chapter 1
fiction
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
clasp her hand tightly. “Never. Not once. But I sometimes
think about the idea of it. Not really it, itself—”
“The idea of it.”
“I never once joined in,” Daniel repeated.
“I believe you,” said Janet, crossing her legs. She wondered what the handsome couple sharing the chocolate
mousse would make of this conversation, even though
they were laughing closely with each other and seemed
to have no need for anyone else in the restaurant. She
herself had noticed everyone else in the restaurant while
waiting for the paté to arrive, dressed in its sprig of
parsley: the older couple, the lanky waiter, the women
wrapped in patterned scarves. Now she felt like propelling
herself into one of their conversations.
“I’m upsetting you,” he said, swirling fork lines into his
white sauce.
“Not so much,” she said.
“Nevermind,” he said. “Really. You look so beautiful tonight, Janet.”
On the drive home, she sat in the backseat, as she did
on occasion. He said it was to protect her from more dangerous car accidents; she liked thinking for a moment that
he was her chauffeur, that she had reached a state of adult
richness where you did nothing for yourself anymore and
returned to infancy. She imagined she had a cook, a hairdresser, a bath-filler. A woman who came over to fluff her
pillow and tuck her in. Daniel turned on the c lassical music station and a cello concerto spilled out from the speakers in the back, and from the angle of her seat, Janet could
just catch a glimpse of the bottom of her nose and top of
her lips in the rear view mirror. She stared at them for the
entire ride home. Her nose had fine small bones at the tip,
and her lipstick, even after dinner, was unsmudged. There
was something deeply soothing to her in this image, in the
simplicity of her vanity. She liked how her upper lip fit in-