Slipping Away

James had begun listening in on my phone calls. I could tell when he did it, of course—you always can. It’s not that you hear a sound but that the silence on the line has altered. It has deepened and expanded. Suddenly, in the middle of your conversation, out beyond your friend’s voice, you hear space. Suddenly you have the whole black universe on the line, and that’s not who you were calling.

The first time it happened, I thought James had just picked up the phone and didn’t know I was already on it. I said, “James?” to let him know. There was no answer.

Then I thought it must be our housekeeper, and I said, “Lita?” But there was still no answer. For a long moment there was that listening distance, and then, soundlessly, the audible space closed in. The line became close and intimate, and it was only my friend and I again. After that, I knew who it had been. And I knew there was no point in asking James to his face. We’ve been married for seven years, and I know that James answers questions only when it suits him. If I asked about this, he would just smile in a private way and shake his head.

But it was getting more and more frequent. It began to seem as though every one of my phone conversations contained one of those black spaces, the sound of the Great Beyond suddenly intruding on the talk. Every time it happened I said, “James?” I was trying to shame him into stopping, but it had no effect.

On Tuesday James and I had breakfast, as always, in the dining room. The big round table in the middle is too big for the two of us, so we sit at a small drop-leaf table, under the window that overlooks the park. We get two copies of the Times delivered, because James doesn’t like to wait if I haven’t finished with the section he wants. We read while we eat, trading comments on the paper.

At eight-thirty Lita brings in a tray. I have coffee and whole-wheat English muffins, and James has coffee and orange juice and scrambled eggs and buttered toast and bacon. I’ve told him all this is bad for him, but James just smiles at things like that. He doesn’t believe them. James believes that he is somehow protected from bad things: cholesterol, heart disease, airplane crashes, hard work. He’s forty-two, and, so far, experience has proved him right. He is still alive, and so are both his parents, so the biggest trust funds are still to come.

In the meantime, James invests the income from the smaller trust funds. James does that, and I do everything else. I run the household. I make the arrangements when we go away, and when we don’t. I buy James’s mother’s birthday present; I write the thank-you notes. I found our apartment, I arranged for the mortgage, and I got the letters for the board. I pay the bills, and I talk to the accountant about our taxes. I don’t mind this. James needs someone to look after him; I’m here, I’m fond of him, and I’m good at it. I like making things run smoothly. Besides, this isn’t all I do: I’m a book designer and illustrator; there are other things in my life.

James sees no reason to worry about cholesterol, or anything else. Why should he worry? There he sits every morning, at his table overlooking the park. Lita brings in his breakfast at eight-thirty, the eggs cooked just the way he likes them.

“Buenos días, señores,” Lita said, sliding the tray onto the table. Lita is from El Salvador. She is short and broad, with silvery-olive skin and jet-black hair. She is twenty-one years old and has a tempestuous private life.

“Buenos días, Lita,” I said. “Gracias.”

My family is from Boston, but when I was growing up we lived in Mexico City, where my father worked for an American bank. Spanish has always been with me, and speaking it is like entering another country. Every morning, when I talk with Lita in the kitchen, I slip back into it. We are only talking about the mechanics of the day, about groceries and the electrician, but everything in Spanish is different. The talk is rapid, the words click and rattle, the gestures are vehement. This is a world of high energy and powerful emotion. Even if it is only groceries and electricians, emotion gets into it. Every transaction in Spanish involves feelings.

When we have done discussing the day, Lita turns back to her work and I go on to mine. But sometimes Lita’s face, as we talk, is stormy, and finally I ask her what is wrong. I know already: it’s always her boyfriend, Paco. Lita tells me her story, and then we are well and truly in Spanish, where things happen that would never happen in English. We are in a landscape of drama and passion, one that rings with accusations and denials, amorous declarations, cries of betrayal and rage.

