Matvei is the pause between two notes of a song.
I look up at him in the buzzy amber light, in his thin black tank, his bare feet, his ink half-hidden, and I think:In eight months, you’re going to be someone’s father.
I don’t say that, though. I tuck it under my tongue with all the other things I’m holding for later. “No,” I say instead. “You feel very, very real.”
He nods and releases my wrist, which falls limply to my side. I can’t bear to look at him anymore. Like he said, it hurts too much sometimes.
So I softly open my door and slip inside. I deny myself the pleasure of looking back at him, because if I did, I kinda sorta think I wouldn’t be able to resist dragging him in here and seeing just how detailed those tattoos are.
Especially the ones that dip beneath the waistband of his pajamas.
But when my door is shut behind me, I pause and wait. I’m listening for?—
Yes, there it is.
The soft sound of his door opening. The soft sound of it closing. The faint creak of old floorboards as he moves around in his room, the room that, as I’ve now learned, shares a wall with mine.
I set the ice bucket down on the bar cart. I don’t even pour myself a glass of water. The whole reason I left the room has evaporated into meaninglessness.
The bed is made. The fire has died down to coals. Raymond’s bag still sits at the foot of the luggage rack, untouched since he stormed off to play squash a thousand years ago. Raymond himself is still off doing whatever he’s doing, which I suspect involves thinly veiled threats and deals that should not see the light of day.
For once, I’m grateful for it.
I undress, drop the robe at the foot of the bed, and crawl under the duvet. Then I do what I’ve done for so many nights of my long and loveless marriage: I take stock.
Item one: I am, by all available evidence, quite possibly going to die of an unfinished orgasm. This ache has gone past inconvenient and into actively medical. My thighs are still trembling, an unbearable little hum that won’t quit no matter how I shift my legs.
Item two: Susan Oglethorpe witnessed said almost-gasm. Her name has become a metronome in my skull, ticking off each newawful possibility. Matvei said she won’t say anything and I want, very desperately, to believe him.
But, counterpoint:She is Susan fucking Oglethorpe.
Item three, and the worst of all: roughly eighteen inches of plaster away from me, on the other side of this wall, a man is brushing his teeth, or pulling back his sheets, or padding around on those godforsaken bare feet, and I want him so badly my molars hurt.
I roll over and press my face into the pillow.
This,I think,is going to be a very long night.
That’s my second-to-last thought. My very last one, just before sleep claims me, comes as I reach out a sleepy hand and press it against the wall. I have no proof of this, and it’s probably a silly thought anyway, but I like to think Matvei is doing the same thing on his side. With my other hand, I touch my belly, linking this improbable family together again.
You see that, little one?I think to the bean in my belly, fingers spreading on the plaster.We’re not alone tonight.
I fall asleep like that, with my hand on the wall.
26
CASS
In the morning, it’s pheasant time.
It’s a Snyder & Oglethorpe firm tradition, or so they tell me. For some godforsaken reason I do not and will never understand, on the Saturday morning of the annual retreat, we all haul our asses into the frigid, snow-choked woods surrounding the hotel to unleash high-powered ammunition at the poor, unsuspecting birds that have been corralled here for our entertainment.
To make things even better, we do it early as hell. That’s how, before the sun has even risen over the treetops, I find myself standing on a dirt path, bundled up in everything I own, breathing white plumes and trying not to freeze my tits off.
I yawn loudly, which earns me a skewering glance from Raymond before he leaves my side to go greet the others. I don’t know how he’s so wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. He came back to the room incredibly late last night—three A.M.? four?—reeking of bourbon and cigars. I had zero intention of interacting with him if I could help it, so I pretended to be asleep.
He couldn’t have cared any less about staying quiet. His drunk ass just stumbled and bumbled around the room, doing this and that, until he finally collapsed into bed next to me. He fell asleep with his shoes still on, snoring like a fed bear within a minute, and I laid there listening to him until the sun came up.
Normally, that’s a recipe for a very bad morning. A hungover Raymond is a dangerous Raymond. But he must’ve gotten good news last night, because he’s been all chummy smiles since we gathered in the hotel lobby to be bussed out to the site of this year’s bird massacre.
