Four

And because the house was filled with comfortable things, you wondered. As your wife slept under the perfect thread count, you licked peanut butter off a steak knife. You thought about what it might feel like to be ripped apart by something you wanted. On the internet, people were scarred but intact. They were whole but changed. You dropped the knife in the sink, but your wife didn’t stir; she’d once slept through an earthquake. You had never felt anything but soft. Was soft a feeling or its absence?

# # #

Sometimes, when you corrected a student’s paper, you got the urge to graft a number onto the wrong strip of skin. An ill-timed four might shatter the universe. That was physics.

# # #

She’d stopped by the coffee shop where you were putting yourself through college. One of you spilled green tea on the other: not enough to hurt, just enough to charm. Numbers changed hands. In bed, her skin felt like the ink that stains your hands when you read a newspaper. You both hated comedies. You preferred to laugh when you least expected it.

# # #

After fourteen years, you expected it.

# # #

And because you wondered, you said yes. Yes to Munich, where you didn’t speak the language. Yes to the dinner; you wanted alienation. Biting into a stuffed mushroom, you listened to the thick roll of German and imagined they were talking about you, your American vowels, your perfect teeth.

Your wife steered you over to the window. You said yes. Yes to the window, where the night was thick like peanut butter, sharp like a steak knife. Two couples introduced themselves in English. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone here,” she said.

You kissed your wife, who smelled like canapés. On your second date, you’d shown her that a mathematical proof could be beautiful. When the numbers balanced out just right, you barely noticed they were there.

# # #

You were eighteen, and she was twenty-five. One boy later, you knew what you wanted. You came to college with a mission: kiss a girl.

She had dated everybody. Grilling steaks—her bare arms, her collarbone, the sun—she told you about the time she asked out the girl from the orchestra. That was before she ran into an old professor at a dyke bar downtown, and they’d ended up in the back of her truck until six in the morning. She was sharing, not bragging. She felt secure in the fact of you—of you plural. As she plated the asparagus, you studied her fingers. Yours were ignorant by comparison. You asked her: “What if you get bored?”

“With the book?” she said. “I’ll start on a different one.”

“No, with me.”

She looked stricken. “Baby, I love you. Is there something I could do better? To show you?”

“It’s just that I haven’t done anything. And you’ve done everything.”

“Oh, baby,” she said, and her arms, her collarbone, the sun.

# # #

Throughout your twenties, you lost friends who saw how easy you had it. Could you call yourself queer if you got married at twenty-three? If you bought a house at thirty? If you had four types of peanut butter in your cabinet?

# # #

You were the one who got bored. She slept through the earthquake.

# # #

You said yes to opening up. It was her idea; she had read you. She offered to be your wingman, horrifically kind.

At the bar, she introduced you to the woman with the gray lipstick. She was your type: muscular, slow to laugh. All night, you tried to want her. She ran marathons; you thought about her thighs. You cracked a joke for her, but the men by the TV started to sing, and you hated them so much it was almost desire. Three drinks in, you went to the bathroom to slide a hand into your pants. But her body was just a body, and so was yours.

When you came back, she was making out with your wife. Yes, you thought. You were sick: yes, yes. You looked at the places the woman had found, the places it took you months to find. Yes, you thought, this is it, make me feel something, pierce my skin. Put a four where a two belonged.

# # #

You said yes when they wanted to sleep together. You thought it would crush you to sit alone in the apartment. But the woman and her partner, a quiet man who worked at the hospital, offered to let you stay at their place. At first, you thought no, that was too generous. On second thought, maybe that was worse, and it was better: the place where the woman slept, where she put her things. Yes, yes.

When you arrived, the blankets were folded up the way you liked them. The thermostat said sixty-eight degrees, which you preferred. There were three pillows on the bed. Two lights on. One window open, one shut, one cracked. A towel in the bathroom, a robe in your size. A bathmat in your favorite shade of green. The shampoo you use, the conditioner, the body wash, the acne cream. In the kitchen: peonies. By the sink: vanilla soap. In the refrigerator: the brand of milk you always bought, the seltzer, the cream, the chocolate you only ate cold, the strawberries you’d wanted from the market, a takeout box from the place you’d meant to try. In the cupboards: your brand of tea. You turned on the TV, and it was set to the channel you watch when you’re alone, the stories that end in the place they began. You counted the books on the shelves, and the number was four, and when you did it again, the number was four, and when you did it again, the number was four, and when you did it again,