My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh Page 0,65

Who does that? What was that about?”

“He’s an idiot, Reva,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Whatever. Everything’s going to be different now,” Reva said, putting out her cigarette in the mug. “I had a feeling this was going to happen. I told him I loved him, you know? Of course that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. What a pussy.”

“Maybe you’ll run into Trevor.”

“Where?”

“At the World Trade Center.”

“I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“He looks like any other corporate asshole.”

“Do you still love him?”

“Gross, Reva.”

“Do you think he still loves you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you wish he did?”

The answer was yes, but only so that he would feel the pain of me rejecting him.

“And did I tell you my dad’s been having an affair?” Reva said. “Some client of his named Barbara. A divorcée with no kids. He’s taking her to Boca. Apparently he went in on a timeshare there. He’d been planning it for months. Now I know why he was being so cheap. Cremation? And Florida? Mom dies and suddenly he likes warm weather? I don’t understand him. I wish he had died and not her.”

“Just wait,” I said.

“Can I have another Xanax?” Reva asked.

“I can’t spare another, Reva. Sorry.”

She was quiet for a while. The air got tense.

“The only thing I can think to do to make Ken pay for the way he’s jerked me around is to keep it. But I won’t. Anyway, thanks for listening.” She leaned over me on the sofa, kissed my cheek, said, “I love you,” and left.

So I gathered that Reva was pregnant. I lay on the sofa contemplating that for a while. There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes. Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up.

I got up and took a Solfoton and a Xanax. Now more than ever, a movie would have helped me relax. I turned the TV on—ABC7 news—and off. I didn’t want to hear about a shooting in the Bronx, a gas explosion on the Lower East Side, police cracking down on high school kids jumping the turnstiles in the subway, ice sculptures defaced at Columbus Circle. I got up and took another Nembutal.

I called Trevor again.

“It’s me,” is all he let me say before he started talking. It was the same speech he’d given me a dozen times: he’s involved now and can’t see me anymore.

“Not even as just friends,” he said. “Claudia doesn’t believe in platonic relationships between the sexes, and I’m starting to see that she’s right. And she’s going through a divorce, so it’s a sensitive time. And I really like this woman. She’s incredible. Her son is autistic.”

“I was just calling to ask if I could borrow some money,” I told him. “My VCR just broke. And I’m horny.”

I knew I sounded crazy. I could picture Trevor leaning back in his chair, loosening his tie, cock twitching in his lap despite his better judgment. I heard him sigh. “You need money? That’s why you’re calling?”

“I’m sick and can’t leave my apartment. Can you buy me a new VCR and bring it over? I really need it. I’m on all this medication. I can barely make it to the corner. I can hardly get out of bed.” I knew Trevor. He couldn’t resist me when I was weak. That was the fascinating irony about him. Most men were turned off by neediness, but in Trevor, lust and pity went hand in hand.

“Look, I can’t deal with you now. I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up.

That was fair. He could keep his flabby old vagina lady and her retarded kid. I knew how this new affair would play out for him. He’d win her over with a few months of honorable declarations—“I want to be there for you. Please, lean on me. I love you!”—but when something actually difficult happened—her ex-husband sued her for custody, for example—Trevor would start to have doubts. “You’re asking me to sacrifice my own needs for yours—don’t you see how selfish that is?” They’d argue. He’d bolt. He might even call me to apologize for “being cold