Bird in Hand (21 page)

Ursula frowned. Clearly, she expected more for her twenty-four dollars. “But what about
your
agent?”

“Oh. She says she’s not accepting any new clients at the moment,” Claire said, parroting the words her agent had said to her when she left on tour. (“Under no circumstances will you give any would-be writer who comes to your reading my e-mail address!”)

“Well, I know that’s not true,” Ursula said, adopting a mock-jovial air. “I have a subscription to
Writer’s Digest
. I know how it goes down. Agents are always looking for new clients. Just because I don’t live in New York City doesn’t mean I can’t string two sentences together, you know. I was listed in the
Encyclopedia of American Writers
last year, by the way. Not to brag. Just to make my point.”

Claire had seen ads for the
Encyclopedia of American Writers
; they charged seventy-nine dollars to list your name and bio, and then you had to pay ninety-nine dollars for the tome itself. She was suddenly bone weary; all she wanted to do was flee. It had been too long a day. She’d smiled and chitchatted with too many random people, and now she just wanted to get back to her hotel and meet Charlie at the bar and fuck him in her king-size bed.

She willed herself to smile at Ursula. “Wow, congratulations!” she said brightly. “I’m sure you’re very talented, and I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. But feel free to contact me through my Web site if you have other questions.”

By this time Gary, the media escort, and Alan, a store clerk with a weedy goatee, had descended on the table, sensing a situation. “Can I assist you with anything else this evening?” Alan asked Ursula in a sugary singsong.

Stuffing Claire’s book in her bag with a frown, Ursula said, “No, thank you. And I just want to say one more thing to Claire Ellis. Irregardless of what that critic said, I don’t think your book is tedious navel-gazing masquerading as fiction. At least from what you read tonight. So good luck. I hope the reviews get better.”

“What is she talking about?” Claire asked Gary when Ursula was gone.

“Lord knows. She clearly has a screw loose. She probably made it up.” He flapped his hand dismissively.

Alan, stacking chairs against a bookcase, called over, “Actually, I saw that one. It’s the newest customer review on Amazon, right at the top. One star.”

“Oh, well, then,” Gary scoffed. “Customer review. Nobody pays any attention to those anyway.”

A tiny dark cloud was forming behind Claire’s eyes, meeting up with other clouds, gathering size and heft by the minute. She felt an achy exhaustion that had become familiar over the past week, the result of erratic surges and ebbs of adrenaline that occurred throughout the day as she moved from one appearance to another.

“Hey, you two want to go out for a drink?” Alan asked, rolling a heavy bookcase back to its customary place. “I can show you around ‘happening’ downtown Atlanta.”

“Fine by me,” Gary said. “We could have a few beers on the publisher.” He looked expectantly at Claire. “I’ll bet you could use a cosmo right about now.”

“I’d love to,” Claire said, “but I’m going to have to pass. I’m wiped. Thank you, though.”

“You don’t have to get up in the morning,” Gary said, leafing through Claire’s typed schedule. “Your flight to Richmond isn’t until two.”

“I need to take a bubble bath and go to bed,” she said, pulling on her coat. “I’m sorry. I’m a boring old lady.”

I’d love to. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re very talented. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. Thank you, thank you, I’m sorry. Claire felt as if she were choking on her own white lies. She just wanted to go back to her hotel, damn it; was that too much to ask? She felt horribly guilty, but she hated this part of it—the endless expectation that one be grateful and polite. As he drove Claire around in his Prius all day, Gary had regaled her with stories of difficult writers: minor celebrities hawking kiss-and-tell memoirs, querulous old historians, bitchy divas with outrageous requests. So-and-so demanded total silence. Another requested, via the publisher, that Gary never look her in the eye. Another wanted to stop at every fast-food restaurant he came across and sample the fries. Still another dropped Gary in front of a mall and took off in his car for three hours, never bothering to explain where he’d gone. These people were obnoxious, she had to agree. But secretly she was beginning to have a tiny bit of sympathy for them.

