Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bernard Cooper has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, and literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment of the Arts.

He has published two memoirs, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum, as well as a novel, A Year of Rhymes, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again. His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, Gentleman's Quarterly, and The Paris Review and in several volumes of The Best American Essays. He lives in Los Angeles and is the art critic for Los Angeles Magazine.

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Guess Again

Simon & Schuster

Excerpt

Night Sky

As Kay shouted instructions in the background, I angled the telescope down themountain toward the home of her ex-husband, but no matter how carefully Ifocused the lens or adjusted the tripod, I couldn't make out much more than atile roof surrounded by trees. Each time I blinked, my eyelashes splayed againstthe glass.

"It's the wall to the left of the front door," she yelled. "Just below hisdriveway. See any damage?"

What little I could see of Warren's house looked fine to me, no gaping hole ortrace of rubble. When I turned around and shrugged at Kay, she shrugged, too.She stood above me on the patio, lit by the blaze of an orange afternoon, herbathrobe flapping. The fierce wind blew her hair to one side, where it whippedfrom her head like a wind sock. The patio was as far as she could stray from thehouse before her electronic ankle bracelet set off an alarm at the Bel AirPolice Department. Whenever this happened, a concerned officer phoned within aminute and interrogated whoever answered in order to verify Kay's whereabouts.Even if she answered the phone herself, which was usually the case, they had away of quizzing her to make sure the voice didn't belong to some kind of Kayimpersonator.

According to Kay, the main problem with house arrest was the fact that herswimming pool, embedded in a flagstone terrace several steps below the patio,was now off-limits. She loved nothing more than drifting on an inflatable raftand dangling her hands in the tepid water, a mindless hydrotherapy that helpedher forget a vindictive divorce. Now that she couldn't bob across it, the waterflaunted its soothing blue. The only thing that made exile from her own swimmingpool tolerable was Kay's fear that the ankle bracelet would electrocute her ifshe dove in, even though Our Lady of Corrections, as she called her probationofficer, assured her the device was waterproof. Still, Kay swore she dangled oneleg outside the tub when she took a bath, largely, it seemed to me, to add yetanother inconvenience to an already long list ? all, she claimed, becauseWarren had the gall to report her.

The telescope stood on a small promontory just beyond the pool, a vantage pointfrom which, on a day as windy as this, the city beneath us stretched inunexpected directions, the world more vivid and unfamiliar than it had been forseveral smoggy months. Skyscrapers jutted from downtown on one end of thehorizon, and Century City on the other. A silver ribbon of sea glittered in thedistance. I worked a crimp from my lower back and promised Kay I'd spy againlater.

"'Investigate,'" she corrected.

I climbed back toward the patio. "You'd be a lot better off if you learned tocontrol your temper."

She shot me the look of stunned betrayal she usually reserved for Warren. "Don'ttell me you don't believe me, either?" Kay settled onto a chaise longue,tapped a cigarette from the pack, and tried unsuccessfully to light it againstthe wind. Only when I bent to cup the flame did she realize the steps had leftme out of breath. She patted the chaise.

"I believe you," I said, squeezing beside her, "but I also believe someaccidents happen on purpose."

"It was a strange car, Sam, a make I've never driven before."

"Every car has an emergency brake. To keep the thing from rolling downhill."

"I put it in Park!" She flicked an ash into the wind. "I'm almost certain."

When my laughter turned into hacking, I had to sit upright. Each cough felt likepumice in my lungs. Lights exploded when I closed my eyes. Kay stubbed out hercigarette and pounded me between the shoulder blades, firm the way I liked it,until the coughing stopped.

"All right," she conceded. "Maybe it was subconscious..."

"Unconscious."

"Don't correct me when I'm venting!" She cinched her robe, then tied the belt ina big angry bow. "Maybe it was unconscious. But I don't care about thatbastard enough to back a rental car into his living room. Besides, I wouldn'thave had to rent the car in the first place if he hadn't completely cleaned meout." She threw an arm behind her head, pointing in the general direction of herhuge French Regency house, now vacant except for a box spring and mattress, atelevision set propped on a stack of phone books, and a checkered picnic blanketwhere the dining room table used to seat fourteen. I lay back beside her, and welistened to shuddering palm fronds and the distant clatter of what must havebeen a trash bin overturning. If you let yourself, it was easy to imagine theSanta Ana turning doorknobs and peeling paint. After a while, Kay raised alotion-polished leg ? I used to love to run my cheek along those legs ? andgazed at the contraption strapped to her ankle. "It's really no different from aball and chain," she said, pointing her toes and flexing her foot to emphasizethe shapely calf.

"Or one of those tracking devices they attach to wild animals."

Kay turned to face me, and touched my arm. In the ten years I'd known her, I'dnever been able to second-guess what little remark would make her grateful.

When I awoke, I saw that Kay still lay beside me, nursing a tumbler of scotch.The sun was dousing itself inch by inch in the Pacific, the dying lightreflected in her Ray-Bans. She gazed toward the sunset in steely contemplation,like someone prepared for the next grim surprise. When I first met Kay she'dbeen a student, the kind of young woman who pronounced "chaise longue" with asarcastic French accent, and didn't care about the difference between cheapwhiskey and single-malt scotch. But all of that changed when she married Warren."Sam," she'd told me shortly after they met, holding my hand to buffer the blow,"Warren can give me the things I need most." I knew it was true. A successfullawyer, Warren offered Kay the constancy I couldn't, not to mention a six-figuresalary and a mansion in Bel Air. And, if Warren was even half as horny as Kayimplied, the guy could provide her with sex on tap. In short, Warren was a manwith plenty of extras, and no one deserved them more than my wife.

Kay and I had been married ? a quick civil ceremony after breakfast at Denny's? while attending graduate school at Caltech. Our Pasadena apartment, furnishedwith orange crates and cinder-block shelves, held the sum of our possessions,mostly books for classes on calculus, astrophysics, and a seminar devoted to thehypothesis that black holes swallowed their own light. Kay was a brilliantstudent, vocal in class, asking the professors challenging questions. I feltproud of Kay, safe in her presence, as though her rigorous powers of reasoncould protect me from harm.

Soon enough, though, Kay's scholastic daring showed its dark side. She turned inlong, argumentative essays for exams she could have aced. She offered a group ofphysics majors the unsolicited opinion that their model of cold fusion, with itsStyrofoam balls and plastic tubing, looked like a kid's project for a sciencefair. She filed her nails during peer reviews. All this happened in the secondyear of our marriage, and I couldn't help but see myself as the cause. Kay'sbrazenness existed in direct proportion to my secrecy. The more I suppressed mydesire for men, the more keenly Kay seemed to sense its strength. Even if thisconviction ? that the changes in her behavior hinged on my inner life ? arosefrom youthful egotism, her alertness to my moods was real, and precisely thetrait that made leaving her so difficult.

Then along came Warren Scofield for a...