Lita stands before me, her eyes glittering, her hands on her hips. “Mentiras! Mentiras!” she cries, thrillingly. Lies! Lies! She holds her head high, like a heroine. Music rises in the background, and the crimson glow of a last sunset stains the backdrop. It is like having the third act of an opera in your kitchen, every morning. It is always like this in Spanish. I love it.

“Poco más de mantequilla, por favor,” I said now to Lita, looking at the small pat of butter on the plate.

“Sí, señora,” Lita said, her voice muted, her eyes lowered. She turned at once, silent in her crepe-soled shoes, and vanished through the swinging door into the kitchen. In public, Spanish is very formal.

James speaks only English, and he is not interested in Lita’s thrilling life. He knows nothing of the passion and drama that take place in Spanish. James mostly ignores Lita, and seldom speaks to her. Sometimes he will say an English word to her in a loud voice, naming something that he wants, and smiling radiantly. James sees Lita as a kind of miraculous apparition: deaf, mute, and willing, there only to serve him. James wishes all women were like this.

That morning at breakfast James was in a pale blue and white pin-striped dressing gown, Egyptian cotton, very elegant, and blue pajamas and his Brooks Brothers leather scuffs. James is handsome, in a charming, boyish way. He has tousled reddish-brown hair, with a kind of electric sunny gleam to it. He has blue eyes and wears reddish-brown tortoise-shell glasses. He has a wide brow, a wide jaw, and a wide, beguiling smile.

James was reading the paper and turning irritable. I don’t know why it is that the Times puts all the upsetting news on the front page. It takes the whole rest of the paper—the heartwarming reunion of a separated family, or the story of a homeless man finding a job—to put you back in a mood in which you can face the day.

“Just look at this,” James said, shaking his head. “Now we’re going to have the death penalty again.”

“I didn’t vote for him,” I said. “He’s your governor.”

I was not in the mood for politics that morning. I had skipped the whole first section and was reading the metropolitan news. “Listen,” I said. “This says that a dead body left out in the air will become a skeleton in a matter of weeks.” I looked up. “Isn’t that amazing?”

James looked at me over the top of his paper. “What’s amazing about it?” James has uneven eyebrows, and always looks slightly quizzical.

“Well, it seems amazing to me,” I said. “I thought you had to be buried. I thought it had to happen underground, like compost. What happens to all the flesh? I thought worms ate it, or little tiny organisms, bacteria or something. If the body was just sitting on a chair in the cellar, where would all the flesh go?”

“What are you talking about?” James asked, now frowning. It irritates him when I talk about something he considers unimportant.

“This article,” I said. “Here’s an elderly Chinese woman in the Bronx, who speaks no English. Her husband is missing. The meter man comes around, and she keeps refusing to let him in to read the electricity meter. Finally the meter man calls the police. They all arrive, push past the old woman, and go down to the basement. The cellar is dark and full of cobwebs, and in it is the skeleton of the woman’s husband, sitting bolt upright on a wooden chair.”

James looked back at his paper. “How did she kill him?”

“They don’t think she did,” I said. “It says she’s not a suspect. And then it says, just by the way, that a body will become a skeleton in a few weeks.”

I like mysteries, and I particularly liked this one. I was pleased that I’d skipped the first section of the paper.

“Well, what was her husband doing down there, then, if he wasn’t murdered?” James asked. He was barricaded now behind his paper. James doesn’t like mysteries unless they’re his.

Lita appeared with a plate of butter pats.

“Gracias,” I said.

“De nada,” Lita murmured. She turned, erect in her neat gray uniform, and left us.

“Nothing,” I said to James. “He was just down there.”

James lowered his paper. “What?” He sounded deeply skeptical.

“He was missing,” I reminded him. “He’s been missing for some time.”

“But so what? Obviously she killed him,” James said. “Why don’t they suspect her?”

“They just don’t,” I said. “It says there was no suggestion of violence.”

