“What would happen if you didn’t? Just this once?” The question is accompanied by Maureen placing her hand on the left cheek of Cate’s butt and gently pulling her closer. Cate sees she’s being subjected to a little test of her affections.

“Well, he’d probably hold it as long as he could, then he’d pee on the floor, which would shame him. And then he’d totally panic because I still hadn’t come home. But that’s not going to happen.”

It’s little stuff like this about Maureen, more than the sister business, that makes Cate slow down and take a harder look at her.

When Graham comes home two days later, all Cate can say is, “Oh, please.”

“I can explain.”

“How can you be doing this? After the rat? After telling me that what you really wanted was to hack her to pieces, then spread the pieces over a parking lot on a hot sunny day, then shovel lye over the whole mess?”

“It turns out we weren’t as far apart on things as we thought. Mostly it was a small cluster of misunderstandings. And it’s not like we’re getting back together. We’re just exploring the territory.”

Cate can’t see any point in bringing the discomforts of reality into this smoothed, burled vision. It would only mean a few tiring, reasonable conversations where he’d act as though he was listening and then go back to Eleanor anyway. Cate can smell a reunion a mile off, but there’s nothing to be done about it. It does say a lot about her opinion of Eleanor that she thinks Graham going back to her would be worse than him continuing to hole up in her spare room Skyping with Lucille Rae. Worse than him peering through the night at downloads in that tiny white type on a black background, what lives behind the smooth interface of the regular web. A marginless scroll of speculation.

pleasant travel

“Scary.” Neale notices a new beauty shop/reflexology place called Bionic Hair. This particular stretch of Broadway has businesses that seem to have slid in from a parallel universe, or a lost time. Pleasant Travel. The Double Bubble bar. The Loving Hut vegan restaurant. Neale is riding shotgun in Cate’s car, twisted into a position that would only be comfortable for a yoga teacher. She’s swiping photos right and left on her phone. She’s on several dating apps. So far, none of this activity goes beyond her thumb. Although she’d like to be having sex with someone, she’s leery of bringing home random guys from the internet, especially with Joe there and all the complications around that. Who she’d like to be with is Claude, her ex, Joe’s father. She is still hung up on him; this puts a definite crimp in her forward momentum.