The bedsheets still smelled of Jason. His hair clogged the shower drain or knotted the pillowcases. Even the air seemed to stir as it once had whenever he moved through the rooms, belting out arias in his basso profundo. His clothes hung untouched in the bedroom closet and his vinyl collection of jazz and opera records, which he stored in musty wooden crates, were still stacked in the garage. The house changed very little in the weeks after his death. Vanessa, his widow, didn’t dare touch a thing.
She devoted a shrine to him on her living room mantel, photographs surrounded by votive candles and incense that she lit every night. She sat in front of the shrine, enveloped in the odor of vanilla and sandalwood as she stared at her husband’s picture, lost in memories that threatened to turn to shadows. When she lay in bed, she recollected the warmth of his lean, taut body lying on hers — and her grief appeared again as fresh as the day he died.
Sometimes she took one of his records out of the musty crates and played it on the record player she still kept in the closet. Vanessa hated opera. It was so much screeching to her. She’d often turn down the volume whenever he played his favorite albums — Cosi Fan Tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, La Boheme — or his favorite singers — Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price. She never did understand why he had a passion for music that nobody she knew would be caught dead listening to, but it was this passion, which he had developed when he was a teen, that charmed her.
He was fearless in his passions (including his love for Vanessa) and didn’t care what anyone thought about it. Vanessa, on the other hand, cared deeply and groomed herself to be what was expected of her. When she went to college, the second in her family to do so, she studied business and economics because that was what she was expected to do — get an education and follow that up with a good-paying job. But Jason was incautious and threw everything to whim. After studying for years at Berklee and enjoying a brief career as a singer in a traveling opera company, he decided he no longer liked traveling, so went to culinary school and became a pastry chef in a well-known restaurant in San Francisco. His team dubbed him the “Singing Chef” because, while supervising, he’d break into arias to motivate the chefs or simply because he wanted to. He’d sing at any given moment, sometimes to Vanessa’s chagrin.
One night, early in their relationship, they were on Muni returning from a movie, when he started singing “Che Gelida Manina” from La Boheme to a crowd of tired and bored passengers. His voice was clear and soft at first, but then it took on more strength and power as he continued. While he had a low register, he managed to hit all the high notes, his voice bellowing over the clatter and shrieking train. Some of the passengers stared at him with delight. Others looked at him as if he was insane, while others still were simply zoned out in their alternate worlds of iPods and text messaging. Vanessa lowered her chin and tried to hide her embarrassment and let him know with her eyes how much he was embarrassing her. Jason merely gazed back, his dark eyes bearing the warm and loving look of a man who was clearly smitten. When he finished, the passengers applauded.
After his death, Vanessa played this song continuously. Curled up in a blanket in her husband’s favorite easy chair, she let the tears wash down her face as the soprano struck the high Cs and shattered the silence in her big, empty house.
Vanessa’s obsessive behavior worried her mother. She insisted she pack away Jason’s things and put her house in order.
“What are you gonna do? Mourn him for the rest of your life?”
“If I have to.”
Vanessa’s response shattered what little tolerance her mother had left. The next day she showed up at Vanessa’s house and took control of everything. “You need to stop this foolishness,” she said as she began dismantling the shrine on the mantel.
“Stop it,” Vanessa cried, snatching a candle from her mother’s hand. “You’re destroying everything.”
“Vanessa, get a hold of yourself. Have you lost your mind?”
The heat of her mother’s disappointment rubbed raw against the edges of her shame. Paralyzed, she watched her mother dismantle her life. She washed and folded the bedsheets and pillowcases, packed away Jason’s clothes in cardboard boxes, and delivered them to Goodwill. She gave away the record collection to various family members or put them up for sale. When her mother started to pack away the dark blue suit hanging in the closet, Vanessa yanked it from her and insisted on keeping it.
“He wore this on our first date,” she said, rubbing her hands along its fabric.
