herself. It was hard to think about all his siblings for different reasons, so he didn’t. Right now, it felt like there was nowhere for his thoughts to alight that wasn’t rife with land mines of regret or anger or guilt.
“You’re right,” Stephanie said, standing and staring at the mantel. “She does look like Bea. Shit.”
“Don’t go,” Leo said.
“I’m just going to the kitchen.”
“Stay here,” he said. He didn’t like the sound of his voice, how it wavered a little. He really didn’t like the sudden, rapid acceleration of his heartbeat, which prior to this moment he’d associated with a certain class of stimulants, not a living room in Brooklyn in front of the fire with Stephanie.
“I’ll be right back,” Stephanie said. Leo seemed to go slightly pale and for a moment he looked lost, almost frightened, which briefly alarmed her. “Leo?”
“I’m fine.” He shook his head a little and stood. “Is that your old turntable?”
“Yes,” she said. “Put something on. I’m just going to rinse these.”
In the kitchen Stephanie could hear Leo flipping through her record albums. He yelled to her from the living room. “Your taste in music still totally sucks.”
“Like everyone else in America, my music is on my computer. That’s the old stuff. I just brought the turntable up from the basement a few months ago.”
Leo was reciting from the album covers: “Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar, Huey Lewis, Paula Abdul? This is like a bad MTV segment of ‘Where Are They Now?’”
“More like, guess who joined the Columbia House Record Club when she was eighteen.”
Leo flinched a little hearing Columbia Records. He shook it off. “Ah, here we go,” he said.
Stephanie heard the turntable start to spin and the familiar scratch, scratch of the needle hitting the album grooves. Then the weirdly dissonant first notes of a piano and the slurry, graveled voice of Tom Waits filled the house.
The piano has been drinking
My necktie is asleep
Stephanie hadn’t heard that song in years. Probably not since she and Leo were together. The album was probably Leo’s. He would wake her up on his hungover mornings (many mornings; most mornings) singing that song. He would pull her sleeping self into his arms, his semierection pressing into her back. She would half-heartedly try to burrow farther down into the bed, clinging to sleep and the reassuring feel of Leo’s limbs holding her close.
“You stink,” she would groan, feigning more irritation than she felt, not even really minding his funky breath. “You smell like my uncle Howie after a night at the bar.”
He would sing into her ear, his voice pockmarked from whiskey:
The piano has been drinking
Not me, not me, not me
AT THE SINK, she started to rewash the roasting pan that Leo had left with a film of grease on the counter and tried to reconcile the Leo in her living room with the Leo she’d last seen almost two years ago, out one night with Victoria; they’d both seemed hammered. This Leo was slimmer and in spite of what she’d heard—and occasionally witnessed—about his recent years of late nights and marital troubles and general rabble-rousing, he somehow looked younger. He was quieter, more subdued. Still funny. Still quick. Still beautiful.
She shook her head. She was not, absolutely was not, going to get swept into Leo’s orbit again. In fact, she’d better set down some hard and fast rules about how long he could stay. And she needed to run upstairs and make up the pullout sofa in her office.
Then, Leo was behind her. A hand on her shoulder. “Want to dance?” he said.
She laughed at him. “No,” she said. “I most definitely do not want to dance with you. Also? You are terrible at washing dishes. Look at this.”
“I’m serious,” he said. He lifted her hands out of the soapy water in the sink.
“Leo”—she held herself rigid—“I was clear.” Her posture was combative, but he could hear something new in her voice, a fleeting hesitancy.
He inched closer. “You said no fucking. I respect the no-fucking rule.” Leo was entirely focused on her. His desire was physical, yes (it had been twelve weeks, not counting a couple of breezy flings with the rehab physician’s assistant in the weight room), but he also remembered how much he’d loved this part, getting past her prickly exterior, cracking her wide open like unhinging an oyster. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, how satisfying it was to watch her steely carriage collapse a little, hear her breath catch. How good