Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,9

of Tiptree preserves, that’s Tiptree preserves—T-I-P-T-R-E-E, preserves, as in jelly—and not just any flavor but Little Scarlet, which is the most expensive one they’ve got. It costs about a hundred dollars a jar and that’s because they make it out of little girls like you. So: one jar of Little Scarlet Tiptree preserves, one jar of the best peanut butter you can find, and one loaf of Russian pumpernickel, unsliced. And you bring them here!”

“Capitana!”

More gifts:

A sheet of thirty-seven-cent stamps, one for each American state, designed to look like vintage “Greetings from” postcards.

A CD of Elgar’s cello concerto, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and the London Symphony Orchestra.

A bag of Honeycrisp apples. (“You’ll need a bib.”)

He needed a stent. A tiny mesh tube they’d insert into a narrowing coronary artery to prop it open and restore the full flow of blood. A simple procedure. He’d already had it done seven times. They don’t put you under, just sedate you, anesthetize the area around the point of insertion, wiggle it up on a catheter and pop it in. Then a little balloon is inflated, causing the stent to expand like a badminton birdie, and . . . voilà. Takes about an hour, more or less. A friend would accompany him to the hospital. If she liked, he would ask this friend, when it was over, to give her a call.

“Yes, please.”

For all his assurances, he himself became gloomy. Not without pleasure, Alice felt herself being tested by these dramatic circumstances.

“Of course,” she said, “we all have to worry. I could get cancer. Or tomorrow, in the street, you could be—”

He closed his eyes and held up a hand. “I already know about the bus.”

The day of the procedure she got home from work and put the Elgar CD on. It was terribly beautiful, plaintive and urgent, and, in the beginning anyway, perfectly consonant with her mood. Twenty minutes later, however, still sawing away sublimely, the cello seemed to have moved on without her, indifferent to her suspense. Finally, at 9:40, her cell phone beeped, flashing an unfamiliar number. Businesslike, a man with an unplaceable drawl reassured her that after having been delayed the procedure had gone fine; Ezra would be staying overnight so that they could monitor a few things but otherwise everything was fine, just fine.

“Thank you so much,” said Alice.

“You’re velcome,” said the friend.

• • •

“The Kid,” he’d referred to her. As in: “I called The Kid.” Ezra thought this was pretty funny. Alice shook her head.

For a while, he was in a good mood. The stent had done the job. Paramount was going to make a movie out of one of his books. An award-winning actress had been cast in the leading role and his services had been engaged as an on-set consultant. One morning, he called her a little later than usual—Alice was already out of the shower and dressing for work—and said, “Guess who I had over last night?”

Alice did.

“How did you know?”

“Who else could it be?”

“Anyway, I didn’t fuck her.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t think she was very impressed with my spare change dish.”

“Or your humidifier.”

They took more pictures.

“In this one,” said Alice, “I look like my father.” She laughed. “All I need is a Colt .45.”

“Your father has a gun?”

“He has lots of guns.”

“Why?”

“In case there’s a revolution.”

Ezra frowned.

“Darling,” he said later, while she was slathering a slice of bread with Little Scarlet. “When you visit your father, these guns . . . Are they just lying around?”

Sucking jelly off her thumb, Alice replied, “No, he keeps them in a safe, but every now and again we get one out and practice shooting at a gourd propped up against an old dishwasher in the backyard.”

She was reading some fan mail his agent had forwarded to him when he said something into the closet she couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“I said,” he said, turning around, “don’t you have a warmer coat than this? You can’t go around all winter in this thing. You need something padded, with goose down. And a hood.”

A few nights later, he slid another envelope across the table. “Searle,” he said. “S-E-A-R-L-E. Seventy-Ninth and Madison. They’ve got just the one.”

The nylon made a luxurious swishing sound and the hood framed her face with a black halo of fur. It was like walking around in a sleeping bag trimmed with mink. Waiting for the crosstown bus, Alice felt pampered and invincible—also delirious with this city, which every day was like a mounting jackpot waiting to be won; then,