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sometimes prove the rule?”
“Let’s just try not to blow it.”
Ransom shook his head, and his eyes shone.
“Because I don’t know how many more tries I have left in me, Ran. I truly don’t.”
“I’ve changed, Claire,” he said, and he was earnest now. “I know it’s up to me to prove, but this time apart, however hard, has made me have a come-to-Jesus with myself. We aren’t going to blow it. I’m not. Okay?” When she didn’t answer, he repeated it. “Okay?”
“Okay. You must be tired.” She laid her hand along his cheek. “Aren’t you?” “Not particularly.”
“I’m wiped. Let’s go to bed.”
To his credit, Ransom didn’t pump his fist or click his heels or sprint.
Uncharacteristically shy with him, Claire switched off the light and turned her back as she undressed, a moving cameo against the starfield in the window frame. She lay down and Ransom brushed away her hair. Claire’s face was grave but open. Feeling a permission he formerly took for granted, a confidence he formerly assumed, he slipped his hand between the mattress and her breast. The nightgown she was wearing, soft and sheer as tissue with repeated washing, revealed the changes time and motherhood had wrought. Her breasts, once just enough to fill a dessert compote, were enlarged and lax. Their indolence aroused him. As he cupped and lifted, Ransom saw the telltale softening in Claire’s face and shoulders. Rising on an elbow, he leaned in and kissed her. She kissed back. The negotiation, at first, was as punctilious as that between two Confucian bureaucrats, and then he felt her tongue and they tumbled down a staircase into some loud, sweaty honky-tonk, and the tastes they took became like stinging hits of raw grain alcohol.
“Ran.”
“What?”
“We need to be real about this.”
“About what?” He drew up to look at her. “Real about what?”
“The money.”
He groaned and rolled heavily onto his back. “Can’t we have fantasy hour first?”
“I’m serious, asshole. I need to understand this. I need to be clear on what we’re doing here.”
“We’re trying to have sex—I am, at any rate.”
“You can’t just endorse the checks to me,” she said. “What are you supposed to live on? You need to keep some for yourself.”
Ransom sighed. “All I want is enough to cut the album.”
She took a beat before she asked, “How much will that take?”
He took a beat before he answered. “Seventy-five? Worst case, a hundred.”
In the silence, Ran could all but hear the clacking abacus.
Claire rose on an elbow. “So, we pay, what, forty percent in taxes? That leaves one twenty; you spend a hundred on the album; there’s twenty left, and you just gave me seventeen. What about the rent on Jane Street? What about groceries, bills, insurance? I mean, how does it work?”
“We just have to make it to the album, Claire. Even if it only sells as much as last time, we’ll clear fifty. That’s respectable for a year’s work. We can live on that down here.”
“Whoa,” she said. “Hold on, bud. We’ve never discussed you living here. That’s further ahead than I can think right now. And you’ve already been working on this album for a year, haven’t you? You’ve got, what, four songs?”
“Five,” he said, feeling everything begin to slip away. “I had a setback, Claire. Be fair.”
“I’m trying to be, Ran, but the truth is, there are always setbacks in your writing. You need six more songs, and if it takes another year, that fifty’s down to twenty-five, and that’s not enough to live on, here or anywhere. So tell me how it is that I don’t have to work.”
Ran, however, had never thought it out in such detail. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I just told you we have two hundred thousand dollars coming in, and you act like I whacked you with a bat.”
“What I heard you say,” she countered, as hot as he was, “is that we have a hundred and twenty after taxes, of which you’ve earmarked a hundred for yourself. Does it work? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”
“Well, it certainly fucking won’t if we don’t believe in each other. It won’t if you don’t believe in me. Do you?”
She didn’t answer.
Ransom’s feet hit the cold floor. “What do you want me to do, Claire, quit? I’ve been playing rock and roll for thirty years. For twenty, it took damn good care of you. What else am I supposed to do?”
“I never asked you to quit, Ransom. Never. As long as you have the stomach for it, I think you should keep on, but let’s face it, the fact that Mitchell Pike covered ‘Talking in My Sleep’ was basically a fluke, a onetime deal. The kids and I have needs, and we can’t count on you hitting the lottery every year or two to provide for them. And I really don’t need you breezing in like Mr. Bigshot and telling me I don’t need to work, because I do, I just fucking do. And, speaking of which, I have to be up at the crack of dawn, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
She turned away, and Ransom started out, then turned back at the door. “Tell me something, Claire, okay? Why am I here? I’m suddenly having trouble understanding why you wanted me to come.”
Claire sat up. “You asked to come, Ran—remember? Not once. A hundred times. Ninety-nine of them, I turned you down.”
“And you said yes the hundredth because…?”
“Because you’re Hope and Charlie’s father, and they need you. Because I keep thinking, if only we can turn the corner, maybe we can spare them the unhappiness our parents did to us. I’d do almost anything to spare them, Ransom. And, along with Hope and Charlie, I’d also like to spare you and myself. I said yes because we’ve loved each other since we were children. Because I’m your family and you’re mine, and because I couldn’t stand to leave you moping around the city in that cab the