Chapter 35
“Hey there. I don’t think we’ve met.”
The wife seems to startle. She turns, the weed she’d just pulled dangling limply from her right hand.
“I live across the street,” he continues. “Henry.”
“Hello,” the wife replies.
“Taking a break from your workday to destroy a few weeds?” Henry asks jovially. He feels white hot and alive because she’s right here. She’s said her name and it’s perfect, pretty and classic, like she is, and she’s smiling at him—uncertain, a hint of discomfort, of surprise, but still there.
The wife laughs gently. “Sorry,” she says. “That was a perfectly reasonable question. It’s just—not a lot of work getting done for me lately.”
“Ah, well,” says Henry. “I could say the same.” He doesn’t elaborate further. He can think of few things less appealing than discussing his employment troubles with the wife.
The gloss of her, the sheen. The slope of her nose, its straightness. Her eyes are wide, and there’s a darkness there. A sadness, strongly steeped. Yet she seems to glitter beneath the high summer sun. Everything about her shines.
He fears this is it, the extent of their first interaction, but her eyes fall to the paperback tucked beneath his right arm, and she seems to brighten, to light from within.
“That,” she says, nodding toward it, “is my favorite book.”
“No way,” he says, lifting it up. The Cry of the Owl, by Patricia Highsmith, worn and softened, and a bit on the nose, perhaps, but he’s certain she hasn’t noticed his interest in her these past few weeks.
She hasn’t caught him watching her. This is at least the third time he’s read it.
“It’s not my favorite book, but it is my favorite Highsmith,” he tells her.
“I think most people would choose The Talented Mr. Ripley. Or Strangers on a Train.”
“I like those, too,” says the wife. “I like them all. You know, A Suspension of Mercy is a close second for me. And Deep Water. And Strangers on a Train, actually.”
“I haven’t read A Suspension of Mercy.”
The wife laughs somewhat giddily, and Henry is elated. He created that, that joy, that audible bubble of happiness.
“It’s—well, there’s nothing like it,” she says. “It’s insane.”
“One of the greatest suspense writers of all time,” says Henry.
There’s silence while they smile jubilantly at each other, and Henry is struck by how nice it is to have something in common with someone.
“I don’t mean to hold you up from your weeding,” says Henry, not sure how to propel the conversation forward, suspecting he should depart while he’s ahead, before things take an awkward turn. “But we’re on one of my favorite subjects. Books, reading. I could talk about books all day.”
“So is that what you do for work, then?” she asks. “Something related to books?”
“Oh, no,” he tells her. “I wish.” He hoists his paperback higher into the air. “I was just taking a break. I was going to walk to that pond around the corner, sit there to read a few pages.”
“That sounds nice,” she says.
A pause. Henry smiles, his mind now entirely blank. “Anyway, I just wanted to very belatedly introduce myself,” he says, reciting his planned exit line. “I live over there.” He gestures vaguely across the street. “I’ll let you get back to your weeding, or whatever.”
“Sure,” says the wife, waving to him, smile faint, turning back toward her garden.
Henry salutes her charmingly, then turns away. He nearly floats up the street.
He could have asked her more questions, he realizes. He should have asked her how she’s liking the neighborhood. He should have asked what she does for work. But that’s how it always is. He only thinks of the right things to say once the opportunity to say them has passed.
But there will be other opportunities. They will speak again. It went well. She’d enjoyed talking to him, however brief it was.
He tries not to let himself think about the fact that it has gone well before.
With Krista, for instance. She’d smiled at him, chatted superficially, laughed with him for weeks.
She was in his master’s program. Her eyes were an unusual navy, a little too far apart, which prevented her from being pretty.
But there was something striking about her, her long, honey hair, the only blond in the entire cohort.
Things were going well, he’d thought. Then he invited her out for a drink, and that friendly brightness dropped from her face.
“Oh,” she said, startled. “Sorry, no. I have a boyfriend, actually.”
She walked away before he could even attempt to save himself, to insist that he’d only been asking her as a friend, that the existence, or not, of her boyfriend was irrelevant.
He thought she was lying until he made his way into her private Instagram account and observed picture after picture of her striking face pressed against that of a man who appeared to be several years older, his brows unruly and low over crisp green eyes.
It didn’t take Henry long to create a new account of his own, to fill its grid with predictable but believable images, to message Krista’s boyfriend.
Hey, man. Your girlfriend has been cheating on you.
Sorry. Thought you should know. To attach the pictures he’d swiped from Krista’s account, the ones she’d sent her boyfriend herself.
But Henry had modified them slightly. It was quite impressive, actually, the way he’d been able to change the bend of her waist, the room behind her.
Krista couldn’t have known what he’d done. He was too good. But he didn’t hear her laugh again. They never spoke.
Henry doesn’t actually want to walk to that pond—which is marred with goose shit—or sit beside it to read, but he has to now. He can’t just go back inside his house in case the wife is still watching him. He hopes that she is.
Before Henry gets too far away, he glances over his shoulder. The wife isn’t there, no longer pulling weeds. She must have gone back inside her house. It’s as though she was out there waiting for him, waiting specifically for him.
Speaking to the wife has cheered him. He’s no longer thinking of Krista—he’s determined that this time will be different.
And he’s not thinking about Lacey’s announcement, her new job, her promotion.
He doesn’t feel like a loser, like a friendless, involuntary celibate.
He feels like a normal guy in his late twenties capable of making his beautiful neighbor laugh.
The pond is disgusting. Henry sits down beside it anyway, on the gentle crest of the hill.
He rests his book on his lap and opens it.
He turns the pages, but he doesn’t read.
He stares at the words, but they blur, and all he sees is the wife.
He sees the high arches of her cheekbones, the swing of her light roast–colored hair.
And there was sadness in her eyes, the way it persisted even when she smiled and laughed, the darkness behind the light. The only time she truly brightened and that sadness lifted was when she was talking about his book.
He’d done that. Him. He’s been right all these weeks. She isn’t happy, and she needs him.