After dinner, decadently fed and watered, he stands next to me, leans in, his body vibrating. “This has been the worst year of my life,” he says. I want to be kind, but this is a party for chrissake. “Shit happens,” I say. “Everything changes. The bad stuff won’t last. I promise.” His wife, tipsy, smiling, arm outstretched, beckons to him. Come dance with me, she mouths. “I don’t want to,” he whispers to me. I place my palm on his back, feel the heat of his body. I nudge him, push him. “Dance with her,” I say. “Go. Dance.”
Judith Shapiro lives on both coasts, perpetually confused about which way is north. When the novel she’s writing isn’t looking, she writes anything else. PeaceInEveryLeaf.com.