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Mona settles into her seat at the concert seeking only familiar pleasure. Her life with Howard is padded by a series of rituals in these later years. The same concert series, tea afterward at the bar and grille, Sunday morning sex after a good night's sleep. Howard has refused to abandon the patterns of a lifetime .Probably a good thing, too, especially in the case of the sex. It would just be too absurd, two out of practice sets of old bones flailing away, trying not to injure each other. Come on, surely there’s more to it than that? Mona smoothes her platinum chignon with nervous fingers. She reminds herself that only last week she had been inexplicably moved at the paper fragility of Howard’s cheeks, how the unshaved spots nearly brought her to tears. In hindsight, the experience, like this predictable program, would be as thumbed through as the pads of the pianist’s fingertips, leaving no prints and no clues.
Howard slips the fur off Mona’s shoulders, and she savors the envious glances from the other ladies who also dressed for each other. She fingers her sapphire necklace for a long, delicious moment, smoothed against the drape of her neck.
Two rows ahead of Mona and Howard a father and son are talking. One is the photographic negative of the other: when the white-haired father turns to his dark-haired son, they show identical profiles--brow bones jutting at the same angle, noses a similar shape. Each feature in one face is answered in the other.
Mona recognizes the men-- first in her body’s cells, a moment before her brain catches on. A tingle travels from the base of her spine into the roots of her hair. When the son swivels in his seat and fixes Mona with an absent stare she realizes with a shock that she had once slept with his look-a-like father. In that moment, she falls into her sealed off past, whirling vertiginously through her own guilt. She lets herself be pushed once more onto the bed piled high with overcoats. She hears again the metallic clicking of the bedroom lock, thrillingly audible over the fragments of songs on the stereo and the clinking of glasses just outside the door. She hears, as from a great distance, Howard crack his party joke and mouth the punch line as her lover pulls her clothes away. She swirls the red liquid of a Manhattan in her mouth as he sinks himself inside her.
An elbow jabs Mona’s ribs, jolts her back to the here and now: “Isn’t that our neighbor from Flower Street?” Howard asks. “Look at that-- the old boy has a son. Looks just like him!” Mona nods dumbly, unsure of her voice. “That’s him, isn’t it? I mean, that’s who I think it is, isn’t it?” The son makes a lyrical gesture just then, the same one his father used to make when he had something urgent to say. It's too much. Mona bolts toward the ladies’ room.
Once in the porcelain privacy of a stall, Mona sits perfectly still, her fur bunched up around her face. I will not cry, she says, her voice in rags. That man was not worth it then and he is not worth it now. She opens her compact and dabs at her nose. She slaps it closed viciously. Slut. Whore.
On the way back to her seat, Mona glances at the stage where the piano tuner is pinging an A that died too fast when struck. It should suffer more.
As she nudges the company of knees to get back to her husband, she notices he has sucked in his stomach almost past endurance. He crosses his pinstriped legs pointedly, and draws a manicured hand lightly over his thick silver hair. And where might the object of his preening be? Mona quickly finds her, a vulgar little thing in tight satin pants, stretching with animal grace.
Bustling into her seat, she waves away his weak ‘Are you OK?’ with an angry shrug. “I saw you flirting!”
He slumps in his seat and sheepishly nods. “She’s quite over the top, even for you. One of these days you’re going to get in over your head”. She gives him a sharp slap on the hand.
The house lights dim and Mona can see Howard grinning in the dark. He had never minded her jealousy. In fact,
