Rapture by Susan Minot Page B

sold at the auction. At least, he never saw it again.
    He looked down at Kay, thinking of the
Flying Cloud,
of his grandmother’s dining room which she’d never seen, never would. Vanessa had been there, though.
    Kay and Vanessa ran into each other another time, after the time on the office steps. He and Vanessa were coming out of a movie and there was Kay like an electric shock, in line for the next show. She said she was waiting to meet someone. It was during a separation period from Kay and he didn’t trust himself to speak. He felt Vanessa watching him. Luckily the girls did the talking, about the movie mainly. Vanessa started to mention something about the plot, but stopped herself.
    â€˜Oh wait,’ she said to Kay. ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you.’
    â€˜That’s O.K. That never bothers me knowing,’ Kay said. Both of them being so nice.
    Benjamin felt his face sort of puffed up with air and he got the dizzying sensation that he was a balloon hovering beside two of his selves in the form of these two women. He well knew that both of them had said not particularly warm things about the other, privately to him. Would that come out now? He was aware, too, that these women had the capacity to compare notes which would result in the uncovering of he could only begin to imagine how many lies.
    â€˜Have a good movie then.’
    â€˜I will. Nice to see you.’
    After they walked away, Vanessa turned to him with slow, blinking eyes.
    â€˜What?’ he said.
    â€˜That was interesting.’
    â€˜What?’ He pretended he didn’t have a clue. So often he really didn’t have a clue, he figured this could easily be one of those times now.
    â€˜Your crush,’ Vanessa said.
    â€˜Sweetheart,’ he said, as if this were a chuckle between them.
    Vanessa arched her eyebrows, a sign of the loss of her sense of humor. ‘I can tell by the way you were acting,’ she said, staying cool.
    He told her, as was his habit, that she was ridiculous. He couldn’t remember how the rest of the night went, but chances were: not so good.
    He’d gone back and forth between them in his mind: Vanessa was his family, his comfort, something he could count on. And Kay, she was more like himself, but like a new self who wasn’t such a failure, who had made a movie. Kay was a new vista. Sometimes you got that feeling when you met someone—the horizon widened. Most of the time, after you got to know the person, the widening feeling went away. You got used to the person’s vista. But with Kay the feeling had lasted. In his better moments he could believe that with her, he might become the person he wanted to be. Then he would review all that would have to change and it would look impossible.
    Anyway, all the weighing of considerations turned out to be beside the point. When it came down to the moment of truth, he simply couldn’t leave Vanessa. So the decision got made by default. What it meant, though, was that he would have to forget Kay. Which he started to do. He applied himself to the project. But it took longer than he would have liked. It took too long.
    SHE GLANCED UP in the direction of his chest and shoulders, which was awkward with the position of her neck, and she saw him with his eyelids hooded, just barely looking down at what she was doing. Or was he looking past her? There he was, as close as could be, beside her and under her and even in her, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on in his mind.
    Somehow she didn’t want to know. Not if it wasn’t good. And knowing Benjamin it could easily be not good. She hoped, at least, that he was in the same general arena of transport as she was. There were no guarantees, but she was doing her best in that department.
    She zeroed all her attention in on him. Surely he must feel how she was worshiping him. It was a paradox that the more she focused on what she was doing the more she