Easy Prey

really upset.”
    “I remember,” she said. “You were such a punk. You were unbelievable. You were also pretty sure you were God’s gift to women, if I remember correctly.”
    “C’mon. I wasn’t God’s gift to anyone.”
    “Easy to say now.”
    “You weren’t exactly a ride in the park yourself.”
    “Are we gonna fight?” But she said it smiling, almost delighted—like something was still the same.
    “The last time I saw you,” he said, dropping his voice, “you were absolutely buck naked. The last thing I saw was you standing there with your fists on your hips, looking for your underpants.”
    “That was something you weren’t supposed to bring up,” she said, and now she was pink. “Though I do remember that we spent quite a bit of time running around naked.”
    “Yeah. Jesus. Are we old now?”
    “No, but we were definitely young then.” A waiter came, gave them menus and left water, and promised to come back. Catrin opened the menu and looked over it to say, “You really made me angry, back then. I almost couldn’t stand it. I never told Jack about you, and he was a hockey fan, and he used to take me to hockey games the next year, before he graduated. He was one of your fans. I remember how pissed off I’d get when you’d be skating around. Cruising around, backward or something, all arrogant macho tough asshole, smiling at the girls . . .”
    “Jesus.” He was impressed.
    “Still pisses me off, thinking about it.” Her eyes dropped to the menu.
    THAT WAS THE end of the sex talk. After they ordered, the conversation drifted to their current lives.
    “When you said your husband took you to hockey games before he graduated . . . When did he graduate?”
    “The next year. We got married June of my sophomore year, and he did his internship with a military hospital in Korea—he was a captain. Then, when we came back, he joined his father’s practice in Lake City . . . and that’s where we’ve been.”
    “What about you? You didn’t finish school?”
    “No . . . you know. I got pregnant while we were in the army. I mean, I took classes over the years, but I never got back to school full-time. I thought about going this fall, to Macalester, but I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t go. Now I’m supposed to go this winter, and I still don’t know. . . . I’m kind of fucked up.” She heard herself say it, and stopped. “The last time I said that—used those words, ‘fucked up’—was when we were dating.”
    “Yeah, well, the good stuff always comes back,” Lucas said wryly.
     
 
WHEN THEY WERE eating, she said, “Things have really been good. I loved Jack right away, I wouldn’t give up any of that for anything. But this is like feminist hell: I keep coming back to How about me? When do they make my movie? I always thought I was gonna be the movie star, and the rest of you were gonna be the extras. Instead, I wind up as the one in the background who’s changing diapers and doing the books and working for free for United Way.
    “I thought you and I were alike, because you always did what you were going to do; you were always the star in your movie. I thought I was like that: I was always going to do what I wanted to do, and then the kids came, and I had to take care of them. I didn’t have any choice, because they were mine, and nobody else was going to do it, and it just made sense.”
    “Now they’re moving out,” Lucas said. “So do what you want to do.”
    “But what am I going to do? I have a feeling that if you want to be a movie star, in any movie, you’ve got to start young and work hard, and the best way to do that is be hungry all the time. But Jack started investing while we were still in the Army, and he always made good money, and you know how much we’re worth now? Something like ten million dollars. That’s a ridiculous amount. . . . Jack wants to buy a house in Florida, and he’s talking about an apartment in London—we both like London, and you can get there in seven hours on Northwest. . . . So what’s the point in trying to be a movie star now? To do what?”
    “Not to make money, maybe. You were a painter, and you want to do photography. So do photography. Or paint.”
    “Ahhh . . .” she said. “That all seems too sterile now. Everything is too comfortable.”
    “So go back to college in criminal justice,” Lucas said. “You can be a cop. I can fix it so Minneapolis’ll hire you, and you can go around and do