Hellgoing by Lynn Coady Page A

other expectant presences that had clustered around him after his talk.
    Eventually his eyes did a tour of the circle of faces. Sam! he greeted.
    Red or white? she mouthed.
    Very kind, said Marco, allowing his soupy brown eyes to pour appreciation into hers. He reached for the white.
    Sam blank-smiled and brought the red to her own lips, holding his eye as she receded from the cluster. Marco, looking stymied, watched her go. He was paying extra attention now because of the way she had behaved in the car and in the restaurant. She hadn’t said much. But she’d said enough to let him know her feelings toward him were taking on a purplish tinge of the unprofessional.
    Sam, called Marco before she had completely receded from the circle. You don’t have to disappear.
    The members of Marco’s conversational klatch were now gazing like cows back and forth between Marco and Sam with a total lack of interest. Waiting brainlessly for the exchange to be over.
    I’m not going anywhere, Sam assured Marco.
    She turned and walked directly into Alex’s looming chest. Her wine sloshed and some of it splattered to the floor, but somehow didn’t get anywhere on him, which was so typical. The smell — like fresh pelt — hit her hard. She craned her neck to peer up at him and her uterus shook itself awake like a dog.
    Clumsy, said Alex, whose one-note mode of flirtation had always been personal insult. She understood then the whole affair had been about efficiency. This was how you sinned and took your punishment all at once.
    He smiled down at Sam, allowing his smell to settle all around her.
    What? Sam said.
    What? said Alex back.
    Here was yet another easy way out — like stepping off a cliff. Sam cleared her throat in order to be heard.
    â€œWhen can we fuck?” she said.
    Alex’s eyes actually bulged and he hunched forward, abruptly telescoping his height in a way that appeared spastic and involuntary. Whoa, whoa, whoa! he whispered. If he had been carrying some kind of sack around with him, he might have thrown it over Sam’s head.
    She turned away from him to check her phone, ignoring the howls from her lower abdomen. There was another text from her brother, starting Did you — so she put it away and moved toward the bar.
    MARCO IS AN animal, she had texted Marie during the talk. She’d been thinking he had eyes like moose: puzzled and stupid and bulgy. And his silky curls shining under the spotlight made her think of the poodle she had growing up; a poodle named Arfer. Do tell! Marie wrote back. Marie had her own interpretation of everything. Transmitting her thoughts to Marie was like cutting the string off a kite, allowing the wind to yank it around in any and every direction; relinquishing ownership.
    And after they arrived at the dinner, the blowsy editor had approached her and said, Sam, I was trying to get in touch with you for the last hour to drop off something for Marco but I wasn’t able to get through on your phone.
    And Sam, who’d had her ringer turned off since the moment on the park bench with the police horse clopping past, stared at the editor’s swelling jowls and told her, My father was having his heart taken out. And that was all she had to say, the editor didn’t even let her finish. The editor’s jowls drooped another couple centimetres — she was almost not middle-aged anymore, Sam abruptly realized; the editor was almost actually old — and she terrified Sam by lurching forward and holding Sam in her billowy arms a moment.
    IT WAS VERY late in the evening when Marco sought her out. He had made it clear all day he wanted to be rested for the flight tomorrow morning. Don’t let me linger too long, he instructed. And for the love of God, don’t let me drink too much. Two, three glasses of wine. Don’t let anyone put a glass of scotch in front of me, or I’m toast. I can’t handle the jet lag the next day —