Her mother shook her head but allowed her daughter that one indulgence.
Vanessa washed the suit and ironed it thoroughly, then hung it in a bag in her closet. One night, she took it out of the closet and laid it across her bed. Running her fingers across the woven fabric, she recollected the first time she saw Jason in it, sauntering through her apartment door, smiling, and offering her a single red rosebud. He looked so handsome and debonair. She struggled hard not to let her hopes up too high. She had had so many disappointments. But the way he smiled at her made her want to believe.
Lying on top of the suit Vanessa wept herself into a troubled, dreamless sleep.
The next night, Vanessa took the suit out of the closet and laid it across a chair in the dining room. She set a dinner plate in front of it, sat down at the opposite end of the table, and ate her meal. Occasionally she glanced at the suit as she lifted a fork of pasta to her mouth, expecting the suit to speak to her. After dinner, she took the uneaten plate and threw the food into the trash. Gathering the suit in her arms, she carried it upstairs and laid it tenderly across her bed. After changing into her nightgown, she slipped into bed beside the suit and fell asleep.
For three nights, Vanessa set the suit at the dinner table, shared an imaginary conversation with it, then laid it across her bed. Each time it seemed less and less strange, and she began to anticipate her evening meals that way. After clocking out at work, she rushed out of the office, ignoring her colleagues and their attempts to draw her out of her grief, then sped home. Dashing up the steps to her bedroom she took the suit out of the closet and hugged it close to her breasts.
On the third night, she took the suit upstairs and laid it on the bed. She removed her clothes, then lay beside it. As she ran her fingers along the length of a sleeve, she recalled the firmness and strength of her husband’s body and moaned with phantom lust. The last time she and Jason made love occurred the night before he died. They had had a fight about something she had trouble recalling now, and he stormed out of the house and didn’t return till later that night, stinking of beer. She had already gone to bed, but she heard him stumbling up the stairs in the dark and appearing in their bedroom.
He took off his clothes and slipped in beside her, shifting and turning as he always did before settling into sleep. This time, instead, he spooned beside her and ran his hand along her thigh, coaxing the nerve endings to curl like leaves on flame beneath his fingertips. She was still too angry to yield, but her body, which betrayed her every time, burned under his touch. She hated him for making her succumb so easily, and she hated herself for succumbing until that sweet burst of pleasure shook her body and even the anger yielded to the enormity of her love for him.
Vanessa shut her eyes and ran her hand down the length of her belly. She pressed it between her thighs and unlocked pent-up and misdirected desires. She moaned softly and shuddered. It was over in minutes. She curled into a fetal ball and sobbed. The spasms of her grief rocked the bed.
Realizing something had to change, Vanessa took the suit and laid it across a chair, then climbed back into bed, curled the covers around her, and drifted into a restless sleep.
The next morning, the sunlight through her bedroom window stabbed her eyes. Her vision was bleary from sleep and sunlight. Lifting herself on her elbow, she rubbed her eyes, then stared at the suit. It was gone!
She became aware of noises in the house. Downstairs in the kitchen, footsteps thudded, water flushed, and pots banged. Thinking her mother had let herself in with the spare key, Vanessa slipped into her robe and went downstairs. She stepped into the kitchen and froze.
Jason stood by the kitchen stove, scrambling eggs in a pan. He wore the dark blue suit.
“Hey, sleepy head,” he said, smiling. “Hungry?” Before she could breathe a word, he burst into an aria in a basso profundo that rattled the walls.
Vanessa stood in the kitchen archway, blinking. He poured the eggs onto a plate and told her to eat. Her mouth fell open. He asked what was wrong, and she replied: “You’re dead.”
“I am? Really? Do I look dead?” She shook her head. “Well, then. Eat, before it gets cold.”
