“Hey,” Carver said as he approached her, locking the car and stowing his keys in his pocket. “How, uh, how you doing?”
“I’m good,” Lillian said, looking him up and down. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks. You have glitter in your hair.”
She reached up and fluffed her hair, which shined like Ralph’s coat in the sunlight. “Do I?”
“Yep.” Carver gestured toward the beach. “Shall we?”
There were fewer people out today than he’d expected, but it was cool and breezy by the water; the Long Island Sound was dotted by whitecaps. Carver was glad he’d changed into joggingpants before he left. They had relative privacy as they walked across the muddy gray sand, and more of it after they got past a wiry old man who was out with a metal detector.
“So, are we talking or what?” Lillian said, perching her sunglasses in her hair and looking over at him.
Carver took a deep breath of the briny air. “I think we should. I think I owe you a few explanations.”
“I’m pretty sure I get what’s going on here,” she said drily.
“I owe you some disclosures, then.”
“Okay, go for it.”
“First, uh, I slept with Scott again last night.”
“Yeah, I figured you would.”
He glanced at her. “Did you sleep with anyone last night?”
“No,” Lillian said, laughing. “The couple I left with wanted to sleep with me, but I wasn’t that interested. I did do some coke with them, though, and we went to a club. Then we drank at their place with some of their friends, and they let me play with their pet snake and their tattoo gun. The husband let me tattoo a little L on his ass. It was fun.”
“Uh — okay. Good.”
“Any other disclosures?”
“I have a few things to tell you, but I wanted to start with the most important one.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“I think —” Carver inhaled again. Suddenly this felt impossible in the same way it felt impossible to place himself in grave bodily danger. His throat locked up, trying to stop him. “I, ah.” Fuck it, fuck it, he needed to do it, it had to be done. He thought of his father dead at thirty-three and thought about how angry at himself he would be if he kept living this half-life only to have even that snatched from him. One breath later it rushed out of him: “I think I want a divorce.”
Carver’s vision went black at the edges after he said this, like the blood had drained from his head, and he continued walking on autopilot. When he came back into himself he got up the nerve to look over at Lillian, who was squinting with her gaze lowered as if thinking.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Can I counter?”
“Uh —” Carver shook his head, disoriented. “Yeah.”
“Obviously, if you’re dead set on that, there’s really nothing I can do about it. I just can’t believe you’re sincerely dead set on it. Everything was fine Thursday night.”
“But it wasn’t actually fine.”
“Well, obviously,” Lillian said, rolling her eyes. “No, I get that you’re unhappy, or whatever. But you’re not giving me any kind of chance to address it.”
“I know, I get how that’s not fair, but I don’t think you can.”
“You might not be giving me enough credit.”
“I think I’m gay, though,” he said with desperation. “Or gay enough that I can’t be completely fulfilled by you, you know? And the older I get, the harder it gets, like, with a woman. I know you’ve noticed that.”
“Yeah, it’s because male testosterone levels start falling off a cliff after age thirty,” Lillian said. “But I account for that, I let you do whatever you want with men.”
