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By Root 1413 0

The cell-phone alert wasn’t solely his invention; it was merely something he’d worked on with other people. But why would he lie? To please her, she guessed, to make himself more important in her eyes. She was such a dynamo, perhaps he’d felt emasculated and lied to make himself look better. He made a good salary, three hundred and fifty thousand a year, but after the first week of Cem’s unemployment, she realized his salary was only more smoke and mirrors: They were living paycheck to paycheck and had three mortgages on the house, the last one taken out six months ago to enable Lola to move to New York. They owed over a million dollars. They might have survived by selling the house, but the market had dropped. The house that was worth one point two million a year ago was now worth only seven hundred thousand. “So you see,” the banker had said while she and Cem sat trembling before him, “you actually owe three hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. And forty-two cents,” he added.

Three hundred thirty-three thousand dollars. And forty-two cents, she repeated in her head. She’d said it over and over so many times it no longer had any effect. It was just a number, unattached to real life.

New York, Beetelle thought with a pang. If only circumstances had been different. What a life she’d have now, free from the horror of penury. Lucky Lola had moved to New York with every advantage, not the way Beetelle had when she’d gotten her first job as a medical technician at Columbia Hospital, making twelve thousand dollars a year. She’d lived in a run-down two-bedroom apartment with three other girls, and she’d loved every minute. But it didn’t last long. After three happy months, she’d met Cem at the old convention hall on Columbus Circle, where there was now a fancy office tower with a mall. It hadn’t been fancy then. Aisle after aisle of booths constructed of plasterboard sold everything from ball bearings for heart valves to magnets that would cure anything. Back then technology was only a little more advanced than witchcraft and sorcery. And so, in between the valves made of titanium and the magnets to reverse cancer, she’d found Cem.

He’d asked her for directions to the exit, and the next thing she knew, they were going out for coffee. The afternoon stretched into the early evening, and they meandered into the bar at the Empire Hotel, where he was staying. They were full of youth and career aspirations and New York City, drinking tequila sunrises while they looked at the view of Lincoln Center. It was spring, and the fountain was going, gushing great glittery streams of water.

Afterward they had sex—the kind of sex people had in 1984 when they didn’t know better. Her breasts were heavy and full, the type of breasts that sagged almost immediately but had one season of ripeness with which to attract, and what she attracted was Cem.

He was sexy then. Or he was to her untested mind. She had had no experience, and the fact that Cem was interested in her thrilled her. For the first time, she was living life—a secret, unexplored, forbidden life. The next morning, feeling free and modern, she woke up expecting never to see Cem again. He was going back to Atlanta in the afternoon. But for days afterward, he pursued her, sending flowers, calling, even writing a postcard. She tucked them away, but by then she’d met another man and fallen in love, and she stopped responding to Cem’s entreaties.

The man was a doctor. For the next few weeks, she did everything to keep him interested. Made a fool of herself playing tennis. Cleaned his kitchen. Showed up at his office with a sandwich. She managed to only let him kiss her (and then go to second and third base) for six weeks. And then she gave in. The next morning, he told her he was engaged to someone else.

She was confused and, when he wouldn’t take her calls, devastated.

A week later, during a routine visit to the gynecologist, she discovered she was pregnant. She should have known, but she’d confused her nausea with the giddiness that comes from being in love. At first she thought the