Vanessa ate. The eggs were gummy and bland. He sat opposite her, watching her chew as though fascinated by the function of eating. She asked again why he was there, but he took her plate and then led her back upstairs, telling her she must dress and get ready for work. When Vanessa came back downstairs, showered, and dressed, he handed her the briefcase at the front door and kissed her on the lips. He told her to have a good day. She said she would, but wondered if he was still going to be there when she came home.
“Where else am I gonna be?”
She thought about this and realized he was right. She smiled and kissed him again.
When she returned that evening, he was still in the kitchen, singing another aria and making a roast. He burnt the roast. She ordered pizza. They ate (or rather she ate) at the kitchen table. Jason watched her studiously.
She did not understand why he returned to her — it seemed strange that he would render the costs of the funeral and her grief meaningless. He said, “Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” she said, dropping the slice of pizza onto the plate. “No, please don’t.”
He smiled. “Then I won’t.”
Vanessa put her hands over her face and cried. It swept her suddenly and ferociously. She started to wonder if she was going insane. Earlier that day at work, Clifton, one of her colleagues at the firm, had approached her in her office and asked how she was doing. Clifton had been at the firm for four years, and it was no secret to anyone, Vanessa included, that he was attracted to her. He wasn’t a terribly good-looking guy, but he cut a dashing figure among the office workers in his pinstripe suits and well-poised manner.
When Clifton asked how she was doing, he sat on her desk and said, “You seem distracted this morning. Everything’s all right, I hope.”
“Everything’s fine,” she said, poring over the accounts sheet for the last financial quarter. She had been distracted. Her husband had come back from the dead — didn’t she have the right to be? She couldn’t tell that to Clifton, so instead, she smiled and said in a falsely cheerful voice, “I’m doing just great.” She noticed the flicker of doubt in his eyes.
But he was right to doubt, wasn’t he? She had gone completely bonkers.
Jason soothed away her anguish, then, lifting her in his arms, carried her up to their room. If she had any doubt that he was a bizarre trick of the imagination or a strange waking dream, he demonstrated through lovemaking that he was not. He had not changed at all. As he laid her down on the bed, undoing the buttons of her blouse and kissing the spot above her navel, she closed her eyes, feeling an ease of familiarity with which he caressed her. Her body stiffened first with resistance, her mind still unable to absorb this new and strange reality. But when his tongue probed the inside of her mouth, and she tasted him, a sourness that was not at all distasteful, but comforting, she realized that this was not a dream, that it was happening. How could her imagination dream up something so physically complete?
Her hands flew to his tie and began unloosening it. She wanted to feel his skin next to hers, hungered for it with an abandonment that made her fingers fumble with the knot. Jason grabbed her wrists and gave her a stern and disapproving look.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He shook his head and explained that he can never take off the suit.
“Why?” she said, startled, sitting up. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t ever take it off. Ever.”
She wanted to know why not, but when he began kissing her neck, she had forgotten why it mattered. He was there and that was all she cared about.
Each morning, Vanessa woke up with Jason at her side. In the beginning, when she was getting used to having him back, she thought it strange that he was always wearing his suit, which grew increasingly rumpled. Making love to him while fully clothed was also strange, though she quickly grew used to that. She was willing to make any adjustments as long as he was with her.
While she showered and dressed for work, he was downstairs fixing breakfast and singing arias. He did all the chores. Breakfast and dinner were always on the table and the house was clean, the dishes washed, and the bedsheets changed. Well, at least, for the most part. He burned dinner, crusts of food clung stubbornly to the dishes, and the linen was carelessly folded or stained by bleaches, but Vanessa didn’t complain.
When he was alive (but isn’t he alive now? or is he dead or undead? She wasn’t quite sure what to call his peculiar status), he left all the household duties to her. It annoyed her, how the burden of keeping house always fell on her shoulders, though she worked just as hard as he. Now, every evening she returned home to dishes that needed to be rewashed or ruined dinner that had to be thrown out, but she didn’t say a word. Every day was like a moment or an hour of her life returned to her.
