We’re thirteen floors high when I tell Ryan I’ve been sleeping with his dad.
But I can’t concentrate.
I’m watching the couple next to us. The girl lifts a neon cocktail like a poison flower to her mouth as something hunched and lonely skates through her eyes. The man opposite her desires that mouth, those eyes.
My own mouth is dry as a crematorium and the man opposite me wants me dead.
Even so, I keep thinking about what’s been melted down to produce that offensive shade of liquor, at what point fear would save me if I leaned over the edge of this rooftop bar, how much easier life would be if I were one of the big cats in the mountains above the city, lounging on a cool rock, hunted only by the man in the moon.
There’s no rock here but if I can get through this confession, maybe then I could run to the hills, fling my clothes to the streets and lie down like a wild feline licked of all my filth.
“Are you actually serious?”
I pluck a celery stick from the plate between us but put it back because, I think, it’s inappropriate to eat right now. The honey-sriracha dries on the wings.
“How long?” Ryan demands.
I practice the breathwork I learned in rebirthing classes with my mother. “Uh. Since Easter?”
“So, last month?”
“Maybe a little before that.”
“Eve. We’re married goddammit. Why did you bring me here to tell me this with all these fucking strangers around?”
“I heard the wings are good.”
Ryan slams his fist on the table. The strangers look up, clutching their noxious drinks, as I rest my hand on Ryan’s and wave them away, let the palm trees whisper in the streets below.
“Does my mom know about this?”
I laugh. “Elaine hardly has a clean record. Neither do you. Do you remember your bachelor party?”—The scar still flickers among beard hairs on Ryan’s jaw from the fire-breathing stripper he got too personal with.
“That was years ago. We dealt with that.”
“Maybe you did.”
“You can’t get out of this, Eve. This is my dad. How did this even happen?”
I should spare the details. Just say sorry. Ryan doesn’t need to know I didn’t visit my mother six months ago, that Jack and I took a long flight, ate calzone and lost our breaths over tangled glass in Venice shopfronts, plunged our bodies together in waterway–sheets for five nights straight. Same way, after six years of marriage, he doesn’t know about the rebirthing classes. Doesn’t know I haven’t seen Mom since she turned my old room into her bespoke candle studio and deflated the blow-up bed with a pin.
“Look. I’m sorry,” I say but I’m watching the girl again.
Her companion is all hair-slime and metallic shirt with white jeans suctioned to his legs. I’d say it’s their first date. Her arms guard her body. He sits back, one foot up, teeth blazing bright as the mirrored lanterns on the tables, while he sounds off about how she looks way hotter than her photos.
She swallows the lychee from the rim of her glass and her fingers cling tight to a heart-shaped necklace. It’s the kind of pendant you might find on a roadside and scrub up, not one you’d choose. I’m reminded of our journey here—in the passenger seat, waiting for Jack to text back, I saw a sleeping bag on the side of the freeway and assumed something was inside. D’you think that was a body? I asked Ryan, forgetting all the ways I was taught to breathe. I hope not, he said and refused to pull over, agreeing instead to leave the freeway and loop back around. When we drove by again the sleeping bag had unfurled and sagged open like a deflated snakeskin, like whatever soul was inside had wriggled away.
Hey, that’s how it goes sometimes—it only takes one betrayal for the spirit to quit. Jack understands. My fingers creep to my phone.
“I feel sick.”
“Is it the wings?”
“No, Eve! It’s the thought of you and my dad going at it behind my back like I’m just some chump. What the hell?”
“It’s not like that. Jack has been good to me.”
“Good to you? So, there’s more to it?” He gets up. “You’re sick. What have you even got in there? It’s not a heart, that’s obvious.”
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom,” he snaps and throws his napkin on the table.
I flip my phone and find a message from Jack:
Don’t tell him, Eve. Let sleeping dogs lie.
I tuck the phone inside my bra, grab the celery stick and enjoy the cold crunch as I stand. The girl with the shiny guy catches my eye like it’s a signal. I walk to the roof’s edge where a breeze sings soft on my face. The stars are muzzled teeth behind pollution clouds. Below are crosshatches of gold, car horns and wandering drunks clinging to the light by a thread. And fencing it all in are the mountains, like the shadowy backs of much larger creatures. The city is love, somewhere most of us fall, some smacking the concrete louder than others.
I lean over the ledge and tense when fingers brush my shoulder. Surely, he won’t push?
But it’s the girl. Her eyes are leonine, flinted in the middle.
“This is the fifth date I’ve had this week,” she says, colder than the breeze. She lets out an empty breath and stands beside me clutching the glass fence with long, glossy nails. “What is it with you? Daddy issues?”
I laugh. “You could say that”—but it’s more like Mommy troubles.
Behind us, lanterns flicker, men burn with rage and lust while our sights are trained on the mountains, where the big cats are waking.
Where unlike dogs, we refuse to let them lie.