“Absurd,” said James, impatient. He mistrusts all women. “Of course the wife did it.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe they had a fight and he went down to the cellar to hide from her and then had a heart attack. Maybe his wife thought he was still wandering around Central Park in a two-month huff.”

Central Park is where James goes when he’s mad at me. He did not reply.

I looked over at James’s plate. In principle, I don’t eat bacon, but James’s plate always looks so appealing, with its sunny rumpled bed of eggs, the little twinkling triangles of buttered toast, the dark glistening strips of bacon. Sometimes the whole thing is irresistible. James had his paper up in front of him and I knew he couldn’t see if I took a slice of bacon, so I did.

“I saw that,” James said at once, not moving from behind his paper.

“I’ll get us some more,” I said, conciliatory. I wondered how he had seen me.

Looking toward the kitchen, I saw that the swinging door was open, just a crack. Lita was behind it, invisible in the dark slit, watching us, waiting to see when we were finished. I called to her for more bacon, and the door swung silently shut.

“Of course the wife killed him, it’s obvious. But why did she do it?” James asked. He closed his paper with a huge rattle and clatter and reopened it importantly to the next page.

“You mean, what had her husband done? It could have been anything,” I said. “He could have been listening in on her phone calls, for example. Or calling The New York Times for answers to the crossword puzzle and pretending he figured them out himself. There are lots of things.”

James looked at me over his paper and over the tops of his glasses. “Most people,” he said, “would not think those things were capital offenses.”

“Those would be people who have never experienced them,” I said. “The pain and anguish.”

James shook his head and went back behind his paper. I broke my stolen bacon very quietly up into three pieces and laid them on an English muffin. I bit into this gingerly, muffling the sound by making a sort of hollow cave of my mouth.

“I can hear you,” James said, “eating my bacon.”

I didn’t answer.

When I had finished my second cup of coffee I stood up and folded my paper. James had eaten the eggs, the toast, and the extra bacon and drunk two cups of coffee, but he wasn’t ready to move. I saw Lita hovering in the open kitchen door, the tray held down, flat against her leg.

“She wants to clear,” I said.

“She can,” he said, not looking up.

“Puede despejar,” I said to Lita. Then, as I was leaving the room, I said to James, “Are you going to the office?”

James put down the paper at once. “Why?”

“No reason,” I said. “I just wondered if I was going to have the pleasure of your company all day.”

James shares an office downtown with two other partners. The three of them look at deals. They have secretaries, and telephones and desks and file cabinets: it’s a real office, but since James is one of the partners, there’s no one who calls up sternly if he doesn’t appear. And if he decides not to go in on Monday, his money will still be there on Tuesday. Most days he goes in, some days not.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said, and went back to his paper. Just as James resents questions, he resists decisions.

I left the dining room and went into my study. I was working at home that day, on a book jacket that was due on Friday. I had started it the day before, but I hadn’t gotten a lot done. I’d had trouble concentrating. James was restless. He was in and out of the apartment all day long, leaving without explanation, returning just when I thought finally he was gone for the day, leaving again just as I sat down to a sandwich, back again suddenly in the middle of the afternoon. It set my nerves on edge, those wordless arrivals and departures. I kept hearing the big front door open suddenly and then shut with a big crash. I’d think, There, that’s that, now he’s gone, I can settle down and work. Then he’d be back, fifteen minutes later, with another crash. Sometimes I’d call out, just to make sure it was him. “James?” He never answered, but sometimes Lita would hear me, and she would come to the door of my study and announce, “Ya se fué, señora.” He’s just gone out. Or, “Acaba de llegar.” He’s just come in. James himself never came in to tell me what he was doing, it was just those crashes.

The book I was working on was a mystery, the old-fashioned nonthreatening, domestic kind. The cover was meant to be a lighthearted combination of charm and suspense. This is difficult to do without being cartoony, and I was having a hard time. James’s erratic openings and closings of the door made the atmosphere more and more unsettled.

Finally, hearing a crash, at one point I shouted, more from frustration than curiosity, “James?”