“I’m coming back to Atlanta in a few months with my husband to visit his family,” she told Gary and Alan, lying brazenly now, “so I’ll get to explore a little then.”

This seemed to satisfy them. They made plans to meet up later by themselves. Was Alan gay, too? Of course, she realized—that was it. She was just the stage prop to get them together.

In front of the hotel, sitting in Gary’s car, Claire said that she wouldn’t need him to ferry her to the airport the next day; she’d take the hotel shuttle.

“I’ve got to get you on that plane,” Gary said with alarm. “If you don’t get to Richmond on time my ass will be grass.”

“Your ass will not be grass,” Claire said. “I’m a big girl. I’m not going to miss my plane.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

When she got out of the car, Gary was checking his reflection in the rearview mirror, rubbing his finger across his teeth, tousling his hair.

“Have fun tonight,” she said.

“Oh, honey, you know I will,” he said. “You have a nice bubble bath.”

“I plan to,” she said, feeling a flush of anticipation.

WALKING INTO THE dim bar from the hotel lobby, Claire was momentarily blinded. The first thing she saw, when her eyes adjusted, was the whiteness of Charlie’s shirt. He was sitting at the far end of the bar, nursing a beer and chatting with the bartender. It was as if she’d conjured him just by wishing. It didn’t seem possible that he was actually here—the bar might as well have been in a distant solar system, light-years from Earth.

Then he saw her. “At last,” he said, rising with a grin.

She moved toward him. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No, don’t be,” he said quickly, grasping her hand, threading his fingers through hers. “It was nice. The anticipation. Knowing you were coming.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. She felt the weight of his sadness, like a blanket over his shoulders, and she put her arms around him.

“Oh,” he breathed. She could hear his heartbeat, or at least she thought it was his heartbeat—it might have been the percussive undercurrent of the music, a Carrie Underwood song she recognized from the radio.

After a moment Claire pulled back. She lifted his glass, which was half full, and took a swallow.

“You need a drink,” he said.

She shrugged. “You’ve been here a while. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t care. I just want to be with you.”

She slid onto the vinyl stool beside him. “Charlie—the accident … . it’s all so awful.”

“It is.”

“How is she?”

“Not so good.”

“What does she—what do they … ” Claire stopped, unsure how to continue.

“There will be a hearing in a few weeks,” he said. “Mandatory sentencing for DWI—she’ll lose her license for three months and has to take some classes. Thank God, though—it doesn’t look like she was at fault in the accident. Technically.”

“Technically.” Claire repeated the word flatly, without affect, but it was a question. Did Charlie think that Alison was at fault?

“She shouldn’t have been driving in that condition,” he said.

“She had a couple of drinks. I’m sure she felt she was fine to drive.”

“Her judgment was impaired, yes.”

“Come on, Charlie,” Claire said, finding herself in the odd position of defending her lover’s wife to him. “You’ve never driven anywhere on a few drinks?”

“Yeah, I probably have. But I can absorb more, I have faster reflexes. … ”

“Basically, you think your judgment is better.”

He didn’t answer. He lifted the glass of beer and drained it.

Claire shook her head. “It could’ve happened to any of us. The other car ran a stop sign, for God’s sake! And I’ve never understood the rules of a four-way stop—when to go, when to stop. … It can be ambiguous.”

This wasn’t how she had envisioned their evening together—arguing about Alison. She was suddenly aware again of the headache lurking behind her eyes. Her shoulders felt tight; her feet were sore. Steaming water, a fluffy terry cloth robe, a stream of pink liquid frothing into bubbles … “Charlie,” she said, capitulating to his stronger emotions, “I don’t want to get into this with you. It’s really none of my business.”

