Page 6

Katrina

The bartender brings a whiskey for Katrina (her second) and a beer for Elijah (his first).

That’s his name—Elijah. Moments ago, he sat next to her at the bar.

She would like to think he was seeking her company, but the truth is that the seat next to her was the only one open.

They have just exchanged names. He is one of the most handsome men Katrina has ever seen.

Not regular-guy handsome, but might-be-a-Calvin-Klein-model handsome.

He has big brown eyes, irises like melted chocolate, and curly brown hair in a bun on top of his head.

His eyelashes are outrageously long. Women pay stupid amounts of money for extensions that make their lashes look like his.

“So are you from around here?” he asks, before taking a sip of his beer.

Her hands are in her lap, and she fiddles with her wedding ring. Should she take it off? The thought of it gives her a thrill. She could pretend, just for tonight, to be single and spontaneous and alive. On nights other than this night, she is married and boring and dead inside.

“I’m not,” she says.

She knows he is from around here because he mentioned, when introducing himself, that this bar is his usual spot.

“I’ve been in town for a couple weekends. Visiting family,” she says.

His smile makes her think of the word genial . What a strange word— genial . One letter away from genital .

“Where you from?” he asks.

She does it. She slips off her wedding ring and drops it in the inner pocket of her purse. Then she brings her hands to the bar. If she’s not mistaken, he glances at the all-important finger.

“Los Angeles,” she says.

“And what do you do in Los Angeles?”

What do people do in Los Angeles?

“I work for a production company.”

“Fancy,” he says.

That’s what she was going for— fancy .

“And you live around here?” she asks.

“I do. My apartment’s just a few blocks away.”

Is it just her, or did he say that with a certain twinkle in his eye? Would he invite her back to his apartment? She wouldn’t go if he did, but it would be nice to be asked.

“And what do you do?”

She hates that question, but he asked it first, so the reciprocation is only natural.

She remembers hearing somewhere that nobody asks that question in Europe.

Ask a European what they do, and they will likely list their daily activities and hobbies.

Only in America is your career equivalent to who you are.

He takes a long pull on his beer. It’s already halfway gone. She is nursing her drink because she is a lightweight, especially when it comes to whiskey. She doesn’t drink it at home, ever. There is the occasional glass of wine from a $9.99 zinfandel purchased at Trader Joe’s. That is her life.

“I’m a paralegal for now, hoping to be a civil rights attorney,” he says. “I just took the bar, actually.”

“Well,” she says. “Fancy.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I’m impressed,” she adds.

“That’s premature. We don’t know if I passed yet.”

We. As if they are already an item.

He finishes his beer. Within three seconds of his placing his empty glass on the bar, the bartender is there to collect it and ask if he wants another. He does.

“How long till you get the results?”

“A couple months,” he says.

She keeps staring at his lips, then scolding herself for staring.

She can’t help but wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

She really has no business wondering this.

It’s just that he’s nothing like the other guys she’s been with before, bland white guys with sandy-blond hair and light eyes and aspirations for a 401(k) and a house in suburbia.

“You seem young to take the bar,” she says, fishing for his age. It’s obvious he’s younger than her, but she’s not sure by how much.

“I like to describe myself as a former twentysomething,” he says with a smile. That smile, those dimples.

“We’re all former twentysomethings,” she says.

“Well, I just graduated from that decade a few days ago.”

Katrina thinks of the twenties as “late adolescence,” a time for mistakes and self-absorption and aimless wandering. The fact that he’s already taken the bar exam means he must be far more mature than she was at his age.

“You can’t be much older than me,” he says.

She feels his thigh pressing against hers. Or maybe it’s not pressing. Maybe it’s just there. But it wasn’t there a few minutes ago.

“That’s a sly way of finding out my age,” she says.

“I thought so.”

“I’m thirty-five.”

He nods. There is no eyebrow raising or other facial reaction to suggest he is in any way uncomfortable with her being “an older woman.” After all, they’re just flirting. It’s not like he’s assessing her as marriage material.

“You were still in junior high when I graduated from high school,” she says.

He laughs.

The truth is really much worse. She’s forty. He was still in junior high when she graduated from college .

“I’ve always had a thing for older women,” he says.

This one comment makes it clear that the interest is mutual, which is shocking.

He is so far out of her league, but he doesn’t seem to realize or care.

She could blame it on the booze, but he’s only had two beers.

To be clear, it’s not that she’s horribly unpleasant to look at.

On a good day, she might even be described as pretty.

But on most days, she would be described as average.

She finishes her whiskey and places the empty glass next to his empty pint glass.

“So, Kit Kat,” he says.

“Kit Kat? You’ve already bestowed me with a nickname?”

“Too soon?”

She wants to say Too unnecessary because I’ll never see you again . But she decides to enjoy the moment instead, to pretend that it’s not unnecessary, that they are at the beginning of something. How fun to be at the beginning of something. For so long, she has felt at the end of everything.

“It’s cute,” she says.

“Should we get one more?” he asks.

Her head is pleasantly fuzzy, her skin warm and tingly. She is at the stage of drunkenness when the world seems kind and possibilities are endless. If she has one more, she will cross the line into drunken despair or, worse, puking. No woman her age should cross that line.

“I think I’m done for the night,” she says.

