I wrote this back in 2001, when I was deeply in love with Martin Amis. What a knock-off! Aside from trying to write like a British male novelist, I think the biggest change in my writing style since then is that my “writerly” presence has retreated from my storytelling — these days I take on a much more realistic approach, something I never thought I’d do, or want to do. It also makes me cringe to see how philosophical I was trying to be — eeep!

+

While on an otherwise routine outing to her favorite department store, Miranda Abrams — trapped in the throes of a size six dress she’d squirmed and clawed her way into and now could not seem to extricate herself from — was at last forced to face facts: she was pregnant. Claustrophobia struck like a fevered panic, spreading up Miranda’s crunched-together legs, the hard knot that was her stomach, her tightly squeezed and shockingly tender breasts.

A horrible place to discover yourself pregnant. But for Miranda, the small dingy room (and later, the women’s clinic downtown) suited the discovery — she didn’t deserve any better. A child conceived with a married man. The afternoon came to her again and again in nightmared snatches: trapped in the cramped room under harsh fluorescent light, banging the door for help. Sometimes a salesgirl rushed to her aid, promising to set her free only if she agreed to buy the dress. Other times it was Frank who suddenly appeared in the tiny space, an oversized, cartoonish pair of shears in hand as he went to work freeing his sobbing lover. “You see,” he clucked. “All that fuss for nothing.”

Miranda would wake with a start, panting in the stifled air of her bedroom, wiping her slick forehead or reaching for a tissue. She always stopped short of running a reassuring hand over the source of her trouble. She wasn’t sure which was wrecking her night’s sleep: the fact that she was pregnant or the guilt of not having told Frank.

The getaway weekend — she would tell him then. At least once they were at the beach she could pretend they were the real couple, a legitimate man-and-woman union dealing with an unexpected but not entirely dismal prospect. And yet with an otherwise uneventful car ride (brief delays heading into Richmond rush-hour) and her customary nausea abated at lunchtime by three packs of saltines, Miranda nonetheless flirted with a growing sense of unease, the tender beginnings of self-doubt, regret; worse, an irrational fear of doom. At nightfall they crossed the border into North Carolina, and the foreign landscape — anemic pines, sandy medians and stark white billboards glimmering against a backdrop of blackness — mirrored her growing discomfort. One such billboard, advertising the fact that both fireworks and bloodworms were available in the same convenient one-stop shop, intrigued Miranda. She told Frank she had to use the restroom and he dutifully pulled into the narrow u-shaped space serving as a parking lot, maneuvering the car swiftly and surely over a sea of scattered pebbles. The inevitable crunch beneath tires sounded soft, melodic, even, to Miranda, and she imagined the pebbles were fallen stars. For the first time since leaving home, a sense of calm overcame her.

“Be right back,” she chirped, darting out of the car and leaving Frank behind to study the map.

Inside, the store’s dim lighting, low ceiling and sauerkraut stench delighted Miranda. She gamely strolled the narrow aisles, stopping every so often when something caught her eye — jars jammed with purple-red beets, boxes of candy molded into the shape of cigarettes, an old-fashioned glass-enclosed freezer offering bottled soda. The only other person in the store was a young girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, sitting on a stool behind the counter, her fixated attention turned to a televised game show; Miranda could hear the audience clapping as a contestant solved a string of mediocre word puzzles. For an instant Miranda forgot about Frank in the parking lot, huddled happily over his dog-eared map. She forgot about the weekend ahead, the promise of solitude and old haunts put to rest. She forgot about Mr. Myerson, his hearty Have a nice weekend cast out while his gray eyes narrowed and a smirk crossed his cherub face as if he, too, knew of Miranda’s shameful secret.

“Excuse me. The sign outside said — ”

The girl didn’t turn from the portable television set and Miranda patiently waited, for what she didn’t know — a commercial, maybe? She leaned against the counter, its gold and black flecked tile so dirty a thousand scrubs would never bring back its original sheen. Despite the cold outside the store was uncomfortably hot, humid, even, as if last summer’s heat were a lingering, unsatisfied customer. Miranda wiped the back of her neck where she imagined a lake of sweat forming. If the salesclerk knew she had a customer, she showed no sign. She sat with her back to Miranda, the slender bulge of shoulder blades a betrayer to her aloof posture — the twin crescent moons, visible beneath a thin white cotton tank, bore the unmistakable ache of loneliness in their slumping spiral. Miranda restrained herself from reaching out, rubbing the girl’s back, whispering words of comfort. In the midst of imagining this scene (the girl’s sudden breakdown, her confession that life had already pulverized her youthful dreams and hopes) Miranda marveled at her own unexpected burst of sympathy: maternal instincts, no doubt. Her body had changed physically and now, finally, her mental faculties had stepped up to the plate. Would she ever be the same?

