Lisa Unger: Die For You

“Do I look worried, Ivan?” Marcus said with a cool smile. Ivan didn’t answer.

As they pulled into traffic, a line from the TheProphet came back to Marcus: “It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.” Marcus could feel the life he’d been living shifting, fading. With every city block they passed, he left a gauzy sliver of himself behind. The strand that connected him to Isabel, he felt it pull taut and then snap. It caused him a pointed and intense physical pain in the center of his chest. But he took comfort in a strange thought: The man she would grieve and come to hate, the one she would not be able to forgive, had never existed in the first place.

“Rick,” I said, fifteen hours after Marcus left for the day. It was going on ten P.M. Lasagna sagged in a glass baking dish, untouched on the counter. A salad wilted in the fridge. “It’s Isabel.”

“Hey, Iz!” he said brightly. I picked up on a strain to his voice, though, as if he was trying hard at that brightness. “What’s up?”

“You guys working late tonight?” I struggled to keep my voice light, my tone easy. I had the television on, the volume too low to even hear. CNN news bites flashed quick fire on the screen-there was an insurgent bombing in Iraq, a celebrity had shaved her head and checked into rehab, a police officer in Chicago was shot. I could hear the water running though the pipes in our wall; our neighbor was taking a shower.

The hesitation on the other end caused my stomach to flip.

“Yeah,” he said too late, drawing the word out, mock-forlorn. “You know how we do around here. No mercy.” He gave a little laugh-a fake one, uncomfortable. He’d slipped immediately into cover mode.

“Can I talk to my husband?” I heard the edge creeping into my tone; I wondered if he did, too.

“Sure,” he said. “Hold on a second.” A flutter of relief then, my worry dissipating. He’s working late, forgot to call. Nothing he hasn’t done before. You’re being paranoid . I waited.

“Iz,” said Rick, back on the line. “I think he ran out to grab a bite. I’ll tell him you called?”

“His cell is going straight to voice mail,” I said, apropos of nothing.

“I think he said the battery was dead,” he answered softly.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” You liar .

I hung up. He’d put me on hold and tried Marc on his cell phone, didn’t get him, came back and lied to me. It wasn’t even just a suspicion; I knew it was true. I’d seen them cover for each other like that with clients; I knew Rick, my husband’s business partner, had done it to me before for various reasons, some worse than others. I’d always found their dynamic a bit strange; they weren’t friends. In fact, I sensed an antipathy between them, even though they worked well together. And one never failed to lie or cover for the other.

I poured myself another glass of wine, my second from the cheap bottle of Chardonnay we had in the fridge. As much as I loved my husband, nights like this reminded me about the hairline fissures in our marriage, the ones that creaked and groaned when pressure was applied, threatening to break us apart.

BY MIDNIGHT I was mildly drunk, zoning out on the television set, barely paying attention to what was on the screen. I was listening for the elevator, for the key in the door, for the ringing of the phone. My cell phone was warm in my hand; I’d been holding it for hours, pointlessly trying his number every few minutes. He’d been late before, MIA for half a day, but never like this, never without calling. He might ring drunk from a bar after a fight we’d had, or with some vague lie about work. But this was not like him. It was too… conspicuous. I took to watching the digital clock on the cable box.

12:22.

12:23.

12:24.

Where is he?

ONCE, NOT QUITE two years ago, Marc had been unfaithful with a woman he’d met while away on business in Philadelphia. The relationship lasted for two months, or so he told me later-long phone calls, a couple of last-minute trips out of town. Once she came here to New York while I was away at a writers’ conference-though he swore she never set foot in our apartment. Not a love affair, exactly, but not a one-night stand, either.

I suspected something right away-on the first night he made love to me after returning home from Philadelphia after they’d met. It’s the details that give people away, the things that writers notice that other people might miss. I don’t mean the mundane things like lipstick on a collar, or the scent of sex. I’m talking about essence, the gossamer strands that connect us.

There was something absent about him, an emptiness to his gaze, that told me his thoughts were elsewhere. Our bodies didn’t seem to fit together right. His kiss tasted different. I couldn’t climax, couldn’t cross the distance between us. This had never happened before; even our bad sex was good. We’d managed to make love well even when we were furious with each other, bone tired, or sick with the flu. We’d always been able to connect physically no matter what else was going on.

I wasn’t as upset as one might imagine. There were no histrionics, no thrown dishes, or screaming assaults. I just waited for something tangible to prove or disprove my suspicions while the distance between us grew. I didn’t blame myself, worry about what was wrong with me, where we had failed. It wasn’t like that- I wasn’t like that. He’d met someone, they hit if off and had sex. The sex was good and he wanted more. I knew this on an instinctive level. I knew him, how he admired beauty, how powerful were his appetites. She must have been something, though, for him to stray-that was less like him. I’d met people, too, over the years. I’d been tempted. In a way, I even understood. But it wasn’t in my nature to be unfaithful or dishonest; I couldn’t even lie about how much my Manolo Blahniks had cost. But this is barely even a shoe! It’s like a tongue depressor with some dental floss tied around it. You couldn’t walk a city block in these, Isabel .

The tangible proof turned out to be a text message on his cellular phone. He was in the shower; it was next to me on the bedside table. It was unusual for him to leave the phone out. Usually it was on his person, or tucked in his laptop case. I heard the buzz indicating that a message had been received. I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the phone and opening the message.

A note from someone identified only as “S” read, I can’t stop thinking about you. I can still feel you inside me .

Marcus emerged from the bathroom, a plume of steam following him into the bedroom carrying the scent of a sage-mint body wash we’d been using. I turned to face him. He saw the phone in my hand and, I suppose, the look on my face. We both froze, locked eyes. He seemed strange and unfamiliar to me, as though I was seeing him for the first time emerging half naked from our bathroom. There was an odd tightness from my throat into the muscles of my chest. The air around us was electric with tension.

“Are you in love with her?” I asked finally. I was surprised by the flat, unemotional quality to my tone. I suppose it was the last safe question, its answer determining everything else that followed.

“No,” he said with a quick dismissive shake of his head. “Of course not.”

“Then end it.”

A pressing forward of the shoulders; a slight nod as if he was agreeing to meet me at a café somewhere. “Okay,” he said easily.

“And go sleep somewhere else tonight. I don’t want to be near you right now.”

“Isabel,” he said.