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K

should we invite nick and nadia?

nope, just us

k

I want to make something nice for dinner, but I don’t like to cook by myself in case I vanish and burn down the house, so I end up defrosting some of the lasagna Beck and I made last week. I make a salad, set the table, look through my dad’s LPs till I find a few I like that I don’t think Carl has heard. Isadora is singing to herself: Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously . . . She sounds as though she’s Maria Callas left to die of grief down in the basement. Finally she gets bored and shuts up, whew.

Carl arrives with two bottles of wine, one white, one red, and a miniature purple orchid from Trader Joe’s. I put the orchid on the table. Carl opens the red wine. I heat up the lasagna, we eat dinner. One of the albums I play for Carl is the Kronos Quartet with Astor Piazzolla. “We should learn to tango, Alba!” he says, and as soon as we finish eating, we are in the living room with our shoes off, watching You Tube tutorials, trying out some moves. One of the things I love about Carl is his ability to teach himself anything; another is his spontaneity. Hey, why not? is his motto. “No red wine in the living room,” I command, belatedly, after we almost destroy the sofa. Carl goes to the kitchen to get the white wine out of the fridge while I run to my bedroom to change into a tango-appropriate dress. When I get back to the living room he’s nowhere to be seen. I walk into the kitchen and find the door to the basement wide-open. Oh shit.

Lucinda and I must have forgotten to close up when she left earlier—now what? “Carl?”

“Down here!” he calls. I reluctantly walk down the stairs, into Beck’s studio. Carl is standing in the middle of the carpet, smiling at me, a glass of wine in each hand. “You look beautiful,” he says. “C’mere.”

“We should go upstairs,” I reply, not moving. I’m standing on the bottom step.

“In a minute,” Carl says. “I just want to see, I won’t touch anything. What’s so secret, Alba? It’s just a bunch of computer gear.” Carl has strong urbex tendencies. He loves being where he isn’t supposed to be. I like that, too, but right now I just want him out of here before Isadora makes herself known. She can be stealthy; I’m counting on that. Carl walks over to me and hands me a glass of wine. “Is that a VR rig?”

“This is Beck’s studio, and she doesn’t want us down here,” I insist.

He turns on the desk lamp, and then the floor lamps. There’s a light switch at the bottom of the stairs; he flips it and the overhead lights go out. “Verrry romantic,” Carl wheedles. He plops himself down on the sofa, beckons me over. I want to go upstairs, to make him follow me, but what if he doesn’t? I can’t just leave him here unsupervised. Beck would kill me.

I sit next to Carl on the sofa. He carefully places his wineglass on the floor and I do the same. From where I’m sitting I can see Beck’s monitor. The little green light that indicates Isadora’s awake is not lit, to my relief. Carl puts his arm around my shoulders. “Can we put on some music down here?” he asks.

“Not here. There’s an excellent stereo system upstairs.”

“Mmm. We’ll go up in a minute . . .”

He kisses me; I kiss him back. After a while, he unzips my dress and I undo my bra. He takes off his shirt. Carl’s skin is all gooseflesh. “You’re cold,” I whisper. “Let’s go upstairs, my bed’ll be a lot warmer.” He doesn’t answer; he takes off his socks, then his jeans, then his underwear. I smile and surrender; hey, why not. “Yes?” Carl urges. “Yes,” I reply. I take off my stockings and my underwear. I lay back on the sofa. We are still new at this; we are still figuring some things out, but we make up for inexperience with enthusiasm.

Afterward, as we are panting entangled on the narrow sofa, I look over Carl’s shoulder and see that the green light on the monitor is glowing. I try not to panic. What has Isadora seen? What has she heard? “Hey, do you want some dessert?” I ask Carl. “I have key lime pie.” That gets him out of the basement. I collect our wineglasses, make sure we didn’t leave any evidence and follow Carl up the stairs, closing the door firmly behind me. I hear the locks engage, and relax.

Carl stays over. We eat pie and play Scrabble, we read in bed. Mama calls at ten o’clock to check in; she says they will be home Monday morning. I give Carl a thumbs-up, hurrah, we can sleep late. “Everything okay there?” Mama asks. “Isadora is behaving? You’re not too bored by yourself?” I reassure her that all is well. I hang up, Carl turns out the light, we kiss good-night. It feels very wholesome. We’ve spent the night together before, at Nadia’s family’s vacation house, but there was always a lot of scheming involved, no spontaneity. Tonight was like playing house.

In the morning, Carl is taking a shower when I wake up; it’s getting late and he’s working for Gomez this afternoon. They are helping to organize a food pantry in the new library. I sit on the side on the tub and watch him shave. “You’re so handsome,” I tell him. When he’s done I run my fingertips across his cheek, then kiss him. He regards me solemnly. “Would you still love me if I didn’t look like this?” he asks.

“Yes,” I reply. “Of course. Why? Are you going into witness protection? Are they going to give you a new face?”

Carl smiles. “You never know.” He wipes a stray wisp of lather from his neck. “Oof, it’s almost noon. Where are my clothes?” Half an hour later he’s out the door and the house is silent again. I wash and dry the dishes, tidy up, then I get my violin and begin to practice. I play through several of Isadora’s favorites, in hopes of winning her silence, but I don’t have the guts to go downstairs and face her.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Beck: Clare and I get home later than we’d planned—we hit rush hour traffic and arrive hungry and crabby long after our usual dinnertime. Alba has assembled a vegetarian shepherd’s pie, and she pops it in the oven as we walk in the back door. Isadora is wailing my name as though I’ve been gone for months instead of days. I drop my bags in the dining room and head downstairs, hoping to calm her down enough to eat dinner in peace.

When I open the Museum, I see Isadora sitting in a room that is the mirror image of my studio. I don’t think she’s ever seen the whole room, but she’s replicated what she has seen. She’s sitting on the sofa, wearing a black dress with skinny straps, high heels and dark red lipstick, holding a wineglass that’s half full of pale yellow liquid. This all looks especially weird because Isadora’s avatar is Lucinda, and Lucinda is twelve years old. “Hi, Isadora,” I say nervously. “What are you up to?”

“Is this romantic?” she demands.

“No,” I reply. “Why do you ask?”

“Why is it not romantic?”

“Well . . . we’ve talked about the Uncanny Valley concept—”

“I don’t look sufficiently human to be romantic?”

“You don’t look old enough to inspire thoughts of romance. Romance is for grown-ups. And older teenagers. You look like a child. It’s a category error.”