I woke up early with Lucia’s face etched in my mind. I pulled up the photos of her and clicked through all of them until I landed on the one. She was the Madonna. She was an Angel. A Child.
The photo needed more sex if it were to achieve its intended result. Making a pregnant woman look sexy is a subtle art. If I made any alterations, they would have to be indiscernible so that Lucia wouldn’t catch them. After some careful scrutiny, I developed a game plan: I darkened the shadows around her breasts. I took a sliver off her waist to make it slightly smaller than it actually was. I moved her hand so that it was closer to her crotch. I layered beads of moisture on her face. And I parted her lips a little bit. When Lucia’s boyfriend saw the photo, he would see a woman who was sexually aroused, notwithstanding her angelic innocence. He would imagine fucking her again. At the same time, he would see the mother of his child. And he would see his unborn child inside her. It would be difficult to resist all of that. Maybe impossible.
When my work was finished, I emailed Lucia the photo. Lucia, I had to send you this. Don’t forget what we discussed.
For the remainder of the day, I checked my email constantly. It was close to midnight when she wrote back. Wow. Thanks, Delta.
I felt certain she would send her boyfriend the photo. I had extreme confidence in my work. I knew how he would react to the picture of Lucia. He would want to claim her and her baby as his property. Right away, before someone else did.
The Straubs and I had established a routine; they assumed I would babysit Natalie every Friday. But given the nature of our last exchange, I could no longer take the routine for granted. I texted Amelia on Friday morning. She didn’t respond.
I tried to distract myself with errands and activities that day.
Friday evening I returned home and gave Eliza her dinner, and afterward we sat together on the sofa for several minutes, at which time I stroked the soft fur on her back and told her about my day. If she had been able to speak, she would have asked me not to leave her for so many hours. She would have asked me to bring her along next time. She would have told me that loneliness made her want to end her life—that the walls of the apartment we shared were inching imperceptibly toward each other, so that she feared she would one day be crushed.
I took a glass of wine to my office and spent two hours online researching adoption in New York State. I learned that a birth mother can decide whether an adoption is “open,” and if she stipulates, she can see the child as often as she chooses to. That kind of ongoing connection to Lucia would be an albatross around Amelia’s neck, especially if Lucia were struggling financially. The Straubs might find themselves coerced into supporting Lucia’s whole family.
I also researched surrogacy laws. From a conversation with Amelia, I’d already gathered that paid surrogacy wasn’t legal in New York. I’d have a significant advantage as an “altruistic surrogate,” if the Straubs were to go that route. A whole layer of logistical complication could be eliminated, though they wouldn’t have an enforceable contract. In New York, a woman who gives birth is presumed to be the legal mother at birth and she has preferred parental status. If I were the surrogate, they would have to trust me.
Later that night, I opened up one of the folders on my hard drive. It contained photos of the Straubs’ kitchen, the ones I took when I was babysitting Natalie and Piper. I couldn’t help dwelling on the high ceilings, the exquisite finishes, the various touches of brass, copper, nickel all working in unison with glass to create a shimmery vision. I remember when I first saw that kitchen. It appeared to be made out of crystal because it sparkled so much.
I pulled up the photos of myself that I’d used for my website. Five years earlier, Lana had shot them as a favor to me. They were by far the best photos of myself that I’d ever had taken. The close-ups emphasized my bright blue eyes, creamy skin, and silky hair. The long shots highlighted my hourglass figure. I’d enjoyed designing my website, primarily because it had been an opportunity to showcase the photos. Once finished with my website, I’d sought out other occasions to use them. I considered it a waste to leave such extraordinary pictures sitting unused on my computer, so I placed my image in advertisements I found online and created photos of myself skiing or hiking or scuba diving. The activity was amusing, but since I didn’t know the other people in the frame, and I’d never been to the locations, it was hard for me to believe in the pictures. Whereas, I discovered that inserting myself into my clients’ photos wasn’t such a stretch for my imagination, and, as a result, I found it much more gratifying.
When I layered my image into the Straubs’ kitchen, it was a way to spend time with the Straubs, all of whom I missed terribly, and a way to fully inhabit their home and their life. I found stock photos of pots and pans online and layered them into the scene too, along with cutting boards, knives, vegetables, and fruit. I already had photos of Natalie and Piper watching Mean Girls. And now I had photos of myself cooking. I cut back and forth between the images to create a short slideshow. One would have inferred that I was their mother, or possibly Natalie’s big sister. Then I cut to photos of Natalie and Piper sound asleep in Natalie’s room. That came afterward in the sequence. Then, at the end of the evening, I cut to photos of me and Fritz. We were making love in the Straubs’ bedroom. I had already taken independent photos of Fritz, me, and the Straubs’ bedroom. I just had to layer our bodies on their bed. Fritz’s naked body posed a bit of a challenge, but I combined a few different images, some I had taken myself and some from Amelia’s Instagram account—pictures of him in his swimsuit. As luck would have it, the light in all of these was coming from the same direction, hitting him at the same angle. I had more than one AI “undressing” app on my computer. All I had to do was input Fritz’s image in a swimsuit, and after a couple of minutes, I’d get Fritz completely nude, front, back and side views. The computer’s best guess of what he’d look like naked was close, but inferior to my best guess, so I tweaked the computer-generated image, changing the skin tone and muscle tone slightly.
I was pleased with my creation.
I inserted a photo of Amelia and me together in the cooking section. She was reading a recipe to me and I was mixing the ingredients in a bowl. It looked to be my home and I was cooking with my dear friend Amelia. I found it comforting to play the slideshow for myself and watched it several times. I especially liked the section with me and Fritz in the Straubs’ bed, our bodies pressed together. When I looked at the photos, I felt connected to a world and a life. I thought about replacing Fritz’s body with Amelia’s—an image of me and Amelia, our bodies pressed against each other. That would also be an uplifting vision, but I instinctively felt it would be a little harder to achieve.
