imagine him doing is shrinking. In the kitchen, I’m forced to imagine him doing things like drinking pulp-free orange juice and eating cinnamon rolls and leaning against the island and washing his hands in the sink. Every drawer I open lights him from a different angle.
The second hour I spend in his bedroom closet. It’s big enough for him to change in, like his former closet, but this one doesn’t have any paintings. He doesn’t hide them here. They’re out where he can see them. In Zeus’s home he keeps a collection of his usual suits, plus a larger selection of casual clothes.
He owns three pairs of swim trunks.
It’s the swim trunks, more than anything, that makes me fall into another dimension of the swooning, painful crush I already have on him. I’ve imagined him on a beach so many times. A brief scene involving me asking him to go swimming sends heat rushing to my cheeks. Such an ordinary thing.
When I’m finished with the closet I come out to scrutinize the paintings. They all have the same name scrawled in the corner. Erich something.
I spend the third hour looking at his huge collection of books, pulling them out at random. In a few of them I find places he’s underlined.
By the end of the fourth hour, he’s still not home.
I need to stretch my legs.
I walk back and forth across the living room but I want more than that, I want a little lift in my heart rate, so I make sure my robe is secure and stride to the main doors.
No one is on the other side, or on the stairs. The lobby waits in silence while I consider the double doors.
His note didn’t forbid going in here. It only said to stay on the second floor. And my impatience is starting to get the better of me. I need a distraction for the worry that’s lapping at my mind with growing waves.
The doors are unlocked.
One of them swings open with a whisper.
I’m expecting complete darkness inside, and once again, I’m wrong.
Zeus has divided the theater in two. The sunken floor creates another high ceiling, with tall windows. They’re closer to the ground, of course, so the light isn’t as intense as it is upstairs. He’s also taken out all the theater seats, because this is his office.
He has a round meeting table to one side, surrounded with chairs. It’s covered in neat stacks of paper and clear at first glance that he wasn’t lying—people don’t come here. It’s a work table. A wheeled chair sits at an angle to a low-slung desk. I can see his pose from that angle. Feet up on the desk, a book propped in his lap. And the book waits for me in the center of the desk.
If I weren’t paying attention, I might mistake it for one of the whorehouse ledgers. It’s not one of those ledgers. I circle the desk and look down at it. A blue cover. The cover has his neat print on the front—about three months ago.
Goose bumps erupt down the length of my back. This whole place has a very forbidden energy about it.
It’s irresistible.
Zeus has been gone for more than four hours. He’s just as likely to be gone for another four. I step around the chair with extreme caution and open the cover of the book on the desk.
It’s more than a ledger.
It’s more than a notebook.
It’s a journal.
The very first page has a date in the upper-right corner—the same date as the one on the front.
I should not be looking at this.
I can’t help myself.
I pull the robe tighter around me. I’m only going to read one. One page, and then I’ll close this and go back upstairs, like he told me.
I saw her again this morning. Her/you. A figment of my imagination in that dress. M never wants to leave until I take him to the door and these women cannot get through a night without having a crisis. Three-drink minimum from now on. Five, and she’s just around every corner. You have got to get out of my brain, Katie. It’s been too long. And not long enough.
My throat closes up. He still thinks about her. Writes to her. I’m not jealous of her, not exactly, but I do ache for him. For the person he used to be. He still is that person, in a way.
I’m due for another pill soon, but I don’t want to fog up my mind