Bunny pulls the plug from the socket and holds it as if she’s not sure what to do with it or what purpose it has. The opacity of the moment is shattered when she hears Albie’s key in the door, as if the sound of the door opening were the same as the clank of a gate closing behind her.
Albie slips off his coat and drapes it over the back of a chair. “Bunny,” he calls. “Bunny?” When she doesn’t respond, foreboding rises in him like heat. “Bunny, where are you? Bunny? Bunny, are you here?”
Of course Bunny hears Albie calling out for her, and she hears the disturbance in his voice, but she doesn’t know what to say. Is she here? Here, surrounded by Hefty bags filled with the documentation of herself now destroyed; the evidence of her life shredded, and how does she answer the question, Are you here?
Albie’s heart fibrillates madly while Jeffrey rubs against his legs. It’s a cat’s way of saying, “You’re home! You’re home! Don’t ever go away again.” Albie picks Jeffrey up and holds him close. Jeffrey purrs. It’s a well-documented fact that physical contact with a dog or a cat calms anxiety and lowers blood pressure, but at this moment Jeffrey is having no such effect. Albie whispers into the cat’s ear, “Where’s your mother? Where’s Bunny?” And then, as if by magic, magic the way a flock of doves gets produced from thin air, there standing in the living room is Bunny, who says, “You’re home.”
Albie puts Jeffrey down, and asks her, “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“No,” she lies. “I was cleaning up.”
“Cleaning up? Cleaning up what?”
“My office.” Bunny takes her place on the couch. She covers her legs with that itchy blanket, and she asks, “Did you have a nice time?”
Albie’s heartbeat has settled into a more measured thump, but it is hardly the heartbeat of a person at rest. “Yes,” he tells Bunny. “I had a nice time.”
“I like Muriel,” Bunny says.
Albie sits in a chair across from her, and says, “I like Muriel, too,” and Bunny suggests to him, “You should marry her.”
As if Bunny were being flippant, Albie says, “Muriel might think otherwise.” Then he asks, “How are you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess,” she says, but without conviction.
“And what about tonight? You still want to go?”
“Yes,” she says. “I still want to go.”
Heeding Muriel’s good counsel, Albie makes no attempt to change her mind. Instead he says, “I’m going to take a nap.”
“What time is it?” Bunny asks.
Albie looks at his watch. “Three fifty-two,” he tells her.
“Three fifty-two,” Bunny repeats. “Three fifty-two,” as if she could hold on to what has, in these few seconds, already passed.
“I’ll wake you in an hour, hour and a half,” Albie says, even though it is he who is going to nap. Bunny won’t sleep, but she will close her eyes.
She will close her eyes.