There was no answer, and this time I went out into the big dark front hall. James was standing in front of the closet, struggling with the sleeve of his coat and holding a small paper bag.

We faced each other. James was now dressed in his work clothes, a sober suit and tie. I was wearing my work clothes: hot-pink sweatpants and a navy sweatshirt, thick wool socks, and slippers. To judge from appearances, James was the grownup and I the adolescent.

“Is that you?” I asked pointlessly.

James raised his eyebrows haughtily. “Certainly not,” he said, removing his arm from his sleeve. He hung his coat in the closet, still holding the paper bag.

“What did you get?” I asked.

“A pear,” he said. He opened the bag and held the fruit out like a magician with a rabbit. “I had a sudden urge.”

The pear was a soft, lustrous yellowy-green. I thought of biting into it.

“It looks delicious,” I said, feeling the same urge he had. “Did you get me one?”

“Certainly not,” James said again, and vanished with the pear into his study.

Later I heard the door slam two more times. James going out and returning, I thought. Now he’s in. But I must have lost track, somehow, because when I finally came out of my study at the end of the afternoon, thinking James was in, he was out. This meant that there had been a crash I hadn’t heard, which bothered me. If James normally slammed the door hard, without thinking about it, why had he shut it softly once, on purpose? Or was he deliberately slamming it loudly every time but once? There was no point in asking him.

The next day, on Wednesday, as I left the breakfast table, I said, without looking at James, “Are you going to the office today?”

James’s head snapped up. “Why?” he asked, as before. It was as though he’d just been called to attention.

I turned around and looked at him. “I just wondered,” I said, holding my hand elaborately against my heart, as though he had given me palpitations. “I just wondered if I would have the pleasure of your company, again. That’s all.”

James leaned back in his chair, his paper in his hands, his face turned watchfully to me. Lita had come in to clear, and behind him I could see her steep Mayan profile, her lowered eyelids, as she bent over the plates.

“Well, you might,” James said. “You might have the pleasure of my company all day. Or I might go down to the office.”

“O-kay,” I said, raising my eyebrows and smiling. “Right-o. Just wanted to know.” I left to get dressed. I was not happy.

The thing was, I was seeing someone else. Guy was totally different from James: he was a grown-up. I had been seeing him for some time, and for a while we had been very careful, supremely discreet. We were still being careful, but things were starting to change somehow, and move faster. I wasn’t sure anymore that I could be careful, or that I could keep things under control. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to; I didn’t know what I wanted. I wasn’t sure if there was some subversive part of me that didn’t want things under control. Something was slipping. I didn’t know if it was me, or everything around me.

That day I was meeting Guy for lunch. By itself, that would have been all right, since I often go out for lunch, whether or not James is at home. But this time Guy had planned to pick me up at the apartment. If James was going to be popping in and out of the apartment all day, then I should tell Guy not to come, but if James was listening in on all my phone calls, how was I going to tell him not to?

We have two phone lines, and when one is being used, a little yellow light on the telephone goes on, to show which line it is. Every time that light went on, I knew, James would stealthily lift up the receiver. He would do it utterly noiselessly, holding the twin plungers down until the receiver was completely still, the mouthpiece held away from his mouth, the earpiece pressed deep against his ear, his whole listening brain ready to plunge into the middle of my conversation.

I went into the bedroom, working on this problem, and also the problem of what to wear. I wanted Guy to look at me and think: brainy and sexy. I chose a black short tight skirt, black tights, black cashmere sweater. I stood in front of the mirror, examining myself. The risk was that he would look at me and think: brainy undertaker. I tried on a gold chain and a gold bracelet: rich brainy undertaker? I took off the gold.

It occurred to me that maybe right now would be the best time to call Guy, while James was reading the paper. The dining room was the only room in the apartment that didn’t have a telephone, with its two little yellow lights. But was James still in there? It would be just like him to sneak after me as soon as I left, and go into his study to watch for the yellow light.

