The Portrait of a Mirror

by A. Natasha Joukovsky

  There are few emotions that can obfuscate shame, but one of them is fear. Vivien had become so comfortable in Dale’s affection, so well accustomed to being the doggedly pursued, the beloved, the in-power party, that she hadn’t even considered double abandonment a possible outcome. Her concern, her entire concern, had been winning over Wes—but only because Dale had been a given, an expectation. It sounded horrible, but he’d been a kind of backup, a safety school of sorts, allowing her to be bolder and more ambitious than she ever would have been alone. Wes had presented the possibility of breaking off her engagement to Dale, but the idea that Dale might break off his engagement to Vivien—? It was unthinkably ghastly, an unfinishable sentence. She imagined having to explain it to her brother, her parents—worst, her friends—their friends. She saw superior eyes, mired in faux concern, moving to comfort her dryly, itching to get away and relay the tale. She herself looked so—what was it? Unenviable. Alone. Like her unhappily single friends, except not quite as sympathetic. Vivien thumbed at her engagement ring anxiously. She might have passed for twenty-five, but Vivien was thirty-one. For all of her education, she had never really grown up. Or maybe it was precisely because of her education, that immersion in well-preserved images, that she hadn’t ever had to; her identity had been so wrapped up in being the precocious child that she’d turned into an inept adult. Regardless, the idea that decisions could have such perilous consequences was an iconoclasm that smarted mercilessly. The notion that Dale was a losable person increased his value to her exponentially, and Vivien started to cry.

  The human brain may be a lazy economist, but it is an absolutely outstanding lawyer, capable of persuasive argument and shrewd cross-examination. It can render damning evidence inadmissible and plead out your conscience, often without any time served. Indeed, the greater the threat to feeling good about yourself, the more of a shark it becomes. As Vivien’s self-piteous tears gained momentum, drifting toward those huge, round sobs that preclude access to one’s analytic faculties, her subconscious mounted an increasingly resilient defense in the case of McBride v. Floris. It considered an insanity plea, then near-insanity (i.e., “passion”); it tested the construction of factual boundaries and flirted with honest supplication for sentence reduction.

  When Vivien awoke in her sateen-bordered cocoon the following morning, she felt slightly better somehow—even before discovering an early morning logistical email from their wedding photographer to which Dale had already promptly and unremarkably replied. Preliminary relief coursed through her veins. He’s just busy with work. Dale didn’t know anything; she was still getting married. She didn’t trust herself to call him yet, but a long shower further improved her mood, and two well-received tours encouraged her further still. She took a yoga class at lunch, and felt lithe, if still a bit heavy. When Raffaela told her she was looking awfully tired around four, Vivien skillfully leveraged the slight, playing up a touch of malaise, just enough to warrant heading out of the office on the early side.

  It was a few minutes after five when Vivien unlocked the door to her hotel room again, finding it bathed in clean ivory light. The navy dress hung in the closet, neatly pressed. The bed looked fluffy and layered and crisp, like a buttery biscuit. As she slid between the sheets—starkly white, almost radiant—the defense floated into her consciousness so softly it didn’t even feel like a defense, merely a corrected misunderstanding. Every bride was entitled to a bachelorette party, a hall pass from premarital judgment and consequence. Hers had gotten a little out of hand, yes, but that was all part of the tradition—an indicator, even, of success. Vivien thought of Alfred Molina in Chocolat, waking up to the horror of his Lenten gluttony, but forgiven, a better man for tasting the forbidden fruit, even if he’d overindulged. If there was a moral lesson here, surely it was that she’d denied herself too strictly.

  There was a mental tug, a dwindling twinkle of conscience. But it was an insecure, hard-earned, upper-middle-class Protestant-work-ethic-type conscience, no match for the competing will to protect her sense of her cultural refinement and social importance. It was easily ignorable against the buzz of a phone, its reflective glow.