“Done drinking or done talking to me?”

“I assumed the two went together.”

“They don’t have to.”

There is that twinkle in his eye again. My apartment’s just a few blocks away.

Katrina has never personally known a woman who has had an affair.

Or rather, she’s never known a woman who has admitted to having an affair.

Not that this thing with Elijah is—or would be, if she let it happen—an affair .

It would be—if she let it happen, which she won’t—a one-night stand.

A dalliance. A blip on an otherwise uneventful radar.

But still, she’s never known a woman who has confided in her about a blip.

She remembers listening to one of the marriage podcasts she subscribes to—because her marriage is at a point in which podcasts are needed to salvage it—and the guest, a prominent psychologist, said that about half of people have an affair at some point during their marriage.

Half! One out of two. That means either Katrina or her husband is likely to cheat.

She wonders if her husband has already had an affair.

She can’t imagine he could manage the logistics of it. He is terrible with texting.

On that same podcast, the psychologist said that men and women have affairs in equal numbers.

It’s just that women are more secretive about it.

After all, it’s more shameful for a woman to stray.

There are scarlet letter A s for women. For men, cheating scandals are very ho hum.

A good percentage of the world’s leaders are adulterers, and most people can’t be bothered to care.

Those poor men can’t be blamed for their biology—they are made to spread their seed, they are governed by their base instincts. Poor men and their ambitious penises.

When Katrina was in high school, it was well known that the history teacher, Mr. Adams, cheated on his wife with the English teacher, Ms. Pressley.

Some of the kids started calling her “Ms. Press Me,” which didn’t make a ton of sense, but the gist was that Ms. Pressley was a slutty home-wrecker.

She ended up leaving the school—by force or of her own accord, it was never clear.

Mr. Adams stayed. He seemed disheveled and didn’t wear his wedding ring for a few weeks, but then it was back.

The students were left to assume that he had been properly reproached by his wife and would now be better behaved.

What if Katrina did go back to Elijah’s apartment? Maybe they would just make out like teenagers. She deserved a little fun, didn’t she? Even if they had sex, was that so awful? She might return to her husband a better wife if she had some excitement for once.

She scours her mental Rolodex of friends and acquaintances, wondering which ones would be most likely to have a one-night stand like the one she is considering having.

It reminds her of when they learned in high school that one in five people has herpes and she and her four friends all looked at each other, trying to decipher which one of them it would be.

The consensus was that it would be Kristen.

They arrived at this consensus behind Kristen’s back, of course.

Truthfully, she can’t imagine any of the women she knows having one-night stands.

It’s not that they seem blissful in their marriages; it’s just that they are so busy .

When would they have time to sneak off to a bar and meet their own Elijah?

They are all mothers. They have bedtime routines to manage.

They spend most waking hours in faded black leggings.

A few weeks ago, she never would have been able to imagine herself in this scenario either.

It’s a unique circumstance, a circumstance not accessible to most women she knows. For better or worse.

“Where would you want to go ... to keep talking?” she asks him.

There is a twinkle in her own eye now, she can feel it. His smile conveys mischief. They are in on this together.

“You’re welcome to come to my place. It’s a short walk.”

“Just a few blocks,” she says. “You mentioned that.”

“Just a few blocks.”

“It would be nice to get out of this noisy bar.”

“It is very noisy.”

“Okay then, let’s go,” Katrina says.

She takes out her wallet, and he places his hand on her hand, which sends a jolt through her system. She didn’t think she was capable of feeling such jolts anymore. It’s as if his hands are those paddles paramedics use to revive the nearly dead.

“Let me,” he says, taking out his wallet. He leaves cash on the bar top.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“My mother would have my head if I didn’t.”

Before she can think up a quip about him being a mama’s boy, he says, “Come on,” then takes her hand and leads her out of the bar.

The night air is cold, but his hand is warm.

She tries to picture what her husband would think if he were walking down the street and saw her with this gorgeous man, leaning into his side, holding his hand.

He wouldn’t believe it. He would blink his eyes in disbelief.

Because it is, truly, unbelievable. When she wakes up tomorrow, she will doubt her memory.

She will question what really happened. This night, the magic of it, will seem like a fever dream.

“It’s right here,” he says, pointing to a high-rise, the reflection of the Hilton logo from the hotel next door shining in his eyes.

This is her chance to say You know what, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, but I think this is where I’ll say goodbye.

She considers it. She doesn’t owe him anything.

She knows that. But does she owe herself something?

She tries to think of the last time she did something for her , the last time she embarked on any action that was not in service to another human being.

There was that massage last month. She’d had to ask the woman to ease up on the pressure. She was sore for days after.

He must sense her hesitation because he says, “I promise I’m not a serial killer.”

She laughs.

“That sounds like something a serial killer would say.”

He laughs.

“If you don’t want to come up, it’s totally fi—”

She puts a finger to his lips, a bold move that surprises him, judging by the way his eyebrows shoot up to his forehead.

It surprises her too. She likes this version of herself, this confident, knows-what-she-wants version.

The psychologist on that podcast said women have affairs not because they fall in love with someone else, but because they fall in love with who they are when they are with someone else.

Not that this is an affair.

“I want to come up,” she says.

“Okay then.”

He takes her hand again, and they walk through the double glass doors into his building.