“I don’t know,” she said. She wiped his sweaty forehead. She dropped her wet hand onto the arm of the chair. She was crouching, looking up at him, wondering if he was just pale from shock.
“What are you doing in that dress?” he said.
“I was going to surprise you,” she said. “I got all dressed up to seduce you.”
He snorted. He closed his eyes again. In a few seconds he opened his eyes and said, “Is that your dress?”
“It’s Pia’s.”
“Pia’s?” he said. “What was the idea? That I’d dress up like Lou and we’d play house?”
She smiled. “I just thought I’d dress up and seduce you.”
“Well, when this fucking pain stops — if it ever stops — why don’t I put on one of Lou’s suits and we can talk about postmodern architecture and politics at the college?”
“And what do I talk about?” she said.
“Whatever Pia would talk about,” he said. A little color was coming back to his face. There was a white smear over the bee bite. So far, it hadn’t swollen.
She sat on the floor, her hand resting on his knee. “Does it feel at all better?” she said.
“I can’t tell,” he said. He briefly touched her hand, then clapped his over the bite again.
“I don’t know what she’d talk about,” Fran said. “She’d say that Anthony wants a new robot. Or she’d tell him about some paper Anthony got a good grade on.”
“Couples aren’t supposed to always talk about their children,” he said.
“But then I don’t know what she’d talk about,” Fran said, puzzled.
“Hey,” he said, “we don’t really have to do this. It’s just a game.”
“I don’t think she wears these dresses,” Fran said softly, running her hand across the skirt to smooth it. “The minute I opened her closet and saw that long row of dresses hanging there so neatly, I had the feeling that she never wore them anymore.”
“What do you think she wears?”
“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t make sense, would it? Most everywhere you go, you can just go as you are. She always looked so beautiful in the city. Remember that until I found out she sewed, I couldn’t understand how she could have so many designer clothes?”
“I always thought you were a little jealous of Pia,” he said. “Which is particularly stupid, because you’re such different types.”
“She’s what American girls want to be,” Fran said. “Very cosmopolitan. Sophisticated. Simple, but beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Take off Pia’s dress and we’ll go to bed and be sophisticated,” he said. “Just let me take a quick shower.”
“Is your arm better?” she said, letting him help her up.
“There!” he said. “That’s good: that’s just what Pia would say in this situation, right?”
She smiled. “I would imagine,” she said.
“Then maybe what Lou needs is to be in pain more often. That way his wife will have something to talk to him about.”
In the same way it came upon Fran that Pia no longer wore elegant dresses, it dawned on Chap that Lou and Pia no longer communicated.
“I don’t want anything to ever happen to you,” Chap said, following Fran up the stairs. He stood in the doorway and watched as she shimmied out of the dress.
“I don’t either,” she said, “but that’s not too likely, is it?”
“No,” he said.
“The question is just what’s going to hit me between the eyes.” She stepped out of the dress as carefully as she intended. She was wearing only panties and Pia’s black high heels. She gave him a coquettish look.
He knew that she only meant to turn aside what he said, but for a split second, he wanted to say something important, so she would wipe the smile off her face. He wanted to say: “Let me tell you what happened to Pia,” though he did not, because Lou had sworn him to secrecy.
They made love before he showered. He closed his eyes tightly and did not open them again until after he climaxed, though the scent of Pia’s perfume almost tempted him to look quickly to make sure it was Fran.
Afterward, he looked at Pia’s green dress on the floor. He ran his finger lightly down Fran’s spine. The smell of sweat intermingled with the perfume. The shade flapped in the breeze, then was sucked against the window screen. How was it that he knew only now — not months before, when he sat beside Lou at the bar or cooked breakfast for him or clapped his arm around his shoulder as he headed off to the hospital — how was it that only now he knew the Brunettis’ marriage had caved in?
“I was always jealous of her,” Fran said, her voice muffled in the pillow. “You were right when you said that.”
4
“Mrs. Brikel,” Chap said as he rolled down the window on the passenger’s side of the car. He had just gotten into the car when he looked out and saw her leaving the laundromat, carrying a white laundry bag.
“Hello there,” she said, raising one elbow instead of waving. The bag was as round as a barrel. Sunglasses were on top of her head. She was squinting in the sun.
“You have a car, I suppose,” he said.
“That’s a long story,” she said, “but my cousin’s boy is coming to get me.”
“I’d be glad to give you a ride,” he said.
“Well, I wonder about that,” she said. She moved her elbow again. Her arm moved away from her body like a bird’s wing stretching. She looked at her watch: a large digital watch. He noticed also that she was wearing pink running shoes with white tennis socks. The shoes were tied with bright red laces. She shifted from foot to foot as she thought about taking the ride.
“Would you be so kind?” she said. “I can go over there by the hardware store to call and save Jay a trip.”
“Go ahead,” he said, turning the button to start the air-conditioning. He put the fan on 3. “Leave those here,” he said, as Mrs. Brikel turned away with her laundry bag.
“I guess I will,” Mrs. Brikel said. He pushed open the door and she put the bag on the front seat; as she walked away, he tossed it into the back seat and stood it upright. Looking after her, he wondered if she was as old as he had thought. Perhaps today she looked younger because of her silly shoes, and her slightly disheveled clothes. All the fashions now were supposed to sag and droop. He was glad that except for sleeping in oversized T-shirts, Fran ignored the new look. Fran had always been quite an individual. It was at her insistence that they married, years ago, in a grove of willows. When something stopped being fun, Fran usually found a way to stop doing it. They no longer flew to his brother’s house for Christmas, since his brother remarried and his wife had four noisy cats. Fran had been trying to decide what career she would embark on next for quite a while, but he gave her credit: if she was restless, she hid it well, and she did not think her quandaries should be his.
Mrs. Brikel was hurrying back toward the car. She greeted a boy on a skateboard, then ran the last few steps. This time when he pushed open the door it was cool inside. She sank into the seat and said, “Aah. This has got to be my lucky day. I would have had to wait another half hour even if Jay was coming. It’s the best luck, running into you.”
He decided she was younger than he had thought.
“Today you remember me, right?” he said.
She laughed as if he had made a very good joke. “I guess by now I do,” she said.
“Car in for repairs?” he said.
“No, it’s a long story. I loaned it to a friend who had to go on a trip. Tomorrow night I’ll get it back, but my son was upset he was missing so many clothes, so I headed in to the laundromat.”
“I’m glad I ran into you.”