Screaming

I thought she had grabbed her whole pearl necklace in a fist to stop it at her throat so that we could speak, because it had been crashing into itself, back and forth across her breast, as she was moving toward me.

“Your dog Heather”—was all I could think to say to her—“I still remember your story about Heather, your dog, and about your daughter coming down the stairs in the black wig.”

“That was Heidi,” she said.

“Your daughter is Heidi?”

“No,” she said, “that’s the dog.”

“Oh, and she’s not living,” I said as she let the pearls go and they fell back down against her chest.

“That’s right,” she said. “Heather is. Heather’s a better name—that’s why you remember Heather. Heather is—” and she rolled her eyes so that I would know that I should have remembered Heather.

We did not talk about Heidi anymore that night, and I did not bring her up for conversation, because I did not have to. I spoke to her husband instead.

Still, I remembered how when the daughter was coming down the stairs in the black wig, wearing the kimono, Heidi ran away. I want to say that Heidi ran away screaming when she saw the daughter—but Heidi is the dog. She was a dog.

For the sake of conversation, when her husband and I saw a woman neither of us knew, I said, “I bet she’s not afraid of a living soul.” I said it because the woman had obviously done her hair all by herself for this gala—just stuck bobby pins you could see into her white hair, just worn an old, out-of-fashion cotton dress.

I told the husband I’d like to shake that woman’s hand and ask her if it was true what I had guessed.

I was considering it, getting up close. I wondered would she get scared or what she would do—what I would do.

“What about that one there?” her husband asked.

That one there was a woman who was trying to get back behind my husband. The woman was wincing as if she had just done something awful.

“A gambling problem—that’s what she has,” I said. But that wasn’t sordid enough. So then I said, “I don’t have a clue.”

“Now me,” the husband said. “Do me.”

“You,” I said, “you are hardworking. You are—”

“No,” he said, “not that—” The man looked fright­ened. He looked ready to hear what I would say as if I really knew.

Then someone was at my back, tugging at my hair, moving it. I felt a mouth was on the nape of my neck. It was a kiss.

I did not have the faintest idea who would want to do that to me. There was not a soul.

When I saw him, when I turned, his head was still hung down low from kissing me.

Thank God I did not know who he was.

I kept my face near his. I liked the look of him.

I was praying he would do something more to me.

Anything.