3

I returned to find my home empty. I stepped out into the backyard and saw that some clouds had started to gather in the western sky. The temperature was dropping, and I wondered if we might be lucky and get some rain. Like most Angelenos I resisted believing any promise of precipitation, even, maybe especially, if made by the sky itself. Basil was happy to have me home. He considered the manner in which I ignored him a kind of attention. He and I were not so different.

That night, as I prepared to shower off the last of the desert dust, I told Meg about Rachel Charles. I mentioned it only because it bothered me so much, made me sweat like I was about to be electrocuted or something equally unsure to work. I wondered why it unsettled me so and even considered momentarily whether bringing it up was a wise thing to do. It was not. I thought I was being open, honest, clean handed, but apparently I was being egotistical, insensitive, throwing a young girl into the face of my middle-aged wife.

“You must have been very flattered,” Meg said in way that had nothing to do with my being flattered.

“Well, I wasn’t. What’s eating you?”

“You loved it.”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I hated it. I was embarrassed by it. I’ll ask again, what’s the matter with you?”

“Why are you telling me about her?”

I paused to look at her, still in my skivvies. “I’m telling you because that’s what we do, our being married and all.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said. She grabbed a book from her nightstand. “I have no interest.”

“Duly noted. I won’t mention it again.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I wasn’t patroni—I didn’t mean—All right, I won’t do it.” My head was swimming. “I’m going to go get clean now. Okay?”

When I came out of the shower, I said, “I absolutely was not flattered by that young woman’s attention. I am truly sorry I told you, but I was simply sharing. I’ll know better from now on.”

Meg said nothing as I pulled on my pajamas and left the room.

That night, instead of sleeping, instead of restoring my body, because that was what I was told and believed sleep was for, instead of dreaming and so subconsciously or unconsciously (I could never keep those straight) sorting out whatever waking-life problems that were eating away at me or that I was afraid to face, I sat up and stared at the small strip of paper I had found in my jacket. “Help me,” it said in Spanish. Perhaps it was a joke or merely a message from one tailor to another, a plea for assistance getting a seam straight, making sleeves the same length. Regardless, it carried no weight in my real world. There was nothing for me to do, say, or consider. As that had never stopped me before, my never having been a depository of good or even common sense, I opened my computer, logged onto eBay, and looked to order something else from the vendor who had sold me the jacket. I found and bought a shirt with two flapped breast pockets.