Fates and Furies

by Lauren Groff

The last month before Lotto died returned to her. His sullenness, his monosyllables. The way he looked flinchingly in her direction. She searched for the last time they had seen Chollie together before Lotto died. And suddenly she saw the night in Ariel’s gallery, where he’d dragged her for Natalie’s posthumous opening, huge metallic sculptures with screaming faces in them, the place turned into a fairy-tale forest, all shadowy and dark. Perhaps, she had told herself, it had been so long, perhaps there was no more danger in Ariel. But some pretty little waiter-boy spilled red wine all over her silk dress and she hurried off to blot it away, and when she came back, her husband had been replaced by a robot that looked like him, a man who didn’t smile when he looked at her, who spoke to her glancingly, who, later, seethed. Somewhere between the moment he kissed her gently on the forehead, before the wineglass tipped off the tray and, with terrible slowness, spilled on her skirt, and the moment she returned, Chollie had told him about her arrangement with Ariel. The world flickered before her.