The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

that I wasn’t fit to be let out of my cage. Karin had made a friendly overture to me, had in fact been giving off tentative, ever so subtle signs that she was available for more intimate conversations on any number of subjects, and I, who had not touched a woman in almost two years, found myself responding to those nearly imperceptible hints and imagining, in the crude and vulgar way of a man with too much alcohol in his blood, what she would look like without any clothes on. Was that why I snapped at her so viciously? Was my self-loathing so great that I had to punish her for awakening a glimmer of sexual arousal in me? Or did I secretly know that she was doing nothing of the kind and that the whole little drama was my own invention, a moment of lust brought on by the nearness of her warm, perfumed body?
    To make matters worse, I wasn’t the least bit sorry when she started to cry. We were both standing by then, and when I saw Karin’s lower lip begin to tremble and the corners of her eyes fill with tears, I was glad, almost jubilant over the consternation I had caused. There were six or seven other people in the room just then, and they had all turned in our direction after Karin’s first yelp of surprise. The noise of clattering plates had brought several more guests to the threshold, and when I came out with my obnoxious remark, there were at least a dozen witnesses who heard it. Everything went silent after that. It was a moment of collective shock, and for the next couple of seconds no one knew what to say or do. In that small interval of breathlessness and uncertainty, Karin’s hurt turned to anger.
    You have no right to talk to me like that, David, she said. Who do you think you are?
    Fortunately, Mary was one of the people who had come to the doorway, and before I could do any further damage, she rushed into the room and took hold of my arm.
    David didn’t mean it, she said to Karin. Did you, David? It was just one of those things that come flying out on the spur of the moment.
    I wanted to say something harsh and contradictory, something that would prove I’d meant every word I’d said, but I held my tongue. It took all my powers of self-control to do that, but Mary had gone out of her way to act as peacemaker, and a part of me knew that I would regret causing her any more trouble. Even so, I didn’t apologize, and I didn’t try to make nice. Rather than say the thing I wanted to say, I freed my arm from her grasp and left the room, walking out of the den and across the living room as my former colleagues looked on and said nothing.
    I went straight upstairs to Greg and Mary’s bedroom. My plan was to grab my things and leave, but my parka was buried under a massive pile of coats on the bed, and I couldn’t find it. After digging around for a little while, I started tossing the coats onto the floor, eliminating possibilities in order to simplify my search. Just when I had come to the halfway point—more coats off the bed than on—Mary walked into the room. She was a short, round-faced woman with blond frizzy hair and reddish cheeks, and as she stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, I immediately understood that she’d had it with me. I felt like a child about to be scolded by his mother.
    What are you doing? she said.
    Looking for my coat.
    It’s in the downstairs closet. Don’t you remember?
    I thought it was here.
    It’s downstairs. Greg put it in the closet when you came. You were the one who found the hanger for him.
    All right, I’ll look for it downstairs.
    But Mary wasn’t about to let me off so easily. She took a few more steps into the room, bent down for a coat, and flung it angrily onto the bed. Then she picked up another coat and threw that one onto the bed as well. She went on collecting coats, and each time she thwacked another one down on the bed, she interrupted what she was saying in mid-sentence. The coats were like punctuation marks—sudden dashes, hasty ellipses,