I received a letter from Piers. He's staying in a Prague hotel until he finishes his book on spires-he's an expert on power and its manifestations in architecture. His last book made him famous; I haven't read it.
He writes his I's like spires that shoot into the previous line.
He tells me he's lonely in Prague. From his hotel room at night, he watches the castle and the green neon reflected on the dark river. If I visit him, maybe it will help his book, or at least we can try out some Czech food.
We met at a conference on inferential desire. He wore a name tag on a string; I was the waitress who brought his gin and tonic. He spilled it on my apron, "accidentally," and asked me to send him the dry cleaning bill. I didn't tell him the catering company would pay. I reached into his pocket for his wallet and took out a business card. I let two weeks pass before I called him.
The Formation of Household Desire was his first book. He was working for a marketing company conducting surveys on housewives and their kitchen appliances. The company wanted to know the importance of sex, when it comes to domestic spending. They asked him to write a book that would take the illicit out of sex, but instead he wrote a trade book on selling sex to women. He concluded that, unlike men who are obsessed with seeing their phallic image repeated, women want the illusion of power. Dishwashers, handheld blenders, paper towel dispensers...should make their buyers feel empowered.
These formulas don't work on me, but Piers knows that. I'm the only woman he doesn't know how to typecast. When he writes me letters, they arrive at my post office box because he doesn't know my address. Men don't fall in love with women, they want the illusion of subduing us.
I should have dumped him after the second date. I am 32 years old and have never brought a man home. I don't even own a plant.
But I liked his wrinkled brown fingers, his pointy nose, the way he swallows his words. When we met for coffee the first time, he kissed my fingers, not at the knuckles, but where the tips of my nails met skin. My mother would have thought this was corny, but I like ridiculous gestures. And I liked his arrogance about small things, the way he believes there is a correct way to do everything-even the way he gets dressed is compulsively the same.
When I am with him, there is no other world.
What scares me is not growing old with Piers, but letting him summon me with a letter from the Czech Republic. Breaking up over the phone would have been so much cheaper. That would have been the easy way out; love can be borrowed, not owned.