“Excuse me… ”

“Yes?” asked the girl, without turning, and Miranda frowned at her surly politeness. So young and already convinced she controlled the world! Certainly not what she’d been expecting. Miranda — her own timid demeanor a resigned fact before she’d even ventured into the world at large — found herself envious and therefore suddenly, urgently impatient.

“Excuse me. The sign down the road said you sold bloodworms here. Where can I find them?”

“You can’t. We’re out.”

Another expectation, thwarted! Miranda rapped the counter with her fingernails. Time for her to make a quick getaway, back to the car, forget her capriciousness. Bloodworms? What was the matter with her, anyway? She didn’t even like to fish! Still, Miranda felt strangely expectant, as if the sullen teenager were likely to turn around any minute and offer a solution to the absented product: Wait! I have just the thing for you… dug them up this morning from over by the creek… when really, what Miranda wanted was clarity, quiet, assurance that informing her lover in the same breath of his progeny and its impending destruction was the right thing to do.

“Sorry,” offered the girl, turning slightly on her stool then. A dark bruise under her left eye, a purple-blue streak against pale, shiny, otherwise flawless skin. “We might have some tomorrow.”

“That’s okay, I’ll take this,” sputtered Miranda, turning to the shelf behind her and grabbing the first thing she spotted: a dusty mason jar that, she realized too late, contained pig hooves. At first she thought she’d mistaken but there it was — the undeniable sight of aged bone, cloven and swimming in liquid the color of a faded penny. Miranda started to tell the girl it was a mistake but already she’d rung up the purchase and, as it was, sat patiently waiting for five dollars. Miranda threw down a twenty and without waiting for change, grabbed the jar and bolted, thinking she might be sick.

“Another forty-five minutes, fifty tops,” declared Frank, folding up the map and reaching over Miranda to put it back in the glove compartment. “What in the hell is that?”

“Dinner,” murmured Miranda, closing her eyes and resting her hands atop the jar to keep it from crashing to the floor as Frank crunched out of the parking lot.

+

“This weekend is supposed to be special. We need to make the most of it, seize the day and all that. Start living in the here-and-now.”

“That’s crazy. Living in the moment is not a preferable mode of existence for anyone.”

Miranda stood at the shoreline, cold water tickling her toes. She was struck with a fleeting thought: do other people talk this way? Or only people living clichéd lives, people on a quest for the unconventional, a way of momentarily escaping the tedium of a love triangle.

If only we find the right vocabulary, love might find us.

They first met at a bar one rainy night. “I know this sounds like a horrible pick-up line,” Frank had said as Miranda — stood up by colleagues — perched uncertainly on a nearby stool, “but you’ll have to forgive me. Are you meeting someone here?”

If Miranda were coy, perhaps she would’ve replied, And why do you ask? In fact the question did cross her mind, only not in that exact shape and tone. More like: I wonder why he’s asking? And so when she said, “I’m sure you do,” she meant it as just that: she was sure he had a good reason for asking, why else bother?

“I detect a note of distrust in your voice. Did you find my question threatening?”

“Not really,” said Miranda. Then she smiled tentatively: at herself or Frank, it was hard to say. Just so long as someone was smiling. Miranda grew edgy in the presence of frowns.

“Good. That marks improvement.” Frank sipped his drink while beside him Miranda dug into her purse. “Improvement for me, you understand.” Frank swiveled so he faced Miranda; she continued sorting through her purse, hoping her cheeks weren’t crimson from the unwelcome attention. “But I’m afraid I’ve gotten things off to a horrible start.”

Miranda extracted a five dollar bill and ordered a glass of Merlot, thankful for what had turned out to be a tedious task. Beside her Frank rambled, having removed his glasses so he could wipe them with the tail of his tie as he spoke. “I thought perhaps you were with a group I was meeting tonight, a friend of a friend, that sort of thing. I don’t think anyone else was brave enough to show… ”

“Yes! I was supposed to meet some people here,” said Miranda excitedly, turning from the bartender. One sight of Frank fumbling with his glasses and she instantly forgave his pretentious, floundering beginning. “So who is it that you know?”

“Bernie Crabshaw and I work down at the clinic together. He’s the point of connection, as they say. I was the tag-along bore.”

“Clinic?”

Frank explained that he split his time between duty at a volunteer women’s shelter and his own private practice. “The clinic keeps me on my toes,” he added, returning his glasses to his nose. Miranda was relieved to see he wore a silver band on his ring finger. “Keeps me in touch with the real world.”

