Free Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott Page A

couch she’d pushed away from the window as far as possible. I’d watch Petey out there and wonder why he wouldn’t just go away. And at some point Maria and I would crawl onto the mattress, below the lip of the windowsill. I’d slide my arm around her shoulders and pull her into me, smell her brittle hair, feel the thick scar across her back fitting into my ribcage.
    “I have an old friend,” I tell Zahava. My wife is sitting at the table in the dining room with a calculator and papers spread out in front of her. She’s studying them, pushing them this way and that, like a puzzle. I’m leaning against the doorframe with my head on the wall and she looks up at me and there’s color in her cheeks as if she’d just been for a run. “He got beat up really bad tonight.”
    “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Zahava says. She takes her glasses off and pulls on the bridge of her nose. She has large cheeks and her eyes become small. She’s thin, but with wide hips, and she uncrosses her legs as she turns toward me.
    “When we were kids, I used to stand on his bed to look out the window. We had a falling out a while ago. He has this weird face that was just dying to get hit. Got beat up all the time. We were roommates for years. When I was locked up. I’ve told you about that.”
    “I’m sorry,” Zahava says again, placing a hand over the papers, holding the corner of the paper between her thumb and finger, not wanting to let go of it. “I know you had a hard time growing up.”
    “Me? I didn’t have a hard time.” I unzip my jacket and throw it over the chair.
    “Can you hang that up, please?”
    “You can’t imagine. Petey got beat up so many times he didn’t even care anymore. Petey had a hard time growing up. Compared to him, nobody had a hard time growing up.”
    Zahava stands and passes me, letting out a patient breath, picking up my jacket and walking it to the closet. She crosses the glass cabinet, which is something her grandmother left her. There are dishes in there that we never use. “Was he nice?” she asks, buried in the closet.
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “I’m just trying to gauge if he brought it on himself or what the circumstances were. And then I intend on getting some work done. Try not to give me a hard time.” She crosses back to her seat at the table.
    “He was plenty nice,” I say. “He never did anything to anyone. So there goes your theory.”
    “Fine,” she says. She returns to her papers, pen in hand. This conversation is finished.
    The bathroom is down a hall, before the kitchen. We live in a long two-bedroom apartment on the third floor not too far from the lake and the El. We keep the apartment clean. We used to stay in a smaller place on the ground floor where we were robbed three times, but that was before we were married.
Was he nice
? I run water over my face and sit down on the toilet. I think of my wife smiling and comfortable, drifting along with the crowds downtown. There’s a little rack next to the toilet where Zahava puts her magazines when she’s through with them. I stare between my legs into the toilet water.
    Zahava’s eyes are closed and the light is off. I sniff at her armpit. I slide my hand up her leg. Zahava makes a quiet noise, like a giggle. “Sweet baby,” she whispers, parting her legs as I press between them with my palm. I lay my palm on top of her vagina and gently slide a finger inside of her. We keep our sex toy in an orange shoebox beneath the bed. We bought it together at Fantasy Makers on Broadway. I pull the box out, take the vibrator from the box. The moon is full tonight and the shades are up. I rub my face along her side and over her breast and kiss her cheek. Zahava places her hand on top of my head. The vibrator looks like a mermaid and a dolphin comes off the side, meant to stimulate the clitoris. The top half of the vibrator is filled with silver balls that rotate around inside a silicone casing for easy