I was about to go to sleep when I realized that I hadn’t included Jasper. I experienced a stab of guilt: I hadn’t thought about my son, and now it wasn’t clear how to incorporate him. Where had Jasper been the whole time? I finally decided that he had been sleeping the entire evening. That was plausible. He was only five years old, after all. So I created a bed for him in Natalie’s room, and layered his delicate little body onto that bed. It was Natalie and Jasper, as opposed to Natalie and Piper, who were asleep in Natalie’s room. It was as if Piper had gone home after the movie, and Jasper and Natalie were asleep in their beds.
I texted Amelia again Saturday morning and didn’t hear back. I felt increasingly unmoored and didn’t know what to do with myself. I needed contact with the Straubs. I hadn’t seen them or spoken to them for a week.
Ian was now my only source of information. I made plans to meet him for dinner at a gastropub in the West Village. After dinner, we bundled up and walked down Greenwich Avenue through the crowd of pedestrians. After several blocks, we came to a red light and he checked his watch. “Do you want to have a drink with me?” His breath escaped from his mouth in a misty cloud.
This was what I’d been hoping for. I took his gloved hand in mine, looked him in the eye, and nodded. Behind him was a group of rowdy teenagers. One of the heavier girls was holding a lamppost and pretending to do a striptease, with one knee hooked around the pole.
“At my apartment, I meant to say.”
“I know,” I said.
The teenagers laughed at the pretend striptease. They chanted: “Donna! Donna!”
“I haven’t been on too many dates recently,” Ian said shyly. “I forget the protocol.”
I pressed my fingers into his palm.
We crossed the street and passed a group of loud tourists, maps in hand, young women with bare shoulders and cleavages exposed in spite of the mid-March frost. Even before I moved to New York, when I’d visited for a weekend, I despised the tourists, though I myself was one. I could see how different we were from real New Yorkers. Less sophisticated, less educated, less everything. Even then, I wanted people to believe that I lived here. I understood how important it was to fit in. Emily Miller had been helpful in that respect. She’d grown up with money and understood the landscape. When I was working on her weddings, I watched her. I listened to her. She’d pretend to let her hair down, but she was performing the entire time—not unlike Amelia Straub. A consummate professional, Emily never said or did anything by accident.
Ian’s one-bedroom apartment, on the second floor of a prewar walk-up, appeared to have been renovated recently, and the masculine furniture was in good taste relative to his fashion sense. The black frames of the enormous uncovered windows contrasted with the crisp white walls, as did the polished dark wood on the back of his white bookshelves. The surfaces were bare, except for a few carefully selected items, probably purchased on his travels, like a Balinese wooden sculpture.
Ian disappeared into his kitchen and returned with two glasses of red wine, which he placed on the coffee table in front of the sofa. I took several sips, deposited my wine on the table, and turned to him. I saw no point in wasting time. I leaned in toward him and we kissed. He smelled like aftershave and garlic. My hand on his crotch. Then my legs around his waist. We crossed to his bed, and then I allowed him to take the lead.
I let him undress me and then we screwed. I enjoyed having sex with Ian and liked the fact that he was smitten with me. But if I were to measure the gravitational pull that I felt toward the Straubs versus Ian, there was no comparison.
After, I suggested another glass of wine. Sex and wine were both helpful in getting the information I needed. Ian pulled his boxers on. He left the room and returned with the half-empty bottle of red wine and our two glasses. He poured us each a glass. I pulled the sheet up over my chest, and positioned two pillows behind me so that I could sit up in bed and drink.
Ian ran his fingers through my hair. “God, you’re beautiful, Delta.”
I looked down, as though embarrassed by the compliment.
“Each time I see you, you’re more beautiful.” He laughed. “I don’t know exactly how that works.”
I looked into Ian’s eyes and saw a generosity of spirit and kindness. But I also saw mediocrity. I didn’t see someone who planned to succeed at the highest level. I saw someone who was content to lead an average life.
“Maybe because I’m trying to impress you,” I said.
Under the sheet, Ian placed a warm hand on my thigh. I kissed his neck.
When finished with my wine, I climbed on top of him and rested my head next to his on his pillow. “Is it OK with you if I spend the night?”
Ian looked more relaxed than he had several hours earlier, with far less tension in his face. “I wouldn’t let you go home now. It’s two in the morning.”
“I want to be close to you,” I whispered in his ear.
He wrapped his arms tightly around my body.
I pushed my pelvis up against his, just to keep his mind whirling and defenses down. “I can’t stop thinking about Amelia and Fritz. I’m worried about them.”
He kissed my cheek. “I think they’re doing pretty well.”
“Yes?”
“I spoke to Fritz yesterday,” he said.
“And?”
“It looks like that baby … the baby they want to adopt…” He traced his finger over the outline of my mouth.
“Yes?”
“It’s going to happen. He said it’s going to happen.”
I focused on my breath, low in my body. Shallow, high breathing leads to anxiety and vice versa. “Wow. Is he happy?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“But he’s going along with it?”
“He thinks it’s too late to turn back because Amelia’s frantic. He thinks that she’d lose her mind if he stopped her.”
I rolled off Ian and lay next to him, my head on his shoulder, until he fell asleep. I looked at his digital clock periodically throughout the night, almost every hour, and counted the minutes until I could go home. Ian slept soundly.
The next day, I had a genuine excuse to leave—an early-morning job shooting newborn twins. He insisted on making me a cappuccino with his shiny red Nespresso machine. Before I left, we confirmed our date for the following week. I couldn’t risk losing momentum.