Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed

“It’s a wonderful street,” he told the broker.

Jane came out into the light and stood abreast the long white columns of the porch while he walked down the stairs and placed her bag in the trunk. The fickle temperature had risen overnight and the day was warm and bright. They left the facility down a dusty lane overhung with trees just coming into leaf.

“Would you like to take a drive?” he asked.

“Where to?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to go home right away or if you’d like to be out in the world. You haven’t really been out in the world.”

She didn’t know how to tell him that she didn’t want to go home. She wasn’t sure she was ready to leave the facility. She lived among flowers and courtesy there, among the firm and guiding voices of the counselors, surrounded by nicely groomed lawns. She was cut off from temptation, unburdened by compromise and guilt, and there she had only one room with one bed, her life stripped down to the simplicity of self-survival.

“A drive’s a good idea,” she said.

“It’s a good day for one.”

“It’s nice to feel the wind coming in. I haven’t been in a car in a long time.”

“Are you happy to be going home?”

She didn’t answer.

“You can be honest.”

“Yes,” she said. “Very much.”

They avoided the highways. They took the numbered routes that turned into streets with names whenever they entered one of the small towns. They stopped at a state park and walked from the parking lot down a footpath to a flowering lake and stood at the edge a few feet from the still water and listened to the silence.

“Let’s jump in,” he said.

“I don’t have my bathing suit.”

“We’ll go naked.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“Who’s looking?”

She peered around and saw no one, no one on the water itself or on the far shore. They walked up into the woods a few feet and took off their clothes and hung them from a tree and then ran silently into the sun-skinned lake, which was much colder than either of them anticipated when they were taking its temperature with their fingertips.

“Christ, oh Christ,” he said. He reached for her in a panic of cold, and she was eager for him. They fought the water in a firm embrace, turning in circles and chattering and rubbing each other’s bodies with their hands and wondering how much longer they could stand it. “It’s kind of torture.”

“Bracing,” she said.

“Stupid.”

“Your idea,” she said.

“Really stupid. Are you ready?”

“We just got in.”

They raced back to their clothes. He dried her off with his undershirt and stopped to kiss her breasts. Her red nipples had hardened and dimpled from the cold, and with her hand on the back of his head, she pressed his hot mouth tighter. He got down on his knees and pushed her gently against the tree. She spread her legs and dug her backside into the rough bark and gripped his hair between her fingers until she came.

Inside the car again they blasted the heat. “I’ve missed that,” he said.

“ You’ve missed it?” she said, touching her flushed face with both her hands. Then she burst into laughter.

They drove along the water, past seaports and tourist spots that had been battered the week before by the season’s first hurricane, which came earlier and hit stronger than anyone could have forecasted. The harbors and beaches had been damaged, and as they drove along they got a glimpse of a stretch of expensive beach homes, one of which had been cleaved on one side by a schooner.

They got on the highway that led home and he drove past the exit. “You just missed the exit, Tim.”

“Are you going to go back to work?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

She didn’t want to go back to work. She supposed it was the best way to spend her time, that it was an honorable distraction from the many hours in a day, and that it gave her life continuity and purpose. But the truth was she didn’t want to do anything. She couldn’t explain why, but she was nearly completely absent of any assertive sense of what she wanted to do with herself. She didn’t mind that they had missed the exit. They could keep driving forever.

“I probably will,” she said.

“If you do go back,” he said, “I have a listing for you.”

“A listing?”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“Are we driving into the city?”

“Be honest with me. Do you really want to go home?”

“It’s probably the last place I want to go,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I’m supposed to be happy to be going home, aren’t I?”

“Not if home makes you unhappy.”

When they reached the city he parked in front of a fire hydrant and threw on the hazards. He didn’t step out immediately. She was taking her cues from him, so she waited, watching him. He turned and announced he’d quit the firm. He had presented his resignation to Mike Kronish the day before, only to learn that staff attorneys didn’t need to formally resign. They just needed to give personnel their two weeks’ notice. Hearing the news, she felt something for the first time.

“They were never going to let me back in,” he said.

“You thought they would?”

“Didn’t you know that’s what I was hoping for?”

“I didn’t understand how you could do it if you weren’t a partner,” she said.

“Well, I couldn’t.” He opened the door. “Come on.”

They stepped out. He had a key to the front door of a brownstone she had never seen before, and he had the key to the parlor floor, and when he opened the door to the empty apartment he said, “We don’t own it just yet.”

She hung in the doorway. He stepped inside and leaned his back against the wall to look at her.

“What’s all this about?”

He motioned for her to follow. They walked through the apartment. It was a tenth the size of their house in the suburbs. It had charm and character and windows full of sunlight, hardwood floors and a remodeled kitchen, and a restorer’s touch around the woodwork. It had an antique chandelier and claw-foot tub. He led her to the far room.

“This is the bedroom,” he said. “It’s the only one.”

She walked around the empty room. “What would we do with all our stuff?”

“What do we need stuff for?”

“And what happens when Becka comes home?”

“We give her the sofa.”

“What if she wants to move back in after college?”

He looked at her. “We’re talking about Becka here,” he said. “Have you met Becka?”

“Good point.”

“Here’s the point.”

“What?”

“Only one bedroom,” he said. “Only one bed.”

They woke that morning in the bed that had contained them like a miracle for another night. Four years had passed since her return. Any predawn stir in those days that rustled the bedsheets put the one on guard that the other might be ready to rise and start the day. But if neither of them opened their eyes to look at the other, that was a sign that sleep was still irresistible in the lengthening hour, maybe because of the lengthening hour, and they drifted back to sleep. They dozed in and out like that most mornings, half-conscious of the clock and of the other.

She woke in the bed alone and had no memory of his having left the room, and this surprised her. In the daze of half sleep she was vulnerable and for an instant she felt that bottomless fear. She got out of bed quickly and put on her robe and slippers and carried her reading glasses out of the bedroom, through the apartment into the kitchen, where the smell of coffee made her both instantly comforted and more alert. She went up to him without speaking and put her arms around him from behind as he read the newspaper.