Freedom [213]
“Yeah?” he said, laughing.
“Yeah!”
Without even kissing, they ran down to the baggage level and out to the taxi stand, where, by some miracle, nobody was waiting. In the back of their taxi, she peeled off her sweaty cotton cardigan and climbed onto his lap and began to sob in a way akin to coming or a seizure. Her body seemed entirely, entirely new in his arms. Some of the change was real—she was a little less arrowy, a little more womanly—but most of it was in his head. He felt inexpressibly grateful for her infidelity. His feeling was so large that it seemed as if only asking her to marry him could accommodate it. He might even have asked her, right then and there, if he hadn’t noticed the strange marks on her inner left forearm. Running down its soft skin was a series of straight parallel cuts, each about two inches long, the ones nearest her elbow faint and fully healed, the ones approaching her wrist increasingly fresh and red.
“Yeah,” she said, wet-faced, looking at the scars with wonder. “I did that. But it’s OK.”
He asked what had happened, though he knew the answer. She kissed his forehead, kissed his cheek, kissed his lips, and peered gravely into his eyes. “Don’t be scared, baby. It was just something I had to do for penance.”
“Jesus.”
“Joey, listen. Listen to me. I was very careful to put alcohol on the blade. I just had to do one cut for every night I didn’t hear from you. I did three on the third night and then one every night after that. I stopped as soon as I heard from you.”
“And what if I hadn’t called? What were you going to do? Slit your wrist?”
“No. I wasn’t suicidal. This is what I was doing instead of having thoughts like that. I just needed to hurt a little bit. Can you understand that?”
“Are you sure you weren’t suicidal?”
“I would never do that to you. Not ever.”
He ran his fingertips over the scars. Then he raised her unscarred wrist and pressed it to his eyes. He was glad she’d cut herself for him; he couldn’t help it. The ways she moved were mysterious but made sense to him. Somewhere in his head, Bono was singing that it was all right, all right.
“And you know what’s really incredible?” Connie said. “I stopped at fifteen, which is exactly the number of times I was unfaithful to you. You called me on exactly the right night. It was like some kind of sign. And here.” From the back pocket of her jeans she took a folded cashier’s check. It had the curve of her ass and was impregnated with her ass’s sweat. “I had fifty-one thousand in my trust account. That was almost exactly what you said you needed. It was another sign, don’t you think?”
He unfolded the check, which was payable to JOSEPH R. BERGLUND in the amount of FIFTY THOUSAND dollars. He wasn’t ordinarily superstitious, but he had to admit that these signs were impressive. They were like the signs that told deranged people, “Kill the president NOW,” or told depressed people, “Throw yourself out a window NOW.” Here the urgent irrational imperative seemed to be: “Wed your lives together NOW.”
Outbound traffic on the Grand Central was at a standstill, but the inbound side was moving briskly, the cab was sailing right along, and this, too, was a sign. That they hadn’t had to wait in line for a cab was a sign. That tomorrow was his birthday was a sign. He couldn’t remember the state he’d been in even