Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,46

one song and this was the song’s name.

“And the hysterical year-end crunch.”

I wandered past to find you and Carlo stopped me and said, “No one should sleep on the floor.” It occurred to me now that Carlo had spent, you know, some money, that the bed had cost something, though its price seemed to hover somewhere above Mishti’s head in an abstract nondollar denomination.

“Thank you, Carlo,” I said. “It’s—”

“She’s been sleeping on the floor,” Carlo said to Mendelson.

“I gathered,” Mendelson said with that old bored knife-light in his eyes. He shook my hand and said, “Congratulations,” as if I’d closed a merger, and I stroked the inside of his palm with my middle finger until he jumped. I looked at Mendelson’s exposed neck and said, “Don’t worry, there is rest for the wicked,” and turned and shook Carlo’s hand and said, “Thanks,” and Carlo said, “Please.” He took Mishti’s hand warmly and adoringly. Mishti looked down and stroked Amanda’s spine. Mendelson rubbed his palm against the side of his hip to remove the feeling of me. I didn’t care that he had disciplined me. He occurred to me now as a dustpan.

“I’m looking forward to Bermuda,” she said. She seemed so tired.

“Bermuda?” Mendelson asked. “Why Bermuda? Or I suppose, when?”

“When? Christmas,” said Carlo.

“Nice,” Mendelson said, the most bored he’d been yet. “I was going to recommend you to the holiday colloquium,” you could see Carlo’s soul curdle in his eyes, “but the beach is more relaxing.”

“Bermuda—” Carlo started, as if he wanted to say that there were no beaches on Bermuda and he couldn’t.

“Gorgeous,” Mendelson said. “Anyway the colloquium is for joyless maniacs with a single-track mind. I’m glad you have some joy in your life.” This seemed more or less earnest, if simultaneously devastating. “Betty would love Bermuda, but . . . she understands.”

And I watched Mishti internalize this understanding, catch the punt, and take a knee, knowing it was now her turn to understand, to permit, to forfeit, to encourage Carlo to go ahead and have a single-track mind, darling.

I couldn’t bear it and it wasn’t my business and I walked into the library, you have a library in your home, and you weren’t there. I stood alone in the cavernous, overstuffed den and understood what it is to be a chipmunk.

When I turned back to see how Mishti looked, I saw Barry refill her glass, this time red, from a new bottle he’d conjured and opened. Something bottomless yawned under us, everyone could feel it, an infinite river of wine had thawed and arrived to cut through our winter. Mishti drank the glass so quickly Barry could refill it before he kept walking. Tom appeared, it seemed out from under the floor. Then, soon, you. I couldn’t resist the group; it was cold in the den. I walked back toward Mishti and she shrank away toward a console on the far wall. A few quiet seconds followed in which I couldn’t see her face or her hands. Then she began to sing.

WATER

The song poured from Barry’s sound system at a volume that could carbonate water. Mishti faced the wall, back to us. She extended her right arm out to the side and twirled it just the way it’s twirled in our movie. I knew what was happening even before I could believe it. One very specific part of our life was coming to the front of our life. She had nothing left to give but this central treasure she carried at all times and never gave. Her upright neck, from behind, looked like a soldier’s. On the next line she turned to face us, as the woman in pink does, and sang the rest of the verse with the accompanying dance move: hand ripples under the eyes. In the movie, Hrithik Roshan watches her dance and slowly walks toward her. I knew more forcefully than ever who I was. I slowly walked toward her. She walked toward me. We met on the mattress.

Mishti knew who I was too. I stood before her in Hrithik’s crossed-arm posture and she rotated her wrists on either side of my face. The mattress wobbled beneath us.

“Le jaa le jaa!” we simultaneously wailed. “Soniya le jaa le jaa!”

It meant: Take away, my beloved, take it away!

Mishti sang the pink woman’s solo Oh with both arms outstretched.

Tom stared at us as if we’d become planets.

We knew the dance. We knew every step of the dance. I had no idea bodies could memorize anything