The Ex

18

Molly wheeled Michael in his stroller from the elevator the next morning and stopped near the bank of tarnished brass mailboxes. The apartment building’s lobby was almost small enough to be called a foyer. Gray tiles flecked with black ran halfway up the walls, which were painted an industrial green. There was no doorman, and the intercom had been painted over so many times that it was obviously inoperable. The finely cracked gray marble floor was littered with crushed cigarette butts, a crumpled McDonald’s wrapper, and marred with dark scuff marks from heels. Molly noted with some alarm what looked like a crack vial whose glass had been ground under someone’s shoe to a fine, reflective powder that glittered like diamond dust.

She fished her key ring from her purse and unlocked her mailbox. Above the bank of mailboxes with their sometimes functional doorbell buttons, someone had painstakingly but obviously altered black felt-tip graffiti reading “fuck you” to the less objectionable “book you.”

Nothing in the mail much interested Molly. There was a statement from Apple Bank, an appeal for a donation to a charity she’d never heard of, a pamphlet without a postmark that warned of an imminent global reckoning with God, and a mail-order catalog of remaindered books.

She slipped the mail into her purse. The elevator doors opened, and an elderly man she remembered from standing in the street with the other tenants during false fire alarms emerged. He smiled and nodded a good morning to her, then held the street door open while she pushed the stroller outside into bright sunlight.

It was going to be another hot day, but the morning was still comfortable. As she pushed the stroller along West Eighty-fifth on the way to Small Business, she found herself looking around tentatively, half expecting to see the woman with the mirror-lens glasses.

But if the woman was nearby, she was staying out of sight.

Nor did Molly see the woman in the park later that morning as she jogged her usual course along the sun-dappled trail, listening to her own deep breathing and the rhythmic light touch of her rubber soles on the warm asphalt. She was running well, with spring in her step. This was why she jogged, this feeling that through determined and relentless exertion she could overcome all obstacles and keep her world in balance and control.

But she experienced a surprising surge of anxiety as she approached the place on the trail where she’d seen the woman yesterday.

When she passed that point and had jogged several hundred yards farther, she relaxed.

If she didn’t want the woman-Deirdre, she still suspected-to upset the morning even in her absence, she decided she’d better concentrate on finishing her run.

She slowed her pace and regulated her breathing, settling into the mental and physical groove she knew would allow her to go the distance. She felt secure enough now. There were other joggers on the trail, people walking, even a pair of lovers in each other’s arms on a blanket. She could hear the hum of traffic, and through the trees glimpse the fleeting bright yellow of a cab passing on one of the park’s gently curving streets.

Deirdre and Craig Chumley were in the back of the cab. Chumley was clenching his jaws as Deirdre, leaning down and to the side, performed oral sex on him.

He groaned and the driver glanced again in the rearview mirror. Chumley, and Deirdre, knew the driver was aware of what was happening in the back of his cab. Neither minded; he was simply part of the fantasy.

Deirdre raised her head. Her eyes met the driver’s boldly in the mirror and he looked away. She saw the curve of his cheek as he smiled and concentrated as best he could on his driving. He was probably never surprised by what went on between his passengers.

She wiped her wrist across her mouth and leaned back in the upholstery, letting her head drop to the side to rest against Chumley’s shoulder. The lush green trees, the on-coming traffic, the people in the park, slid past outside the window like a bright dream.

Chumley made no move to zip his fly.

“God!” he said softly, “you didn’t have to stop!”

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I…well, I’ve got a lot of worries lately.”

“Such as?”

She hesitated, as if she really didn’t want to burden him with her problems. Then: “There’s this apartment I found. It’s perfect! All I have to do is get the money for a security deposit and I can have it.”

“So?”

“I’m afraid somebody else is going to want it and snatch it away from me.”

Chumley tucked in his chin and gazed down at her in surprise. “For God’s sake, Deirdre, why didn’t you say so earlier? I can give you an advance on your salary.”

“That’s a wonderful idea!” Then she backed away and looked at him, suddenly concerned. “But are you sure you can afford it?”

He smiled. “Of course! The company’s healthy enough for that. We’ve had a good quarter.” He pulled her back to him so her head was against his shoulder again, then tenderly brushed a strand of hair up off her forehead. “Besides, I trust you, Deirdre.”

She resisted his efforts to hold her and sat forward again so she could twist her body and look into his eyes. As the cab struck a pothole, the suspension bottomed out, and she almost slipped from the seat. “That’s wonderful of you,” she said. “I won’t forget this. I really won’t.”

The cab rocked as it rounded a corner, and this time she let the momentum take her and collapsed far back in the seat in great relief, beaming.

The cabby glanced again in the mirror. “Back to the office?”

Chumley pretended not to have noticed the hint of sarcasm in his voice. “No, just drive around the park some more for a while.”

Deirdre wrapped her arms around Chumley’s neck and kissed his cheek. Her eyes met the driver’s again in the rearview mirror. She winked.

Then she grinned at Chumley and slid down again to sit on the cab floor.

Molly was seated cross-legged on the living room floor that evening, playing with Michael, when David came home from work. They both waved to him then went back to using Michael’s See ’n Say, a toy that made appropriate animals sounds when a cord was pulled. “This is a sheep,” said the See ’n Say as David tossed his attache case in the chair then hung his coat in the closet just inside the door.

“Not me, I hope,” he said, over the Baaaaaa of the See ’n Say.

“You’re early,” Molly said.

“One of our fee clients is driving me nuts, claiming we won’t try to market his manuscript because it’s political dynamite. He’s convinced Charles Manson engineered both Kennedy assassinations.”

“What do you think?” Molly asked, smiling.

David crossed the room and picked up Michael, then kissed him and playfully jostled him.

Molly stood up and looked at both of them with pride and a possessiveness edged with worry.

“Why don’t we see if Bernice can watch Michael, then let’s go to Rico’s for dinner?” David said. “This time just the two of us.”

Pleased, Molly thought the offer over. “Better yet, why don’t the three of us go?”

She wasn’t sure he was going to agree, but he grinned and handed Michael to her. “Okay. Just give me a minute, then we’ll leave.”

She watched him walk toward the back of the apartment, then go into the bathroom. A minute later she heard water running.

In the bathroom, David was standing shirtless before the mirror, twisting his torso this way and that to examine the scratches on his back.

He stared at them for a long time before deciding they looked better. They were scabbed over evenly and there was no swelling. He wouldn’t have to worry about infection.

The hunger Deirdre obviously felt for him was something he couldn’t quite fathom, but he had to admit to feeling flattered somewhere within his agony of hating the circumstances that had entrapped him in the Fifty-fourth Street apartment with the wide bedroom window.

Of course, Deirdre considered it destiny and wanted him to think of it the same way. But wasn’t that how all adulterers thought?

A loud knock on the door made him jump.

“Hey,” Molly called through the door, “you okay in there?”

He hurriedly struggled back into his shirt. “Sure. Be right with you!”

When he emerged from the bathroom, they were standing by the door to the hall.

“Better not keep us waiting any longer,” Molly said jokingly. “We’re starving, and it’s alarming what hunger can do to the disposition.”