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“You asleep?”
Groggily I glanced at the digital clock sitting on the wooden orange crate that doubled as my nightstand. It said 3:30 A.M.
“Who sleeps at this hour, Sava
“You don’t dance, Logan. If dancing were any easier, it would be called football. Isn’t that what you told me once?”
“Possibly.” I rubbed my eyes. “You doing OK?”
“Fine.”
“Then why are you calling me at 3:30 in the morning?”
“Just to talk.”
“We talked all weekend.”
“That wasn’t talking, Logan. I believe that would be defined as ‘heated debate.’ ”
“I stand corrected.”
Our weekend together, in which we’d agreed beforehand to sleep separately in the exquisite villa Sava
You left me for another man.
You left me no choice. You checked out on me emotionally long before I ever packed my bags.
Gum surgery would have been more pleasant.
Nearly seven years had lapsed since the end of our marriage. Not a day had gone by since when my stomach did not grind over the realization of how big a mistake I’d made, letting her go as easily as I did. Sava
Don’t get me wrong. The total package was not without its flaws. At forty-three, Sava
“I’ve been thinking it over,” she said, “and I think I know what our issue was this weekend.”
“I happen to dislike bananas and you love them?”
“Not bananas.”
“Fruit should be round, Sava
“I’m trying to be serious here, Logan.”
“OK, what was our issue?”
“Location. We were in my house. I used to live with someone else in this house. So, naturally you were going to be on edge, which put me on edge. By reenacting our perpetual relationship gridlock on an unbalanced stage, we fell into antagonistic patterns of communication. Clearly, it was a recipe for disaster.”
“That’s very impressive psychobabble, coming from a fashion model.”
“I don’t model anymore, Logan. I told you. I’m a life coach.”
“A life coach. How does that work exactly? You send off for some mail-order certificate that gives you license to tell people how to manage their lives?”
“I didn’t send off for some certificate, Logan,” she said, the rising agitation in her voice hard to miss. “I earned a master’s degree in psychology from UCLA. I’ve also done extensive postgraduate reading.”
“I could check out every book at the library on rocket telemetry. It wouldn’t make me Wernher von Braun.”
Cold silence filtered from the other end of the line. I’d overstepped. Yet again.
“I’m sorry, Sava
“Like hell you didn’t. That’s always been your problem, Logan. You think you can say anything to anybody and get away with it. Is that who you are deep down? Somebody who enjoys hurting people for no reason?”
“Not usually. Having a reason helps immeasurably.”
“You’re so full of crap, you know that? I don’t even know you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”
“You knew me.”
“Nobody knows you, Logan. They only know what you want them to know. You put up walls. You let no one in. We were married for eight years, eight years. I never even knew what you did for a living, what you and Arlo really did — and I was your wife, for god’s sake.”
“We’ve been over and over this, Sava
“Have you considered seeing a therapist? Therapy would do you a ton of good.”
“Pay some guy two hundred bucks an hour so he can tell me my problem was that I wasn’t breast-fed? Thanks, I think I’ll pass.”
“You have trust issues.”
“I have trust issues. Gosh, Sava
She said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Check and mate.
I’d undergone regular psychoanalytical assessments as a member of the military. When the government of the United States authorizes you to kill other human beings, it wants to be assured that you’ll be reasonably selective when doing so. Sitting across the desk from a military shrink, you learn quickly what answers he or she is looking for, how to game the exam, because you both know that too much has been invested in your training, and that you’re too lethal a weapon to be shelved. I kill because it’s my duty, Doctor, not because I’m addicted to the hunt. Do I see them in my sleep, the dozens whose lives I’ve extinguished, some more gruesomely than you could ever imagine? Sometimes. But who doesn’t have an occasional nightmare? Nature of the beast, right, Doc? I passed every mental evaluation I ever took. But that didn’t mean I didn’t give serious consideration to Sava
Though she didn’t know it, I’d actually gone to a psychiatrist when our marriage was foundering. I’d selected him randomly from the Yellow Pages, a corpulent, middle-aged man who maintained his practice on a houseboat in Sausalito and whose hands trembled all the time, like he was living atop the San Andreas Fault. He spent forty-five minutes asking me how I felt about having been abandoned at birth by my heroin-addicted teenaged mother, and how I felt about having been brought up mostly by strangers, bounced among more foster homes than I cared to remember. I told him I was fine with all of it. You can’t change the past, I said. All you can do in life is move forward. The shrink recommended we commence twice-weekly counseling sessions immediately. I never went back.
“What if we met on neutral turf next time?” I told Sava
“Somewhere that doesn’t engender ingrained resentments. That’s an excellent idea, Logan. Any place in particular you have in mind?”
“What about Costco? I’m ru
“You want to talk about reconciliation at Costco. Can you be serious, Logan, please, for once in your life?”
“I am serious. I don’t feel at all resentful at Costco. In fact, I usually feel pretty great at Costco, especially when they’re handing out lots of samples. You know the expression, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch?’ Whoever said it has never been to Costco.”