  Vivien was so glad that Dale had called—she disagreed vehemently with his logistical instructions to the photographer. And surely this was the most important part of the wedding, right? There was such an inherent validity to photographs.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  Diana would not have minded so much if he’d answered an incoming call, but that he would proactively choose, however briefly, to excuse himself to phone his fiancée—well, she had either misread her influence entirely, or Dale McBride was a better-skilled adversary than Diana had originally thought.

  There were some consulting projects that became a part of your life and others that caused a fissure, where Diana felt like a different person Monday through Thursday than she did over the weekend. She could already tell which type Mercury would be. The bonds of tribal unity had started to envelop the team; she could sense everyone’s one-on-one interactions building a familial network and feel the burgeoning halo of collective bond and group identity around it. There is a special closeness born from relationships of short duration but high intensity, a way they tend to overcome barriers and escalate rapidly so that it’s possible to live whole lives in the span of weeks. Such projects, microcosmic and insular, felt like high-stakes summer camp or some über-bougie adaptation of The Real World. This is the story of seven strangers, picked to advise corporate executives and get drunk on expense accounts. Parker. Eric. Raj. Megan. Rich. Diana. Dale. On such projects, you almost always got to find out what happened when people stopped being polite and started getting real.

  And so it was unsurprising that Diana would feel a betrayal in Dale’s elective absence on Wednesday evening. He was breaking an inchoate normative code, voluntarily violating the freshly circumscribed sphere of MercuryTime. Outside life was to be dealt with, certainly, if outside life came to you. But seeking it out was another matter entirely. Diana would have felt the same twinge of self-righteous disappointment if it had been Eric or Megan. She would have, wouldn’t she? Particularly at this moment, during a celebratory dinner. Everyone was there save Parker, who had left for another client right after they presented the fraud competition approach to Prudence Hyman. It was decided that the teams from Merchantes and Settlmnt would be given a few weeks to prepare detailed pitches for a global MercuryCard fraud solution prior to an in-person exposé and multi-day workshop. The prize would be obvious if never explicitly stated: leading the transition effort was a pretty transparent euphemism for saving your job from offshore arbitrage.

  Prudence Hyman had gone for the idea immediately. It allowed her to give concrete orders that had an air of excitement and potential; it was a unified directive that structurally protected the mothership from mutiny. Neither of the acquired companies could afford not to seize perhaps their only chance to truly remedy their employment situation as opposed to merely delaying the inevitable. And it preserved optionality for Hyman: she could choose—or delay in choosing—a winner on entirely her own terms. Dale had spent the remainder of the day delicately finagling logistics so the workshop would be separately bankrolled by Mercury on top of existing fees, include the entire Portmanteau team, and take place in Paris—the clear, obvious, pragmatic choice given that you had to cover a geographic spread from San Francisco to Saint Petersburg. They could work out of the Merchantes offices. The Pegaswipe engineers would walk in through the front door with everyone else—welcomed like a Trojan horse.

  Diana had watched Dale attentively throughout this negotiation process and been amazed by the way he could make administrative issues disappear when he wanted something badly. Except for two, of course. That she had a husband, and that he had an almost-wife.

  —Apologies for that, Dale said, returning to the table.

  —When is the wedding? Megan asked politely, trying to smooth over the rift in conversation.

  —Labor Day wee
kend.

  Diana rolled her eyes mockingly, half-behind his back in that way expressly designed for the person you are mock-excluding. It was considered if not rude then at least presumptuous to schedule your wedding on a summer holiday weekend. Dale pointedly focused his attention on Megan, joking that the process had seemed strangely familiar to him—weddings being the personal version of corporate M&A: high-stress and expensive unions, both of them, with rabid stakeholders and limitless potential for dramatic conflict.

  —Hope you’ve done your due diligence this time, Dale, said Raj with a friendly elbow to his ribs.

  —Indeed, Diana said, curling her lips. Because, trust me, postmerger integration is the hardest part.

