The Stud Book (18 page)

In the dim orange glow of a cedar-lined room, lit only with salt candles, Georgie breathed a deep hit of gyno-steam. Steam seeped up between her legs. Her vaginal folds were hot and damp. It was like resting on a geyser.

Her C-section incision was on its way to becoming a scar. Everything smelled rich with herbs and pussy. The baby was on blankets and pillows on the floor. The spa was baby friendly, but when Bella started to cry Georgie eased off her throne, picked up the girl, and found her way back to her perch. She dropped open her white spa robe to let Bella nurse. The phone rang.

A sign on the wall urged this is your time.

Her opening to life was sweaty. The phone cried out again, its ringtone a classical riff, singing need. Georgie eyed the sign—your time—and let the phone go.

At the bar the music was loud. Humble leaned toward the bartender, made a quick gesture, and there it was, another pint set on the dark red wood countertop. Ben hoisted the glass and let the foamy head roll. That first swallow of beer tasted like a party that shouldn’t end. He wanted to order a second pint as soon as he touched his first.

He scanned the room. Knob Creek, Maker’s Mark, Jameson, Crown Royal. Tanqueray, Luxardo, Chartreuse, Cynar, and Galliano: Bottles along the wall were as curved as bodies, the names like those of women Ben had only heard about—foreign exchange students, strippers, hookers, and cheap hotels.

Humble said, “You look like a fighter. Georgie told me you were a mess.”

Ben could barely hear him over the noise. He said, “Georgie?” He hadn’t seen Georgie. They had a deal—Sarah said she wouldn’t mention it.

Sarah sat on the couch with her magazines, the phone, and the pack of maxi-pads within reach. She was too tired to get up but afraid to fall asleep, alone and bleeding. Ben would be home before it grew late. Soon enough she’d pass that little blue sac, the collection of misguided cells. Once that was gone—this collection of cells that refused to form a child—her whole body could calm down. It was a natural process.

Animals had miscarriages. Prairie voles were known to have spontaneous abortions after hanging out too long with a male other than the father, in lab tests.

There was a stab in her gut, and Sarah thought,
Did this happen because of Dale?
He always sat so close, in small rooms alongside the cages at the zoo. Spontaneous abortion induced by impure thoughts? Jeez, she was getting more Catholic by the second.

The phone rang. She grabbed it. “Hello?”

The first sound she heard on the line was a baby’s wail. It was a baby, crying! A baby had called her? She wanted to throw up. There was a rattling sound, not a baby’s rattle but the sound of papers, somebody fumbling for the phone. Georgie’s voice came on over the wail of the baby. She said, “Where’s Ben? Does he know?” So she’d gotten the message.

Ugh. Sarah had to quit shaking. She said, “He’s out with Humble, right?”

Georgie made a sound, a fast exhale, a breath of contempt. “They still met up?”

The baby’s cry was quieter now, but still there, haunting and creepy in the background. Didn’t Georgie know where her own husband was? Sarah said, “Ben needed a night out.”

“You need him home,” Georgie said. “What’s going on?”

Then the line clicked. Sarah couldn’t get away from the sounds of the baby crying fast enough. She said, “Dulcet’s calling.”

Sarah flashed over. She heard the sound of a party, a woman laughing, voices mixed together. Dulcet said, “How are you feeling?” Her voice was slurry, a few drinks in.

“Like hell,” Sarah said, “but I’ll be okay. Where are you? Georgie’s on the other line.…” The phone clicked again. Caller ID showed it was Nyla—Nyla, with her calming, responsible ways.

Sarah said, “I’ve got to take this other call.”

“I’m on my way over.” Dulcet sounded more on her way under, as in drinking herself under a table somewhere.

“Line ’em up!” Ben said. It was his turn to buy. Humble drained his pint. When Hum said something, he turned his head away and Ben couldn’t hear him very well over the music, but he caught the words
Dead girl
and
Skoal
and
Make a bet
. He followed Hum’s gaze and saw a cop show rerun on TV with an underweight Asian girl in a bikini dead on a slab, her ribs architectural under her thin satin skin.

The regulars along the bar roared. They slapped the wooden bar top. Humble leaned forward and smiled at the masses. He lifted his glass. Everybody drank.

Cheers, dead girl!

