Bunny sits up, but not up up. Her feet are not on the floor, but her back is resting against the arm of the couch, which is camel-backed, olive green velvet. What had passed for shabby chic at the time of purchase is now the furniture equivalent of a dog with mange. The upholstery is shredded, puffs of stuffing stick out like Albert Einstein’s hair. When Jeffrey had commandeered the couch as his scratching post, neither Albie nor Bunny had it in them to chastise the little idiot for what he couldn’t possibly understand. Also, Bunny’s been occupying much of her time pulling at the fabric’s loose threads. Her legs are stretched out and covered by the blanket as if they were useless, and she says, “Some. I slept some.”
It’s been over a week since Bunny last showered or changed the T-shirt she is wearing, which reeks of sweat and fear and emits a vapor which Bunny pictures as a visible fume of noxious gas, like the way a bad smell is depicted in cartoons. But her unpleasant odor is not why Albie chooses to sit more or less parallel to her hip with the three or four inches of couch cushion between them. It’s because sometimes when he touches her, even accidentally, she flinches. It’s not him in particular. She’d flinch no matter who touched her, but Albie is the only one with opportunity. It’s been many weeks, maybe months since she’s seen anyone other than Albie. And Jeffrey. Because it’s incomprehensible to their goofy cat that a snuggle might not be welcome, he jumps onto the couch where he winds his way into the unoccupied inches of space between Albie and Bunny, as if that space were there purposefully, intended for him. Albie strokes the cat’s ears and asks, “How much is some?”
“I don’t know,” Bunny says. “What time is it now?”
Albie checks his watch. “It’s nine twenty-one.” He cannot help but to be exact. Bunny, however, is an approximator. Piecing together the segments, the snippets of sleep, she calculates, “Four hours. Give or take,” she says.
Albie leans in closer to his wife seeming like he is going to lift a few stray strands of hair away from her face, except he’s about to do no such thing. “About tonight,” he says. “You know we can cancel. It’s no big deal.”
“I know,” Bunny says, which brings them to a lull in the conversation, such as it is a conversation. Jeffrey’s purring fills the void. His purr is unusually loud for a house cat, more like the purr you’d expect from a tiger, but Jeffrey is decidedly not a tiger. He is more like a battery-operated toy. His purr hums warm against Bunny’s hip, the sound waves ripple. His whole body vibrates, including his tail.
“Four hours is hardly a good night’s sleep,” Albie says. “Maybe we should stay home. Get some rest. Because if you’d rather not go, I’ll call Julian. No big deal.”
“What time is it?” Bunny asks.
“Nine twenty-three.” Albie does not point out that she’d asked the same question when it was nine twenty-one because, as if the previous two minutes never happened, he too, although not word for word, repeats himself. “I’d be just as happy to stay home.”
It’s true. As far as he’s concerned, New Year’s Eve is no big whoop, which might seem out of character if you knew the incident about the odometer flip; about how as a small boy sitting in the passenger’s seat of his father’s infrequently used Volvo while driving to Far Rockaway, the odometer turned from 9,999 miles to 10,000, and Albie nearly passed out from the thrill of it. His father had to pull off to the side of the road for Albie to breathe in and out of a paper bag. But the flipping of the calendar page from one year to the next does not elicit even a remotely similar effect. But neither does New Year’s Eve disturb him the way it disturbs Bunny.
Second to New Year’s Eve, Bunny’s most loathed holiday is Thanksgiving. She used to loathe Christmas, too, but that changed after she and Albie got married. Although Albie is Jewish, they celebrate Christmas, albeit in their own, irreligious, somewhat screwy way, which has to do with gifts, pancakes, Santa Baby, and old Japanese horror movies. But the only holiday Bunny will claim any real affection for is Arbor Day because it has a purpose, which has value. Also, it’s free of tradition and not burdened with memories. It’s not even celebrated, really.
Last year, last New Year’s Eve, she’d said to him, “You know, I’d really rather stay at home and drink Clorox.” But that was last year. This year, she would say no such thing. This year, to indulge in the kick of a joke or the pleasure of hyperbole is to risk being taken at her word.
Yet, despite knowing that she will experience only despair and regret, every year she forges ahead with the New Year’s Eve celebrations as planned. The plans for tonight are the same as they were last year and the same as 2006, 2005, and 2004, too: a vaguely unpleasant dinner with Trudy, Elliot, Julian and Lydia before heading off to the Frankenhoffs’ after-party to watch the ball drop, which is the worst part of the night.
Dinner out with friends is something they do frequently, which does not mean that it’s easy. First, there is the when of it. They are busy people, their friends, with many dinners on their dance cards. A good amount of back-and-forth is required before they can locate a night mutually free of prior engagements and other obligations. Then, where to go? Where they have dinner is important, important the way a matter of life and death is important because at the next dinner out the previous dinner will be a significant topic of conversation. The dinner itself, the food, will have been either exquisite or overrated and the wine list excellent, although sometimes insufficient, but, always, the conversation is smart and warm and delightful, and what could be bad about that?
But, still. One night, nearly a year ago, they had dinner with Nathan and Philip. They are very fond of Nathan and Philip, though they were far from keen on the restaurant. Aviary, it was called, because the menu was all about freshly killed birds. The bird Philip ate was served with its feet and head, with the beak attached. On their way home Bunny said, “A fucking beak, and he ate it.” Even Albie, a zoologist at the Museum of Natural History, and therefore no stranger to dead birds with their parts intact, had to admit, “That was a little rough.” After that, nothing, not one word, passed between them until they got home. Then, while hanging up her coat, Bunny said, “If I have one more delightful dinner with delightful people engaging in delightful conversation, I am going to scream. I am going to scream and scream and never stop. I will die screaming.”
Albie sat on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes. “What’s wrong with a lovely dinner with lovely people?”
Either there was no explanation or not one that she could articulate. At a loss, she said, “Delightful. I said delightful. Not lovely. Delightful.”
“And the difference,” Albie asked, “is what?”