I went into the front hall, where I could see into the dining room. James was still sitting at the table with the paper. He was leaning over the puzzle, a pencil in his hand. He looked placid and settled.

The kitchen phone was the closest. Lita was standing at the sink with her back to me. I dialed Guy’s number. I stood facing the room, my head high, my chin lifted. I wasn’t going to turn my back, or whisper and act secretive; I was going to act perfectly normal, as though everything I was doing was respectable. Still, my heart was pounding a bit.

When Guy answered I said, “Hi.” My voice sounded perfectly normal (I hoped) and cheerful, as if he were any old friend, and as if everything were fine. “It’s me. About lunch.”

“Still on?” Guy asked.

“Ye-e-es,” I said, dragging the word out to suggest complications. “But we can’t meet where we planned.”

“You mean at your place,” he said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Okay. What’s going on?” Guy asked.

“It’s hard to say, exactly,” I said cheerfully.

“You can’t talk,” said Guy. “Can you call me later?”

“I certainly hope so,” I said, laughing and emphatic, as though I would be shocked and offended otherwise. “Okay, then. Talk to you soon. Bye.” I hung up.

I hoped that I had made it sound, to anyone listening from the dining room, as though the conversation was quite different from what it was. But the whole thing had been more alarming than I had expected. My heart was still pounding, in fact it had gotten worse: this was more excitement than I had hoped for. Lita turned around and looked at me without speaking. I smiled at her in a perfectly natural way; she doesn’t speak much English anyway. She couldn’t have picked up anything from my conversation. Everything was still perfectly all right: Guy had been warned off, and James was still out there working on raising his cholesterol content.

Still smiling perfectly naturally, I walked past Lita to the swinging door. I cracked it open and peered out into the dining room the way Lita did. James was gone. My anxiety level shot up. Where had he gone, and when? If he’d left when I arrived, and had been in the bedroom or in his study, he’d have seen the yellow light go on, and I was dead. If he’d been in the bathroom, shaving, or if he’d only just now left the dining room, then I was safe. My heart was pounding even more, but the main thing, I thought, was not to panic. I would act natural, and do everything as usual.

I went back to where Lita stood at the sink.

“Lita,” I said.

“Sí, señora,” she answered at once, turning to face me.

“This afternoon, when you go to the dry cleaner’s,” I said, “can you ask them if they have my red skirt? I need it for tonight.”

“Sí, señora,” she said. There were other things that needed to be done, a water stain I wanted removed from a coffee table. I added pears to the grocery list. Lita’s face was stony, her expression grim. I could see that there was turbulence beneath it. I knew there was something she wanted to tell me, but I couldn’t afford to listen to her life right then. I couldn’t hear another story about Paco, I couldn’t bear to see her face turn thunderous, hear the music rise. I was having enough trouble with the turbulence in my own life.

I went into my study. Out of nerves I left the door slightly open, which I never do. I knew I couldn’t concentrate on real work, so I did sketches and layouts, peripheral things, as I waited for the next thing to happen. The worst of it was that I didn’t know what I was waiting for. Even if James had listened in to the phone conversation, he wouldn’t confront me. I tried to imagine what he would do: something bizarre and convoluted. Would I be found, in a few weeks’ time, sitting upright in my chair, my bones immaculately clean?

It was ten past eleven, and Guy and I planned to meet at one. I would have to call him soon. I hadn’t heard a sound from James in half an hour or so, so I walked very quietly across the rug to the door of my study and peered out. Why was I walking so quietly? If I wasn’t feeling guilty I’d make noise, I thought. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to tiptoe. My pulse was still racing. I peered soundlessly out into the front hall. There was no one there. I listened: no noise.