“I’ve managed to avoid shrinks my whole life.” At Miranda’s confession Frank’s face fell and he lifted his empty glass, pretending there was a sip of something at the bottom. “Not because they’re not nice people,” she added hastily. “Or useful. It’s just that I… ”

Miranda paused, waiting for help, though she’d been the offender. She already knew that about Frank, that he was a giver, she could see it in the deep lines of his forehead. So why wasn’t he helping? Maybe he was a bad therapist. The way his eyes were locked into hers, unblinking, waiting for her to gag on the foot she’d squeezed into her mouth. And from this Miranda confirmed all her suspicions about Frank: mean, arrogant, small. A waste of an evening — she would finish her glass of wine (would it look bad to down it one gulp?) and then leave.

Instead, she stammered. “… I don’t know, it’s just, well, I — ”

“Let me guess. You don’t feel comfortable talking about yourself.”

How did he do that? Her whole existence summed up in one sentence — a complete stranger! It was as though they’d known each other for years. Miranda set down her glass of wine.

“By the way, I’m Miranda,” she said, extending her hand. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

And thus the conversation enthused. One hour. Two. Three, then four. Before long midnight and the bar was drawing its curtains. By then, hours of intriguing and yes, unclichéd conversation, ample doses of Frank’s belly laugh (Miranda was warming to the raucous noise of him, the hearty sounds steaming from such a thin, spindly man) and multiple rounds of drinks. Miranda wasn’t much of a drinker and the wine had a drowsy, lasting effect on her senses. Softened lights, whispers of noise tingling her ears, a newfound fondness for touch. First, a hand on Frank’s knee: “I never said that!”; next a brush of fingers against his shoulder. She wasn’t flirting, exactly. How could she be? She never flirted. Not that she thought herself above such things. More a matter of leaving risqué banter and loaded looks for the more self-confident, the more exuberant, those who knew what it was they wanted and exactly how to get it. As for Miranda, this particular night with this particular man and she seemed to be losing her wits.

“What’s it like, having so much insight into the human psyche? I imagine quite a burden.”

“Not at all,” said Frank. “My job is like… what is my job like? I guess you could say it’s not unlike someone who takes their clothes off for a living.”

“A stripper? You can’t be serious.”

“Okay, analogy needs a little work. More like someone who helps other people undress. A stripper of the psyche, if you will.”

“Keep going.”

“Well, first of all, we have to strip the unessentials, those things we think make us who we are but are nothing more than adornment… ”

“As in jewelry? Something in the neighborhood of say,” Miranda reached for Frank’s left hand, boldly tapped her index finger on the band that rested there. “A wedding ring?”

“An unessential if ever there was one.”

“How so?”

Frank took off his ring and laid it on the counter. Then he held up his hands in the short space between them, fingers spread like a pair of matching fans behind which his eyes sparkled playfully. “Now who am I?”

“You’re not still Frank Jamieson?”

“Precisely.”

“Only now it’s impossible to read what’s important to know about you. The text has been turned into a blank book.”

“Why is that particular symbol important? Can’t I still be Frank Jamieson? You just said I was.”

“Now your Frank Jamieson, married man posing as a single.”

“_Exactly!_ The danger then,” Frank’s voice rose, he was on his turf now, and Miranda smiled to see his enthusiasm, “is that we come to rely on fabricated symbols as a way of differentiating ourselves from others. Symbols that put us into categories recognized by the outside world. A person’s psyche is no different. All constructs, both those we make ourselves and those society stamps into our brains, everything must be stripped away… ”

“When did wedding vows become something society stamps on our brains? If you’re not going willingly, why go?”

“What’s important here is not the symbol itself, but how your perception of me is shaped by its existence. With the ring on my finger, you might assume a false personality.”

“Such as?”

“You tell me.”

Miranda frowned. Not the usual married-man angle. Why was she such a sucker for men who could express themselves? “Let’s see. Responsible… mature. Committed.” She paused, watching Frank’s lips flicker in a held-back smile. “Loved.”

Frank’s lips parted into the promised smile, not the reaction Miranda had expected given her last statement. She’d assumed he’d confess his shameful secret then — a loveless marriage and shrewish wife. Frank’s easy, warm smile seemed to suggest that she’d hit things dead-on, that he was all of those things, above all loved. So why this conversation? This night at the bar? Miranda had the terrible thought that she’d been misreading things.

“And with the ring off?”

Miranda hesitated. “Unscrupulous playboy.”