Her colleagues must have noticed the change that came over her. Before Jason’s return, they frequently asked how she was doing. Her boss had even offered to let her take a brief sabbatical to mourn in peace, though what Vanessa took from the offer was that her boss and her colleagues were uncomfortable with the depth of her grief. Of course, she realized they wanted not to be reminded of death, theirs, and everyone else’s. But now that Jason had returned to her, they no longer avoided her or watched her with pitiful and uncomfortable gazes. Clifton had even remarked that she seemed to be glowing.
“I am?” she said, touching her face.
He probed her eyes closely, then nodded. “In fact, you look like you’re a lady in love.” He smiled with the confidence of a man who believed he was the source of this newfound glow.
When she arrived home in the evening, rescuing a roast in the oven from being charred, she smiled sweetly at her husband and bought take-home Chinese. After dinner, she went over some work she brought home from the office while he sang an aria from La Traviata. She sighed as his voice embraced her with its tremulous warmth.
Vanessa embraced the strangeness of her new situation. Undisturbed by the outside world, her day was complete each evening she returned home. With practice, Jason became a better cook. One night she returned after a particularly jarring day to find the steak broiled exactly as she liked it, medium rare with grilled onions on top. He had a glass of Scotch waiting for her and encouraged her to tell him about her day. Sometimes he rubbed her feet.
As perfect as her life became, Vanessa could not look past the suit. With each passing day, it grew more rumpled and frayed. There were stains on the shirt from cooking and lovemaking. Threads unraveled along the cuffs and the pockets. It stank. One Saturday, after he made her blueberry pancakes, she insisted on washing it.
“Sorry. No deal.”
“Jason, it’s starting to smell rank.”
“Don’t question a good thing,” he said quite seriously, then kissed her on the lips.
As the weeks passed, Vanessa divided her time between the real world and the life she was rebuilding with Jason. Work occupied most of her time. Once her colleagues encouraged her to go out to lunch with them. As they ate club sandwiches and drank sodas at a nearby deli, she laughed and enjoyed herself far more freely than she had in months. She had attributed this to the fact that Jason was back in her life, but when she returned home later that afternoon and found him there, cooking for her and singing his arias, she became unsettled.
Something was wrong, though she wasn’t quite sure what. While he cooked, she stared at him closely. His face was changing. It was shiny and soft, malleable even, like putty. The pores were more visible, dark freckles stippling across his cheeks and forehead. When he noticed her staring at him and asked why, she replied: “No reason,” and then frowned.
One day, Vanessa’s mother called and invited her to brunch the next Saturday. She looked forward to spending time outside the house, though she felt bad that Jason could not join her. He looked disappointed when she told him about the date. His eyes drooped as if they were about to fall down the length of his cheeks. She promised she wouldn’t be long.
It was a warm day and a breeze blew in off the ocean. She and her mother drank tea and ate Cobb salad at an outdoor cafe. Vanessa felt more relaxed than she had felt in days. Her mother took note of this and said she was glad that she was no longer grieving. It was time for her to move on, she said. Vanessa sipped her iced tea through a straw and noticed Clifton approaching their table. They both gasped with recognition and surprise.
“Funny running into you,” he said, smiling warmly as he glanced at Vanessa and then at her mother. Vanessa introduced them. “Now I see where Vanessa gets her good looks.”
Vanessa’s mother raised an eyebrow and smiled. “For that, you deserve a seat at our table.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said and pulled out a chair.
They talked about her mother and Clifton mostly, work, and Vanessa. It was obvious that Clifton was trying to win her mother’s favor, a vain attempt to gain an ally. More amused than upset, Vanessa sipped her tea and occasionally joined in their conversation.
After a half hour passed, Clifton glanced at his watch and announced he had to leave; he was meeting a friend downtown. Rising, he said goodbye to Vanessa’s mother, then, glancing at Vanessa, said it was nice running into her. “It’s a nice departure, outside of work, I mean.”
