3

At the end of another fourteen-hour day, the week careered to its conclusion. Jason’s grip on the steering wheel was an effort. Even his fingers were tired. Each arm had the tensile strength of a single thread. He swung the car into his driveway.

The panels of the garage door yawned up, the automatic light revealing the emptiness of a clean, swept concrete floor. Serena’s car was still gone.

He pulled in on the right out of habit, leaving room for her Mercedes. He clicked his remote to get the garage door closing before twisting the key to silence the engine. Its purr was replaced by the whirring of the garage-door closer, the chunk and rattle of the door hitting the concrete, and then silence.

The baked air in the garage was a stifling presence. He moved through it ponderously, each step an effort, and came to the door to the house.

No one greeted him.

He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Maybe some stranger had wandered in to stock the place with food. The bare glass shelves reflected light from the single bulb, the glare warped by stains from spilled leftover containers long since removed. On the shelves in the door a bottle of mustard stood like a yellow sentry guarding a jar of olives. Soy sauce. A half-empty carton of organic milk. He swung the door, and it closed with a thud.

Jason couldn’t remember why Serena had fired their last housekeeper. Something about the dusting, or the bathrooms. But at least the refrigerator used to be full.

In the cupboard, the only possibilities were a box of Corn Flakes, some powdered pancake mix, and an ancient carton of cookies.

He took down the Corn Flakes and shook what was left of them into a bowl and went back for the milk. The edges of the carton cracked open, and white crumbs drifted down into the liquid. It reeked.

He put the carton back in the refrigerator and stared at the dry bowl.

Fatigue knitted through his joints like a disease.

He took the bowl to the sink and eased the tap open. Drops of water splashed off the Corn Flakes onto his hand. He carried his cereal to the table and was seated before realizing he’d forgotten a spoon. It took a moment to gather his energy to rise again. By the time he got back to the table, the cereal was a mass of slop.

He ate it anyway.

The curtains were closed, a panel against the dead day. The darkness of the summer night outside was still new.

The taps of his spoon on the dish sounded lonely and harsh in the silence.

He stared into the bowl, as if by doing so he could refill it. Finally he shoved himself out of the chair. He looked down at the encrusted bowl with the spoon angled out and considered leaving it there. But he took it to the sink. As he rinsed it, the dissatisfaction in his stomach argued against his fatigue. He went to the cupboard and found two stale chocolate-chip cookies left in the carton, and he downed them on his way up the stairs, craving milk.

In the master bathroom, he put his mouth under the faucet to wash down the cookies, wiped his chin with the back of his hand, and got his tie nearly off on the way to the closet. His fingers worked each shirt button loose with deliberation. The shirt went into the hamper together with his socks, the suit into the bag for the dry cleaner. Still in his underwear, he threw back the bedspread and crashed onto the sheets.

The cotton, taut and firm, pressed cool against his body. He settled into it like fluid seeking a lowest point. Thoughts about work flitted in his mind but couldn’t find purchase, and they surrendered to the vacancy of oncoming sleep.

Sometime later, he heard Serena’s voice. Groggy, he mumbled, “What?”

“I said, hi, handsome.”

That voice, like silky jazz. It brought a smile. Eyes closed, he heard her move through the room shedding jewelry, jacket, kicking her heels off into the closet, where he knew her shoes lay in heaps, their heel marks like scattered dark moons on the wall. When she emerged from the closet, she would be clothed in her short satin robe. The sink faucet going now. She would be leaned over the sink, legs bent at the knee, her back tipped forward.

When the water closed off, she would rise to press a towel to her face and dab the water off, coming away with a few strands of auburn-colored hair pasted to her cheek and forehead. A pinch by fingertips to remove the hair, and she would blink away the droplets clinging to her lashes.

Fear and sorrow tugged at his groggy mind. His eyes were still closed. He wanted to move to her.

She rubbed lotion into her hands, their backs, between the fingers, on the supple knuckles as she came to the edge of the bed. Her hands together, passing over one another, lotion soaking into her tight skin the color of creamed caramel.

He struggled against his own body, trying to move toward her but too tired. He sensed her unsmiling lips, but he knew her brown eyes held a glint of amusement.

Sorrow swelled deep inside him, burned. Longing for her was like a cord threaded through his chest. But he felt pinned to the bed.

Red fingernails pulled apart the edges of the robe. She slid out of it and draped it over the covers. She wore thin garments to bed this time of year. She leaned over the bed and peeled the covers back. One knee came onto the sheets first, and then she was in with him, moving toward him. And just before the warmth of her body reached him, he woke.

Alone.

The emptiness of the house was a vacuum, sucking the breath out of him.

She was not there.

She had not been there for weeks.

He rolled onto his back, his teeth grinding.

In the glow of a night light Serena had plugged in long ago, the shapes in the ceiling texture took on forms. He used to lie in the dimness with her, and they would point the shapes out to one another like kids on a hilltop imagining forms in passing clouds.

He pressed his eyelids closed. Now what he saw was the look on her face when he’d confronted her. After resisting his suspicions so long, trying to excuse her a thousand times, he had no choice when the final proof made its way to him.

Another man. Her lips on his. Her hands in his. Her arms, the ones he longed for now, encircling another.

She was gone.