Twice His, Once Deceieved

Two Conversations

Sandra's:

By Wednesday, she'd stopped counting the nights.That was how she knew it had become something. In the first week she'd counted one, two, three..marking each visit against the calendar in her head like evidence. By the second week she'd stopped. Now she simply went to the balcony the way she went to the library: because it was the place she breathed easiest.Zane had been there three times this week already. It was only Wednesday."You're quieter than usual," he said tonight, settling beside her on the railing."I'm thinking." "About? "Whether I'm a bad person."He was quiet for a moment the considered quiet she'd learned to read, the one that meant he was actually deciding what to say rather than reaching for the easiest answer."What makes you think you might be?" he asked.She turned the railing cold under her palms. The garden below was dark except for the lights she'd decided she loved, the ones that turned the hedges gold and silver.I'm married," she said. "And I come out here every night to talk to you.We talk...We talk about everything." She looked at him sideways. The mask was silver in the moonlight. She'd stopped seeing it as strange. That bothered her too. "I tell you things I haven't told anyone. Things I didn't even know I was thinking until I said them to you."

"Is that a problem?" "It means something," she said. "Doesn't it? Connection means something."

"Yes." His voice was very even. "It does."She'd spent the morning at the gallery. Julian had pulled three new pieces from a storage unit in the Presidio and needed a second opinion on provenance and apparently her second opinion had been useful, because he'd looked at her afterward with something that wasn't quite surprise but was adjacent to it."You actually know what you're talking about," he'd said.

"I have a degree in it."Half the people I hire have degrees. You have taste. It's not the same thing."

She'd felt warm about that for two hours. Then she'd come home, passed through a house that was beautiful and enormous and empty in the specific way that meant Alexander had already left for the office, and the warmth had gone somewhere she couldn't find it.Tell me something," she said to Zane. "Something true."

He shifted beside her. "I'm afraid of small spaces." "That's not what I meant."

"I know." A pause. "I'm afraid of being known. The whole of me, not a selected version."

She looked at him properly then. He was looking at the garden, jaw set in a way that made him look, for a moment, like someone she was almost certain she'd met before.Why?" she asked.Because if you know everything and still leave, there's nothing left to blame but yourself."

"And if you hide things?"Then it's the hiding that drove them away." He turned to look at her. "Which is worse, arguably. You lose either way."

She thought about that. "That's not actually an argument for hiding."No," he said. "I've noticed."

They'd talked about her childhood once, at length, the way she'd never talked about it with anyone except Sophie. She'd told him about growing up in Vivian's shadow not bitterly, just accurately the way certain facts ceased to be dramatic once they'd been true long enough. She'd told him about the museum where she'd volunteered for three years, the summer she'd spent studying a single Vermeer until she knew every craquelure pattern in the paint.

He'd listened without filling the pauses. She didn't know, until then, how rare that was.

In return he'd told her things edited things, she sensed, the shape of real information with certain specifics removed. That he'd lost someone important when he was young. That he'd built something large and found it insufficient. That he sometimes felt, in the middle of a room full of people, completely without coordinates....Without coordinates. That was the exact phrase. She'd written it down afterward because it was too precise to be accidental.Can I ask you something personal?" she said.You can ask me anything."You don't have to answer." "Sandra." The quiet authority in his voice, direct and low. "Ask."She took a breath. "Do you have somewhere to be? A life, somewhere? People who wonder where you are at night?The question hung in the cold air between them.It's complicated," he said finally.

"That's not an answerNo." A pause that went on one beat too long. "It's not."She let it go. She'd learned when to push and when to wait, and something in his stillness told her that whatever sat beneath that answer was real and unresolved and she'd do more damage pressing than waiting.She was doing that again. Romanticizing. She could feel it the warm tilt of her own thoughts, the way she was arranging the facts into something that suited the story she wanted.She'd read too many novels. Sophie had said this for years.I feel guilty," she said."Coming out here. Talking to you."Zane looked at her steadily. "Because of your husband." "Yes."

"Does he know you?" Not unkind. Just honest. "Does he ask what you're thinking?"She opened her mouth and closed it. She thought about last night,Alexander in the living room, her talking about the painting, the single word interesting falling from him like something accidentally dropped.He asked where I'd been,she said slowly. "Yesterday. First time."Zane said nothing. Just waited.He seemed like he might say something else. Then he didn't." "What do you think he wanted to say?"I don't know." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a reflex she hated. "I never know with him. He's like a room with the lights off. You know there's furniture in there. You're just not sure what shape anything is."

The wind moved through the garden below. Somewhere down the block a car passed and was gone.Are you happy in your marriage? Zane asked.The question was quiet and direct and she'd known it was coming, and still it landed somewhere behind her ribs."No," she said. The word was easier than she'd expected. "But I made a commitment."To a man who makes you feel like staff."To a contract I signed with my eyes open."That's not the same as happiness."

"I know." She looked at the garden lights. "But it's not I don't want to leave. That's the strange part. I thought about it, early on, and I didn't want to. Which means something. I just can't figure out what."Zane was quiet beside her. The kind of quiet that meant something was happening behind it.Maybe," he said at last, "you're not as resigned as you think."Or maybe I'm braver than I feel."Or both."He left not long after. He always left before midnight, for reasons he'd never explained and she'd stopped asking about. She watched him go the easy, unhurried movement over the balcony railing, down and away into the dark and felt the specific weight of missing someone who'd just been beside her.She stayed out in the cold a few minutes longer.She was thinking about the room with the lights off. About the single word interesting. About a man who asked if she was hungry and then called it practical, as if kindness were something that needed a cover story.She went inside.At the end of the hallway, Alexander's wing was dark and silent. She stopped outside her door and looked at it for a moment.Then her phone lit up on the table inside. A text from Sophie.Just checking in. How are things? Still alive over there?"Sandra picked up the phone. Sat on the edge of the bed. Started typing.She stopped. Deleted it. Started again.She typed: "I think I might be in trouble."

Three dots appeared immediately. "What kind?"

Sandra looked at the dark hallway. Looked at the balcony door.The kind where you don't know which feeling is the dangerous one," she typed. "We need coffee. Soon."Sophie's reply came back in two seconds: "Tomorrow. Don't do anything stupid tonight."Sandra set the phone down.From somewhere in the east wing, just barely audible, she heard a door close. Alexander, home late. Moving through his half of the house in the dark.She sat very still and listened to the silence that followed.That was the thing about a room with the lights off.Someone had to be the first to reach for the switch.