“Maybe the both of you should try it more often,” said Vanessa’s mother.
Vanessa glared at her, stunned by her forwardness, but Clifton laughed and said, “Maybe.” He smiled confidently, then turned and left.
“What was that all about?” Vanessa said, her voice sputtering. “He’s my colleague.”
“He’s attracted to you. That’s obvious enough. Or have you forgotten what that even looks like? Vanessa, baby, you’ve been out of commission too long.”
“It’s only been a year,” she said, stabbing a half-eaten boiled egg with her fork. “And besides, I don’t want to give him any ideas.”
“Why not? You can’t go around with your ‘merry widow’ act forever, Vanessa.”
Vanessa gasped, then glared down at the salad. Her wedding ring, which she had never removed, glinted softly in the sunlight. She realized that she hadn’t thought of Jason that entire time.
Jason was changing. His face was softer, blurrier. He was shrinking, or perhaps it was the suit that was growing in size. One evening, over dinner, he even seemed transparent in the candlelight. She stared at him across the table, frowning and blinking as though she was emerging from a dream.
Jason told her she was changing. She dropped her mouth in surprise.
“I am?” she said. He nodded. She asked how.
“I don’t know. Maybe you don’t love me anymore.”
“I’ve never stopped loving you,” she said, leaning against the table.
Jason smiled. His mouth stretched across his face, bearing enormous, white teeth. He got up and took her hand and began kissing her fingers. His lips felt rubbery.
They went upstairs and made love. After he fell asleep, she stayed awake, listening to the wind harass the trees and bushes outside. A terrible feeling came over her, and she could not quite identify what it was. It wasn’t gloom or depression or sadness, but an uncanny feeling.
During a meeting at work, she tried to stay focused, but her thoughts wandered. She glanced out of the large windows in the conference room. Sailboats crowded the bay and fog obscured the top of the Transamerican Pyramid. She wondered what Jason did all day when she was at work. She wondered if he even existed at all when she was not home.
She worked late for the next three days. When she returned home at night, it was to a house that had grown fuzzier around the edges. Every time she walked through the front door, she felt like she was stepping into a dream. Jason still greeted her with the Scotch and water and the fine meal, but he seemed less enthusiastic. He stared at her while she ate. She asked him not to do that. “And besides,” she said, gazing into his elastic features, “You really should eat something. You’re …” she was about to say that he was wasting away, but that seemed too ironically true. He was wasting away.
He blinked his large, sad eyes at her, but said nothing.
The next morning, Vanessa woke to a shock. Jason had changed dramatically. He was literally melting. His skin dripped down the side of his face and fell in large clumps along the hem of his frayed shirt collar. Though he was still thin, his body was losing shape. It was wobbly like Jell-O. When she saw him in the kitchen cooking, she screamed and clamped her hands to her mouth.
“What’s wrong?” he said. His voice sounded broken and slurred, like a tape recorder played at the wrong speed.
When he tried to kiss her, she recoiled. A shocked, hurt look flashed in his eyes. She excused herself by saying she was late for work. He tried to get her to eat. He had made eggs Florentine and it looked and smelled delicious. But she could barely look at Jason. She fled the house.
At the office, Vanessa plunged into her work to distract herself from her troubles at home. She had reports to read and write. She was already backed up. A stack of data was piled on one end of the desk. She told her secretary to hold all her calls and kept the door closed. She remained there long after office hours. Most of the office workers had left and only the night janitors were in the building. The muffled hum of a vacuum cleaner drifted through the door.
When she couldn’t use work to avoid the obvious anymore, she grabbed her coat and purse, turned off the desk lamp, and left her office. As she walked down the corridor, she noticed light pouring out of Clifton’s door. She knocked and entered. He glanced up at her at his desk and smiled.
“Working late?” she said.
He laughed. “Not the only one, I see.”
