_OceanofPDF

She laughed as if I’d nailed the punchline of a long joke.
I turned down a side alley and parked the BMW next to her dark blue El
Camino. In the daylight, I could see the cracks in the paint and the rust
spots on the chrome.
“I’m getting you a new car,” I said, getting out before she could argue. I
went around to open her door, but she was already out and jingling her
keys. “What kind do you want?”
She opened the steel door. “I don’t know.”
We entered her studio. She grabbed a box from a pile, tossed it to me,
and grabbed another. She led me to the other side of the building and her
bedroom.
“What do you like then?”
“I don’t know.” She opened the dresser and plucked through her
underwear, flinging things into the box.
“How do you not know?”
The tangle of lace and cotton piled up in the box. Bra cups, balls of
socks, and a single, surprising black stocking over the side. I picked it up,
bridging its length between my palms. Soft. Worn at the heel. A little lace
top with a little silicone to keep it on the thigh.
“I don’t know what I’ll want after this is over,” she said, opening
another drawer. “I guess I’ll have to run my father’s business.”
“But what do you want now?”
Picking through, she left the ripped jeans in the drawer and tossed two
nicer pairs into the box.
“Now?” She looked at the space, the paintings on the walls, the drafting
table, and the unmade full-size bed. “I want Bianca out of that office and I
want to be a good wife.”
“I meant car.”
Ella pulled the stocking away slowly, making it slide over my palms. “I
don’t want a car. I want to get through this and I want it to be clean at the
end.” She dropped the stocking into the box. “We’ll have separate rooms,
right?”
She could refuse to have sex with me any time, for any reason. But I
had an instinctual resistance to ceding control.
“If you want,” I said.
“I need that.”