“IT COMES DOWN TO TRUST,” Penny says, not meeting my eyes as she sets a mug of coffee—my fourth of the morning—in front of me. She’s looking pretty and fit in tennis whites, but otherwise as hard and cool as a Greek statue. I’m seated at what used to be her former husband Darryl’s place at the kitchen counter, precariously perched on a high stool, no more in control of the situation than a man trying to ride an emu.
“I agree with you, Pen.”
“I was looking at him last night, the son you almost never mention and who I had no reason whatever to believe was in town. In your house. A lot of history there—I could feel it without any help from you. And you know what? You’re hardly better than a liar. I’ve realized that I don’t really know you at all.”
“That’s not true. You know more about me than anybody else around here.”
“Which isn’t saying a whole lot.”
“I don’t know, but if you were me—”
“If I were you?” Penny leans into the counter till she’s inches from my face, her hazel eyes moist but on fire. “If I were you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I wouldn’t be committed enough or brave enough or engaged enough to actually tell you, another person with another person’s needs and feelings, what I really think. What I care about. What the real story is. What I’m just willing to—just to, to bring to the fucking table of human relations.”
“Point taken.”
“It isn’t a point, you asshole.” Her eyes well up and she pivots and walks to the sink, where a pile of dirty breakfast dishes can be seen tilting toward the coast. I think she’s going to say more, but instead she turns on the faucet. A squirt of soap on a sponge, and she begins to scrub plates and load the dishwasher.
I’ve been gripping my mug too tightly, and I see now that I’ve spilled some coffee on the counter: another stain.
I set the mug down, get up and go to the sink, and put my arms around her from behind. I can feel myself getting hard before I even touch her.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur in her ear.
She smacks the single-lever faucet and the water shuts off. “Move.”
I step well back as she transfers a heavy skillet from sink to dishwasher. Historically, pots and pans in the hands of aggrieved women are not my friends, and by the time Penny’s added detergent and switched on the machine my nascent erection isn’t even a memory.
She turns to face me, drying her hands on a dish towel. Her eyes are no longer moist. It is in fact hard to imagine that we’ve ever fucked or had coffee in the mornings like a couple that doesn’t need language to know a few important things about each other.
“Pen, listen—”
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me, Dwight. Probably had me wrong from the start.”
Her tone is so realized and final it’s hard to recover. The dishwasher kicks into a higher gear, then turns eerily hushed. Just to have something to do, I retreat back to the counter and my abandoned coffee mug—but, even as I move, a small sac of despair is leaking inside my chest, which mystifies and frightens me. It’s unclear whether this feeling has to do with Penny, or with myself, or with this sunny California morning that seems already to presage another dead-end journey.
“What happened to you?” she demands. “That’s what I woke up this morning asking myself. Why the hell are you like this?”
I taste the coffee again and it’s cold. I carry the mug to the sink and rinse it out.