She shrugged. He asked if she was leaving. When she affirmed that she was, he asked if she was headed home. She considered this question for a few seconds, then breathed deeply. Before she answered, he rose, pulled his jacket from the back of his chair, and approached her.
“Let’s go for drinks. God knows, I could use one now.”
She let him take her arm and lead her toward the elevators, grateful that he offered her a chance to avoid home.
The bar was a block from their office building. It was small, darkly lit, and loud. Clifton found a spot near the back and ordered drinks from the bar. When he returned, he gave her a drink and a napkin. She thanked him. They began talking, mostly about work at first, quarterly projections, and regional performances, but eventually eased onto more personal matters.
Clifton complained about the dating scene, and how hard it was to find the right woman, offering his suggestion that modern life made it difficult to find an “old-fashioned romance.” He was ladling it on thick, and under any other circumstance, she would have cut him short. But that night, she relaxed under the steady flow of his voice, nodding and occasionally sipping her drink. She hadn’t been in the dating scene for a long time, but she understood what he was going through.
“It’ll happen, give it time. She’ll come around and you won’t even remember what life was like before you met her.”
“Sort of like with you and Jason, I guess.”
“Yes,” she said, lowering her eyes, frowning. She had forgotten what her life had been like before Jason. She never imagined that she’d have to face life again without him, but at the very least, when she was single, she wasn’t lost without the knowledge of having known him. She was struck by the irony that in some ways she missed those years before Jason when she was free not to miss what she didn’t have. She thought of the altar she had arranged on her living room mantle and winced. It seemed like such a long time ago now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Seems I brought up sad memories.”
“No. It’s all right. Listen,” she began, setting down her glass, and was about to continue when something at the front of the bar caught her attention. A group of young people had sauntered in, their voices rising above the babel of ambient noise, and strolled over to the crowded bar. Behind them, something or someone flashed like lightning in front of the entrance. It happened quickly before her eyes could decipher what it was, but, like the clap of thunder right after a strike, she heard Jason’s voice calling her name in her head. It was so clear and distinct that she glanced at the entrance again, expecting to see him there.
She started to rise and, in so doing, knocked over her glass. Clifton reached for the napkins to sop up the spilled drink. Vanessa grabbed her purse and started to leave. She had reached the entrance when Clifton grabbed her arm.
“Hey, what’s up? Where’re you going?”
“I have to go,” she said, struggling out of his grip.
“Let me walk you …”
“No. Please, I have to go.”
She rushed out into the cool, fog-draped night, leaving the noisy bar behind her.
The house was dark when she returned home. Jason always had the lights on. She felt that, in some way, he was keeping the hearth burning. The warmth drew her in time and again. But now the shadows had returned, and she felt nothing but apprehension.
Her hand trembling, she unlocked the front door and stepped inside. She turned on the lights and gasped. The entire living room was in disarray. The books from the shelves were scattered on the floor and the broken shards of lamps and vases lay everywhere. A tremendous boom shook the air and rattled the walls like an earthquake, knocking down paintings and framed photographs. Her heart pounding, Vanessa ran to the kitchen where, just as she expected, Jason waited.
He had deteriorated significantly. His arms dangled at his sides like sticks of melted cheese, his hands dissolving on the floor. His face was globular now, one side sinking into his shirt collar. Vanessa cried out and clapped her hands to her mouth.
“You said you loved me,” he said. There was another boom that rattled the kitchen so violently Vanessa nearly lost her balance. The oven door flew open and out burst a gush of hot air.
“You said you loved me,” he repeated in that strange, mechanical voice. He started to walk toward her, attempting to lift his elongated arms, only to have them melt back toward the floor.
Vanessa screamed and ran out of the house.
