Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,16

pale and smooth and whenever passing Alice could not resist twisting one ever so slightly . . . although she never dared shift SATURDAY all the way to SUNDAY, or 2 to 3, or AUGUST to SEPTEMBER, for fear of not being able to shift them back.

Behind the sofa stood a narrow marble console stacked to her elbows’ height with books. Many were by prominent writers, others by names she knew as friends. The friend who called her The Kid, for example, had written a book about Auschwitz that Ezra had given a guardedly favorable quote. There were also several galleys, including one of a biography of Arthur Miller and another of a novel scheduled for publication that fall by Alice’s own employer, a letter from her boss tucked crisply inside:

Dear Mr. Blazer,

As you’ll see in my introduction, Allatoona! is a very special novel, not to mention a subtle, respectful, and ultimately triumphant tribute to your influence. I’m not asking for an endorsement, only that you might enjoy the book as much as all of us here at Gryphon have done, with surprise and delight at its confidence, its exquisite calibration, its searing wit—

Alice shut the galley and took the Auschwitz book out to the porch.

Some dinnertimes, an elderly neighbor would drop by, bearing eggs from his henhouse along with the local hearsay. Other nights she and Ezra played cards, or read, or took a flashlight down to his dock to look up at the stars. One Saturday they walked all the way to the Ram’s Head, where a wedding party was still going strong: men wielding croquet mallets chased barefoot bridesmaids around the lawn while a jazz quintet rolled out big band standards in the bar. “No,” Ezra said firmly, when Alice pulled teasingly on his arms. But then the tribal rat-a-rat of “Sing Sing Sing” started up and a moment later he was percussing the air as if possessed by Lionel Hampton. A bit of finger snapping here, heel swiveling there; at one point he even got up on his toes and dared a brief accordioning of the knees. He’d taken Alice’s hand and was spinning her through Spirograph designs that became longer and looser with each rotation when a woman wearing an upside-down corsage shimmied over to announce: “You know, everyone says you look just like my husband.” “I am your husband,” replied Ezra, before proceeding to dip Alice almost horizontal and leading her up toward the band.

His bedroom was at the top of the house, where the floors creaked sedately and the gnarled branches of an old oak tree filled the windows with undulating green. In the mornings, as she lay facing him, staring into the radiating brown of his irises and marveling at how unworn they looked, how limpid and alert, even after so many birthdays and wars and marriages and presidents and assassinations and operations and prizes and books, Alice sighed. Ninety-seven years they’d lived between them, and the longer it went on the more she confused his for her own. Outside, the birds gossiped blithely. When the sun reached her face, Alice sat up and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. Her cheek was still creased with the pillowcase’s wrinkles. Solemnly, she touched a finger to her nose, then her chin, then her elbow, the tip of her nose again, and tugged on one ear. “Bunt,” Ezra said hoarsely. Yes! Nose, chin, elbow, thigh, earlobe, earlobe, tip of her nose again, three quick claps. “Steal.” Good! Chin, thigh, earlobe, earlobe, elbow, elbow, imaginary visor. “Hit and run.” When it was his turn, Ezra mirrored what she had done, but in double time, and with a deadpan face, and every sequence ended with him pointing at her belly button. Laughing, Alice fell back to the pillow. Ezra gathered her in and kissed her hair. “Sweetest girl. You are the sweetest girl.” The words were like a hot feather in her ear. In her other ear, with a tone that sounded almost apologetic for having to remind them, his watch beeped noon.

• • •

“I follow my course with the precision and security of a sleepwalker.” And yet a sleepwalker’s course is anything but precise and secure. It is the uncertain leader who strains to reassure his subjects and perhaps above all himself that his objectives are sound and pure. Of only one thing does he feel certain: that he would like to lead. He would like to have power; he would like to