“So what did you do when you weren’t doing anything?” Donna’s voice asked. “Were you thinking things through at least?”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. I was reading Dante and looking at things and spending money and not getting my book finished in time for my deadline. It’s still not finished. I’ve got forty e-mails from my editor, all hysterics in print.”
“You’ve got to tell Gregor something,” Donna said. “You can’t just disappear for months and then act as if nothing has happened.”
“But nothing has happened,” Bennis said reasonably. “I got away from the pressure until I didn’t feel pressured anymore, that’s all. I didn’t have an affair or date other people or get married to my ski instructor or murder somebody in Gstaad or any of the things that would make a difference. I just calmed down until I could think.”
Gregor took off his coat and put it on the tree next to the raincoat. He un-buttoned his jacket and put his hands in his pockets. Bennis hated to see his jackets buttoned. He thought calming down until he could think would be a good idea, but he didn’t have the time. He just wished he could breathe.
He saw her before she saw him. He came around through the living room and the door to the kitchen was propped open on that little wooden wedge she had bought for him. She got claustrophobic in small rooms. She looked, he thought, the way she had always looked: small but inexpressibly perfect, her great cloud of black hair held back away from her face with combs, her exquisitely high cheek bones making her cheeks look hollow. He had spent months wishing he could rush up to her and knock her flat. Now, actually looking at her, he couldn’t move.
She got up to get more coffee from the coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, and that was when she saw him. He was thinking that he hadn’t used that coffeemaker since she’d been gone because it was the complicated one, and he didn’t know how. He was suddenly enormously relieved that he had never brought Alison back to this apartment.
She stopped in midstep and stood back. “Well,” she said, “look who’s home.”
“Is Gregor there?” Donna asked. “Why doesn’t he say something? Why doesn’t he come in here?”
These were both good questions. Gregor made his legs move. “I just got here,” he said. “I’ve just hung up my coat.”
He was not looking at Bennis, but he was very aware that Bennis was looking at him. He walked into the kitchen and found Donna as big as a house and looking as if she was going to demand to go to the hospital at any moment, sitting at the little table in the nook. This was an illusion. It was at least five or six weeks until she was due. He thought he ought to do something about Bennis. He ought to kiss her on the cheek or shake her hand or something.
Of course, Bennis wasn’t doing anything either. She was just standing in the middle of the floor with her coffee mug in one hand. And she was staring at him, Gregor reminded himself. She really was doing that.
“Well,” Gregor said.
“Do you want me to get you some coffee?” Bennis said. “You haven’t used the percolator in living memory, as far as I can tell. It was all cleaned out and dry when I got here.”
“Coffee would be nice,” Gregor said. Then he made his legs move again. He went to the breakfast table and sat down across from Donna. “I’ve been making do with coffee bags,” he said. He thought he sounded like a zombie. He knew he didn’t sound like a play by Noel Coward or Bernard Shaw, where no matter how uncomfortable the situation everybody would be witty and bubbling with double entendres.
Bennis opened the cabinet above the percolator and got out another mug.
“So,” Donna said, sounding so bright she could have lit up a room, “Bennis and I have been talking—about her vacation.”
“Is that what you’ve been on?” Gregor asked. “A vacation?”
“Sort of,” Bennis said.
“She saw Liz and Jimmy in Montego Bay,” Donna said. “And she went to Italy for a while. I’d like to go to Italy. Russ and I talk about it a lot, but he’s always so busy. And now I can’t even get on a plane safely. You’d think they’d have figured a way around that by now, wouldn’t you? I mean, a way for pregnant women to get on a plane safely.”
Bennis filled both of the coffee mugs with coffee. She came to the breakfast table and put them both down. Then she went back to the other side of the kitchen and got milk out of the refrigerator.
“Don’t bother with the milk,” Gregor said. “It’s gone bad.”