Alligator - Lisa Moore [69]
Bob was handsome and single and if she moved now, turned the knob, he would topple onto her carpet like a gift, but she didn’t move, was happy not to move, and she heard him wander off down the corridor.
And for this near miss alone she is glad she is not married. She had felt euphoria that night, falling onto the big hotel bed all by herself, and euphoria in the morning when the sun came up over the golf course and in through the window and she made a pot of coffee and she was writing and still naked from the midnight swim.
These irrefutable, stone-stupid near misses and the dalliances that came true and the men who found her fascinating because she stood on her own two feet — Trevor Barker upstairs, for instance, who had left three messages, who had turned out to be a more than passable cook — and the risks she took and fast friends she made and how she was the life of the party always. She wasn’t married because she couldn’t be married and she did not regret what she was.
If you fuck Bob Warren you’ll be one of thousands, a producer friend had said the next morning, after the night skinny-dipping in the hotel pool.
And she had answered, So will Bob Warren.
When she first left Marty, she was desolate. Beverly had come over to the new apartment and found her bawling, the sort of scream-crying that has no sound. She had tried to sit in one of the children’s plush cartoon armchairs, but it was too small and it was squashed beneath her and her knees were sticking out and she couldn’t get up. She was wrenching up absolutely no tears, her face like mauled Plasticine.
Stop this nonsense at once, Beverly had said.
The tree is artificial and it has red lights like an alarm system, it’s the middle of August and Marty wants to come over and it’s more of an appliance really, a household appliance, it has more in common with a fridge than a fir tree. She decides she loves the artificial tree.
VALENTIN
WHEN HE CAME back for Isobel, she had three Tupperware containers full of green tomatoes. Each tomato was wrapped in a paper towel, nestled in rows, two layers deep, and she was wearing sunglasses.
He was pleased with how reconciled she had become to the idea of the fire. The sunglasses had white frames with tiny rhinestones. She was wearing a simple, dark red dress that hung loosely and rustled when she moved. Her shoulders were bare, except for the narrow straps, and she was tanned. He thought the sunglasses looked expectant.
Isobel had let the grass get too long on her front walk and the legs of Valentin’s pants were wet with dew. He had seen, as he came down the path, that her front door was covered in worms. He had wiped most of them off the window with a flyer from her mailbox. Then he knocked on the door.
Standing in the sunlight he had the feeling the house was empty. What if she had called the police? He knew what her living room looked like at this hour, sunlight filtering through the trees, cool and full of leafy shadow. What if there were four or five police officers sitting around the living room quietly waiting? The gasoline was in the basement, all the gasoline.
He had put his hand on her throat and threatened to kill her and had promised, at the same time, about the money he would give her. Their faces were so close he could see her contact lenses lift with her rapid blinking and slide back down, slowly, over her irises. He was squeezing her neck and the pores in her skin on her cheeks looked large and there were tiny veins around her nostrils and these signs of age frightened him. She was old and he couldn’t quite count on what she would do next. He had described how he would kill her and the alternative: the boutique with pedestals draped in velvet, each displaying a bottle of perfume worth so much money she would only have to sell one a week.
If the house wasn’t empty, Isobel was probably sitting at her vanity putting in an earring. She had earrings that were peacock feathers weighted with tiny silver balls. She might just be sitting