Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,3
while she sat at the table eating her cookie, he watched her in silence.
The following morning:
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
“I just wanted to say that it must have been strange, hearing that from me; you must have been reeling—that’s R-E-E-L-I-N-G, not R-E-A-L-I-N-G, which isn’t a bad word, either. What I’m saying is that it was meant in the moment, but it doesn’t mean anything should change between us. I don’t want anything to change. You do what you want and I do what I want.”
“Of course.”
“Good girl.”
When Alice hung up, she was smiling.
Then she thought about it a little longer, and she frowned.
She was reading the instructions that had come with her watch when her father called to inform her, for the second time that week, that not a single Jew had reported to work in the towers on the day they came down. But the writer did not call her again for many days. Alice slept with her phone next to her pillow and when she wasn’t in bed carried it around with her everywhere—to the kitchen when she got herself a drink, to the bathroom when she went to the bathroom. Also making her crazy was her toilet seat, the way it slid to the side every time she sat on it.
She thought of going back to their bench in the park, but decided on a walk instead. It was Memorial Day weekend and Broadway was closed for a street fair. Already at eleven the neighborhood was smoky and the air sizzling with falafel, fajitas, French fries, Sloppy Joes, corn on the cob, fennel sausages, funnel cake, and fried dough the diameter of a Frisbee. Ice-cold lemonade. Free spinal health exams. “We the People” legal document administration—Divorce $399, Bankruptcy $199. At one of the stalls peddling brandless bohemian fashion, there was a pretty poppy-colored sundress lolling on the breeze. It was only ten dollars. The Indian stallholder got it down so that Alice could try it on in the back of his van, where a watery-eyed German shepherd watched her with his chin on his paws.
That night, when she was already in her pajamas:
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mary-Alice. Did you see the game?”
“What game?”
“The Red Sox–Yankees game. The Yankees won fourteen to five.”
“I don’t have a television. Who pitched?”
“Who pitched. Everyone pitched. Your grandmother pitched a few innings. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want to come over?”
Alice took off her pajamas and put on her new dress. Already a thread needed biting off.
When she got to his apartment, only the lamp on his nightstand was lit and he was propped up in bed with a book and a glass of chocolate soymilk.
“It’s spring!” cried Alice, pulling the dress over her head.
“It’s spring,” he said, sighing wearily.
Alice crawled lynxlike toward him across the snow-white duvet. “Mary-Alice, sometimes you really do look sixteen.”
“Cradlerobber.”
“Graverobber. Careful of my back.”
Sometimes, it could feel like playing Operation—as if his nose would flash and his circuitry buzz if she failed to extract his Funny Bone cleanly.
“Oh, Mary-Alice. You’re crazy, do you know? You’re crazy and you get it and I love you for it.”
Alice smiled.
When she got home, it had been only an hour and forty minutes since he’d called, and everything was exactly as she’d left it, but her bedroom looked too bright and unfamiliar somehow, as though it now belonged to someone else.
• • •
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
He left a message.
“Who takes the greatest pleasure in leading the other one astray?”
• • •
Another message:
“Does anyone smell mermaid in here?”
• • •
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
“Mary-Alice?”
“Yes?”
“Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“What are you doing?”
“Reading.”
“What are you reading?”
“Oh, nothing interesting.”
“Do you have air-conditioning?”
“No.”
“You must be hot.”
“I am.”
“It’s going to get even hotter this weekend.”
“I know.”
“What’ll you do?”
“I don’t know. Melt.”
“I’m coming back into the city on Saturday. Would you like to see me then?”
“Yes.”
“Six o’clock?”
“Yep.”
“I’m sorry. Six thirty?”
“Okay.”
“I might even have some dinner for you.”
“That would be nice.”
He forgot about dinner, or decided against it. Instead, when she arrived he sat her down on the edge of his bed and presented her with two large Barnes & Noble bags filled to the handles with books. Huckleberry Finn. Tender Is the Night. Journey to the End of the Night. The Thief’s Journal. July’s People. Tropic of Cancer. Axel’s Castle. The Garden of Eden. The Joke. The Lover. Death in Venice and Other Stories. First Love and Other Stories. Enemies, A Love Story . . . Alice picked up one by a writer whose name she had seen but never