Who is Rich?

On the rebound from some long-haired Australian deadbeat, she met whatshisface, Mike. He was tall and dark and strong as an ox. He could work a hundred hours in a row without setting foot outside the building. Even in the short time she knew him, she could see him changing for the worse. She didn’t consider him a friend or a mentor, and he didn’t know how to talk to women. Was he shy? Was he tired? That first Thanksgiving with her family, when he wouldn’t make small talk, she knew it was wrong but went ahead with it anyway. Planned the wedding, got cold feet, refused to back out. Or maybe the Australian guy had mistreated her and Mike was nice at first. I forget. She filled out reams of forms for an annulment, met regularly with her priest that whole first year, trying to figure out how to get out of it, then got knocked up, and was either pregnant or nursing for the next seven.

Last summer, lying on the beach with her classmates, she wore Italian movie star sunglasses and a white wifebeater, tight against her freckled copper skin, over a screaming blue-and-white flowered bikini, the string loops tied behind her neck as if she’d been dressed that way by some larger being who’d stood over her and tied that bow and then pushed her out into the world. After the beach, a few of us went to play putt-putt golf, where she towered over me by half an inch, and I couldn’t stop looking at her legs.

On the final night of the conference we skipped the festivities, went to a fancy restaurant, then drove out to the point. She didn’t hesitate, just stripped and ran right into the big booming ocean in the dark. Her bra and undies were white. When we got out of the water I forced myself not to look, forced my eyes up, above her chin. But then I looked. She was breathing strangely, said she hadn’t kissed anyone else in nine years. I noticed her breathing, and looked at her hands, and then it hit me: Duh, she’s shaking, she’s telling the truth.

This stuff happens in movies all the time, but what’s interesting about real life is that the longer you live, the cornier life becomes, although that corniness, what once seemed corny, now comes from a deeper place. Desperation doesn’t mind corny. Desperation trumps style. We owned the beach, foam breaking around our ankles, delirious and alone in the moonlight.

Her bunkmates had already gone home, and Amy had the room to herself. There were problems with the lighting, curtains, noises in the hall. Over the next several hours she became awkward, worried, antsy, horny, offended, confused, athletically engaged, panting and moaning, weepy and angry, relieved and exhausted, until we passed out like two crazy drunks. Then, last fall in a bar in the West Village, while trying to wrap her legs around me in the booth, she tipped over a candle and set the table on fire.