Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,44

in our blanks, willing and even giddy. The lamp designer, then the chemist. Or the chemist, after the lamp designer. In a more platonic course of life we would be able to love one love at a time, in sequence, without recurrence, relapse, nostalgia, or overlap. But the ones we abandon are always burning holes in the one we choose.

I pictured my utilitarian lamp standing tall and blank in Red Hook. I pictured handing it an elaborate hat. I pictured my lamp throwing the hat out the window and into the East River. I pictured the hat flowing north into the Long Island Sound, covered in spotted moon snails, befriending a sea grape. Carlo had nothing more to say about his ex-girlfriend. One deep awkwardness filled the room. Even your corrupt kitchen couldn’t hold so many of us and when it seemed we’d reached the meaning of capacity the doorbell rang. Barry scampered to it, being the most recent kitchen arrival, the closest still to the door. “Mendelson!” we heard him exclaim.

BUTTER

Mendelson turned out to be one of the spectacularly fit older gentlemen who could model quarter-zip trail tees for the L.L. Bean Signature Collection. A breed of preternatural athletes sixty-five and older who redirect the savings of a corporate lifetime into elderly oomph. The first signal of Mendelson’s health is his haircut: tight on the sides, gray everywhere, and wonderful on top. The second signal is his neck: he likes you to see his neck. Finally, his socks, which are brave and patterned and knit from single-origin wool. This is a man who has touched mastery and who now spends his time restraining himself from tasteless expenditure. This is Carlo’s dream and it stood there right in front of him. Carlo stared at Mendelson as you’d stare at an armadillo.

“Good of you to come,” said Barry, who looked so proud of his life he could die.

“How’s Betty?” Carlo asked. “Still dancing?”

“Don’t get him started on Betty!” Barry said, taking Mendelson’s coat. “She was welcome to join you tonight, you know.” Barry walked off toward the closet and Carlo leaned close to Mendelson and whispered, “Go on, get started.”

The fact is these mature men love the shit out of their second wives. Betty positively rescued them. Before Betty, they were misunderstood. Psychically lonely and imperfectly loved. Before Betty, all they had was cash. Now they have cash and Betty.

We all joined you at the table except Mendelson, who asked to use the restroom. We original six sat in petrified silence, waiting to say some kind of grace. You stood, as if you were she. You rushed to the kitchen and came back with cloth napkins, coiled up into bamboo napkin rings. We passed them around. You sat again, and the impossibility of grace resumed. Then, once more, the doorbell.

“There’s nobody else,” you said vaguely, and Barry again rushed to the door.

Carlo’s generally orderly face filled with mischief, his expression deadpan and his eyes entertained. A man in a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit stood in the hallway, propping up a giant plastic-wrapped mattress.

Barry looked back to the table in astonishment. Carlo removed his napkin from its ring. The delivery man slapped the mattress and said, “Where?”

“I bought Nell a bed,” Carlo said.

You only raised your eyebrows and said, “Drop it on the floor.”

The man pulled this icon of intercourse into the foyer. He dropped it. The mattress squashed all the nice lilies still strewn over the floor and popped berry juice all over its plastic and the large noise shook your cabinets. Barry signed his receipt, tipped him in cash, and in shock wished him a merry Christmas.

“Merry Christmas,” said the delivery man as he walked hugely unburdened back down the hall.

Tom, who had been communing with the wallpaper, blinked into consciousness. He slapped Carlo’s back as hard as the man had slapped my new bed and smiled and said, “She needed one.”

“I know,” said Carlo. “Overdue.”

“Why is it here?” was Mishti’s excessively practical question.

“It shouldn’t be,” Carlo said very mildly, “unless I pasted this address by mistake—Joan’s invite came in as I was ordering.”

“It’s fine,” you said, as if a guest had merely broken a wine glass. “If you don’t mind, Amanda will lie on it.” I couldn’t believe your cool. For one second you flickered. “Where have you been sleeping?” you asked me.

I looked at you with weight. It felt like walking on your back. Amanda herself, tall and red, walked into the room, climbed aboard the mattress, sniffed its