Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

She asked who domesticated who , before excusing herself to the downstairs WC while Jeremy took care of the bill. (She knew Larissa would see her go.) She lingered at the sink and washed her hands, pretending to be surprised when the stand-in appeared. The bathroom was empty and they backed into a stall, mouth to mouth.

Larissa was startled by the ferocity of her own desire. The more experienced Allegra hit pause and said, “Maybe we should do this another time.”

“Oh — sorry!” said Larissa, embarrassed. “I just thought it was okay. Was it not okay—?”

“ Totally. It’s fine, it’s great .”

“I’m really sorry!”

“Don’t apologize, you’re amazing .” Gusts of heat poured from Larissa’s throat, and all kinds of scent. She was still in the throes. “And I love that you came and found me. But it’s… complicated.”

It felt like she’d been using that word a lot lately.

They left the metal playpen and, side by side, threw cold water on their faces. Larissa couldn’t believe her sudden lie; it erupted from her as if something — some one —had taken possession.

“Dusty’s been coming to yoga. It’s so much fun having her in class.”

“Oh, great!” said Allegra, flustered.

“She’s really advanced — she should be teaching! But I think she feels comfortable there. You know, like a safe haven. Everyone leaves her alone — they’re all too self-obsessed to notice her! I hope she comes back soon. I know she had a big loss but it really helps to lean on your practice. To get grounded and back in your body again.”

“She just needs a moment,” Allegra said automatically.

Larissa had written her number on a card upstairs; she slipped it into Allegra’s hand. Trying to make up for her boldness, she discreetly insisted Allegra “go first,” and return to Jeremy alone. After she left, Larissa loitered in the alcove behind the marble steps, pondering her spontaneous artifice — and the plot, mysterious even to her, that was busy being born.

—

After Reina died, they resumed sleeping in the same bed. No sex, but lots of cuddling — a comfort to them both.

Allegra told her she ran into her camera double. Dusty gave the tiniest of shrugs, as if it wasn’t worth acknowledging. When she said Larissa talked about hoping to see her again at yoga, Dusty scoffed.

“Uhm, not gonna happen.”

“But she said you loved the class.”

“I only went once, honey.”

It peeved Dusty that Larissa even mentioned they had that off-campus moment. Everything about that woman peeved her.

Allegra left it at that but wondered, Why would she lie?

That night she had the dream, but this time the baby was dead. The woman from the support group stood at the foot of the bed and held it in her arms.

She looked down at Allegra and said, “Is this an intervention?”

—

When Jeremy walked in, Tristen was working on his laptop at the kitchen table. It was nice coming home to someone — it felt like family. He kissed the boy’s cheek then let him get on with whatever he was doing. He liked to show that he wasn’t the smothering type.

Jeremy put on the Brahms channel and ran a bath. It was raining; how he loved that. He thought about the support group, comparing and contrasting its high emotion with his apathy. Long ago, the sudden, violent erasure of his family by a drunk (who, of course, was himself unharmed) had inured him to grief. With that event, any presumptive expectations of an orderly, linear life underwent a deep and disorienting transformation. Up until then, the a priori world, even in its supreme, shambolic splendor, had adhered to the inviolable three-act structure — a beginning, middle, and end — whose literal translation, as it happened, became the foundation of his career as a story editor and creative executive. Like a high-ranking cultist, he understood the three acts, becoming their scholar and servant, their trustee and executor, their henchman and trusted lieutenant. He learned much from them. They embodied divine symmetry — the syncopation of life and death. Like God, they saturated all creation, bringing comfort, reason, and solace. They were ancient. They shone like the sun and darkened with the consistency of night. He was a joyous laborer in the garden of the three acts, pruning and tilling the soil, designing pathways, caring for all its living things. And then his loved ones were obliterated and he awakened in a secret garden where nothing grew but the present moment. He was a terrible horticulturist now — how could you water that ? — yet he was free.

The other day he watched a mini-doc on YouTube. An English barrister with an aggressive cancer enlisted his grandson to film his last few months. They went to the cemetery where he would soon be buried and took beguiling footage of a walkabout amongst the graves. After supper, he sat by the fire musing about the end, only weeks away. It played well to those who hadn’t experienced the unfathomable riddle of sudden death — like an ad brought to you by the Three Acts Corporation.

A newborn dies minutes after being delivered, without awareness of having existed; an ebullient Florida tourist is taken out by a 350-pound manta ray when it leaps on deck; a barefoot bride poses for a wedding photo in the shallows of a river. Water creeps up the gown and she stumbles on the embankment — the soaked dress, now heavy as concrete, makes rescue by the photographer impossible. A posh barrister, fatally diagnosed, has ample time to reflect on life’s mysteries before morphine companionably hastens his death. What did any of it mean? In a world of drowned brides and murderous, bitch-slapping flying fishes, it meant nothing. He felt asinine even posing the question, even thoughtlessly having the thoughtless thought…

Jeremy only prayed that when his moment came, he’d be quickly absorbed into the masterpiece of dark matter and infinite nebulae — of black holes from which neither light nor three acts could escape.

—

At midnight, just as she turned out the light, Larissa’s cell lit up with SHITHEAD.

(How Derek was listed in her contacts.)

Her gut clenched. He’s drunk.

When she picked up, a woman very tentatively said, “Is this Larissa?”

“Who’s this ?”

“Uhm, Beth. Derek’s in the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“He had the flu but now they think maybe it’s his heart? They’re transferring him to the ICU. Uhm, did I—? Sorry if I woke you.”

Larissa stewed. The asshole made the girlfriend call his mommy! Unfuckingbelievable. Then she laughed, imagining how the doctors and R.N.s probably kept asking if she was the granddaughter.

Larissa got out of bed, empowered by her abrasively carefree assessment of the situation — it really was liberating to feel nothing . No way was she going to get in her Uggs and race over there.

It started to gnaw, though, as her thoughts turned to Rafaela. “ICU” never meant anything good… if the piece of shit upped and died and she never woke her daughter, she wouldn’t hear the end of it.

Seeking clarity, she had herself a pee.

She crept to Rafaela’s room, softly calling her name. Turned on a light. The sleep-confused girl yelped when Larissa said her daddy was sick and had been taken to the hospital and that they probably needed to go. When Rafi asked what was wrong, she snapped, “His girlfriend wouldn’t tell me.” On the way to UCLA, she regretted the snark.

Her daughter whimpered the entire ride like some puppy outside Starbucks. (She should have given her a Xanax.) They stopped at a light before the final turn. A woman at the intersection held up a sign.