“Aren’t you worried you’ll set off the sprinklers?”

“They’re disabled.”

“You disabled your smoke alarm? On purpose?”

“Problem solved.”

She rolls the cigarette in her fingers but doesn’t take a draw before passing it back to him.

“No tobacco either?”

“A temple, I say.” Maeve pulls aside the sheet to display the temple, then gets up to leave. He shakes his head.

“And she didn’t even stay for a nap.”

He’s languorous, smoking in his bed on the floor. It’s a performance. She gathers up her things.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I have to go. I have to work, I’ll sleep later.”

He watches as she reconstructs: bra, dress, shoes.

“You aren’t wearing panties.”

“No.” Damp from swimming, they’re in a ball at the bottom of her purse.

He stubs out his smoke in a little tin ashtray and sets it aside.

“You leave your children so you can be someone else for a while.”

“No,” she says again. She pauses, standing there, then slowly goes back to buttoning herself up.

“So you can be yourself, then. Which is it?”

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it’s either/or.”

“When someone asks if you’re a dancer or a mother, what do you say? Don’t think! The very first thing that comes to your mind. What are you, Maeve Martin?”

She doesn’t say anything, her fingers still playing at the top button of her dress.

“I know what you are,” he says. He runs his tongue along the seal of a new cigarette before lighting it up. “Otherwise, why would you be here? You weren’t even drunk.” He takes a drag and repeats himself: “You weren’t even drunk.”

“No.” She wraps her hair into a bun and pins it. “I told you: a temple. A working temple.”

“Most unexpected.”

He’s drunk himself, but there’s a different look to him all of a sudden, something Maeve recognizes but can’t quite place. It pricks at her.

“Almost like I was asking for it,” she says. “How’s your face? Still beautiful?”

She can see the shadow of a bruise where it’s coming in, high along his cheekbone, but he doesn’t say a word. Only draws on his cigarette and smiles.

Day 3

Day 3