A skinny woman in a nearly sheer shirt—she wore it like a dress, but it was a shirt—bumped Ben’s elbow as she leaned on the bar, trying to catch the bartender’s attention. She whipped her hair around and flashed a look at him just long enough to say, “Sorry.” Her eyes were green. Her teeth were small. She was barely twenty-one, if even that, Ben guessed.

He said, “It’s okay.”

She stopped, stared, and pulled a strand of hair out of her mouth. “What happened to you?”

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. He was happy to be out on the town. Before he could come up with the right clever line, Hum leaned in and yelled through the music, “He slipped in the john.”

The woman’s face moved into an uncertain smile. “Really?”

Ben let the conversation unfold across him. Humble nodded, said, “Hit the sink,” and smacked one hand against the other.

She said, “Oh my God. This is the guy you told me about!”

Humble and the woman both busted up over it. Ben asked, “What?”

The woman said, “You should sue somebody.”

Again? Ben let that wash on by. He said, “Maybe I’m already a rich man.”

The woman, or girl, said, “I’m sure. The Humster told me all about you.”

The Humster?

Hum grinned back like he was used to flirting with underage drinkers, or drinksters: the Humster and the Drinksters.

What did Humble know about Ben’s smashed face, anyway? Not the real story. Ben tipped back his glass. The girl-woman ordered her drinks, holding a few bills in one hand and running the fingers of her other hand over the ends of them.

Then Hannah came on the TV over the girl’s shoulder—Hannah, the newly appointed senator.

Or state senator, really.

She was a floating face, an angel or devil, ready to whisper in the young woman’s ear, to whisper in Ben’s ear. She was the mother of all those children in the bar, high above, a concerned talking head.

It was a newsbreak. Hannah spoke with authority about some vague plan; Ben missed the lead-in, and what was she talking about?

Maybe because of the beer, or maybe because of his broken face, to show he was more than a buffoon, Ben elbowed Humble in a way that made both their beers slosh. He said, “I used to date her.”

Humble looked again at the busty young chick in the sheer shirt. He smiled. “Her?”

Ben said, “No, her,” and pointed at the TV. “In college.”

Humble looked up at Hannah, with the blank stare of the unimpressed. Ben tried to shake it off like Humble’s opinion didn’t matter, but yes, it was her, his old girlfriend, on TV, and she still mattered.

He had her photo torn from the newspaper folded in his wallet.

At home, over the phone, Nyla asked, “Does it hurt more or less than the time the cops showed up and you fell out of that tree and couldn’t catch your breath, you hit the ground so hard?”

Sarah said, “You know, I was so wasted back then. That was a long time ago.…” It was a landmark in their shared ancient history. They’d been under drinking age but over eighteen—old enough to throw in jail—on a night when a party was busted. A close call.

“But that’s what it feels like, isn’t it?” Nyla said. “The one I had was quick. Like an afternoon. It was intense, but only lasted for a few hours.”

Sarah flipped her magazine closed and reached for her glass of
wine, but she didn’t sit up all the way and knocked the magazine into the wine instead. The glass spilled; wine rolled across the coffee table, under magazines and junk mail, and across the old maxi-pad. “Ah, crumb!” She grabbed the first thing she could reach—more pads—and started blotting.

Nyla said, “What is it?”

“Nothing. A spill, red wine. Second one today. I’m so wiped out, it makes me clumsy.” She stood up, and when she stood she heard and felt, in a mixed sensation, the suck of blood and clots tumbling. Her head tipped back like somebody had put a palm to her forehead. She said, “Oh, jeez!” and reached for a wall.

Nyla said, “What?”

She said, “Just dizzy, for a minute.”

Nyla said, “Sit down. Right now, right where you are. Are you okay?”

She said, “The bleeding’s a little heavier.”

“Hang up and call 911. Call, and I’m coming over. I’ll call right back. When I call back, I want to hear that they’re on the way.” It was a plan.

Humble’s voice was loud when he said, in Ben’s ear, “Ever think about it, like, what if you were still with her? You’d be in politics.”

Ben said, “No way, man.” He shook his head. It seemed the thing to say. Why tell Humble about pining?

Hannah, on TV, was dressed in the worst kind of clothes, a self-imposed frump. But even in her politician costume, she was beautiful. She was hot. If he’d married her, by now he’d be the public husband lagging behind his successful, hot politico wife. It’d be good—she’s a powerhouse. And it’d be lame—he’d look useless.