She had been driving for a long time, sobbing and unaware of where she was going or what she was doing. When she reached San Bruno, she pulled of the highway and stopped at the first motel she saw. She checked in. As the clerk handed her the key, he gave her a strange, concerned look and asked if she was all right. She stared at him as if he were a strange thing that had dropped from the ceiling in front of her. Frowning, she went to her room. She stepped into the bathroom, and saw her image in the mirror. Was it any wonder the clerk looked at her that way? Her eyes were red and her face was caked and ashy with mascara and dried tears.
After washing her face, Vanessa went back to the other room and tried to rest, but she couldn’t get any sleep. The lamp on the nightstand flicked on and off, the television turned on, its volume so loud that the occupant in the next room banged on the wall. She tried to turn off the set with the remote, but it was hopeless.
“Damn you, Jason!” she said, throwing the remote at the set. The screen went black. The lamp stopped blinking.
Dropping her face in her hands, Vanessa cried again. She wept as she hadn’t wept since she heard that her husband was dead. She recalled with renewed fury the day her whole world collapsed. She was still at the office when two inspectors from the police department arrived and asked to speak with her alone. She was overcome with nausea even before she heard them say those impossible words, collapsing to her knees and letting out a howl that circled the entire office building, attracting the attention of her secretary and the office workers who crowded her door. For weeks afterward, she saw in their eyes what she imagined they saw that day: a woman in desperation.
She stretched out on the bed and cried well through the night.
When the sun rose, casting its pinkish glow through the motel windows, Vanessa had long dried her tears. She knew what she now had to do.
She checked out of the motel and drove back home. The squat Victorian looked fresh and new in the morning sunlight. It looked as if nothing unusual had taken place there. But the house inside told an entirely different story. It was just as she had left it the night before when she fled, everything torn and flung and rent asunder. There was a strange, musty odor in the air as if she had entered a long-enclosed tomb.
She called for Jason. He wasn’t in the kitchen. She went upstairs to the bedroom and found him there. He sat on the edge of the bed, a glutinous mass of dark skin shaped only by the dark blue suit holding some semblance of physical form. His face had changed even more dramatically. One eye had fallen down his cheek. His lower lip draped the front of his stained shirt. The crown of his head had sunken in.
He tried to stand, but collapsed instead onto the mattress in a gelatinous clump of flesh. He grinned sheepishly. “I’m not myself today.” His voice was even more distorted.
Vanessa shook her head as tears coursed down her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“About what?” she said cautiously.
“About last night. The mess I made. I was afraid I lost you.”
She hugged her arms. “You haven’t lost me.”
He looked relieved, though his face collapsed into the blob. His eyes bulged like the lids of teapots.
“You don’t belong here.”
“Don’t say that. I love you.”
“I loved Jason,” she said. “You’re not Jason.”
“Yes. I am.” His voice slurred, becoming almost incomprehensible. His body roiled. Boils broke out all over it, popping with loud, gassy farts. He tried to rise again, his flaccid arms reaching toward her, but he lost his strength and fell back onto the bed.
“No,” she said with more certainty. She reminded him of the Jason she knew. The man who taught her how to live, with arias and walks in the rain and lazy afternoons spent doing nothing but making love. “I have to let you go.”
Jason looked at her. His face stretched obscenely into a grin. His grin and his gaze were sad, as though he knew what was about to happen and had resigned himself to it.
Vanessa leaned her head against the door frame. She was still for a very long time before she went to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“I love you,” she said.
His lips moved, but all that came out were strange, gurgling sounds.
More tears fell as she undid the tie and removed the coat. There was an unmistakable odor of dirt and decay. Jason glanced up at her, her teardrops plunking into his fish eyes. She began unbuttoning the shirt and removed that, then unbuckled the belt, unbuttoned and unzipped the pants, and slid them down his flabby legs.
As she removed each item of clothing, he melted even more, so that he began folding in on himself into a jellied mass. The mass slid off the side of the bed and oozed to the floor where it melted into the carpet and disappeared. All that remained was the tattered, dark blue suit. As Vanessa pressed it to her face, she detected the unmistakable, musky odor of her husband’s old cologne.