On Friday they had “stayed late to work”—Max had bent her over her desk and she had felt his hand searching her, a single probing finger that caused a whelming and responsive moan, the onset of her tic of shifting her weight from one leg to another uncontrollably as she waited, her ass in the air squirming, and then she had heard the zip of his zipper and his slow, teasing entry accompanied by slaps and gasps. Unknown to them a janitor had stood outside her office door paused in mopping. After they were done Max had, as always, slapped her ass one last time in appreciation and kissed her roughly, and then slowly that retraction of emotion had begun, that withdrawal like an undersea animal into its shell, a calcium carbonate composite of clipped words and clothing, and she’d still be hugging him to her nude body while he was fully dressed as he dialed enough takeout to feed three. Most of the time she tries not to think about it, not to think about his wife, or his kid, the morality of it, whether it was right or wrong, but just to be with him, when she could, when he could, because this intensity of being stood unsupported, un-needing of justification. Such thoughts keep occurring to her today; she’s finding it hard to think, everything seems to whizz past. But then occasionally something like seeing Kierk and Carmen together slows it all down into an almost indefatigable beauty and stillness. Karen is so regular that just an absence of three days is enough to get the test. She touches her stomach. She is pregnant. All is phenomenon.

TUESDAY

Kierk wakes up, rolls over, painfully slaps his hand on the wall next to him, and comes to consciousness cursing. His alarm did not go off. Hastily he dresses, grabs his notebook, dons his new Mets baseball cap, and thunders down the stairs without waiting for the elevator.

Walking, he spills some spots of coffee on the burning pavement. Everything on Broadway dissolves in the omnipotent light—the smoke from his cigarette, his sneakers jutting forward in front of him, and people become whitewashed outlines; even the butt that Kierk flicks away vanishes into the light.