Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,7

that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.”

CALLER ID BLOCKED.

Breathlessly, as if to outrun her own advice, Alice told him about all of the things she had bought, including the toilet seat and the teakettle and the dresser that the antique dealer had described as “a vintage 1930s piece.”

“Like me,” he said.

“I have my period,” Alice apologized.

Three nights later, as she lay with her bra around her waist and her arms around his head, she marveled at how his brain was right there, under her chin, and so easily contained by the narrow space between her elbows. It began as a playful thought, but suddenly she distrusted herself to resist crushing that head, turning off that brain.

To some extent, the sentiment must have been reciprocal, because a moment later he bit her abruptly through a kiss.

They saw each other less frequently now. He seemed warier of her. Also, his back was giving him trouble.

“Because of something we did?”

“No, sweetheart. You didn’t do anything.”

“Do you want to . . . ?”

“Not tonight darling. Tonight only tendresse.”

Sometimes, when they lay facing each other, or when he sat across his little dining table from her, head pulsing to the side, his expression would settle into a sad sort of bewilderment, as if with the realization that she was life’s greatest pleasure at the moment, and wasn’t that a sorry state of affairs?

“You’re the best girl, you know?”

Alice held her breath.

Sighing: “The best girl.”

“Ezra,” she said, clutching her stomach. “I’m so sorry, but suddenly I don’t feel very well.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think maybe there was something wrong with my cookie.”

“Are you going to throw up?”

Alice rolled over, pulled herself up onto her hands and knees, and sank her face into his cool white duvet. She took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s go to the bathroom.”

“Okay.” But she didn’t move.

“Darling, let’s go.”

All at once, Alice covered her mouth and ran. Ezra got out of bed and trailed her calmly, quietly, closing the door behind her with a soft dignified click. When she was done, she flushed the toilet and rinsed her face and her mouth and leaned shivering on the vanity. Through the door she could hear him respectfully getting on with his evening—opening the refrigerator, clinking plates in the sink, stepping on the pedal that lifted the lid to the trash. She flushed again. Then she unspooled a bit of toilet paper and wiped the bowl, the seat, the lid, the edge of the bathtub, the toilet-paper dispenser, the floor. There was blackout cookie everywhere. Alice lowered the lid to the toilet seat and sat down. In the wastepaper basket lay a galley of a novel by a boy with whom she’d gone to college, his agent’s letter, requesting a blurb, still paper-clipped to its cover.

When she reappeared, Ezra was in his chair, legs crossed, holding a book about the New Deal. He watched frowning as Alice tiptoed naked across the room and slowly lowered herself onto the floor between the closet and the bed.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry: I need to lie down, but I don’t want to ruin your duvet.”

“Mary-Alice, get into the bed.”

He came to sit beside her and for many minutes smoothed a hand up and down her back, like her mother used to do. Then he pulled the duvet up to her shoulders and quietly withdrew to begin his one hundred things: silencing ringers, extinguishing lights, segregating pills. In the bathroom, he turned the radio on, softly.

When he emerged, he was wearing a light-blue Calvin Klein T-shirt and shorts. He set a glass of water down on his nightstand. He fetched his book. He rearranged his pillows.

“Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine . . .”

He got into bed and sighed theatrically.

“One hundred!”

Alice lay silent, motionless. He opened his book.

“Sweetheart,” he said finally. Bravely, brightly. “Why don’t you stay here? Just this once. You can’t go home like this. Okay?”

“Okay,” murmured Alice. “Thank you.”

“You’re velcome,” he said.

In the night, she awoke three times. The first time, he was lying on his back, while beyond him the skyline was still glittering and the top of the Empire State Building was floodlit in red and gold.

The second time, he was on his side, facing away from her. Alice’s head hurt, so she got up and went to the bathroom to look for an aspirin. Someone had turned the Empire State Building off.

The third time she woke up, he had his arms around her from behind and was holding