John Lutz - The Ex

“The baby was injured, David. That was why I went ahead and had the abortion. It wouldn’t have been born normal.”

What she was saying spread inside him like something black and heavy as he recalled the violence of their sex while she was pregnant. “Oh, Christ! Was it something we-something I did?”

“No, not you, David,” she said. She touched his arm as if trying to lend comfort. “Someone else, after I left you. Can you forgive me?”

“I’m the one who wanted the abortion,” he said. “Whatever happened wasn’t deliberate, and your life was your own then. There’s nothing to forgive.”

“You’re a better man than I thought you were six years ago,” she said.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Well, the past is buried and dead.” She bowed her head, then suddenly looked up and seemed to brighten. Her eyes were green, wide, luminous with possibility. “Listen, David, why don’t you phone me at my hotel? We could get together for a drink. The world has changed for both of us, so maybe we’d both feel better if we talked without emotion about the past and future. We can be friends, I think.”

Despite her toned-down appearance, there was sensuality in her every gesture. As she pursed her lips and sipped at her drink through a straw, he couldn’t look away from her despite his confusion and discomfort. He wished they hadn’t met again, yet he was still sexually attracted to her.

“I don’t know…” he said.

“If we can be friends?”

“If it’s a good idea.”

She appeared injured, then smiled. Her wide, red lip slid up over her teeth, almost inverting. “Oh, I get it. The wife. Have you married again? Never mind, don’t answer. So what’s her name?”

“Molly.” It felt almost like a sacrilege, using Molly’s name in Deirdre’s presence.

“Hmm. I like that name,” Deirdre said. “Molly.”

He didn’t like hearing her say it. Didn’t like the indecipherable emotion stirring in the corners of his mind where memory moldered. Memory he thought had been purged of emotion by time. But he’d been wrong. His chance meeting with Deirdre was dissipating the years as if they were mist, striking life into the past. Corpses were rising.

“Molly’s young, I’ll bet.”

“Twenty-seven. Only ten years younger than I am.”

“Which would make her eleven years younger than me.”

David smiled. “You robbed the cradle, Deirdre.”

“Do you and Molly have any children?” she asked.

“One. A boy. Michael. He’s three.”

“That’s absolutely wonderful!” She did seem genuinely pleased.

“We think it is.”

“What does your Molly do?” Deirdre asked. “Other than wifely duties?”

“She’s a freelance copy editor. Publishers farm out work to people like her, manuscripts that need help.”

“Then you and she have your work in common.”

“We have a lot of things in common.”

“And Molly and I have something in common.” She made a face at her own faux pas. “I’m sorry, David. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“I guess I’m the leopard that can’t change its skin.”

David smiled. “There’s no real reason for you to change, Deirdre.”

“Why, thank you! A compliment!” She seemed immensely pleased.

“Maybe I should have given you more of them six years ago. God knows, I loved you enough.”

“Nobody’s to blame for the past, David. Life teaches us all. Usually too late. Like I learned too late I shouldn’t have left you.”

She’d finished her sandwich. Now she patted her mouth with her white paper napkin with exaggerated delicacy, then slid across the booth’s bench as if preparing to stand.

“It’s been marvelous seeing you, David. Tell Molly I said hello, and that I wish both of you all the happiness in the world. She’s lucky, you’re lucky. And me…” She shrugged. “Well, I haven’t been un lucky. And I haven’t been unhappy the whole time after we parted.”

“What about now?”

“Now? Oh, I’m reasonably content these days. Good job, enough money even if I’m not rich. And right now contentment’s enough for me. I’ve learned it’s more than most people have.” She stood up from the booth, then leaned forward unexpectedly and pecked him on the cheek. It was a kiss like fire. “Bye, David. Take care, hey.”

She edged through the crowd at the serving bar, moving toward the counter.

Biting his lower lip, he watched her stride from the deli. Out of his life again.

He suddenly felt much too warm, and the pungent scent of the food was making him nauseated.

He got up and made his way outside, dropping his suit coat from where it was folded over his arm. It landed to form a puddle of cloth on the sidewalk.

“Here, David.”

Deirdre picked up the coat and brushed it off, folded it neatly as if she were going to lay it on a bed or chair, then handed it to him.

“I thought-”

“I was about to hail a cab,” she said.

“They aren’t easy to get this time of day.”

“So I’ve been told, but nothing ventured, nothing obtained.”

She smiled and strode to the curb, raising her arm. As if to prove her point, a cab immediately swerved across Third Avenue and coasted to a stop next to her.

She opened the cab’s rear door and turned toward him. “Make the rest of your life happy, David!” Then she lowered herself quickly inside and pulled the door closed.

As the cab drove away, David stood staring at the back of her head framed in the arc of the rear window, this woman who was like a stranger but wasn’t a stranger. She faced straight ahead as rigidly as if her neck were in a brace. She might have been crying, but he couldn’t be sure.

Maybe he was simply imagining her tears because he felt like crying.

Deirdre pushed aside the roiling emotions she’d experienced after seeing David. Their meeting had been less and so much more than she’d imagined in the instant their eyes met.

On Broadway, she gazed through the cab windows at the crowded sidewalks and asked the driver to pull to the curb beyond the next intersection. She paid through the little rounded scoop set in the plastic dividing panel, leaving a suitable tip, and climbed out of the cab.

It felt wonderful to be lost in the middle of all the people, all the energy that swirled noisily around her. It was as if she were protected by movement and blaring horns and masses of humanity. And it was true, she told herself, she was safe here in New York.

A man with a raincoat slung over his arm almost ran into her, swerving at the last second and smiling at her. She smiled back, and he hesitated, then walked on. Deirdre held her head high, her shoulders back, and joined the flow of pedestrians. Workers hurrying back from lunch, shoppers, sightseers…she was one of them, and it felt glorious with the afternoon sun warming her shoulders and glancing brightly off the buildings and the contoured steel of the yellow cabs stuck in the impatient, laboring traffic. There was a strong exhaust smell, but she didn’t mind that. It was better than a lot of smells.

A woman carrying a shopping bag emerged from a revolving door and bumped into her. “Oh, hey! Deirdre!”

Deirdre looked at her and smiled. She’d literally bumped into the one other woman she knew in New York. “Darlene! You’ve been shopping.”

“Charging up a storm. I’m happily addicted to plastic.” Darlene spoke in a clipped, cultured voice that sounded natural to her but probably wasn’t, like a long-ago affectation that had taken root. She was about Deirdre’s height but much slimmer, with a long, elegant neck, slender calves like a teenager’s, and practically no breasts. She wore her hair combed back severely and neatly braided above the nape of her neck. She had the kind of dark-eyed, delicate features that enabled her to get away with that kind of hair style, Deirdre thought with envy. Darlene looked successful, her own woman, rich. It had been one of the first things Deirdre noticed about her when they’d struck up a conversation at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That and her distinctive voice.