On her way to meet Bryan, the tsunami siren goes off. She pulls over on the cliff road. The wail, forlorn and animal, lifts and crests, swings down and up and over again. A haunted wolf. Once a month it goes for three minutes, followed by chimes (all clear) or a piercing blast (evacuate). If an earthquake blows up the sea, a sucking wall of water will come at them, and minutes will matter.
The sprites are on the hill, higher than any wave could reach, playing camping with their father.
The ocean is a green pane. Pillars of rock shaped like chimneys, seals, and haystacks rise from the water.
She hears the chimes. Safe, sound.
She could be caught: a text sent to the wrong phone.
Or she could confess. Watch her husband’s face when she says I slept with Bryan.
She keeps the house and he gets an apartment in town, carpools to school with Ro. The apartment will have a second bedroom for the sprites, who’ll stay with him on weekends. During the week things won’t be much different, no help with bath and bedtime as usual; same with the mornings, when she alone handles the boiling of oatmeal and dressing of bodies and brushing of teeth. But the weekends—the wife will have those to herself.
Or Didier could stay in the house, for now. The drafts and dripping taps and ugly wallpaper. The house has been in her family for generations; she read her first chapter book in its dining room, got her first period in its bathroom, watched Bex take her first steps on its porch. But for a while now she’s been letting it go.
Too chickenshit to leave first, she will blow up her life instead.
Wenport is a dreary townlet adjacent to a pulp mill, and no one from Newville goes there except to buy drugs. Sometimes the wife asks herself which of her children is more likely to buy drugs one day, and the answer is always: Didier.
She parks right in front of the coffee shop. It wouldn’t be Didier himself spotting the car, of course—he is crouched in a tent of blankets in the living room, being fed marshmallows fakely cooked on a fake fire—but Ro? Pete Xiao? Mrs. Costello?
I thought I saw Susan’s car the other day …
Was Susan in Wenport with Bryan Zakile?
The coffee shop is too warm. The wife slips off her jacket and sweat darts to her cheeks. It is three minutes after two. The only other customers are two trench-coated boys playing cards.
“Can I getcha?” says the barista.
Almond pastries glisten under the glass.
“Tall skim latte, please,” says the wife.
“For your info, ma’am, we are an independent business with no ties to multinational corporations. I.e., a mermaid-free zone.”
“What?” The wife has one eye on the door, one eye on the boys. They could be Didier’s students. Or Bryan’s.
“You need to order a small,” says the barista.
“Then can I have a small skim latte. And a water.”
“Water is self-serve.”
She settles at the table farthest from the boys, facing the door. Ten minutes after two.
One boy cries, “Your griffin spell doesn’t frighten me, sir!”
Seventeen minutes after. No texts or missed calls.
At twenty after, she will leave.
At twenty after, she finishes all the water in her cup.
She will leave in one minute.
At 2:24, Bryan appears. Not in a hurry at all. “Well, hi there,” he says. “How’s your day going?”
“Great, yours?”
While he’s at the counter, the wife, facing the door, hears him ask the barista if she knows where the word “cappuccino” comes from; and she hears the barista giggle and say, “Um, Italy?” and Bryan say, “Well, for starters.”
When he sits down across from her, she remembers that his face is not beautiful, despite the dimple. A fair to middling face. But the body that follows—
“Your hair looks awesome,” he says.
“Oh—thanks!”
Slurping milk foam: “Get it cut?”
“Ah, no, actually. So how were your holidays?”
“Good, good. Went to see my folks in La Jolla. Nice to be in civilization again.”
“Do you find this area uncivilized?”
He shrugs. Napkins the foam off his lip.
“Or too remote?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, in terms of, I don’t know—”
Bryan smiles. “Do you mean is it hard to meet women?”
“Or whatever. Yes.”
“Not to sound conceited?—but that’s never been a problem of mine.”
“I’m sure it hasn’t.”
He pushes one fist slowly down the length of his thigh. “Are you?”
“What?”
“Sure. That it hasn’t.”
A clod of dried mascara falls off the lashes of her right eye, landing on her forearm.
“Look,” says Bryan, “the way I see it, the scarcity model is a bunch of crap. When people are worried about not finding anyone, they pick the first person who comes along.”
She flicks the mascara away. Her mouth is so dry.
“That’s what happened to one of my cousins,” he continues. “Married a total dick because she didn’t think she could do better. And maybe she couldn’t have, but, hey, I’d take lonely over beaten to a paste.”
“Beaten?”
“Like I said, he’s a dick.”
“But that’s—?”
“We all wish she would leave him. They don’t have any kids.”
“Even if they did.”
“Well, maybe. Although children really need both parents at home.”
The wife can see and hear and feel but is no longer thinking.
She wants to feel the thigh sitting two inches from her knee. Feel the fingers resting on the thigh.
Long, hard fingers.
Long, hard thigh.
“What about you, Susan? Do you find Newville remote?”
“I find it …” She twists her mouth to one side, which Didier used to say was sexy. “Boring.”
“I wonder what we could do to make it less boring.”
“I wonder.”
“I can think of a few things.”
“Can you?” Wet flare in her pit.
“I can.”
“For instance?”
“Well …” Bryan leans forward, elbows on table, and holds his face in his palms. The wife leans in too, but the angle is awkward with her legs crossed. He stares at her. She stares back. Something is about to happen. He is going to kiss her right here, amid griffins and steam, twelve miles away from the house on the hill. She is going to blow up her life.
“Mini-golf team!” he says, grinning so wide she can see the black fillings in his teeth.
“What?”
“It’s a thing now, competitive mini golf. There’s a place right off 22. They run teams of four. I’m thinking you, me, Didier, and Xiao. You can actually win decent money.”
As though a giant hand had released its grip, the wife sags in her chair. “I suck at golf,” she says.
“Come now!”
“Get Ro to be on your team.”
“The grammar police? No gracias.”
He does not want her.
Why did she think he wanted her?
“Hey,” says Bryan, “let’s share an original sin amen bun. They’re fantastic here.”
Black fillings all over his mouth.
“Why the hell not,” says the wife.