I cheated on Claude once. He’d already moved to California and I was still in Kansas, still in school, living with an opera singer who was as tall as a lumberjack. He had curly blond hair and credit card debt. We lived together because we were both friends with our other roommates, a short girl with a loud dog and a guy in pharmacy school who was rarely home. We had separate sets of friends, and he had a girlfriend—a pretty Asian girl who was also an opera singer. She went to the nail salon every single week. They practiced their arias on the porch sometimes. She was out of town the night it happened, and the opera singer and I decided to go out drinking, I’m not sure why.
He had a beard and it felt good to kiss him. Claude’s face is very smooth and soft, softer than mine. The opera singer and I came home from the bar and had sex in his bedroom. It was filled with stolen furniture. He drove a delivery truck for a Danish store downtown and would sometimes deliver things to himself. He had a headboard, a dresser, a desk, and a set of matching bedside tables, all painted white and handle-less. Our other roommates might have been home. I didn’t think about consequences back then.
Now that Claude is here I watch him sleep. I picture him in Montecito, leaning back in his office chair with a tie on, teasing the receptionist who has tan shoulders and a symmetrical smile. I picture him walking to lunch, squinting in the sunlight and jingling his keys.
The first night Claude and I spent at our new California apartment, on the floor squeezed into a single sleeping bag, all I could think about was that opera-singer roommate.