  She blinked, and Dale blinked back, like twin basilisks lying in wait, circling, studying each other, watching at all times, even when they didn’t appear to be looking, as if through transparent, panoptical lids and eyes.

  —Hence the honeymoon in Paris, said Dale.

  —I, like, still cannot believe we’re going to Paris! said Megan, wide-eyed.

  Even Eric knew that Paris was an uncommonly desirable consulting destination—that you were far more likely to end up in Atlanta or Dayton, Ohio, or . . . Philadelphia—but Megan was looking at Diana to validate her exclamation anyway. Megan was already submerged in that envy-neutralizing heterosexual-female-to-heterosexual-female sorority pull, a loyal attraction born out of esteem and resulting in the desire for association and proximity, as if some of Diana’s personal magic might rub off on her.

  —Oh, I know, Diana cooed. They say that when good Americans die, they go to Paris.

  —What about bad Americans? asked Eric.

  —I believe the joke is they go to America, said Dale.

  —Since we’re already there, Raj cut in, let’s make the most of it. Who wants to go out?

  —Club goin’ up on a Tuesday, said Rich.

  Dale shook his head.

  —Sorry, but there comes a time in life when you no longer want to go anywhere involving a velvet rope.

  —I think this is it for me, too, Diana followed swiftly, raising her glass. Go on ahead, have fun—I’ll take care of the check.

  Diana gave the waiter her corporate card and topped up on Maximum Strength Visine. Once the rest of the team had gone, she turned to Dale with renewed confidence and energy.

  —In the absence of any velvet ropes, would you want to get another drink?

  —I thought that was understood, he said.

  His boldness surprised her, and she noticed him flush briefly at his own confidence. They strolled south a couple of blocks to a nondescript bar Dale knew. He hoped she would not be offended by the averageness of the place. There was an inverse relationship between the necessity of interesting places and interesting people, Dale explained. If you had to have a drink with your mother-in-law or something, an interesting place was essential. However, with the best kinds of company, the key was to minimize distraction. The ideal bar for ideal company was just full enough that you’d never notice it seeming empty. It had unmemorable drinks and still less memorable music. The background stayed in the background; it faded away around the person you were with. He wanted to be able to hear Diana speak. She ordered an IPA and looked unconvinced.

  —Why did you fight so hard for the workshop to be in Paris, then? Because you know you’ll be bored with us all in a month and in dire need of spectacular scenery?

  —No, of course not. I’m hideously cultured and want to show off my French.

  —You’re hideously something, but I don’t buy it. Background interest acts more like an accelerant to foreground interest, I think. Compelling music makes average moments seem special and special ones extraordinary. Can you really imagine a sound designer saying, “No, cut the Simon and Garfunkel—there’s enough interesting stuff going on here already”? I mean, maybe you can. Maybe Simon and Garfunkel aren’t cultured enough for you. But what about, like, something highbrow? Like that really famous opera guy?

  —There’s more than one.

  —You know the one I mean.

  —Pavarotti?

  —Thank you.

  —I think if you were only watching your life, you’d probably be right. But you also want to live it, don’t you?

  —All right, answer me this, then—think about the most interesting person you know. Your fiancée, right? Otherwise I assume you wouldn’t be marrying her. Do you seek out boring places with her so she can more fully consume your foreground focus?

  Diana cocked her head defiantly. It was a limit-testing sort of question. Dale had to either admit argumentative defeat or declare his fiancée on some level inferior to present company.

  —No, but she’s a different sort of person than we are.

  A tacit declaration, Diana thought, but a declaration nonetheless. There was a whisper of restraint on Dale’s face. Diana recognized this genre of discourse. There was a very specific socially acceptable way to criticize one’s spouse, one that revealed your partner’s genuine shortcomings, but under a flattering unidirectional light source. The effect amounted more or less to a relationship-based humblebrag. Diana itched to trounce it, but instead decided to play. Attractively bad-mouthing your spouse was a marvelous cover for heavy flirtation, and mannered honesty was Diana’s A-game.