“Of course it is,” he said wearily. “It’s my business, it’s your business. I wish it weren’t. I wish it had nothing to do with us. But it does, and— Jesus.” He put his head in his hands, his elbows on the bar. “Alison is depressed—her parents—the kids. And being with you is suddenly. … ” He sighed heavily, almost theatrically. “It’s not like this thing between us is just a fling, and everything will go back to normal. It isn’t, it won’t. At least not for me.” He looked up, and Claire nodded, not wanting to respond until he was finished. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Claire. I just don’t know. Alison is usually such a careful person. To a fault. Right? Haven’t we always joked about that? She gave up coffee the minute she found out she was pregnant—didn’t touch alcohol once in the whole nine months, or when she was nursing. Always wears a seat belt. She insisted that the two of us finish our will before we went away together overnight for the first time after Annie was born. I know she’s not at fault—I know she didn’t kill that kid. But this accident has fucked up everything. I feel—I feel like she’s ruined my life.”

“Imagine what she must be feeling about her own life,” Claire said.

“Of course, of course I do,” he said edgily. “That’s the point—her own life is a wreck. She’s a wreck. And I’m married to her. How can I—how can we possibly—”

“Stop,” Claire said abruptly, putting a finger to his lips. “These questions are way too big to settle in Atlanta on a Monday night.” She slid off her stool, put her hand on his thigh. “I suggest that for the next twelve hours we pretend that we’re alone in the world. Nobody else. Just us, right now, here.” She glanced around. “In this lame bar.”

“Yeah. In this anonymous office park,” he said. “In this random city.”

“Tomorrow we’ll be gone.”

“What’s your name again?”

It was already happening, she thought; the past was indistinct. “No names,” she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a room card, held it up between two fingers. “You know what I’m craving?”

“Can I guess?”

“A bath. With you. What do you think about that?”

“No thinking,” he said. “Remember?”

Maybe they were at their best like this—pretending they were strangers, with no history between them, drawn together only in lust. In the hotel room they had sex in a frenzy, with their clothes half on, standing up against the door, then took a long bath together, reveling in the luxury of time. Later they made love again, stretched out across the huge bed, their movements slow and deliberate. Though it was exciting to pretend that Charlie was unknown to her, when Claire finally came (it took a while; she’d been so tense) she felt stripped of this pretense, revealed; his fingers and tongue knew her so well. Their years of friendship and flirtation, the low flame of desire—it was all in his eyes and the way he touched her.
I know you
.

The next morning, when Charlie was in the shower, Claire called Ben. They made small talk for a few minutes—
How’d it go last night? I’m tired of being on the road. Any calls or mail I need to deal with?
— until Charlie came out in a towel and Claire cut the conversation short, tugging off his towel as she snapped the cell phone shut. Lying back against the pillows, she let the phone drop to the floor as Charlie stretched across her, seal-damp, his wet hair brushing against her face, his minty lips on her mouth.

Room service arrived after a while, and they drank coffee and ate English muffins like a long-married couple, exchanging information about their flights. They left for the airport together—Charlie had coordinated his flight time with hers—and went through security before realizing they’d have to split up; she was flying to a different hub.

They were early. Airport security in Atlanta was more relaxed than in New York; they’d allotted more time than necessary. So they found a corner booth in an Au Bon Pain and bought a coffee to share. Sitting in a public place, in the bright light of midmorning, they were suddenly self-conscious with each other. What had been thrilling the night before, now, under threat of exposure, felt a little furtive. If someone they knew stumbled on them and asked what they were doing, it would be easy enough to lie—Charlie on a business trip, Claire on a book tour, a chance meeting in line for the security machines at the airport—but it would be bad. They weren’t ready to be stumbled on.

Thoughts hung in the air between them, unspoken. What are we doing? Where is this going? How can it possibly work?

“I want to wake up beside you every morning,” Charlie whispered after a while, abandoning protocol. He leaned forward, folding his arms on the marble tabletop. “I want to go to movies with you. I want to build a life together.”