Countdown for A Single Girl
Each time Celeste read the Ten Commandments she checked to see which one she had broken most recently. Sometimes she had trouble deciding. The categories overlapped. Coveting. Adultery, Taking the Name in Vain.
Celeste could never remember the names of the players. It was the bottom of the ninth, the score tied, the bases loaded. She looked at the TV screen, and thought about Tom watching the game across town.
After her graduation from college eight years ago, Celeste attended a flurry of weddings. She watched carefree as bouquet after bouquet sailed over her head.
Sunday morning her cell phone rang at seven o'clock. Celeste wasn't expecting his call. She fumbled in her purse for the phone. Missed call. No message. His cell. She did not dare return the call.
Six months ago Celeste had already survived Christmas and New Years Eve. On Valentine's Day she went to dinner with three of her girlfriends. They drank Cosmopolitans and pretended they were twenty-two, and all of them flirted with the Italian waiter who looked at them as though he knew all their secrets.
Each time Tom left, Celeste told herself that in five minutes he would return, repentant, his mouth and hands stuffed with promises.
Tom came for supper. Celeste scrambled four eggs and topped them with sour cream and salmon roe caviar. She heated rolls in the oven. Just before he arrived, Celeste slipped a tiny spoonful of the translucent orange spheres into her mouth, pressed them with her tongue until her mouth filled with a burst of salty liquid.
Celeste and Tom and Jeannette. Three. Jeannette was always hovering, whispering, walking unexpectedly through the door of the coffee shop, her reflection fleeting besides theirs in shop windows.
Tom brought a bottle of champagne, cold from the liquor store, and two Waterford flutes to celebrate their anniversary.
One of the champagne flutes slipped from her hands and shattered on the tile kitchen floor. Struck by morning sunlight, the shards of glass shimmered and glittered and glistened. In the center of the circle of broken crystal. Celeste stood barefoot and alone.