The Emerald Light in the Air by Donald Antrim Page B

was going to have to call her. He took out his phone and dialed—in that moment he was glad that he had his meds on board—and right away Kate picked up and hollered, “Where are you? I’m at the restaurant with Susan! Elliot is out parking the car. Did you go to your therapy ?”
    â€œCould you not shout, Kate?”
    â€œIt’s goddamn packed in here!”
    â€œI need to talk to you, privately,” he said, and turned away from the shopgirl. But there was no way, in the small space, to keep the girl from overhearing, so he put his hand over the phone, leaned toward her, and whispered, “I’ll be right back,” then stepped out of the shop, stood on the sidewalk in the freezing wind, and slowly, deliberately humiliated himself, saying to Kate, “I stopped on my way home and bought you flowers, but the bank account isn’t cooperating with my card for some reason and now I’m stuck at the florist’s because I don’t have enough cash on me, and I think the problem is simply that—shit, I don’t know what the problem is, I must not have kept my eye on the balance, and it’s possible that we’re overdrawn. I know we’ve talked about this. But it’s not a serious problem, I promise.”
    â€œOh, Jim. Are you spending ? How much have you spent ?” Kate cried, and he winced.
    He said, “Is Susan there?”
    â€œDo you not hear a word I say? She’s right here! We’re drinking Manhattans. Are you coming? We’re waiting for you. Why do you want to talk to Susan? Jim, are you spending our money?”
    â€œI don’t want to talk to Susan. I’d just prefer that this conversation be private between the two of us.”
    â€œPlease, Jim, as if everyone we know doesn’t already know everything there is to know?”
    â€œI’m not—I am not spending our money.”
    â€œYou’re agitated.”
    â€œWhy are you diagnosing me? I’m not agitated. I wanted to surprise you with flowers. But clearly it was just another of my many mistakes. I’ll think twice next time. Everything I do is unwanted.”
    â€œStop it,” Kate said to him then.
    Through the phone he could hear sounds from the restaurant bar, voices and other noises in the after-work crush. Then the wind came up, and the only sound he heard was the phone’s own static. The wind died, and Kate’s voice was saying, “Elliot is here now, and Lorenzo is clearing us a table. Let me talk to someone about the flowers.”
    In this way he was forced to trudge back into the shop, hold the phone out, and say to the girl, “She wants to talk to you.”
    The girl hesitated, then reached out and let him pass the phone into her hand.
    â€œHello?” she said into his phone.
    He retreated to a corner of the store. Joking aside, he didn’t care to loiter about, smelling the flowers, while the girl wrote down his wife’s American Express number. He would never learn the girl’s name, not now, Kate would see to that, he told himself as he peered out from his hiding place behind a leafy potted tree. He saw the shop’s buckets of flowers and the refrigerators in a row, and the door leading to the back, but where was the girl? He heard her laugh in response to some remark Kate must’ve made, and realized that she was standing behind the bouquet. “Oh, don’t I just know that about men and their important purchases!” she exclaimed.
    What was Kate saying to her? Was he being made fun of? Was she calling him bipolar?
    He had a problem with anxiety and suicidality, and, as Kate had reminded him in their conversation a moment earlier, everyone knew about his previous autumn’s sojourns on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and his games of chicken—no, not games, not at all, really—on the fire escape outside their bedroom window.
    He didn’t want to think about any of that. Yet it