Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

>Maybe I should start. I’m the one who crossed a boundary.

Kelly Thorndike

>You don’t need to be clinical about it.

Robin Wilkinson

>Let me put it this way.

>When I first met you and saw you and Martin together, I sensed there was a lot of intimacy. Not sexual intimacy. It set off kind of a red flag for me.

Kelly Thorndike

>I don’t know what to say.

Robin Wilkinson

>It’s been eating at me all this time. And I never do this with Martin. I don’t second-guess him. I don’t even inquire too closely. That’s not my role. We’ve been together long enough. His schemes always sound crazy. That’s the nature of the business, I guess. But this was different. Not sure why.

Kelly Thorndike

>Because I’m white?

Robin Wilkinson

>I’d like to think I’m more subtle than that. Anyway. I Googled you. And the one thing I can say for sure is that you’re not a magazine writer. Or if you are, you’re the secret kind that never publishes anything online. Or anywhere. Yeah, I know, you said you were just getting into the business. I don’t believe it. Maybe that’s unfair. I’ll take it for granted it’s unfair.

Kelly Thorndike

>You’re just trying to be protective.

Robin Wilkinson

>That’s very diplomatic of you. Anyway. The point is that I did some more kicking around online. And then, I’m not proud, but anyway, in our personal finances. Which normally is Martin’s thing. And I came across this thing, purely by accident, a credit card update email from a Web hosting service for something called “Orchid Enterprises.” So I looked up the URL, and bam.

>Still there?

Kelly Thorndike

>What are you telling me?

Robin Wilkinson

>What am I telling you? It’s your turn to start talking.

>Seriously? That’s how it’s going to be?

Kelly Thorndike

>We can stop anytime. Look, I’m sorry. This is going to sound awful, but Martin’s my source.

Robin Wilkinson

>Whoever you are, Kelly, you are a piece of work.

Kelly Thorndike

>and my employer.

Robin Wilkinson

>Okay. Okay. I’m over it.

>Do you think it’s going to work?

Kelly Thorndike

>Is what going to work?

Robin Wilkinson

>Whatever these “procedures” are. I mean, have they tested them out? Are there any actual cases involved?

Kelly Thorndike

>Yes.

Robin Wilkinson

>How many?

Kelly Thorndike

>Enough. There’s proof.

Robin Wilkinson

>I looked up Silpasuvan. He’s been at this awhile. Can’t believe some of the stuff he’s published. I’m not in the field, but I would imagine this would be raising red flags with the bioethicists.

Kelly Thorndike

>Things are a little different here as far as that goes.

>Can I ask you a question?

Robin Wilkinson

>Since we’ve come this far.

Kelly Thorndike

>What are you going to do with this information?

>You there?

Robin Wilkinson

>I don’t know.

>Nothing.

>Look at how tired I’m getting not even bothering to punctuate anymore… I told Tamika that if she ever sends me an email looking like this I’ll take away her phone.

Kelly Thorndike

>I’d call you, but my phone doesn’t work here.

Robin Wilkinson

>Not sure I could take hearing your voice right now.

>I’m a human being, after all.

Kelly Thorndike

>?

Robin Wilkinson

>Believe me. I love my husband.

>Where are you right now, btw?

Kelly Thorndike

>In my room.

>It’s 1 a.m. here.

Robin Wilkinson

>Is Martin home?

Kelly Thorndike

>Not sure.

>Want me to check?

Robin Wilkinson

>Forget it.

Kelly Thorndike

>Go on.

Robin Wilkinson

>

>

>

Kelly Thorndike

>Think the program is freezing.

Robin Wilkinson

>No, I’m here.

>As I was saying, I love my husband, but he treats me like Wonder Woman. I don’t give him any reason not to.

>Neither one of us is really good at the whole vulnerability thing, putting our guard down.

Kelly Thorndike

>I get that.

Robin Wilkinson

>Accepted a long time ago that when he’s with me he’s 100 percent and when he’s traveling we hardly even talk.

Kelly Thorndike

>Are you asking me?

Robin Wilkinson

>Are you telling me?

Kelly Thorndike

>What time is it there, it’s in the middle of the afternoon, aren’t you at work?

Robin Wilkinson

>Just got back from a conference in D.C., doing laundry, waiting for the girls to get off the bus.

Kelly Thorndike

>What are you wearing right now?

>Sorry that’s not what I meant to say.

Robin Wilkinson

>

>

[Robin Wilkinson has left the conversation]

Late at night, a knock on my door.

I’ve fallen asleep sitting up in bed with the binder across my knees, open to an article about maintaining airway access during rhinoplasty. Trying not to think about Robin. My laptop is closed, shut down, sealed in its case. I won’t go back online till morning. Whatever that was, it’s over. Can’t touch it. I erased my browser history, my message queue, did a Privacy Purge of my profile. And I’m sure she did the same. I imagine us clicking the same buttons, clawing our way back. Erasing our histories. You could call that a kind of romance.

And now instead I’m thinking, for no particular reason, about Paul Phillips. Fuck you, hymie. BCC has been closed now for three months: did he find another job? I ignored the outburst and wrote him the most glowing recommendation I could, then mailed it to his home address, in a box with his kids’ gap-toothed school pictures, his autographed Ravens helmet. The restraining order wouldn’t allow him within a hundred feet of the building. Is it guilt, this feeling? At being a pawn, a bystander? Something irretrievably done, or still undone? In a thicket of wondering I drifted off, and now I’m pulling a shirt over my head and wiping the spit from the corner of my mouth. Hello? I say, as softly as I can manage.

No answer.

I open the door six inches, and Julie-nah glares at me. Skinny jeans, bare feet, her hair loose and spilling over her shoulders. As if she’s just come from a walk on the beach. Under one arm she’s got a small steel thermos.

Can I help you with something?

You can let me come in, she says, softly, almost mouthing the words. I open the door all the way, and she slips inside so quietly I hear her hair swishing by.

Keep your voice down, she whispers. I don’t want them to hear me. Do you have some music you can turn on or something?

I take my iPod from my carry-on, plug it into the clock radio by the bed, and put on the last thing I was listening to: Miles Davis’s Porgy and Bess. She gives me a skeptical look and takes down the wall-mounted remote control that operates the ceiling fan. At the highest speed, a gale-like wind so strong we have to move out of the way, it has a mellow but discernible hum, a drone beneath the music, an extra layer of tubas and baritone sax under Gil Evans’s orchestration.