LITMIR.BIZ

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It’s all over.”

      Somewhere in the valley, the tiniest trickle of water appeared in the riverbed, the tiniest trickle of water appeared on her face. She wiped it off immediately.

      “Faye...please.”

      “Don’t worry about me.”

      “Don’t worry about you? You tell me you’re losing the baby, and I’m not supposed to worry about you?”

      She returned to the bedroom, Hagen following her. The bedroom. Their bedroom. Their ridiculous bedroom. Hagen had picked out all the furniture. It looked like something from the Biltmore—king-size iron bed; chocolate-colored walls; brick fireplace; oversize espresso leather armchairs, artfully distressed, of course; gilt-frame landscape paintings on the wall picked out by the decorator by artists neither of them could name. It was a showroom more than a bedroom. Look how much money we have. Look at how sexy we are. Look at how glamorous our marriage is. She hated everything about the room except for the pillow-top mattress. Sleeping was her favorite pastime these days. She took her mattresses seriously.

      “I wasn’t pregnant. It didn’t work. And even if I was, it’s not like you can do anything about it,” she said, climbing back into bed. She reached for her book. It would make a fine shield between them.

      “What are you doing?”

      “Reading.”

      “You’re reading. While having a miscarriage.”

      “I got my period. It is what it is.”

      “You don’t care, do you? You don’t care that this is happening?”

      “I can’t care,” she said.

      “Why can’t you care?”

      “Because if I let myself care about anything that happens to me, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed.”

      “You don’t get out of bed anyway.”

      She sighed and met his gaze. He was looking at her, eyes boring into her. Did he see her at all? Or did he just see what he wanted to see? Pretty brunette with violet eyes and good breasts. Quiet, biddable when necessary, like when he trotted her out for company functions and she painted on a smile and wore it until her cheeks hurt.

      “Oh,” she said. “Good point.”

      “Do you care at all?”

      “Please leave me alone, Hagen. Please don’t make me have this conversation now. I was washing blood off my hands five minutes ago. If you won’t let me read, then let me sleep.”

      “Sleep? I called you at noon, and you were still in bed.”

      “It’s almost impressive, isn’t it? Give the lady a prize, right?”

      “Don’t say that.”

      “What?”

      “Don’t bring Will into this.”

      “Oh, yeah, I forgot I’m supposed to pretend he never existed. I’m sorry.”

      Hagen stopped at the edge of the bed. Faye tried to rest her head back but the stupid iron headboard might as well have been a wall of nails.

      “You know what your problem is?” Hagen asked.

      “Yes,” she said, because she did, but Hagen went on as if he hadn’t heard her.

      “You want to live in the past. You watch old movies. You haven’t read a book written after 1950 in four years. You listen to Frank Sinatra and Ethel Merman all day long like a goddamn ghost in my house.”

      “That’s not true.”

      “It’s not? Really?”

      “I got this book yesterday, and it was written two years ago.”

      Hagen plucked it out of her hands and read the title in as cold and cruel a voice as any man had ever read a book title.

      “The Bride of Boston; A Jazz Age Mystery. Who the hell is the bride of Boston?”

      “A girl who disappeared in 1921,” Faye said. “Vanished into thin air. But it has a happy ending.”

      “Oh, yeah? What’s the happy ending?”

      Faye smiled. “She was never seen again.”

      Hagen threw the book across the room.

      “Jesus Christ, Faye, what the hell is wrong with you? Women would kill to be in your place.”

      She rolled onto her side and into the fetal position. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes onto the pillow. She willed them away, willed Hagen away, willed the world away. But they didn’t go away because her Will was gone.

      Hagen must have seen he’d gone too far. He knelt by the bed so they could look each other eye to eye. As he reached out his hand she flinched, fearful he’d strike her even though he never had before.

      “Faye.”

      “Will never threw anything but baseballs,” she whispered to herself.

      “You can’t live in the past. It’s not living. The past is dead,” he said, his hand on her face. It did nothing to comfort her.

      “Everything I love is dead.”

      “Don’t say that.” Hagen spoke through gritted teeth. He had such nice straight white teeth. “Don’t say stupid stuff like that. It’s melodrama.”

      “I’m a melodrama queen.”

      “I believe it. Do you think you’re the only person who has ever lost anybody? Everybody loses somebody eventually.”

      “But not everybody loses Will.”

      “I lost Will, too. Goddamn it, Faye, he’s dead. And I’m not and you’re not. You have a husband who loves you very much—”

      This is the most you’ve talked to me in six months.

      “You live in a mansion.”

      I hate this house. It feels like a prison. Everything’s made of iron and it’s turning me to iron.

      “We have all the money we could ever need or ever want.”

      Your money, not mine.

      “You don’t even have to work.”

      “I miss working.” She said that out loud because Richard’s email had reminded her how much she missed working and how much she resented Hagen telling her she shouldn’t. “But you don’t want me to work. It makes you look bad in front of your boss because he’s a chauvinist.”

      “He’s old-fashioned. That’s all.”

      “And you say I live in the past.”

      Hagen turned his back to her. Who could blame him? Why he hadn’t dropped her yet she didn’t know. Masochism maybe? Heroism? Maybe he wanted to save her. Maybe he was too embarrassed to admit he couldn’t.

      And the truth was he had a point. She did live in the past. She hadn’t watched a movie made after 1950 in four years. Today she’d watched Casablanca while lying in their bed. They were all dead—Rick and Ilsa and Sam who never did play it again. A DVD of The Maltese Falcon sat on top of the television, waiting to be watched for the tenth or twelfth time; she couldn’t remember. Bogie was dead. Hammett was dead. And the Maltese Falcon never did get found, did it? People searched for it, fought for it, died for it, and in the end it was nothing but a hoax, lead where there should have been gold.

      “Okay,” she said.

      He narrowed his eyes at her.

      “Okay, what?”

      “I’ll stop living in the past.”

      “You will?” He sounded skeptical, as if she’d

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