Anniversary

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They ran along the lake and, spent, heaving, beating, breathless, fucked. A mirror on the wall: grace wasn’t in her. She wasn’t on a ceiling, a fireplace, a rug. To stay present, she tried not to overstare her face. She glued her chin to her chest and watched him enter her again and again until pleasure was immediate, imminent, instant. No. They washed each other. Rose petals sloughed off the soap and dissolved on their soft, white stomachs.

From the street, the restaurant looked deserted. Graffiti sliced across the awnings. In celebration, Charlie bought two bottles of wine, and they ate cobia and cow tongue, heart and ravioli pumped with truffle and yolk. No waiters; four chefs took turns serving. Charlie wanted Bianca to take pictures; she’d left the camera in the room. Sweetbreads with lambic, jellyfish with Gewürztraminer, and, halfway through the tasting, Bianca needed to pee.

“Is there a bathroom?” she asked a chef who came to take their plates.

No, he told her. She recognized his face from pages, places. He was in charge; he was owner and executive chef; he was young and brazen and wild and damaged; his stare didn’t stare.

“We use the alley.”

His stare didn’t straighten.

“C’mon. Through the kitchen.”

She wondered, hungry.

Following him, she palmed a freezer.

“Watch the step,” he said. Now he was one of four, each more grimy than the last.

She always got drunk off champagne. While she peed, she tried to make out the chefs: they knifed and spoke. They were men and, over speakers, they piped hip-hop into the restaurant, music her husband recognized. He could identify songs by year and producer; oh, he’d unscrambled a brain teaser. Answers didn’t make you anyone better. Bianca was younger.

She heard pounding and a chain. She washed her hands, and her face lingered over the sink. The light in the bathroom came out red and gunked the walls. Bianca lifted her dress and stared at her thighs: black lace held her up, and tomorrow it’d be useless, the feeling in her legs eviscerated. She wished. They’d eaten six courses. Seven plus amuse. Impossible to know what the chefs said but she could picture them, the executive chef with his oily hair rehab-bloat, his heart a quartered muscle on a greasy plate, his ear against the door.