Demon

I would also ask for an antianxiety prescription.

My sleep was harassed by a cast of human faces, each of them jeering in turn, by masks with black rubber horns, the eyes of which were no longer vacant but fixed solidly on me, by watches with faces inside faces in an infinity of time like an image eternally reflected by two mirrors, by the ticking of the second hands, loud as bells tolling in my ear.

WHEN I AWOKE, THE the bells, ringing like those from the steeple on Park Street, had passed. I had been in bed nearly three days. I made my way to my desk, turned on the computer.

I stared at the file of my manuscript, my unfinished story. The memoir into which I had funneled every bit of my energy, my life.

I selected it.

Just before I hit the command to delete it, a notice appeared in the corner of my screen.

5:00 p.m.

L.

THAT AFTERNOON I PLACED a call to a number I had not expected to dial—not today, perhaps not any day ever.

The voice on the other end was surprised but not hostile. “This is so unexpected.”

“I just called to see how you are.”

“I’m fine. I’m very fine. I’m surprised to hear from you. Is everything all right? Are you all right? You sound tired.”

“So do you.”

“I suppose that’s the truth. Are you still seeing that woman we met at the museum?”

I hesitated. “No. Not really.”

“You know you’re allowed to, Clay. You deserve that. To be happy.” Her statement reminded me too well of Lucian’s words in the sandwich shop.

Everyone thinks they deserve happiness.

“I was wondering: Have you talked to Sheila?”

“Only once since she moved home. She’s withdrawn. Rather the way you did, I suppose.”

“She called me before she left. I’m afraid I wasn’t very sensitive. Actually, I was rude.”

“She told me. She thought you’d be able to help her. More than I could.” She gave a slight, mirthless sound that wasn’t really a laugh.

“Why would she think I could help her?” I thought of the day in my office, the call to my hotel in Cabo San Lucas.

“Didn’t she tell you why they’re separated?”

“Not—no. Not in so many words.”

“Dan left her, Clay.”

I stared off toward the bedroom without seeing it or anything but the look of Sheila in my office that day, asking if I would speak to him, wringing her hands and looking like a bird about to pull her own feathers out. I felt ill.

“Yes, but—”

“She came by the house several evenings, worried that he might be seeing someone. I wasn’t the best friend to her, Clay. I was too ashamed to tell her that everything she said made sense. And he was, too—he was seeing someone from work. One of the women in the office e-mailed her and asked to talk to her. She told her everything.”

The night she returned my text message from a friend’s house. The “have to see you” e-mail on her computer. Lucian had alluded to her affair without saying it, and once I believed it, he had not dissuaded me.

Fiend! I felt worse than horrible. I felt responsible. “I need to call her, Aubrey. Can you give me her number?”

I took it down, not sure when I would call or what I would say.

“Aubrey?” I said, at the end of the call. “What was it that was never enough for you? Was it money? What I did for a living?”

“Don’t.” I heard a tremor in her voice. “Don’t do that. You did everything right.”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Yes, you did. You’re a good man.”

I hated those words. I hated hearing them. Being a good man had won me nothing. Lucian’s words echoed somewhere between my brain and the phone line.

I ask you, what is good, really, Clay?

And I knew the answer: not good enough.

But I thanked her anyway, knowing she meant well, and asked her again if she was well.

“I am. I’m pregnant.”

And with those words, I felt her fall irrevocably away from me. All the hope I had harbored, but had been afraid to admit even to myself, slipped away like coins through a grate.

“That’s wonderful, Aubrey. That’s really something.” My voice was hollow. I wished her well again and we hung up.

It seemed so unfair. She would have the house, the children, the life I had wanted with her. She would never endure what I had, would never know what those months had been for me.

It was unfair, but it had tethered me too long. And despite our reasons and expectations—realistic or not—I had surely let her down as much as she had betrayed and abandoned me. I was a good man, but I was no better than she.

I forgave her.

I HAD NOT BEEN to Esad’s since that first night. The strap of bells against the glass sounded sharp and metallic, too loud. The smell of the grill, the chicken and burgers and gyros, flooded my nostrils and I was there again, that night in October.

But tonight I was a different man.

The Mediterranean stranger was there, sitting at the same table. This time I did not wait for him to summon me but walked directly to his table and sat down.

“You let me believe lies.”