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By Root 367 0

or snap at him when he’d actually use the glass but distractedly leave it on the counter for me to put away. As if using the glass was the favor to begin with and putting it in the (fucking) dishwasher was more effort than he could muster. When we first moved, I made offhand, occasional comments, “Could you please put the glass away, Hen?” or “It really grosses me out when you swig from the carton; I use it, too, you know,” but changing him was like trying to alter Morse code: It was too ingrained and thus impossible. So I stopped asking and thumped the glasses into the sink and then the dishwasher, all the while wanting to aim them more firmly at his head.

“So, anyway, now that I have you on the phone, what are you up to tonight?” Henry says, swallowing his drink. Definitely straight from the carton, I think, though now, it all seems sort of funny, sort of hilarious, like a perverted cartoon of a mouse who keeps going back to get the cheese and gets his tail caught every time. But he just doesn’t give a shit because he wants that cheese so badly. Henry, my poor demented mouse. I shake my head as a smile spreads across my face at the thought.

“Er, well, we have plans. Jack and I do. But, um, he’s supposed to fly home today—”

“No way that’s happening,” Henry interrupts.

I glance back over at the TV. The red warning bars are still pulsing at the bottom.

“Yeah, I guess not,” I say. I can nearly hear my blood quickening, and immediately, I’m nervous.

“Well, here’s an idea. You suggested coffee in your message, so, want to come over to my place for dessert and coffee? We can watch the ball go down and be all corny like that.”

I snort to myself, despite my nerves. Henry loved the stupid Times Square ball. Nonchalant as he pretended to be, he was obsessed with that thing. In fact, we’d spent every New Year’s Eve of our married life ushering in the New Year by watching that glittery ball descend among a crowd of crazed, drunken revelers. I realize, suddenly, that Henry is trying to impress me today, feigning his coolness, his quasi disinterest in the ball when he is fervently hoping that I’d agree. We’re not so different, you and me, I think. We’ve both mastered the art of concealing ourselves so well that it’s no wonder that we finally imploded.

“What about Celeste?” I ask. “Won’t she mind?”

“Oh, she’s in Florida,” he says, as if that’s some sort of explanation.

I pause and listen again to a news reporter who has had the misfortune of being assigned to braving the elements. “Grab your skis or snowshoes because that’s the only way anyone is getting in or out today,” she says, snot dripping from her nose; her eyes and lips are the only other exposed parts of her body.

Jack, it seems clear, will not be here by the stroke of midnight to greet 2001 by my side.

“Sure,” I hear myself saying to Henry. “Sure, let’s do dessert and coffee. I’ll be there around nine.”

We hang up, and I pull the covers over my head and burrow underneath, wondering if and when I’m going to wake up and discover this, all of this, was just a mad dream or a nightmare or even a little bit of fantasy. But after I lull back into sleep and after I’m awakened by my cell phone ringing yet again and after Jack confirms his extended vacation, I look around, fully cognizant and in no way dreaming, and realize that this life, this time, might just be for good.

HOW MAIL CARRIERS DO IT, I do not know, but per its motto, the U.S. Postal Service does manage to hurdle through what the news is now calling “the worst storm in two decades” and deliver the day’s mail.

My superintendent throws it against my front door, and it lands with a thud. Gingerly, because I have spent the past twenty minutes coating my nails in pillow-soft pink, I slip my palm over the knob and shuffle the letters in with my bare foot.

I flap my hands in the air, much like a chicken does wings, until my nails seem bulletproof, and lean down to retrieve the pile and filter through it. Mostly, it’s catalogs, companies I’ve never heard of crying out for me to purchase their on-sale dog beds,