Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

not Bonnie posture. There was a long silence. It was broken by the screech of a gull flying toward the water.

Bonnie finally said: “I apologize for the outburst.”

“No problem.”

“I don’t want to be a bitter person. I lost control for a second. I’m exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping, not since Sy was killed. Not since you rang my bell. I’m scared. I wake up and the sun is shining and I yawn and stretch—and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with terror. I’m trapped inside a nightmare, and the sunshine doesn’t give me any light. And you: I can’t resolve my memory of you and my fear of you.

It’s very hard being here in your house.”

“I understand, and I just want to say how sorry—”

“Let’s drop it now.”

“Can’t I—”

“Please, don’t.”

It was getting dark. I knew I had to call Lynne. I walked into the kitchen, but instead of picking up the phone, I put Moose’s dog chow in a bowl and got her some water. Then I took the dinners out of the oven and brought them back into Bonnie’s room on plates, with forks and napkins. I thought she’d say, No, thanks, I’m much too upset to eat, but by the time I got back again with Cokes, she’d woofed down a drumstick and half the mashed potatoes and corn.

I sat there holding a wing, like I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, thinking that there were approximately a million subjects I wanted to talk to this woman about: what teams she liked, although I had a dread suspicion she would be a Mets fan; what Mormons were all about; whether she read about stuff like Eastern Europe and the national debt in the paper or just articles about movies and saving marsh 290 / SUSAN ISAACS

grasses; what was her favorite running route; how had she hurt her knee; did she only like the John Wayne and Kathar-ine Hepburn stuff or did she ever watch a good horror movie; did she believe in God and did she feel guilty or only regretful about her abortion; had it simply been the sex—amazing, all-star sex—or had she fallen in love with me in the course of that night.

What I asked her was: “When did you begin sleeping with Sy again?”

“That last week.”

“Why?”

“‘Why?’”

“What was it, a casting couch kind of thing? You thought if you slept with him, he’d make your movie?”

“You know,” she said, and reached for another napkin,

“there’s an old show-business joke: A gorgeous, talented actress walks into a producer’s office and says, ‘I want that part. I’ll do anything, and I mean anything, for that part.’

She gets down on her knees and says, ‘I’m going to give you the world’s most incredible blow job.’ And the producer looks down at her and says, ‘Yeah, but what’s in it for me?’”

Bonnie wiped the bread crumbs from the chicken off her hands. “So what was in it for Sy? Nothing. There was nothing I could do for him that would entice him into doing anything he didn’t want to do.”

“But how could you sleep with such a bastard? Okay, he let you have the house, but other than that, he left you broke.

He made you get an abortion—”

She cut me off. “No one held a gun to my head.”

“Maybe he didn’t, but he gave you the clap, didn’t he?

Forget that it’s proof positive of adultery. It took away the chance for you to have the one thing you wanted more than anything in the world.”

MAGIC HOUR / 291

I’d just hit her most painful spot. She didn’t wince; she just stood, holding out her plate. “Why don’t I bring this into the kitchen?” Her voice was artificially high, as if she were being stretched too tight.

“No. I don’t have curtains or anything on the windows. I can’t risk having you seen. I’ll take it in later.” I took the plate from her and put it down on the floor. “You’re going stir-crazy, aren’t you?”

“And this isn’t even stir,” she said softly.

“Put on your sneakers.” When she did, I turned off the lamp, took her arm and steered her out of the bedroom, through the dark main room and out the back door. It was nearly night; the sky, already dotted with stars, was a uniform blue. Dark, indigo, like my Jag. I sat her down on the back step and murmured, “Keep your voice down.”

“You’re worried about nocturnal farmers, plowing out there, right past those bushes, listening in?”

“I always worry about nocturnal farmers. Or a friend could drop over. So what do you want? To sit out here or go back inside?” In response, she leaned against the doorframe and took a deep breath. Whatever she’d had in mountains, this had to be better. The bracing salt of the sea, the fragrance of pine, the deep, musky smell of the earth. “More questions, Bonnie.”

“Okay.”

“Why did you sleep with Sy after what he did to you?”

She didn’t answer; I think she was still with that lost baby.

“Come on,” I pushed her. “You don’t strike me as one of those masochistic broads who lets herself be used. You seem to play more by men’s rules than women’s rules. You have a good time, you say thank you and that’s it. You don’t wake up the next morning feeling like a piece of shit; you wake up and say to yourself, ‘Hey, I got laid. It was good. Cleared my sinuses.’ And that’s that.”

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“That is never that.”

“But it’s not that far from the truth, is it? You’re not saying,

‘Sweet Jesus, help me. I hate myself.’”

“People of my persuasion generally don’t say ‘Sweet Jesus.’”

“You know what I mean.”

“Am I one of those women who sleeps around to degrade herself? No. I sleep around—or slept around—for sex.

Sometimes to be held.”

“So answer my question.”

“I slept with Sy because he was there, a real, live person who knew me. He came to the house to go over his memo on my screenplay, and