All Around Atlantis by Deborah Eisenberg Page B

individualized and frigid clarity, would search their faces for proof that each was in some reliable way different from him, as though he were a dying man approaching the gauzy crowds waiting for judgment.
    And they—what were they seeing? Perhaps he and his kind seemed a ghostly population to them— distant, fading…Perhaps at some terrible border you’d simply leave behind everything that you now considered life, forget about once precious concerns, as though they were worn-out shirts or last year’s calendar or old lists of things that long ago it had seemed important to accomplish.
    Oh, it was probably true, as Caroline had sometimes said, that his fears were irrational. That he’d always find some way to manage. But when the door closed behind her that day he ought to have understood—yes, he thought, that was the moment he ought to have understood—that success, the sort of success Penwad’s letter seemed to promise for him again, was something he could just, finally, forget about.
    But he had understood nothing; he’d simply sat there numb—for hours—until Lady Chatterley threw herself forward in a frenzy of carpet shredding. “Stop that,” he’d said. “Stop, O.K., please?” He’d flicked a finger at her rear, and she’d leapt, snarling. The truth was he had always been a little afraid of the cat. She was Caroline’s, but Jim, evidently, was allergic.
    Shapiro supposed that, to whatever extent Caroline was thinking about him , she would be imagining him in debonair company here, taking part in animated and witty conversations of a sort no living person had ever experienced. Shapiro felt short of breath, as though Caroline were suffocating him with a pillow. “This is a wonderful opportunity for Aaron,” she could be assuring Jim at this very instant. “Really it is.” Oh, yes. He , Shapiro, must be happy so she could be.
    An Indian child playing nearby in the street skinned a knee and howled for his mother. Shapiro felt an almost uncontainable sorrow, as though he were just about to cry himself. But to cry it’s necessary to imagine the comforter.
    Caroline had never cared what things were really like. He’d once overheard her saying thank you to a recorded message. Everything was nice, pleasant, good. If he spoke truthfully to her, she couldn’t hear him. She despised no one. Those who were not nice, pleasant, happy simply ceased to exist.
    Shapiro was ravenous. He entered an inviting little restaurant. Inside, it was very dark, but low-hanging, green-shaded lamps made a pool of light over each table.
    The waiter spoke no English, but was agreeable when Shapiro pointed at a nearby diner’s plate of soup. But there had been a time—truly there had—when Caroline actually loved him, had been fascinated by him, not just by his reputation. For a moment he saw her distinctly. She stood holding Lady Chatterley, gazing into space with a baffled sorrow. “Caroline—” he said.
    Had he spoken aloud? Three men at a neighboring table were staring at him with a volatile blend of loathing and amusement. All three were mammoth. One appeared to be a North American; he and one of the others wore pistols, visible even in the restaurant’s pleasant gloom, beneath their shirttails.
    The waiter, bearing soup, interposed himself; Shapiro gestured fervent thanks. He took a spoonful of the soup. It was clear, and delicious. Food , he thought.
    Plus rent. Plus utilities…Yes, tonight the stage of a concert hall, a tuxedo. A party, champagne, adulation. But tomorrow it was back to cat fur.
    The waiter arrived with a second plate for him, huge and unexpected. A pretty selection of things that seemed to have been cooked in the broth. Mmm. Shapiro leaned into the light of his hanging lamp to poke around at it—carrots, onions, white beans, cabbage, celery, a small…haunch, something that