Take my lips, she sang, I want to lose them. Take my arms, I’ll never use them.
I pulled a pen out of my pocket and jotted the lyrics down on my napkin. In the mirror, I saw the shapes of Opp and the girl flicker and rise. She followed him to the dance floor. They left their plates at the table.
Once they’d started dancing, he held her hand at his shoulder. His other hand braced the small of her back, and while he turned her around the floor, I saw her from different angles. From behind, she could have been any girclass="underline" that narrowing of her waist; the hem of her dress at the midpoint of her calves; the run in her stocking, which had worked up from her ankle. From another angle, when he’d turned her around, I saw only his back, and her fingertips clasping his hand. At a third angle, from the side, I could see the line of her profile.
Her hair was loosely pulled back on one side, fastened there with a clip. A few times, with the tip of her finger, she touched the high point of her cheekbone.
It struck me, even then, as a strange gesture. It was almost as if she were touching her cheekbone to make sure her face was still there. Then I thought, Is she crying?
I couldn’t say. Either way, I don’t think Opp ever noticed. His head was above hers. If she was crying, and maybe she wasn’t, I don’t think Opp ever realized. He never stepped back, or looked with any surprise at her face. They only kept dancing. When the song finished, the Mexican girl left the stage for a while, and Opp and the girl headed back to their table.
As soon as she sat, she reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a box of cigarettes. Almost at the same time, as if it were a choreographed aspect of a scene they’d planned in advance, Opp pulled out a lighter. Then he leaned over the table to help her.
ONCE, A FEW WEEKS AFTER WARREN SHIPPED OUT, I HEARD MAY GET out of bed. She moved over the floor and closed the door to the bedroom. Then I heard the sound of water running from the tap in the bathroom.
It went on a long time, too long for her to be washing her hands. Too long for her to be just washing her face. After a while, I started to worry, so I got up and went to the bathroom. I moved as quietly as I could. And I stopped before I got to the door, so she wouldn’t see my shadow under the crack.
I didn’t want her to think I was following her in her own house. I stood in the hall and craned my neck forward. I got my ear close to the door. Then I heard her crying. Or that was my best guess. If she was crying, she was crying very quietly, trying not to make any noise. It sounded like a faint succession of coughs, made gentler by the sound of the water.
Standing alone in the hall, wondering whether or not she was crying, I remembered my brother.
I thought of him, leaning on the railing of the back stoop. I remembered the smell of the jasmine, and the moths frying themselves on the streetlights, and the way he brought up the subject of May.
At first, it all seemed so mild and pleasant. He was happy, he said, that I’d found a woman I loved. He talked about her jokes for a while, and how quick she was at cards. Then he asked where her accent was from.
“What accent?” I said.
He shrugged, and made himself busy fiddling around with his lighter. We were quiet for a while. Then he started talking again.
“Tell me again,” he said, “where she’s from in Wisconsin?”
He said it lightly, not looking at me directly. Staring off past the fences cluttered with vines, past the yard where the Millers’ dog was lying outside its doghouse.
I answered the question. Warren nodded. “And which school did she say that she went to?”
By then, that metal taste had flooded the back of my mouth, but still, I answered the question. I hadn’t yet pinpointed the problem. I only realized once I’d already given the name of the schooclass="underline" he’d asked the question as if I didn’t know the right answer.
As if my wife might be lying to me, and I hadn’t realized. As if I’d been a fool to believe her.
Then I looked at him a little more closely. What did he think he knew that I didn’t?
When our mother asked us if we’d come with her, Warren went. I was older than he was. I knew what kind of life it would be. So I stayed with our father, and Warren went with our mother to Texas.
I was older than he was. I probably should have looked after him better. But I let him go. He survived it, but we had different lives. He left junior college to sign up for the army, and by the time I saw him again, he read car magazines and stood two inches taller than I did. And then he stayed with us for three nights, and maybe it was because of those years he spent in Texas, but immediately he saw what I’d made myself blind to.
Or he felt he did. Or wanted me to believe that.
I still don’t know. I can only picture him as he was when he leaned against that railing, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He was tapping his cigarette box on his palm and squinting off down the alley, pretending he didn’t want to offend me. When I answered his question about where May went to high school, he started to say something, but I stood up. Then I went inside. The screen door banged in its frame when I left him.
Walking back to the bedroom, I paused a few times. I almost went back to join him. It was the night before he shipped out. I thought maybe I should let him say what he’d meant to.
But then I kept going. In the bedroom, I took off my clothes as quietly as I could. I draped them over the chair. I got under the covers. Then, in bed, I looked at the outline of May’s shoulder.
I looked at the slope of her waist. I looked at the rise of her hip, facing away from me in the darkness.
What accent? I thought. And why would she lie about the school that she went to?
IN THE BLURRED MIRROR OVER THE BAR, OPP AND THE GIRL WERE both smoking. She was listening, with her head cocked to one side. He spoke, gesturing with the hand that held his cigarette. Every so often, he flicked the ash off without taking his eyes away from her face.
When the waiter came to bring him the check, they both looked up as if startled. Then they dug around for their wallets. I didn’t wait to see which of them paid. I left a dollar on the bar and headed out with my face down.
“What’d you see?” Frank asked, once I’d climbed into the De Soto.
“They had dinner,” I said.
“What else?”
“They danced.”
“Anything else?”
I thought of her touching her cheek. I thought of the way he’d leaned forward to help her when she pulled out her cigarette.
“That’s it,” I said. “Dinner. And three rounds of martinis.”
FROM BROADWAY, WE FOLLOWED THE PLYMOUTH AT A SAFE DISTANCE. At Montgomery Street, they turned left, then climbed the hill, and they were nearly to the top when she pulled over and parked.
I checked my watch: 10:58. They’d gotten out of the car and were heading toward a three-story building.
“No way she survives this,” Frank said.
I tried to ignore him, but there was something unnerving about the way that building swallowed them whole. One minute they’d been on the sidewalk, the next minute they weren’t. Once they were inside, the building remained dark for what seemed like a long time. I guess they were climbing the stairs, but at that point we didn’t know. We’d lost sight of them for the moment. When the lights finally came on in the top-story apartment, even Frank breathed a sigh of relief. One by one, three windows came into play. The lights blazed on like signals.
“Out you go, bub,” Frank said.
I reached into the glove compartment and took out the camera.
OUTSIDE, THE NIGHT SMELLED LIKE THE BAY. IT MUST HAVE BEEN cloudy, because there was no starlight. I crossed the street and stood in the yard opposite the building they’d entered. I found a place close to the trunk of a big, leafy tree, trying to keep myself in the shadows.