The First Bad Man. Миранда Джулай

clouded by yang.”

      Now we were doing it with both hands and looking each other square in the eyes. Our history was bearing down on us, a hundred thousand lifetimes of making love. We rose and stood with just a hot inch between us, our palms pressed together.

      “Cheryl,” he whispered.

      “Phillip.”

      “I can’t sleep, I can’t think. I’m going crazy.”

      The inch was half an inch now. I was throbbing.

      “We have no elders,” he moaned. “No one to guide us. Will you guide us?”

      “But I’m younger than you.”

      “Perhaps.”

      “No, I am. I’m twenty-two years younger than you.”

      “I’m forty-nine years older than her,” he breathed. “Just tell me if it’s okay. I don’t want someone like you to think I’m—I can’t even say it. It has nothing to do with her age—you can see that, right?”

      Each time I inhaled, the soft dome of my stomach pressed against his groin, and each time I exhaled it gently pulled away. In, out, in, out. My breathing grew sharper and faster, a thrusting kind of breath, and Phillip was gripping my hands. In another second I would use my innocent, fingerless paunch to grope and explore him, shimmying up and down. I stepped away.

      “It’s a tough decision.” I picked my dinner napkin off the floor and placed it carefully over the row of uneaten pink fish meats. “And one I take seriously.”

      “Okay,” said Phillip, straightening up and blinking as if I had suddenly turned the lights on. He followed me to the closet, where I found my purse and jacket. “And?”

      “And I’ll let you know when I know. Please take me home now.”

      CLEE WAS HALF-ASLEEP WATCHING TV. When I came in she looked up, surprised, as if it wasn’t my house. Just the sight of her pretty face and big chin made me furious. I threw my purse down on the coffee table, which was where I used to put it before she moved in.

      “You need to get your act together and start looking for a job,” I said, straightening the chair. “Or maybe I should call your parents and tell them what’s been going on here.”

      She smiled slowly at me, her eyes narrowing.

      “What’s been going on here?” she said.

      I opened my mouth. The simple facts of her violence slid out of reach. Suddenly I felt uncertain, as if she knew something about me, as if, in a court of law, I would be the one to blame.

      “And anyways,” she said, picking up the remote, “I have a job.”

      This seemed unlikely.

      “Great. Where?”

      “The supermarket, the one we went to.”

      “You went to Ralphs and filled out an application and had an interview?”

      “No, they just asked me—last time I was there. I start tomorrow.”

      I could see a man’s trembling hands pinning a name tag to her bosom and I remembered what Phillip said about her fat store. Just a couple of hours ago we were sitting in his car and I was thinking, Let’s not waste our time talking about her when we have so much else to say to each other. I lifted the end of her sleeping bag and yanked out one of the couch cushions.

      “This couch isn’t meant to be used as a bed. You need to flip the cushions so they don’t get permanently misshapen.” I flipped it over and started pulling at the other one—the one she was sitting on. My muscles were tensed; I knew this was a bad idea but I kept tugging at the cushion. Tug. Tug.

      I didn’t even see her get up. The crook of her arm caught my neck and jerked me backward. I slammed into the couch—the wind knocked out of me. Before I could get my balance she shoved my hip down with her knee. I grabbed at the air stupidly. She pinned my shoulders down, intently watching what the panic was doing to my face. Then she suddenly let go and walked away. I lay there shaking uncontrollably. She locked the bathroom door with a click.

      PHILLIP CALLED FIRST THING IN the morning.

      “Kirsten and I were wondering if you’d had you a chance to think it over.”

      “Can I ask one question?” I said, pressing a bruise on the back of my upper calf.

      “Anything,” said Phillip.

      “Is she gorgeous?”

      “Will that impact your decision?”

      “No.”

      “Stunning.”

      “What color hair?”

      “Blond.”

      I spit into a hanky. My globus had swollen in the night—I couldn’t swallow at all anymore.

      “No, I haven’t decided.”

      For the next three hours I lay in bed, my head where my feet should be. He was in love with a sixteen-year-old. I had spent years training myself to be my own servant so that when a situation involving extreme wretchedness arose, I would be taken care of. But the house didn’t function as it once had; Clee had undone years of careful maintenance. All the dishes were out and the general disarray was beyond carpooling—there was nothing between me and filthy animal living. So I peed in cups and knocked over one of the cups and didn’t clean it up. I chewed bread into a puree, moistening it with sips of water until I could slurp it down as a horse would. Only liquids could slip past the globus, and only with a swallowing scenario. The Black Stallion for bready water. For plain water I was Heidi, dipping a metal ladle into a well. It’s from the end, when she’s living in the Alps. For orange juice I was Sarge from the Beetle Bailey comic, where Sarge and Beetle Bailey go to Florida and drink all-you-can-drink orange juice. Glug, glug, glug. It worked because it wasn’t me, it was the character swallowing, off handedly—just a brief moment in a larger story. There’s a scenario for every beverage except beer and wine because I was too young for alcohol when I invented this technique. I let my mouth hang open so the spit could roll out easily. Not just a sixteen-year-old, a stunning blond sixteen-year-old. She was driving him crazy. Someone came in the back door. Rick. The TV blasted on. Not Rick.

      She was home from Ralphs: it was later than I thought. I pulled myself upright and listened to her flipping channels arrhythmically. My back was sore where she threw me down, but this was almost a welcome distraction from the globus. My neck felt like an object unrelated to me, a businessman’s misplaced briefcase. When I tapped my throat it made a bony sound, and then suddenly the muscle began to tighten, and tighten, like a pulled knot—I panicked, shaking my hands in the air—no, no, no—

      And then it locked.

      I’d read about this online but it had never happened to me. The sternothyroid muscle becomes so rigid that it seizes up. Sometimes permanently.

      “Test,” I whispered, to see if I could still talk. “Test, test.” Very carefully, without moving my neck, I reached for the glass bottle on my bedside table. Using the Heidi scenario I drank all the red. Nothing happened. I gingerly carried my neck to the phone and called Dr. Broyard, but he was in Amsterdam; the message invited me to call 911 or leave my name and number for Dr. Ruth-Anne Tibbets. I remembered the two stacks of business cards in their Lucite holders—this was the other doctor. The one in charge of watering the fern in the waiting room. I hung up, then called back and left my name and number. The message felt too short for a therapist.

      “I’m forty-three,” I added, still whispering. “Regular height. Brown hair that is now gray. No children. Thanks, please call back. Thank you.”

      DR. TIBBETS SAW PATIENTS ON Tuesdays through Thursdays. When I suggested today, a Thursday, she countersuggested next Tuesday. Six days of liquids; I might starve. Sensing my anguish, she asked if I was in danger. I might be, I said, by next