Getting off the plane, I look twice before recognizing him. He embraces me, and I can feel his ribs. It's like hugging the carcass of a bird. In my ear he whispers, "I have no appetite without you."
We don't talk in the taxi. I stroke the wrinkles on his hand. He gazes out the window, crying.
Is this weeping real or is it just a tool, a new way to subvert my power? Is it his style at a certain point, does he always try it with women he's summoned?
We check in, then walk to a riverside café, where we sit in yellow wooden chairs facing the Charles Bridge. I order beer and potato soup, but he tells the waitress, No, nothing for me. I give him a look that says I see through his self-deprivation, and he asks the waitress to bring him the same.
From a pocket in his corduroy blazer, he removes a small leather journal and lays it on the table. I turn back the scotch-colored leather to line drawings of spires. I tell him they are lovely, that what he notices in structure is beautiful, but he just says he can't do this anymore.
Several years ago, I worked at a homeless shelter. After a while, I noticed that many addicts talk about a breaking point-losing their job, the death of a loved one, the day heroin became too seductive not to try?-one thing pushed them too far. What bothers me about Piers is that even when he's gone I still think about him. He's the first person I think I can't let go.
Will you marry me or shall we just move on, Piers asks.
I nod and take his hand. I promise to decide by the end of the week.
He looks relieved and eats everything that is brought to him, then orders a second bowl of soup. The conversation is light.
Afterward, we stroll through this gorgeous city. It's cold by the river, so he buys me a red cashmere shawl, but I don't let him drape it on me.
"Kiss me," he whispers. His brow is sweaty and his lips are purple blue. He must be freezing; beneath his jacket he's only wearing a T-shirt.
I place my index finger against his lips. Piers is used to getting what he wants. Stepping away from him, I sit in the middle of a bench and he follows me. Again, we hold hands, but this time it feels like we could be 90. I squeeze his palm and rest my blonde curly hair against his shoulder.
When we reach his hotel, it's late. I see the illuminated castle he mentioned in his letters. He takes a shower while I thumb through a magazine on green construction.
The phone rings. It's his friend Jonas, who's been teaching in Wittenberg. I've only met him once. If he comes down for the weekend, he wants to know if we will meet him. Of course, I say jotting down the number.
The first time I spoke to Jonas, after too many strawberry margaritas, he described Piers as a genius. We were at a party in a tin house with saffron-colored walls and line drawings matted on green. Everyone was enamored with Piers. He tries not to laugh too much in public, because plaque coats his lower teeth. I spent most of the party alone,?trying to decipher who people were by the way Piers shook their hand.
Halfway through the party, I decided to walk home. Suddenly, I understood that with Piers I'd always be on the sidelines. I went out that night, got wasted, and intended never to see him again.
He comes out of the shower pacing, with a small towel around his waist. With his shoulders jaunting out of their sockets, he looks like a skeleton with a thin seal of skin. He is waiting for me to allow him into our room. We lie without touching, and I watch the light seeping in under the door. It is the grainy color of hospital corridors.
I begin to dream of the ocean: of sea urchins oscillating purple spines. Rusty crayfish. Leather-skinned cucumbers that liquefy to fit inside a reef, hooking back their collagen when they want to be small and hard. Benthic beasts at the bottom of the sea-they would die near the surface, without enough pressure pushing them down, holding them together.
When I was growing up, my mother sang in musicals. We were always flying to New York, Los Angeles, or even London. Before she got pregnant, my grandmother was an extra in a Grace Kelly film, so I always thought my mother's career was just her way of living out my grandmother's dream. They taught me how to slip into another life. The top shelf of my apartment is still lined with wigs, tubes of hair bleach, and jars filled with stage make-up. My costumes have become a little frail. I haven't changed my look since I turned 29, but give me ten minutes and I still could. Lately, I'm wondering if it's more than that: I don't know if I'd prefer sleeping with Piers or becoming him.
The next day, he leaves me with the room key. I sit on the bed in a black slip. If this were my room, I would be painting my toenails while listening to Maria Callas, so instead I click through soap operas in foreign languages. Piers doesn't come home until it is dark and muggy out. I haven't had the chance to tell him about Jonas, but they already spoke. We're meeting in one hour.

Jonas wears a plaid shirt with khaki pants and cumbersome boots. He thuds a thick hand against Piers's back and awkwardly yells hey toward me. I nod back and try to smile, but it's too loud in this club. Jonas has brought along a girl with shiny hair and lucid green eyes. Elsa's a graduate student in Middle Eastern Studies. Her aunt lives in a suburb of Prague.
"Wanna get something to drink?" she asks. "It's sort of dull here."
We move toward the dimly lit bar. A man tries to grab her forearm, but Elsa nearly breaks his hand.
"Leave it," she says, then pulls me with her to the bar. I act like a child around her. I want to climb inside her and come out young and strong. We share two rounds before I realize the men are gone.
"If you could be anywhere, where'd that be?" I ask, studying her eyes. Elsa shrugs, then flips a hand through her sable hair.
"Haven't really thought about it. Maybe, Barcelona. There's nice food and the people are lively. Jonas drives me up the walls. He's like a caveman with a book instead of a club. When he finishes eating, half the meal is stuck on his shirt. Disgusting! One more drink and then we go."
Elsa's eyelashes look too long to be real. Her breath smells like tobacco laced with caramel.
The club has multiple floors, so we decide to split up and reconvene at the bar. I feel stupid wandering around. I could be at home right now reading Henning Mankell or the Wall Street Journal. Slipping between groups, I look for where I belong. I can see Piers and Jonas in a booth on the second level, probably bullshitting each other about their careers. I can see Elsa, still by the bar, her metal dress flashing with the light.
Eventually, we all end up on the sidewalk. Elsa throws up her hand, commandeering a cab with one catlike gesture. Everything outside us is moving, and poor Piers, my drunken Piers, smiles like a pig after a hard day at the trough. His eyelashes flutter.
Back in our room, he slurs some words about needing me. For the first time, I tell him: I love you.
Piers snores with his whole body, occasionally jerking a leg. I watch his chest lurch and wonder how many women have been here and seen nothing they wanted to save.

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