The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

not like I can’t see how much he misses his physics, all those alternative energy sources he can’t bring himself to part with, can’t quit on that dissertation of his even if no one else gives a flying hoot about it. He keeps futzing with it just so he can keep one foot in that door, not even a foot, a toe, a pinkie, even after his business started making enough to pay the bills—but still not enough, I don’t think, to move out of these boonies into a decent neighborhood, not to mention any murky plans regarding our future.
    I don’t know really—one could, I suppose, get a loan to buy a place, but that takes connections at the bank. Maybe one of his clients could help—all our banks start their own collections these days. What about this new candelabra candidate who’s supposed to be such a hotshot, what if? Aidy may have had the same idea, that may be why he’s so wound up about it, why he’s so inspired to keep on about all the details of the deal he’ll make, while it takes all I’ve got just to keep staring at him, as if opening my eyes wider will help me hold on to at least the gist of what he’s saying.
    And where, I ask you, do spirits fit in all of this? In what itty-bitty crack? It’s no wonder he just dumps them all off on me, shakes them off like a dog come in from the rain—watch out when they fly! It is my job, after all, nothing to be done about that, and the film about his great-aunt is also mine to make—no man would ever make that movie, wouldn’t even think of it. It’s like Yurko said—he’s our Bluebeard who, whenever he’s not embroiled in the many challenges of his domestic life, likes to show off his feminism like a rented Brioni suit—“Who’s that poor thing you’vedug up? If you were going to mess with UIA, go find yourself a real ace, some daredevil who mowed down the bad guys like hay, first Germans, then ours, pardon me—Russians—and then roused a revolt somewhere in the Gulag. Now that would be something—and you picked some wallflower with a typewriter. What kind of story is that?”
    Sure, I agree, not much there, but I’m not the one who did the picking you know—
this
, the story, picked me, knocked me down and had me, did, in fact, have me quite literally, which, of course, I shall never tell Adrian, and of all my friends could only maybe tell Vlada—she would appreciate it, but by the time this happened Vlada was no longer among the living, and now it’s all guys all around me, at work, at home, wherever I turn, that’s just the way the cookie crumbled, and I go around censoring myself to accommodate them.
    So there you have it: I’m smiling and nodding at him, all dutiful, because I know he needs my encouragement, and support, and regular watering, weeding, and feeding. Every woman must cultivate her little garden with the proudly erect phallus at its center, like a Mexican cactus—these are very demanding crops, these phalli; they wither and die without constant care and attention, and if I need to call off my guards, let my hair down, and just be myself for a little while I have two options: soak myself into a pruney-fingered blob in a pine-scented bubble bath, or, more radically, perfume myself with vanilla all over, pounce on him, and drag him to bed growling like a panther to buy myself a relaxing half hour of complete abandon. Only, unfortunately, the second option is not really an option when I’m exhausted like now—the kind of exhausted that wears your nerves down hair-thin and makes you want to cry—and I would really be happiest right now if I could just sit with you, Aidy, without either of us saying anything. I’d sit and finish this Chianti you found—it’s really wonderful—pour more for myself, and you won’t even notice—the wine glows beautifully in the glass I hold against the candlelight, burns with a dark garnet fire. I know you can be quiet, Aidy.
    You’re one of the few people with whom it’s been easy and natural from the start to be quiet—there was never anything foreign or alien in your presence. And that may be what I love most about you—a man with whom it is nice to be quiet, what a gem!—because there are things you really can’t talk about with men, and all these things settle in us, accumulate and calcify like scum inside pots or plaque on teeth, and itch and itch, and then begin to oppress us—vaguely, so we can’t even name them and don’t even know what’s wrong with us until one day we