I stepped out into the hall, onto the big Oriental carpet. I took three more silent steps until I could see the dining room: empty. James was either in the bedroom, in his study, or in the bathroom, or he’d gone out. I would go in and see if he was in the bedroom. I could do this quite naturally, as though I were in there getting something. I walked quietly back down the hall—I seemed incapable of making noise—and opened the door to our bedroom. It was terrifying. I felt as though I were opening the door to an enemy camp. I stepped inside.

Someone was leaning over the bed, and to my panicky eyes it seemed to be James in his pale cotton dressing-gown—doing what? What was he doing to the bed? Poisoning my pillow? Guilt and nerves assailed me.

It was Lita, in her pale gray uniform, pulling the bedspread smooth. She turned around and looked at me.

“Oh!” I said, confused. Then, since I had started the conversation, I added, “Buenos días.” Ridiculous. You don’t say “Good morning” every time you see someone, all morning long.

Lita nodded without smiling. “Buenos días,” she answered politely, and turned back to the bed. She tugged firmly at the bedspread.

I hesitated, wondering whether or not to go through the bathroom, into James’s study. If he was in there getting dressed, I would have to produce some reason to be there. I would have to have something ready to say, something better than “Buenos días.”

“Señora,” Lita said. She plumped one of the pillows hard, thumping it on the bed. “Se fué.” He’s gone out.

“¿El señor?” I asked. How did she know what I wanted?

“Sí,” she said. She gave me a long, sober look.

“Oh,” I said, “gracias.”

I was safe for a few minutes. Back in my study I called Guy. This time I couldn’t help myself, I spoke in a near whisper. I was listening for the front door.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Hi,” he said, “what’s up?” It was unspeakably wonderful, hearing his voice. Guy is totally, totally focused, and whatever he says he will do, he will do. I find this incredibly sexy.

“Things have gotten very weird,” I whispered.

“Listen, if this is a bad day, we don’t have to meet today, you know,” Guy said reasonably. “We can change it.”

But that was not possible. I couldn’t bear the thought. I had been waiting for this day to arrive for decades, it seemed. And the day itself had started slowly, and quietly, in small dry trickles, like an avalanche, moving from the trickles into steep meaningful slides, gaining speed and mass and thunder. It was now hurtling downward in a huge sliding roar, carrying me with it, carrying all of us, headed straight toward this lunch, and my meeting Guy. My heart was thundering too. The thought of it all not happening was impossible. Putting it off meant meeting him sometime in another era. It was not possible. It had to happen today.

“No,” I whispered, “it will be fine. Only we’ll have to meet on the street. The corner of Madison and Ninety-first, the northeast corner. Same time,” I said, not naming it, in a desperate attempt to leave something unsaid.

“See you then,” Guy said, and we hung up.

I straightened. In my urgent secretiveness I had hunched myself over the phone as though I were trying to keep it warm. I stood up, not looking around. I was consumed by the horrible certainty that I was being watched. The skin on my neck felt cold, and my heart was galloping along, loud and wild, like a runaway horse. I made myself walk to the window, very naturally, and look out onto the park. I stared out for a few moments, seeing nothing, and then allowed myself to turn. James was standing in the door.

“Hello,” I said, breathless. “I thought you’d gone out.” Damn Lita, I thought, wild. I’ll kill her.

“No,” he said. He smiled. “I hadn’t.” There was a pause. I walked back to my desk and sat, very naturally, down.

“Are you going out for lunch?” he asked.

“No,” I said instantly, and my heart sank at once. A fatal error. How could I have said something so stupid? It was a denial reflex. I was really answering the question: Are you guilty? Right then I would have said “no” if James had asked if I’d ever seen him before.

If I hadn’t been such a fool, I could easily have told James I was going out for lunch with someone, anyone. Now I had trapped myself into staying here.

“What are you doing? For lunch?” I asked. Maybe he was going out, I thought hopefully.

“I’m not sure yet,” James said. “I may be going out.”

I nodded casually, as though it meant nothing to me. James stood there a bit longer, as though he was waiting for something else, and then he turned, looked back at me, then left.

