears a hundred coats, even in summer?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Did you buy him all those coats?”
“Yep.”
“And do you think he went crazy before he became homeless, or the other way around?”
Ezra thought about this. “Don’t sentimentalize him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t pity him. Don’t overempathize with him. He’s fine.”
In the bathroom, she rinsed her mouth, brushed her hair, and tied a dental-floss bow tie around the dildo standing on the vanity; then she left.
Coming down the steps of her own building:
“Good morning, dear! You look pretty today. Tell me: Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Not yet, Anna! Not yet.”
FOR THE HOLIDAYS, HE went out to his island. Alice took the train up to see her mother, whom she would decide it was impossible not to sentimentalize, and returned on New Year’s Eve to attend a colleague’s dinner party. The eggplant was tough and the risotto too salty and afterward everyone got drunk on cheap Brut and wrote stupid things on Alice’s cast. “Any resolutions?” she asked the boy slumped beside her; someone had told her he had a book of poems coming out in the spring. “Sure,” he replied, straightening a leg and running a hand through his long, spiraling hair. “Quality and quantity.”
In Union Square, a girl in gold sequins threw up in the subway trough while her friends took pictures and laughed.
When Ezra came back, they opened Champagne, real Champagne, and ate Bulgarian caviar from Murray’s. He also brought her a box of jelly doughnuts from the Shelter Island Bake Shop and an eight-CD box set of Great Romantic Standards entitled They’re Playing Our Song.
“Any you don’t know?”
“ ‘My Heart Stood Still’?”
Ezra nodded, leaned back in his chair, and took a deep breath. “ ‘I took one look at you, that’s all I meant to do / And then my heart stood still . . .’ ”
“ ‘September Song’?”
Another deep breath. “ ‘For it’s a long, long while from May to December / But the days grow short when you reach September . . .’ ”
He had a good voice, but he distorted it, for levity’s sake. Shyly, Alice smiled down at her doughnut. Ezra chuckled softly and rubbed his jaw.
“You have jelly just here,” he said.
“Ezra,” she said a moment later, passing their plates to him, in the kitchen. “I don’t think I can do it tonight.”
“Neither can I, sweetheart. I just want to lie down with you.”
On the bed she struggled to find a place for her cast.
“When does that come off?”
“Wednesday morning.”
“Why don’t you come here afterward and I’ll give you some lunch, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“How’s work?”
“What?”
“I said how’s work darling.”
“Oh, well, you know. It’s not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it’s fine.”
“What do you want to be doing for the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know.” She laughed softly. “Live in Europe.”
“Do they pay you well?”
“For my age.”
“You have a lot of responsibility?”
“Sure. And my immediate higher-up is going on maternity leave next month, so I’ll be doing some of her job soon.”
“How old is she?”
“Midthirties, I guess.”
“Do you want children?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. Not now.”
Ezra nodded. “My darling Eileen got to be forty and wanted a baby, with me. I didn’t want to lose her so I thought about it very seriously. And I came close to doing it. I’m glad as hell I didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“We split up, which was very hard, and it took a while but she found someone else, Edwin Wu. And now they have little Kyle and Olivia Wu, who are four and six and pure enchantment.”
They drifted toward sleep, even though he hadn’t done his hundred things. Alice sniffed.
“What?”
“My grandmother, the one who likes baseball, her name is Elaine, and when my grandfather, who was an alcoholic, proposed to her, he was so drunk that he said, ‘Will you marry me Eileen?’ ” Alice laughed.
Ezra’s arm around her stiffened. “Oh, Mary-Alice. Sweet Mary-Alice! I want you to win. Do you know?”
Alice lifted her head to look at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
He ran a hand over his eyes, fingers trembling. “I’m afraid some man is going to come along and fuck you up.”
• • •
The night before his birthday they shared a praline tart and watched the president announce the invasion.
In this conflict, America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war,