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Back Last of Her Name
Chapters (13)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Last of Her Name
  5. The Wrong Dave
  6. A Reasonable Person
  7. Accident
  8. I Have Never Put My Hope in Any Other but Thee
  9. Wedding Night
  10. Bad Influence
  11. The Woman in the Closet
  12. Acknowledgments
  13. About the Author

Mayling offers her cheek to the next in line, a boy of three. As his mother lifts him up to kiss her and the room applauds and laughs, Dave imagines their children growing up and leaving home, and he wonders if they’ll be glad and relieved and as full of resentment as he once was, and whether they’ll think to call him when he needs them to, when he is old and alone in a room perhaps. Then he imagines that Mayling will outlive him, which means that she will be the one who is old and alone in a room, and this thought suddenly seizes him with fear and sadness. He will let her be the favorite parent, the funny one who listens and lets the kids break the rules a little, if that’s what it’ll take to get a phone call. If this doesn’t work and they still don’t call, and he’s definitely sure he’s going to go before her—say, a doctor has given him two months to live—maybe he’ll have to kill her and then kill himself. Yes, he thinks. I could do that. Mayling offers her cheek to him. Dave leans in and kisses it. Her skin is warm; it smells heavy with perfume, brandy, and fatigue.

She touches his arm. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Dave looks at his wife, who is smiling under her napkin blindfold, and he nods.

“It’s me.”

A Reasonable Person

A REASONABLE PERSON

WITH ALMOST TWO HOURS to spare until the Hung Shing Plastics anniversary dinner, and with the hotel crawling with sweaty executives and managers (they are everywhere—the lobby, the bar, in elevators and corridors), the young couple in 501 decide to hide in their room until they are required to join the others in the Grand Ballroom.

They make use of the time. They strip down to their underwear and watch the first half of a TV documentary on pandas, make love, and play eight rounds of gin rummy (she carries a deck of cards whenever they travel). The husband, feeling badly about attending his company dinner on their one-year anniversary, deliberately loses the last five games. He does his punishment of ten push ups, the last five with a hand behind his back. She applauds and he gives a theatrical bow and retreats to the bathroom, where he starts running a shower.