I turned back to my sketch pad. Had he heard me? How would I know? I had an hour and a half before meeting Guy. I started making useless sketches. If worst came to worst I could call a friend, and tell James afterward that she had asked me to lunch. An hour and a half. I looked at my watch. My heart was not going to last the day if it kept up like this. “Shh,” I whispered, but it kept on.

Then the door began its sporadic crashing again. This time, every single time it crashed I had a wild urge to go out and look. Had James gone out? Come in? And why had Lita told me he was gone when he was not?

At twelve-fifteen I decided to make a move. When I heard the next crash, I went out into the hall. It was empty. “James?” I said, loudly. I looked in our bedroom, and in his study. They were empty. He was definitely out. When he came in, when I heard the next crash, I would tell him someone had called, and I was having lunch out after all. I went into the kitchen and fixed myself another cup of coffee—as though what I needed was caffeine—and started back to my study. Crossing the hall, my mug in my hand, I met Lita.

“Señora,” she said, meeting my eyes with some urgency. “Lo siento. Creí que se fué.” I’m sorry, she said, I thought he had gone out.

“No importa,” I said, waving my hand. I didn’t want Lita to think I was spying on my husband.

“Está en el armario,” she said. He is in the closet.

I stared at her for a moment. In her life, this sort of thing was always happening. Paco was constantly lying in wait for her, banging on doors, leaping out from alleys, accusing her of infidelity, trying to seduce one of her friends, or doing some other wild and alarming thing. But these things never happened in English. It’s true that I was seeing another man, but quietly, decorously.

I wondered if I had misunderstood Lita, if she was continuing with some story about Paco she’d started earlier.

“¿Quién está en el armario?” I asked.

“Su esposo,” she answered. Your husband. She stood very straight, her face solemn, as though she were a scout reporting on enemy activity.

“¿En cual cuarto?” I asked. In which room?

“Su escritorio,” Lita said.

James was in the closet of my study. He was standing there, dressed for the office, in his suit, in the dark. He was probably standing on my shoes, crushing the insteps. Was he hunched over, his ear against the heavy door, listening? Was his hand on the doorknob, holding it still? What if I tried to open the door? Would he hold on to it and keep me out? Would we wrestle, through the door? What if I managed to open it and we stood there, confronting each other? What would he say?

I didn’t want to find out.

“Gracias,” I said to Lita. My stomach felt terrible.

“De nada,” Lita said, soberly, and we passed by each other, she on her way to the kitchen, I on my way into my husband-infested study. I sat at the desk, doodling on my sketch pad. I thought of leaving the room again so that James could slip out, but of course it was possible that he didn’t want to slip out. It was very possible that he wanted to wait there until something incriminating happened.

The phone rang and I jumped. “Hello?” I said nervously.

It was only a friend, but I knew James was listening to every word. This made me feel very strange, and I must have sounded odd, because Susan asked if I had a call on the other line. I told her I was working on deadline, which was true, and we hung up. The hands on my watch moved so slowly that I kept looking at the clock, to see if my watch had stopped. Every time I did, I thought of James, breathing quietly, still standing on my shoes in the closet, for whom the time was passing even more slowly.

Finally, at twenty-five past twelve, I stood up. James would be ready by now to get out of the closet, I thought. I went into the kitchen, to give him a chance to slip past. I stood well back inside, across the room, where I could see out into the hall if James went by.

Lita was in there and turned, her eyebrows slightly lifted, as I came in. I smiled at her and put the kettle on again.

“¿Está todavía adentro?” she asked. Is he still in there?

I nodded, smiling slightly, shrugging my shoulders lightly, not looking at her. I wanted to act casual, as though we were not really talking about this, my husband standing in a dark closet for over an hour, listening to me make doodles on my sketch pad. Lita gave a decisive and disapproving shake of her head, then turned back to the silver she was cleaning.

