DEFECTIVE

     Jean Michel was smoking in the living room when she arrived, and drinking brandy. “There’s a good idea,” she said and helped herself to a glassful, though she hated the stuff.

     “What’s wrong?” Jean Michel asked.

     “I got stood up,” she said, feeling foolishly like she was going to cry.

     “By the actor?” She nodded, feeling a tear get away from her.

     “So what are you so upset about?” he asked with amusement. “You hardly know him.”

     She left after that, walked down to Dr. John’s and found him making a curry supper. They sat in his front yard at his splintered table and drank wine until they were both quite drunk, then went down to the discotheque to listen to the band. She stood in the front row of a crush of onlookers in the tiny bar, swaying and clapping, amazed at how much better she felt. Liquor really does work, she marveled. When the place finally closed she went home, a couple of hours before dawn.

     She slept a few hours and woke up tired but without a hangover. All she wanted to do was find Terry and apologize to him. What if he’d felt hurt, rebuffed when she wouldn’t go with him to the Flat Rocks the second time? she’d realized. What if he thought he’d failed as a lover because she never had an orgasm? Putting herself in his place, she saw how her actions might have wounded or confused him.

     She spent the morning searching for him all over town, but strangely, not one of the gang was anywhere to be found. The yacht was still anchored off the point, but now it was quiet. In the afternoon she walked up into the hills south of town, where there was a villa. Thinking about all that had happened, wondering how much of it she’d brought on herself, she felt an anguish, so sudden and monumental, it came crashing down on her like an avalanche, crushing her chest with such oppressive weight, she could hardly draw breath. She staggered along the path, scarcely able to walk, she felt so hopelessly defective—that she always found a way to wreck every opportunity life offered her—and finally collapsed on the side of the road, then forced herself to get up and walk again. She heard herself sobbing and talking wildly out loud. It was as though the suffering of a lifetime had born down on her in a single moment.

     Hours later, back in town, she looked for Terry again; it was the evening of the dinner, but she still couldn’t find him.