Frank exploded with laughter and Miranda, laughing also, felt her doubt, cynicism and growing attraction melding into an uproarious private joke, the punch line of which she didn’t dare admit she didn’t get.

Oh, but now she knew how it went, all right.

It was Frank who didn’t.

“You can’t live in the past.”

“Why not? If I were to start living in the present I’d first have to let go of the past, right?” Miranda bent over and pulled something from the water: a starfish. In her hands the creature’s limbs strained, his body stiffening in the chilly air. Miranda gave him a merciful squeeze.

“Precisely.”

Miranda flung the dead starfish back into the water and started walking. Frank caught up to her and reached for her hand. A slight hesitation, but then she remembered: Here we can be public. She put her hand in his and they walked in silence, the wind fighting them at every step.

“Well, then, I’d have to admit that the past was bad,” said Miranda, after some time. “And why would I ever want to admit mistakes? Isn’t it much easier to believe that my past is as good as anything in the movies?”

“Well, you do have a point. After all, who wants to confront their own responsibility in creating that terrible past, for the creating of a past is a shared act, is it not?”

“You tell me.”

Frank stops. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Miranda broke free and quickened her steps. In no time she’d gained a few yards on Frank and, seeing the empty shoreline stretching like a broken promise, the remarkably desolate, untainted beach that would eventually take her as far as Florida if she wished, Miranda thought maybe that’s just what she would do: walk and walk and walk. At least until she could quit thinking and just be. She remembered reading once a passage from a novel to a friend who had just confessed her inability to give in a relationship; a desire to remain invulnerable while simultaneously becoming part of another’s life. Miranda consoled her friend by reading aloud the differences between the one who loves and the one who is loved; always safest to be on the giving side of things. Miranda herself was moved by this because she knew all too well her own desire to be the one in charge, the one doling out emotional disclosures, a heart so trusting the inevitable tramplings were innumerable; she’d lost count ages ago.

With Frank, all of that self-diagnosis had been rendered unimportant. As a lover he gave, gave, gave, continually surprising Miranda with his ability to express himself and more importantly, an unabashed willingness to do so. But the miscalculated punch line being, of course, his unaltered devotion to his wife. Frank wasn’t one of those married men who confessed a strong dislike or hatred for his spouse. In fact, he had no qualms in telling Miranda just how much he admired Carol: her nightly dust-ups with reporters, her dedication as a lobbyist. The woman apparently whipped up crepe suzettes and chicken kiev in her sleep. Miranda herself unable to fry a solitary egg without scorching its lonesome, liquid edges.

Not that Frank talked about Carol all that much; in fact, rarely at all. But what he did say (usually prompted by Miranda’s morbid sense of curiosity), he said with respect, fondness, though she wasn’t sure she would call it love.

Miranda, lost in her jumbled musings, narrowly missed a collision with the beached, gray carcass of a dolphin. A cry of surprise and then Frank was beside her, the distance she’d gained between them a memory as he put his arm around her shoulder.

“Certainly a tourist attraction,” he said, shaking his head. “Are you all right?”

“It just — it caught me by surprise.”

“Death always catches us unaware. Almost more so than life.” Frank picked up a stick and poked the dead animal’s side. A band of ribs — white, paper-thin — unfurled themselves from their cage. Overhead, low-lying clouds turned thick, heavy with fresh burden. Miranda crossed her arms over her chest. Frank tossed the stick in the water. He and Miranda watched it disappear beneath a wave.

Someone walked toward them, a teenage boy with shoulders hunched against the wind. Ahead of him loped a big black dog. A matter of seconds and the dog jumped for the dead animal, burying her snout in the porpoise’s side. Miranda screamed. Frank made a grab for the dog’s collar but stumbled in the sand. He came up empty-handed. Miranda noticed for the first time the fist-sized hollow where the creature’s eye had once been. She clutched her stomach, staggered in the sand, and vomited.

Later that night, a grumbling Frank set out for the beach, toting a surfboard pilfered from the cottage. In front darted Miranda, flashing a light to illuminate their steps. The sky had cleared and the stars were out. On a night like this, thought Miranda, it’s impossible to tell where water meets sky, or if it even mattered.

The lovers searched almost an hour but the dead dolphin had disappeared.

“The tide must’ve carried him off,” said Miranda, sighing.

“Apparently,” agreed Frank, heartily. “Ready to go back?”

Miranda had no answer. Staring at the cold water, the dark sky hovering just above, she no longer felt the wet sand beneath her feet. But the wind. Lifting her hair, pricking her skin. Perhaps she was here — in the here-and-now — after all.

“Yes,” she said, smiling as she forced her toes deep into the sand. “Let’s go home.”