BY THE TIME I GOT HOME it was past two in the morning. No one was up to greet me, just as there had been no one to call and tell I’d be late. At the late age of thirty, I was living alone for the first time.
Last summer I’d moved out of the home I’d shared for years with Penny and our two housemates. At first it had been exciting to set up house by myself. The apartment I’d found was a spacious one in an old ivy-covered brick building on Capitol Hill. It was on the fourth floor and the living room window had a lavish western view of Queen Anne Hill and Elliott Bay. I’d watched sunset after sunset all through the summer and fall, and life had seemed, if not perfect, then more than tolerable. The space and the sunsets went together with a sense of independence less tinged with melancholy than I’d dreaded. I’d bought plants and put up posters and learned to cook for one from the section in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest called “Light Meals for Nibblers.”
But by the end of fall my solitude no longer seemed quite so adventurous. Starting in November I found myself going through an unusually promiscuous phase. My affair with Hadley last summer had removed me from my old circle of heterosexual friends, and I threw myself into a string of one-night and one-week stands with women, out of curiosity and need, and as if to confirm all my worried sister’s worst fears about lesbians and their rampantly unstable sex lives.
Over a period of two months I slept with four women—well, maybe that wasn’t so promiscuous; for plenty of people that was a way of life. For Carole at the shop for instance, who went through relationships like new breakfast cereals. But for me, with my vague ideas about commitment, who’d had maybe four boyfriends and Hadley my whole life, it felt pretty daring. I didn’t regret it—I’d learned a lot—but I was thinking about taking a breather. For one thing, it was all so complicated: not starting up, no that was easy, but maintaining an interest, and even worse, breaking off.
Not that most of the women weren’t very nice people—Betty was a classical guitarist and played me a little Bach chaconnes and gaviots while I ate my breakfast; Andrea made me wholewheat pastries and breads until I felt like a grain terminal (batches of muffins still kept turning up forlornly on my doorstep); Dandi gave wonderful massages and Devlin told great stories. But somehow none of them were quite the ticket. After a shorter or longer period I’d find myself yawning and struggling to keep a conversation going, avoiding places where I might meet one of them, and looking around eagerly for someone new, someone who might be the one. I was afraid of admitting to myself what I knew was true—my time with Hadley, short as it had been, had spoiled me. Not only was that the sort of relationship I wanted, but that’s who I still wanted.
I never talked about her to anyone, didn’t know how to talk about her. I didn’t have the words to describe what I’d felt with her. The nearest I could come was the phrase, “We were so regular together.” Sometimes I wondered if it had ever really happened. I would have liked to ask her, but she wasn’t even in Seattle any longer. Her father had had a stroke and she’d gone back to Houston to help take care of him. A postcard with a skyscraper skyline had arrived one day in December and its message had been as uninspiring as its view: “I miss Seattle, but not the rain. My accent’s coming back with a vengeance. You’d probably laugh to hear me.”
Nothing about giving me the opportunity.
I went around my apartment, nervously turning on lights, trying not to think too much about what had happened at the hospital. But the image of blood running down Rosalie’s face, of Trish’s black-rimmed, frightened eyes wouldn’t leave me. They were so young to be on their own, so young to be using their sexuality, and used for it.
Rosalie was dead now, and Trish was running. From who, from what? From me, because I’d pushed her? I should have handled it differently, should have handled the whole thing differently. But I’d been afraid of them, hadn’t really looked at them. Just hadn’t seen them.
In the kitchen I opened the refrigerator out of habit rather than hunger. In a flash Ernesto was there, roused from whatever deep feline sleep he’d been enjoying by the prospect of food. Ernesto was Ray’s cat and I had promised to take care of him while Ray was away. It had been a weak moment and I was regretting it.
Ernesto was as profusely furred as a mohair sweater and as solid as a tank; big as a dog, but without a dog’s friendly, trusting eyes. Ernesto’s gaze was superior, distant and calculating. Even during the time Ray and I had been involved I hadn’t liked Ernesto much. He had a way of ignoring me when I tried to get his attention that made me feel foolish—and a way of being physically aggressive just when I was least interested, when I was trying to sleep, for instance. Now I faced six weeks of his company, a fact that didn’t seem to excite him either. For when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to be fed, he contemplated me severely and gloomily for a moment before turning and padding heavily back to whatever dark recess of the apartment he’d emerged from.
Next to food, sleep was most interesting to Ernesto—and after a few more minutes of bleakly staring at the contents of my refrigerator—old tofu, an open can of tomato paste, six bottles of salad dressing and three withered carrots—I decided he was right and went to bed.
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