Here She Lies

comforting, mundane detail. “Our bank keeps Saturday-morninghours, nine to noon. Just get there before eleven forty-five because sometimes they lock the door early.” I read him the confirmation number the bank had given me to verify that new cards had been issued and were snail-mailing their way in our directions. “Visa and MasterCard said we should have our new cards by Monday. A couple others said Tuesday, but now I can’t remember which ones.” All told, we had about seven credit cards — way too many, but neither of us had gotten around to paring them down.
    “Okay, we’ll just have to cope with this,” he said.
    “We have no choice.”
    “I just wish you’d been a little more careful, Annie. I mean, this isn’t the first time you’ve lost your wallet.”
    I said nothing, just stretched out long on the couch and listened to our phone static. The living room had six windows, all of which were pure black rectangles. A complete lack of ambient light, the totality of the night’s darkness, seemed to erase the outside world. For a moment, before Bobby spoke again, I thought of this living room and this house as a spaceship that was carrying me away from trouble.
    “Listen, I cleared the weekend off with Kent. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to come see you guys tomorrow.” The softened tone of his voice told me that he had already, just now in that minute of silence, forgiven me for the wallet. And I felt my body relax. There had been much good in our marital give-and-take. I hadn’t forgotten that. How had we gotten to this distant spot in so short a time?
    “Okay. It’ll be good for Lexy to see you. But how did you get Kent to agree?” I knew that Kent hadthreatened to make Bobby work Saturdays in retaliation for my bailing out of what he actually, upon occasion, called “the Evil Fortress” (always with a sinister little chuckle).
    “I had to pull out my employment contract,” Bobby said. “He couldn’t argue with that.”
    “I think I really hate that man.”
    “Yeah, me too. But I’m not giving in to him.”
    “I guess you’ll have to buy your ticket in cash.”
    “Well, actually, I went online yesterday and booked it — flight and rental car — so I’m set.” We both knew that if I’d asked him not to come he could have used the air ticket later. “But I can only stay one night. I’ll have to leave Sunday afternoon.”
    “I’m leaving Sunday night for Manhattan,” I said, “so that’s perfect.”
    We spent a few minutes going through our credit cards to make sure I’d called everyone. I could picture him sitting on our green velvet couch with the Infidelity File. I had worked hard collecting our financial data in one place and it contained the most current list we had of all our credit sources.
    “Bobby? Bring the file, why don’t you? I can’t take much more of this in-between-ness. We have to really face this now.”
    Pause. I could see him freeze, sitting on the couch, the file in his lap.
    “Okay, I’ll bring it.”
    So this would be it. Finally, we would go over the file together and in the face of so much hard evidence he would have to confess. Unless... unless I was wrong. I had to admit I was beginning to wonder ifthere was a chance I had made a terrible mistake. I doubted I had, but if I didn’t allow for that slim possibility I never would have let him come. Bottom line: I really missed him. And if he did confess, finally, and if he promised to give her up and stay faithful, couldn’t I forgive him — just this once?
    The next day Bobby’s flight arrived on time, just before eleven o’clock, but the rental car agency refused to honor his reservation without a valid credit card on hand. A taxi for the long drive would cost far more cash than he had with him and he had no way to access an ATM. And the next bus didn’t leave for four hours. So he called me and somewhat sheepishly asked for a ride. I told him where to wait and promised I’d be there in about an hour.
    The problem was, I had no driver’s license. The Lexington DMV was sending a replacement, but it wouldn’t arrive until Monday. I would have to ask Julie if I could borrow a credit card and call it in to one of the taxi companies that serviced the airport.
    I found her at her desk, hooked up to a headset and talking a mile a minute. She had told me she made all her international calls through her computer because it was much cheaper — and now that I thought of it she had