Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction by Amy Bloom

diner and wipe each other’s faces with napkins.
    Clare saw that the man in the seat across from her was smiling uncertainly; she’d been saying William’s name. Clare walked to the little juncture between cars and called Margaret Slater, her former cleaning lady. There was no answer. Margaret’s grandson Nelson didn’t get home until three so Margaret might be running errands for another two hours. They pulled into Penn Station. If Margaret had a cell phone, Clare didn’t know the number. Clare called every half hour, home and then Margaret’s number, leaving messages and timing herself, reading a few pages of the paper between calls. Goddammit, Margaret, she thought. You’re retired. Pick up the fucking phone.
    Clare pulled into their driveway just as the sun was setting and Margaret pulled in right after her. Water still dripped from the gutters and the corners of the house and it would all freeze again at night.
    “Oh, Clare,” Margaret said, “I just got your messages. I was out of the house all day. I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” Clare said, and they both looked up at the light in William’s window. “He probably unplugged the phone.”
    “They live to drive us crazy,” Margaret said.
    Clare scrabbled in the bottom of her bag for the house key, furiously tossing tissues and pens and Chap Sticks and quarters onto the walk, and thinking with every toss, What’s your hurry? This is your last moment of not knowing, stupid, slow down. But her hands moved fast, tearing the silk lining of the bag until she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a brass house key sitting in Margaret’s flat, lined palm. Clare wanted to sit down on the porch and wait for someone else to come. She opened the door and she wanted to turn around and close it behind her.
    They should call his name, she thought. It’s what you do when you come into your house and you haven’t been able to reach your husband, you go, William, William, darling, I’m home , and then he pulls himself out of his green leather desk chair and comes to the top of the stairs, his hair standing straight up and his glasses on the end of his nose. He says, relief and annoyance clearly mixed together, Oh, darling, you didn’t call, I waited for your call . And then you say, I did call, I called all night, but the phone was off the hook, you had the phone off , and he says that he certainly did not and Margaret watches, bemused. She disapproved of the divorce (she all but said, I always thought Charles would leave you, not the other way around) but gave herself over on the wedding day, when she brought platters of deviled eggs and put Nelson in a navy-blue suit, and cried, shyly.
    “Fulgent,” William said after the ceremony, and he said it several times, a little drunk on Champagne. “Absolutely fulgent.” It wouldn’t have mattered if no one had been there, but everyone except William’s sister had been, and they got in one elegant fox-trot before William’s ankle acted up. William will call down, “I’m so sorry we inconvenienced you, Mrs. Slater,” and Margaret will shake her head fondly and go, and you drop your coat and bag in the hall and he comes down the stairs, slowly, careful with his ankle, and he makes tea to apologize for having scared the shit out of you.
    Margaret waited. As much as she wanted to help, it wasn’t her house or her husband and Clare had been in charge of their relationship for the last twenty years; this was not the moment to take the lead. Clare walked up the stairs and right into their bedroom, as if William had phoned ahead and told her what to expect. He was lying on the bed, shoes off and fully dressed, his hand on Jane Eyre , his eyes closed, and his reading glasses on his chest. (“‘He is not to them what he is to me,’” Jane thought. “‘While I breathe and think I must love him.’”) Clare lay down next to him, murmuring, until Margaret put her hand on Clare’s shoulder and asked if she