Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

“Right, yes, I’d heard that — and so, you know, that vote of confidence, it really seems to be opening some doors for me. I got a commission to do a magazine illustration of a reclusive mining heiress who’s rarely photographed. I’m doing wedding portraits, baby portraits, someone even mentioned holiday cards to me, which seems so far away—”

“I think I got it!” Karina said.

Bertha Mason laughed. Bertha had rattled at the door all these years not seeking freedom from confinement or retribution. She rattled only for approval.

“Okay,” Jen said. “Okay, this is great — I mean, not great in all senses, but—”

“Jen, what can I say — you’re a real pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps story,” Karina said. “A real Horatio Alger tale.”

“Actually — and most people don’t know this — but Horatio Alger stories weren’t really about pulling oneself up,” Jen said. “They’re more about being in the right place at the right time, about earnest young people happening to cross paths with a wealthy benefactor in a generous frame of mind.”

“Aren’t you Miss Smartypants,” Karina said, grinning widely and crinkling her nose impishly. “I will miss all the ways you educate me. The foundation will, too.”

“Also,” Jen said as she turned to leave, “just FYI, Horatio Alger was a pedophile.”

“Julie.”

Jen was standing in line at the coat check in the red-carpeted, red-walled arcade outside the ballroom where the annual Bluff Foundation Revel was winding down. Meg, her date, was in the ladies’ room. Jen pulled her spangled black-cashmere wrap a bit tighter around her midsection and turned toward the voice to see Leora Infinitas. Structured mosaic-print dress and gladiator spikes. Smoky eye. Caramel-butter extensions. Shoulders thrown back, one hand on waist, hip turned and corresponding leg stepped out. Anxious handler — not Sunny, but Sunny-like in her force field of high-strung cheer, her flat-footed quickness — levitating nearby, BlackBerry in one palm and two handbags in the other.

“Oh, wow, Leora — Ms. Infinitas! Yes — it’s Jen — but that’s okay — what an amazing dress — it’s so nice to finally meet you,” Jen said, holding out her hand.

Leora Infinitas turned both palms upward, the cuffs and clatches encircling her wrists winking with light, in a gesture that Jen couldn’t instantly decode as either a proposal for a hug, an invitation for a double hand grasp, or a dispensation with all tactile formalities. After a second’s hesitation, Jen reached out her hand, knuckles to ceiling, and wrapped her fingers around Leora’s limp right palm in a 90-degrees-turned handshake. The Sunny-like handler checked her watch.

“But we’ve met many times,” Leora Infinitas said, extracting her hand and aiming her head in a quizzical tilt.

“We have?” Jen’s voice squeaked. She felt as if she’d been caught committing a crime, but didn’t know which one.

“Through our work,” Leora said. Her eyes were black and bottomless, a sea seen churning through the pinholes of a painted porcelain mask. “Through the work that we do. Through the work we have done.”

“Oh, of course, but we’ve never spoken — directly — I mean, with each other.”

“But we have.” Leora Infinitas did not break eye contact. She beamed like a hologram. “You have heard me. And I have heard you. I see what you do.”

“Oh, of course. It’s funny, isn’t it? I totally feel that way, too, about you, and it’s so cool to know that it goes both ways, Leora.”

“We’ve got — the thing—” the Sunny-like handler said.

“We have always known each other,” Leora Infinitas said. “We always will. I will always be with you. And you will always be with me.” She turned and glided away, handler scurrying beside her, forever attended to and somehow alone.

Jen came home and sat down on the couch next to Jim and Franny.

“So. I think we can officially start talking about it now,” Jen said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s time,” she said, rubbing her knuckles against Franny’s brow. “We’re out of the woods. The anatomy stuff. Testing. And it’s becoming obvious. A lady gave me her seat on the train today. Although that happened once before.”

“When it happened before, was it the yellow dress with the sailboats on it?”

“Yeah, good call. The waist kind of billows out.”

“I love that dress. I wondered why you never wore it anymore.”

“I guess now I can wear it again.”

“How do you feel?”

“You have to be more specific.”

“How do you feel about starting to talk about it?”

“I don’t know. One time I blurted out to someone that we were ‘trying,’ and I felt like I was saying, ‘We are having sex.’ Now I’d be saying, ‘We have had successful sex.’ ”

“But you don’t have to say that. Your body will say it for you.”

“Well, my body will start a conversation that I won’t want to finish.”

“Do people still say ‘bump’?”

“Never under any circumstances ever say that again.”

“Does starting to talk about it involve talking about all the unsuccessful sex-having?”

“When Genevieve from my old book club had her twins, everyone asked her if they were science babies.”

“Did Genevieve make science babies?”

“I never asked her.”

They sat silently for a moment.

“We should call some people in the morning,” she said. “We should call my parents.”

“We should definitely call your parents.”

“They will be so happy,” she said.

They sat silently some more.

“We are starting to talk about it,” he said. “That’s true. Does starting to talk about it involve you starting to talk about it with me?”

“Of course it does. I feel like I’ve been talking about it with you all along. I know I haven’t — it’s odd; something would happen and I’d just assume you would know, because if it happened to me it meant it was happening to you, too.”

“Maybe someday we’ll become so close that we won’t have to talk to each other at all.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s weird that something can be so private and so public at the same time. It’s like, inside and outside — I get confused about which is which.”

“You’re inside now.”

“I know. I’m inside now.”

They sat silently for a long time.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She couldn’t answer right away.

“Honey, look at me,” he said. “Look at me. Come on. Look at those tears, so heavy with nutrients and minerals. They heal the sick and awaken sleeping princesses. They slake the thirsts and nourish the soil and moisturize the pores of Tiger Canyon.”

“Stop,” she said. “I appreciate what you’re doing, honey, but stop.”

They sat silently some more.

“I’m fine,” she finally said. “I’m fine. I’m a little panicked. I’m extremely happy. I’m tired. I’m a moist, leaking grocery bag of wilted clichés and adjectives full of empty calories. I’m hungry.”

“Do you want me to make some dinner?”

“Yes, that would be great. Thank you.”

“While I make dinner, should we think about how everything is about to change, and soon we won’t even remember the people that we are right now?”

“Yes, that would be great, too.”

“Because we’ll have amnesia associated with extreme sleep deprivation?”

“Yes.”

“Which is, when you think about it, a kind of psychic death ?”

“Yes!”

“Are you ready to stage a household coup d’état and then fall victim to it, and all the screaming mayhem and poverty and squalor that will follow?”