It was now twenty of one, and I had one last hope. If James was going out to lunch, it would be soon. He refuses to eat lunch any later than one o’clock, because of his theory about digestion. He might be leaving any minute. I was so unnerved by having him in the closet that I didn’t think I could now manage to tell him someone had called earlier, while he was out, and asked me to lunch. I couldn’t even be sure, now, that he had been out. For all I knew, he’d been crouching in the hall coat closet all morning, tiptoeing out periodically to slam the door, and rushing back in after each crash.

I closed the door from the kitchen to the front hall and turned to Lita.

“Listen,” I said. “I want you to go out and stand on the corner of Madison and Ninety-first.” I told her what Guy looked like. I told her to tell him to wait, that I’d be there within ten minutes. “Okay?” I asked. “¿Me entiende?”

Lita washed her hands as I talked, listening carefully, with a frown of concentration. When I was finished she wiped her hands firmly downward on her apron, like a salute.

“Sí,” she said. “Entiendo.” She went to get her coat. I stayed in the kitchen. Lita came back, her coat on, her face sober. Walking past me she turned. “¿Por qué no sale a la oficina, como los otros?” she asked contemptuously. Why can’t he go to the office like other men? She set off on her mission.

I stood in the kitchen, hoping to see James leave my study. I turned off the kitchen light so I wouldn’t be seen. I had forgotten to ask her this, but I hoped she would slam the door loudly, loud enough to be heard by someone standing inside the closet in my study. I waited, holding my breath. There was a huge crash.

In a second James strode rapidly down the hall toward his study, past our bedroom. I waited, wondering what to do. I looked at my watch: four minutes to one. If James had a lunch date nearby he could still make it. Even if he didn’t have a date, he’d leave if he thought I’d gone out. Wouldn’t he? There would be nothing else for him to overhear, but maybe he’d stay in, out of sheer perversity: I had no idea what he would do. I could take the bull by the horns and walk out boldly myself. That would throw him into confusion, but was that what I wanted?

I couldn’t think what I wanted. All my talent for organization had vanished. I couldn’t think of what would be the best thing to do. I had no idea. As I stood there, hesitating, I heard the front door slam again. I looked out into the hall at once: it was empty. James was gone. The heavy botanical green wallpaper, the big oak chest, were alone, the room silent, unpeopled.

Everything in me had now started up like a factory. My heart was hammering, my blood was pulsing, my nerves vibrating. My ears were ringing. I was sweating, and I couldn’t remember how it was I normally breathed. I went to the hall closet and took out my coat, but I had a hard time putting it on. I couldn’t remember which one I normally wore, or if there was a reason for wearing a different one today. I was going to see Guy in moments, moments. He was already waiting outside, on the street corner. Lita would be standing surreptitiously nearby, on guard, having delivered her message but unable to tear herself away. The message was brief, one she could say in English—only a few words, the name, the phrase “ten minutes.” Her sober Mayan features would be her credentials.

Guy’s car would be parked along the sidewalk, right on our corner. James, long and lanky in his tweed overcoat, might stride right past him, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his untidy overcoat, his face enigmatic. James might stop when he saw Lita, and then she might, in her excitement, glance at Guy. Then James might follow her glance, and look at the man in the car parked alongside her. Then their eyes might meet, James’s and Guy’s. Oh, God, I thought, anything could happen, now, anything at all. The music was rising, the sunset colors coming up.

I was buttoning up my coat as I was thinking all this. I felt hot and cold at once. I couldn’t remember what season it was outside. In the elevator, the door slid shut behind me and I turned to the mirror. I had fastened my own coat all wrong. The brass buttons were out of alignment and the hem was awry, like a crazy person’s. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt the floor suddenly plunge out from under me, dropping away, leaving me aloft with nothing beneath my feet, leaving me breathless.

I felt unprepared and helpless: I could do nothing about any of this. It was alarming, but it was also thrilling. I could feel my whole known, orderly life slipping away. I could feel it slipping into Spanish, right before my eyes.