1

Something was wrong.

Susan sat in her cubicle (the editor called it an office, but the editor called apartments “flats”) and thought. The morning had gone as usual. Lou lectured aloud to himself about business over breakfast, Andrea spilled everything within her reach, and the dog, Sweet William, whimpered and finally gave up and peed on the hall floor. Business as usual.

But something was wrong.

“You want to go to Bloomie’s during lunch and get ripped off?” Tara’s pretty head appeared over the glass partition that separated their cubicles.

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. We’ll get through the day yet,” and Tara sank down and was dispersed by the thick glass.

Susan felt better immediately; Tara Karsian had that effect on her. They had worked side by side (or nearly, given the thickness of the glass) for seven months, ever since Susan had announced to Lou (“announced” was the wrong word; “whimpered” like Sweet William?) that waiting for Andrea to get out of school was not what her parents had sent her to Barnard for and she wanted to go back to work. Lou had given his “permission” (again the wrong word. “Blessing”? Hardly. “Permission” would have to do). And so, here she was, en cubicle, illustrating a group of ladies’ magazines from approximately nine to somewhat before five each day. Three-thirty was a killer—when Andrea was picked up at school by Mrs. Diamond instead of by her mother. Susan wondered if the blacks also felt guilt at their liberation.

Today’s work was a watercolor still life of a quiche that would simultaneously impress company and act as an aphrodisiac on one’s husband. She mixed the green of baked spinach.

“Are you sure Mary Cassatt started this way?” she called to Tara’s wiggling image.

“Shut up and draw,” came back.

Though the job was not what she had in mind (today a quiche, tomorrow a casserole) Tara more than made up for it. She was a few years younger than Susan, in her early thirties, and, wonder of wonders, nobody’s wife and nobody’s mother. With a gun pressed to her temple, Tara would still be unable to say an intelligible word about potty training or secondary schools. And she had the audacity to live in the Village instead of on West End Avenue. God bless her.

The grass is always greener, Susan thought, and, glancing at her brush, decided the green she had mixed was more like backed grass than spinach.

They grabbed a bite at The Heavenly Burger, during which time Tara regaled Susan (knowing full well that she was embarrassing her) with her sexual exploits of the previous evening, centering around a man of, if you can believe it, twenty-two.

“My God!” Susan laughed.

“A body like silk,” Tara added. “A mind like rayon.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“I can’t avoid it. He’s staying at my apartment till his father sends his allowance.”

They always laughed heartily at lunches; Tara’s round Armenian face would fall, chin resting on collarbone, black hair trembling, as she tried to hide her hysteria from onlookers, Susan’s thinner, more angular face thrown back, the honeyed hair hanging behind her, laughing at the ceiling.

Lunches with Tara were one of the best parts of being alive and she loved her for them.

They ravaged Bloomingdale’s, spending too much, as always, egging each other on, approving, disapproving, suggesting, whispering behind the salesperson’s back, giddy with comradery.

And then it hit Susan.

Something was wrong.

They were in the elevator on the way back when Tara noticed it.

“What’s the matter?”

“Don’t know,” Susan answered. “I just have this funny feeling that something’s wrong.”

“When’s your period due?” Tara asked, much too loudly for Susan.

“Tell you what—” and Susan leaned in and whispered, “When it’s our floor, I’ll turn around and tell everybody I had my period last week.”

“Last week? That’s great!” Tara boomed, and Susan pinched her.

The feeling persisted.

They were having dinner—their usual easygoing, sloppy dinner with Sweet William lying under Andrea’s chair to catch the inevitable droppings and Lou talking nonstop with his mouth full.

“. . . I told him if he’d come down five hundred we’d take it for August. Would you like that, babe?” He wiped mashed potatoes from Andrea’s cheek. “You want to live next to the ocean?”

“I wanna go to camp.”

“When you’re ten.”

“Shi—” and she thought better of it. “Shoot.”

Lou glanced at Susan and realized she hadn’t said a word in minutes; in a family where everyone talked and no one listened it was a dead giveaway.

“How was work?”

“Boring.”

“Want to quit yet?”

“Want to shut up yet?”

“Ooh, what Mommy said!”

“How’s your mother?”

“The job’s fine, my mother’s fine, everything’s fine, Your Honor.” Having a lawyer for a husband had its irritating moments. But of course this wasn’t one of them and so she apologized. “Sorry. I’m just fractious today.”

“Anything I can do?”

She looked at him, at his still youthful, still handsome, still sexy face and wondered why she felt the way she did. It wasn’t her usual dissatisfaction with her slice of the American dream pie; this feeling was worse. Like a far-off call of danger.

“You can load the dishwasher.”

“Done.”

“And you can give Andrea her bath.”

“Done.”

“And you can stop being so nice to me when I’m being so mean to you.”

“Also done.” And he punched her playfully on the arm.

“That hurt,” she said, scowling.

It was worse later that night.

They had made love and that part was good, but then Lou had rolled away from her and fallen asleep, just as she was preparing to tell him of her premonition or fear or whatever it was. She was chastising him to herself when Sweet William, who could always sense her upset, laid his enormous muzzle on her arm. She turned toward him and patted the bed, the signal that he could join her. He did, not nearly as gracefully as he might have a year ago, and she cradled the old dog. He whimpered, his sole sound, and she kissed his forehead and wiped away the ever-present drippings from his eyes. She had loved Sweet William for fourteen years, before Lou, before Andrea, before she had grown into whatever it was that she was. She bought him when she moved into her first apartment; he was a part of her freedom, her identity. And now he was old. She kissed him again and, suddenly overwhelmed with regret, decided to dress and take him for a walk, while she still could.

It was almost one in the morning and the avenue was deserted. Sweet William pranced at the end of his leash, thrilled by his unexpected treat. They turned the corner and started toward Riverside Drive, down the darkness of West Seventy-seventh Street. She had never liked the street, and she especially disliked it at night. It was lined either side with five-story graystones, once townhouses, then shabby rooming houses, now reconverted apartments, mostly rented by gay young men. But the look of the houses, rather than their inhabitants, was what put Susan off. They seemed, in the darkness, to be old people, gigantic old people, standing there watching, thinking, whispering among themselves about you. It was, if such a thing existed, a hostile street.

At the corner of Riverside Drive, Sweet William found his fire pump and Susan her company. A young couple languidly moving up the avenue, their arms around each other, their easy, obvious sexuality on display for all the establishment in their large expensive apartments to see, if they cared to look out their windows. Susan cared to look. She watched them saunter away and wondered: How long has it been since I was like them? How long since Lou’s body was all there was?

She ached, briefly, the ache of not being young, and then Sweet William was finished and they started back toward West End Avenue.

There was a ringing.

A pay phone, up the hill almost to the corner. Ringing on the deserted street. The sound was eerie, as if an apartment had been turned inside out, ending up in front of, rather than inside, its building. There was something personal about it; something that didn’t fit a deserted, hostile street at night.

“God, am I dumb,’’ Susan said to Sweet William, and he wagged his tail in agreement.

But as she passed the phone, still ringing, Susan shuddered and quickened her pace back to their building.

Later, in bed, she wondered why she hadn’t answered the phone.

But she was glad that she hadn’t.