The From-Aways by C.J. Hauser

going to live in it together. We were going to have an adventure. I was holding a tinkling ring of keys in my hand.
    The wonder of it has not dissipated. I still have trouble remembering that this house is mine. When I cook in June’s kitchen and ask Henry if he would like salt in his eggs, I feel like I am playacting. Who is this grown-up Leah Lynch in a house with a husband cooking eggs? This woman who thanks Henry for taking out the garbage? What happened to Leah Gold, who worked all night and had an encyclopedia of delivery places in her phone?
    I look at Henry now, sitting on the couch, huge papers on the coffee table, sketching the gardens of the casa grande into existence. He has not been shaving much and has scruff coming in all over his face. He moves his hands over the table papers to smooth them, erases something, and fills in something different. He makes a low, grumbling thinking sound like a growl, so deep you can barely hear it. But I listen for that noise. I try to catch it whenever I can.
    I sit in Henry’s lap and wrinkle all of his papers. He sticks his pencil behind his ear and wraps his arms around me. He slides a hand into the back of my jeans and snaps the elastic of my underwear, then picks me up from the hips and sets me on my feet. He follows me to the bedroom.
    T HE FIRST TIME I ever slept with Henry was in the morning. I had spent the night at his Brooklyn apartment (Brooklyn! It was a brave new borough, I’d known nothing off the island). We’d been seeing each other for two months and hadn’t slept together yet. I was holding out, tormenting him, in part because I knew you never got that chance again, but also because Henry was an unknown entity: met at a bar, was from another state, lived out of borough. He had no papers.
    He slept under a quilt, a yellow patchwork affair so earnestly a defense against the cold how could I not want to crawl under it? We slept in our underwear and in the morning I opened my eyes and there was Henry with his warm expanse of furred chest. Henry under this dainty quilt. I pushed up against him. From the living room came the muffled sound of grunts and whistles and penalties announced. It was winter, and his roommate seemed intent on watching every game of the football season from their living room couch.
    Good morning, I said, and Henry shushed me. Snapped the elastic of my underwear. We were, for a while, like teenagers: he discreetly pressed himself against my leg while I hid my face by his ear so he could hear me breathing. I bit his earlobe and our bodies radiated the heat of a night spent under covers, and when we wriggled out of our underwear and slid together, I gasped and Henry put his palm over my mouth.
    Shhh, he said again, and his face looked worried, so I bit him, and when he took his hand away I said, Don’t you shut me up.
    We moved like clock hands that circle away from each other and then meet again so it is incredible and inevitable both. His roommate shouted from outside, Hey, what’re you up to? Want to watch the game?
    Henry shouted back, No. We’re playing Scrabble .
    On the TV, a whistle was blown.
    Who’s winning? his roommate said.
    Both of us, Henry said. And we laughed and snorted and Henry promised he would get his roommate tickets to see a game one of these days. Would get him out of the apartment. He said, I’ll get him tickets to the damn Super Bowl if I have to .
    W E ARE STILL in bed, bow to stern, half naked and reading to each other from the newspaper, when Quinn calls.
    She shouts into the receiver, “You’re not going to believe this shit! Come to the office now.”

12

    Quinn
    I ’m pitching Charley the story of the Menamonian century when Leah walks in. “The Georges live in the Elm Park development. They moved in a month ago. They brought their cat with them.”
    “What’s the cat’s name?” Leah says, first thing. That wench.
    “Derek Jeter,” I say. “But that’s not the point.”
    “The cat’s name