And after the Intermission IV

Then it is the day before she returns. I haven't written much here, I realize. I thought I would, but maybe I am not so interesting on my own. I look over the words I managed. Short sentences. Empty sentences. When I talk with her the night before her flight, she says, "Will you be sad if I don't come back?" She uses the wrong tense, and laughs. I will be a better husband, I say.

The cat has grown frustrated with me. He won't let me brush him anymore. At first it was fine; then it was bribes; now it is not at all. He throws up a hairball on the carpet. He doesn't understand the concept of serves him right. He simply sadly meows.

Tomorrow I will rent a car and pick her up. I will not say how much I missed her. I have said it already and it sounds overblown, and she will be there and missing her is the only thing I will miss, if anything. A strange concept, but this is the experience: I will struggle to talk when what I will want to do is to throw myself into her presence, and when I can talk I will tell a story of us--how we made it through five weeks and grew stronger for it--instead of how those five weeks have weakened me until the first good look at her, in the flesh, will bring my loneliness crumbling down, to a bedrock of longing.

And after the Intermission III

As I'm keeping myself busy I start to feel okay, then less okay, then circular. After a weekend of this circle she calls with the news in Boston. The water is undrinkable, she says. I already know this: the "cuff link" on the pipe has broken and the clean water has spilled into the unswimmable Charles River at 8 million gallons an hour. I wonder how Cathreen knows this. She says, "Don't give to Boise." Our cat cries in the background. I hear they are sending people out on the streets to announce the bad tap water, because if you came home and weren't lonely and always online, how would you know? I hold the phone to Boise's ear and he looks confused. I take showers and watch my skin for a yellow glow. Soon Cathreen calls to tell me the water is okay again.

"How?" I ask.

She says, "I know everything."

I ask her how things are, and when she says they could be better, I ask if she wants to come home. We talk about our two little nephews that are driving her crazy there. She says she went to the fortune teller and I should watch out for stairs and cars. Just for this month and next, she says. Of course I imagine falling down the outside steps into traffic. She says something about babies. She says, "when I come home."

She says she knew about the water because she is always watching. I imagine her searching the internet for the things that are affecting me here.

And after the Intermission II

Two weeks pass at a fast slow clip.

I have a friend come into town. I work. I drink more than I have in a long time. I buy cat food twice. Boise is eating in sorrow.

The first couple nights he waited in the living room. Now he’s happiest when we’re both asleep. He is always hungry. He is always meowing. Sometimes, when he hears her voice on the computer, he runs away. I don’t want to look and see where he goes.

I talk to her a little. She says the usual things she should say to make me feel better. This works, for a while.

I go crazy if she doesn’t call again the next night.

Here is what I do: I wake up and turn on the heat so the shower will be warm. I go to work. I sit at a computer. I come home and sit at my computer. I think about when, or if, she will call. I try not to watch tv. I bring a book to the tv and watch tv. I brush the cat until he tries to bite me. I switch brushes. I give him a snack. If she doesn’t call, I lay in bed reading. If she does call, I am okay.

This probably makes it sound too sad. The drinking is fun. I spend money she’s preapproved. I remember my old life.

Missing her is probably a good thing.

I play basketball once. Kids play at the hoop beside me and in the playground nearby and I listen to the nonsense of their small circle of friends.

And after the Intermission

Cathreen is gone to Korea. My, this house is big.

I want to write more but it's also a little scary. How to care for the cat?

The Paris Review Interviews essays will have to wait. I have emotions on my mind. The cat sits by the door, in a suitcase. "Boy," I call him. Still, I'm the one who named him.

Five weeks.

We've done months before. But I've never been the one who couldn't get away from the other's scent. I was always the one who sadded his way over the ocean and then looked up his old life.