Water Under the Bridge: The Client

The morning after I tell you I’m pregnant, I ask to see my file.

You’re standing in our new kitchen holding a paper sack and two coffees. You’ve come back expecting gratitude. Possibly more of what we did upstairs, and I was considering that too, right up until I heard your car in the drive.

“Your what?”

“The file you have on me.”

You set the coffees far enough from the edge that neither of us is likely to knock one over. I’m wearing your shirt. There’s a bed upstairs and nothing much else in this enormous house, and you’re already arranging things.

“Why?”

“I paid for it.”

Last night you seemed pleased when I told you I was Mrs. Robinson. You said you were impressed. I’m interested in finding out whether that feeling has survived a good night’s sleep.

“You paid me to find someone,” you say.

“And?”

Your eyes travel down your shirt to my bare legs. You take your time coming back up.

“I found her.”

“Then I’d like to see your work.”

You smile, and I feel it low in my stomach. This is inconvenient. I’m trying to conduct business.

“I thought you saw quite a bit of it last night.”

“The work I hired you for, Jude.”

You slide a coffee toward me. “Eat first.”

“Is that how you treat all your clients?”

“Only the difficult ones.”

You begin unpacking breakfast. I watch you line up the little containers, the napkins, the plastic forks. Sunlight warms the backs of my legs. It would be so easy to let you do this, to eat my breakfast and thank you for the house and stop paying attention.

“Where is it?”

You stop with a napkin in your hand.

For a moment, I wonder if you’re going to tell me no. There’s something almost exciting about that possibility.

“In the car.”

“Well,” I say. “That’s convenient.”

✦

You place the folder beside my coffee. Then you move the coffee.

I look at you.

“It leaves a ring,” you say.

Of course. There’s a file on a murderer lying on your kitchen counter, but we mustn’t damage the granite.

I open it.

Lydia Hartman looks up at me, and for a second I don’t know what to do with my hands.

You’ve chosen a photograph from before Brazil. Before Kate. I recognize the blonde hair, the shape of my face, even the look I used to give a camera when I was trying to appear as though I had nothing to hide.

You’re watching my face instead of hers.

“Is that all?”

“No.”

I lift the photograph. Beneath it are pages. My names. Places I’ve been. A life reduced to something you can carry around in your car.

I don’t need to read every line. I know what I’ve done.

“Were you going to do it?” I ask.

You open a breakfast container. “Do what?”

“Turn me in.”

You push the food toward me, and I push it back.

“Originally,” you say.

I wait.

“Yes, Kate. Originally.”

I appreciate the answer. It isn’t a pleasant thing to hear from the man whose shirt you’re wearing, but I’d rather have it than a pretty story about knowing from the moment you saw me. I know what that moment was worth. I arranged it.

“When did you change your mind?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

You come around the counter. Your shirt is open at my throat, and you glance there before meeting my eyes. You’re close enough that I can smell coffee on your breath.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

It’s a good answer to a question I didn’t ask.

You touch the hem of the shirt. I watch your hand. You look very sure of yourself, standing in this kitchen you chose beside the woman you think you’ve caught. I want you closer. That is the trouble with being angry with you, Jude. Nothing about it makes me want less of you.

“You could’ve asked me,” I say.

“Would you have told me the truth?”

“Probably not.”

You laugh. “Then we’ve saved some time.”

✦

You kiss me, and I let you.

For a little while, I do more than let you. I put my hand around the back of your neck and pull you closer. You make a sound against my mouth, and I like knowing I can do that. I like the way you forget the cooling food and the papers when I ask for more without saying a word.

Your hand settles at my waist.

I put my palm against your chest.

“Wait.”

You stop. I feel how much you don’t want to, and I like that too.

“I’m still talking.”

“I noticed.”

“You’re going to keep this, aren’t you?”

I don’t have to point at the folder.

“It’s a file.”

“It’s me.”

“It’s part of you.”

I slide out from between you and the counter. You let me go, although your expression makes it clear you think I’m wasting a perfectly good morning.

I pick up the photograph.

“Did you like her?”

“Kate.”

“Before I changed. Did you like what you saw?”

You look almost offended. “You know I did.”

I don’t know, though. Not really. I know what you like now. I know what happens when I walk across a room in your shirt. I know you bought a house with space for children before I told you we were having one.

I put the photograph down, facing you.

“Then why keep her like there’s something left to solve?”

Outside, a car passes, and both of us look toward the window. It’s almost funny how much we have in common when we aren’t trying.

“I wanted to understand,” you say.

“And now?”

You reach for me. I stay where I am, so you let your hand fall.

“Now I’d like to have breakfast with you.”

It’s such an ordinary thing to want that for a second it takes the fight out of me.

But I need you to understand that the woman in this photograph is still here. She didn’t disappear in Brazil. She’s wearing your shirt, and she’ll be having your baby, and if you think the house will finish what the doctors started, you’re going to be disappointed.

“I’m not going to become someone else for you,” I tell you.

You look at my hair. Then at the photograph.

I almost smile. “Not again.”

You come closer, slowly this time.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Good.”

You pick up the photograph. You look at it, then at me.

“I like this one,” you say.

“Which one?”

You put it down.

“The one who’s here.”

It’s a better answer. I’ll give you that.

✦

We eat on the kitchen floor with our backs against the cabinets. You wanted to take breakfast upstairs, but I pointed out that if you’re worried about coffee on granite, you won’t enjoy eggs in your new bed.

Our new bed, you corrected.

You’re very particular about what belongs to both of us.

When you get up to throw away the containers, you put your hand on the folder.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

I consider asking you to burn it, page by page, while I stand there and make sure. It would be a lovely little ceremony. I’m sure you’d appreciate that.

But it wouldn’t make you forget.

And I don’t think I want you to.

“Keep it,” I tell you.

You wait.

“You should know what you’re getting into.”

You look around our kitchen, then back at me. “I have a pretty good idea.”

I hold out my hand. You pull me to my feet, and this time when you kiss me, I don’t interrupt. I’ve said what I came down here to say.

At the stairs, you turn and ask whether I’m coming.

I look back at the folder. My old face is still on top, watching the empty kitchen.

“In a minute.”

You go ahead. I hear your footsteps, confident, unhurried, and I let you get all the way to the top before I turn the photograph facedown.

Then I follow you.

You can’t say I didn’t warn you, Jude.