The Mentor's Hunger

Martinić holds his glass the way he holds everything, like it's a specimen he's already finished studying. Three fingers of whiskey, no ice, and he hasn't taken a sip in twenty minutes. The man came to our apartment for dinner. My wife spent all afternoon on the lamb. He's been talking about her since the second bottle opened.

"You understand what I'm telling you, Gev." He sets the glass down on the coffee table, hard enough that Alla's ceramic coaster jumps. "I'm not asking permission. I'm explaining a fact."

Alla is in the kitchen. Running water, the clink of plates. She can't hear us over the tap and she wouldn't believe it if she could.

Martinić is sixty-five. His hair went gray in patches, not all at once, so it looks like a chessboard from behind. He has a way of leaning forward when he talks that makes you lean back. Twenty years her senior, her doctoral supervisor, the man who got her published in the Kraków journal when two other reviewers called her work derivative. I owe him for that. She owes him more.

"You've had a lot to drink," I say. It's a weak move. He knows it.

"I've had exactly enough." He taps his temple with one thick finger. "The inhibitions go first. The clarity stays. That's the trick of it. You think I don't know what I sound like?"

I don't answer. The radiator clanks in the corner. Our building is old, the pipes have opinions.

"I've watched her for four years, Gev. Four years. I know how she holds a pen. I know she bites the inside of her cheek when she's thinking. I know she wears the gray cardigan on the days she feels invisible and the green blouse when she's ready to fight." He picks up the glass finally, swirls it, doesn't drink. "You don't watch a woman for four years without learning her."

My jaw is tight. I take a drink of my own whiskey to loosen it.

"You're angry," he says. "Good. Anger means you're listening."

"I'm listening. I haven't decided what I'm listening to."

He smiles. It's not a pleasant smile. It's the smile of a man who has never in his life been told no by anyone whose opinion he respected.

"Let me tell you what I see when I look at her," he says. "She's forty-seven. She's spent twenty-two years being someone's wife and eleven years being someone's mother and four years being my student. Every role she has, she got it by giving something up. You know what she gave up?"

The water in the kitchen stops. Alla will be drying her hands now, checking her reflection in the microwave door out of habit, the way she does before she comes back into a room.

"Tell me," I say.

"Herself. The part of her that wanted things without asking whether she was allowed." He finally drinks. A small sip. "I've seen it in a hundred women. The ones who marry young and good. They fold themselves up small enough to fit in the life they built and one day they can't find the original shape."

"You don't know her."

"I know her better than you do." He says it flat, no cruelty in it, which makes it worse. "You know the woman who makes your coffee. I know the woman who writes at three in the morning. I've read her marginalia, Gev. I've read the notes she writes to herself in the corners of her drafts. She has a hunger in her that you've never seen because she doesn't bring it home."

The kitchen door swings open. Alla comes out with a tray of small glasses and a bottle of the plum brandy her mother sends from the village every autumn. She's flushed from the heat of the kitchen. Her hair is pinned up but a strand has escaped, and she tucks it behind her ear with the back of her wrist because her fingers are sticky with dish soap.

"Are you two solving the world's problems?" she asks.

"Something like that," Martinić says. His voice changes when he speaks to her. Softer. Slower. Like he's handling something that might break.

She pours three glasses and sits in the armchair across from us, tucking her feet under her. She has no idea. That's the thing that guts me. She has no idea what's been said in this room.

"Martinić was telling me about the conference in Vienna," I say.

Her face lights up. "Did you get the keynote?"

"I did." He raises his glass to her. "And I'll be citing your chapter. The one on the Moravian dialect shift. It's the best work to come out of that department in a decade."

She goes pink. Actually pink, from the throat up. "You're exaggerating."

"I never exaggerate. It's a character flaw, I'm told." He drinks to her. She drinks back.

I watch them. The way he watches her mouth on the glass. The way she doesn't notice. The way the lamp catches the silver in her hair and she looks, for a second, like a woman in a painting by someone who loved her.

She starts clearing the tray. Martinić stands to help and his hand brushes her hip as she passes. It could be nothing. It's not nothing. She doesn't flinch because she didn't feel it, or because she's decided not to.

"Gev," he says when she's gone back to the kitchen. "Walk me to the door."

In the hallway, under the bad light, he puts his hand on my shoulder. His grip is stronger than it should be for a man his age.

"I want to eat her," he says. Quiet. Almost tender. "Not fuck her. Eat her. Down to the last drop. I want to know what she tastes like when she stops performing. I've been thinking about it for four years and I'm telling you because you're the only person who can give it to me."

My mouth is dry. I should hit him. I should throw him out. I should do a lot of things.

"There's a sweetness in her," he says. "You've tasted it. You know. But you've only had it in the ways she allows. I want the rest. And here's the thing you need to hear, Gev. The thing you won't want to hear." He leans closer. Whiskey and wool and the particular smell of old books. "She needs it too. She's dying in that kitchen. She's been dying for years and you've been watching her die and calling it a marriage."

"That's enough."

"It's not. It won't be. You'll think about this tonight and tomorrow and next week. You'll watch her brush her teeth and you'll wonder what I'd see. And eventually you'll ask her. And when you do, she'll say no. And then she'll think about it. And then she'll say yes. That's how it works. I've done this before."

"Done what?"

"Saved marriages." He lets go of my shoulder. "By breaking them open first."

He puts on his coat. It's a good coat, camel hair, older than my marriage. He buttons it slowly, watching me over the collar.

"Talk to her," he says. "Not tonight. Let it settle. But talk to her. Tell her I asked. Tell her what I said. And tell her I'll be at the Vienna conference either way, with or without her chapter in my keynote. She should know that. It's not a trade."

He opens the door. The stairwell light flickers.

"And Gev." He pauses on the threshold. "When she says yes, and she will, I want you to be there. That's the part I haven't done before. That's the part I want."

The door closes behind him. I stand in the hallway for a long time. From the kitchen, I hear Alla humming something, off-key, happy. The tap runs. The plates clink.

I go back in. She's at the sink, elbows deep in soapy water. She looks over her shoulder at me.

"Did he leave?"

"He left."

"He's a strange man," she says. "Brilliant, but strange. Did you notice how he watches people? Like he's taking notes."

I pick up the whiskey glasses. Mine is empty. His is empty. There's a ring of condensation on the coaster, and I wipe it with my thumb.

"Yeah," I say. "I noticed."

She turns back to the dishes. The strand of hair escapes again. This time she doesn't fix it.