  —What, exactly, does that mean, Dale? she said with faux-aristocratic elocution, knowing full well what he meant. What sort of person is she? What sort of person are we?

  —In many ways Vivien’s greatest depths are rooted in material things. She’s an art historian, grew up in a wealthy family—what she sees in objects, the way she reacts to backgrounds—that’s part of her foreground interest. This is going to sound kind of douchey, and you’re probably going to eviscerate me for it, but you—me? I think we’re fundamentally more interested in ideas than things.

  Diana said nothing, motionless save another ophidian blink.

  —This isn’t to say she’s not smart, of course, he continued. Vivien’s a curator, an academic doctor—she’s exceptionally bright. But her professional love of fine objects bleeds seamlessly into the personal acquisition of five-hundred-dollar shoes. Growing up, I thought a fifty-dollar pair of shoes was expensive, so at first this blew my mind a bit. There’s definitely a superficial streak to it—to the well-curated life.

  Talking about money had become so taboo that flatly doing so exhibited its own kind of nonchalance, a rebel disrespect for convention that Diana enjoyed and admired. She smiled wryly and nodded in the direction of the floor.

  —Aren’t those loafers Gucci?

  —Hah! Yes, but they were a gift from Vivien.

  It was a slick move, twisting hypocrisy into a case in point, and Diana felt the need to one-up him.

  —When I met Wes, it wasn’t so much the five-hundred-dollar shoes that shocked me; those I knew were out there. It was the five-thousand-dollar shoes, and the ten-thousand-dollar bathrobe. I’m not exaggerating—Wes’s mother owns a ten-thousand-dollar bathrobe. It’s from Loro Piana and made of vicuña, which, I have since learned, is some rarefied South American mega-soft camel species that can only be shorn every three years. I mean, I’d known about diamonds and rubies, minks and cashmeres, but these were luxuries in the context of special occasions, even for the wealthy—or so I thought—things you’d bring out for a black-tie gala, a state dinner maybe, or a society wedding. But a ten-thousand-dollar bathrobe suggests an exponential nature to banalities. Once you can conceptualize that there’s a ten-thousand-dollar bathrobe, that such a thing can possibly exist, you just know that somewhere out there, there is a hundred-thousand-dollar bathrobe, a million-dollar one even.

  —Thanks to my future wife, I’ve had dinner with enough experts in sixteenth-century Chinese textiles to know that million-dollar bathrobes do, in fact, exist.

  —None of this bothered me initially—just the opposite, if I’m being honest. I mean, I was sort of awed by it all, you know?

  It was another conf
ession formed less for its specific content than the desire to illustrate an unusually incisive capacity for confession—and implicitly, to beg its reciprocation.

  —She doesn’t have one, but Vivien would definitely want a ten-thousand-dollar vicuña bathrobe, Dale said with gratifying bluntness. It’s on her radar, I’m sure. If you met her—well—I’m afraid you might find her a bit of a . . . a bit of a basic bitch.

  —Oh—no. She sounds like a pretty advanced bitch to me.

  Dale laughed.

  —Come on—you know what I mean. Don’t act like you don’t. Overeducated, expensively dressed, no body fat, “natural”-looking in the way that requires a lot of upkeep. Important job, fulfilling marriage—near-marriage anyway—and still manages to get to SoulCycle or barre every day. I’ll bet your house looks like a Restoration Hardware catalogue—sophisticated palette, quixotic elephant sculptures and shit. I’ll bet it’s always clean. And when you get married she’ll bear you like four children and run them like a little corporation and still manage to do all the things she did beforehand without ever looking haggard or stressed or anything. I don’t mean for any of this to sound critical, let alone cruel. If it does, that’s only because I’m jealous of her. I’m jealous of all of them. I’ve been conditioned to want all of those things too, and even as I disdain them, I want them. I do.