by James Gregor
As they traversed a narrow, shaded street he caught her reflection in a window: the dogged pout of her thin lips, the red curls puffed into a rampant yet controlled cloud, the bright blue shirt and black sunglasses she wanted to replace.
“I didn’t mention this before,” she said. “Erin and Alicia are staying with me while their apartment is fumigated.”
“Why is it being fumigated?”
He already knew what the answer would be.
“They had bedbugs.”
“You’re not worried they’ll bring them to your place?”
“What am I going to do, let them sleep on the street?”
In the lobby of the building, a doorman played a game on his phone at a thin glass desk.
“I’m still sort of moving in,” she said as they stepped into the elevator.
They got out on the eleventh floor and walked to the far end of the hall, where the scent of a pungent flower lingered. The apartment was spacious, and minimally decorated. It was big enough that the kitchen had an island. There were cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, and a curtain was folded over the back of a chair.
Anne sniffed the air suspiciously.
“What’s that smell?” she said loudly, as if she’d been waiting to accuse somebody of something and had found her opportunity.
The odor was familiar to Richard, yet he couldn’t place it. They entered the large, comfortable-looking living room, full of sunlight.
His eyes adjusted, and he made out Erin reclining on the midcentury sofa, the first time one of those sofas had looked even remotely comfortable to him. Her pose was an extreme and studied, almost degenerate, relaxation. She could have been feeding herself grapes. As it was, she was reading a book.
“Erin, what’s that smell?”
“The usual.”
“Please open the windows if you’re going to cook.”
She didn’t answer.
“Erin,” Anne repeated. She was interrupted by the opening of the front door.
“Is it ready?” Alicia said, coming into the apartment and closing the door behind her. She had a bag of sprinkles in her hand.
“I hope you didn’t pay for that,” Erin said.
“Of course I didn’t. I never pay for anything at Whole Foods.” Alicia turned to Anne. “You haven’t touched it, I hope?”
“Touched what?”
“Our cake.”
“I wouldn’t touch it with a stick.”
“Look what the cat dragged in.”
Richard waved limply.
“Still solving world hunger through Neoplatonism?”
“This is the best nondairy cream I’ve ever tasted,” Alicia said, removing a bottle from a pocket in her cardigan.
Richard followed Anne into the kitchen, relieved to escape the abrasive chorus of Erin and Alicia. She opened the door to a large fridge. Inside, it was clean and white-walled as a laboratory, empty except for several bottles of Gerolsteiner water and a block of salted butter. On the wall beside it was affixed a chalkboard with a grocery list and an interrogative sentence in Spanish written across it.
Anne retrieved one of the bottles, took two glasses from the cupboard, and proceeded into her room. Richard followed, making sure to leave the door open a foot or two. The black-and-white photos of Greece had been remounted on the new walls; the abstract painting—the swirl of black ink on a white background—had resumed a central position among them. On the bed, a single pristine pillow with a tasteful floral watercolor sat atop a large feathery comforter.
“Do you like this neighborhood?” he said, looking out the window at the leafy West Village street below. People were passing along the sidewalk with big white shopping bags.
“There are lots of tourists.”
“And cupcakes.”
She poured him a glass of fizzing water.
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m good.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded.
“I never eat them,” Anne said. “The sugar gives me a headache.”
She got up, opened the window completely, and sat down again, this time closer to him.
“It can get loud with the window open,” she said. “But I try not to use the air conditioner, for energy and environmental reasons.”
“I like the sounds of people on the street.”
“Sometimes they make me feel lonely.”
“I think the noise of the city is comforting.”
“I wanted to ask you something,” she said. “My father’s place on Martha’s Vineyard is going to be free next month. I thought it would be fun to get out of the city. It’s going to be so humid here, and the breeze is lovely. We could get a lot of work done.”
Richard pictured them together in this opulent, hypothetical cottage, alone and with nowhere to go. He tried to lift the image up above his own flooding worry, like a man plucked from a rooftop before a large wave consumes it.
“I’ll have to check my schedule.” He swallowed. “But I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”
“You don’t have to give me an answer now.”
They both nodded. Something in the room deflated, and they were silent for a moment.
She turned toward him, and with the thumb and index finger of one hand lifted the glasses off of his face. With her free hand she removed her own and put his on.
“You’re blind.”
Staring at the blurry floor, he nodded.
“You look so different without the glasses,” she said.
“You think?”
“With them on you’re kind of, like, a child and an adult all at once.”
“And without?”
“Just a child.”
“Ha, okay.”
“No, no,” she said. “With them on you’re kind of like some teenager who has become a professor too soon. It’s your smooth pink skin.”
He laughed.
“And these glasses,” she said, handing them back to him.
He put them back on.
“I . . . can . . . see!”
She smiled, patting him on the knee.
“Just let me know whenever you can about the Vineyard,” she said. “It would be fun.”
Richard couldn’t think of what else to say, so he just nodded, pretending to adjust the glasses. He wanted to stand up, but he felt that standing up would be insensitive, so he remained sitting.
It was a relief when Anne got up herself and walked over to the window. Feeling that it was perhaps prudent to mark a line in the sand, he asked, “Are you seeing anyone right now?”
She looked at him as if he’d said something ridiculous. “Seeing anyone? I’m not seeing anyone.”
“It’s tough to date in New York,” he said, shaking his head, which felt exceedingly unnatural, like a bad performance.
Anne frowned, but didn’t say anything. “Have you tried going online?” he continued, tumbling forward in this line of inquiry.
“No.” Her voice was flat.
“One in five marriages begins online now,” he persisted, hearing himself as if from a distance.
“To think those Stasi-types in California know what makes two people love each other,” she snapped.
“You shouldn’t dismiss it,” he said.
“Why not? It’s so robotic.”
“There’s always the possibility.”
“Do you actually connect?”
“Lots of my friends met their significant others that way,” Richard said.
“The modern world is so stupid.”
“Your profile would be great.” He felt that he could not stop now. “You’re so articulate.”
“I hate the Internet. Let’s talk about something else.” She turned her head toward the door. “Do you smell that? What are they doing out here?”
She walked out of the room. He stood up and followed. A plate of chocolate cake between them, Erin and Alicia were sitting on the sofa in the living room.
“It smells li
ke something is burning,” Anne said.
“We’re not burning anything.”
“What are you doing then?”
“We’re comparing antidepressants.”
“I’m surprised the fire alarm didn’t go off.”
Anne opened a window. Richard just stood there as they stared at him.
“Which antidepressants are you on?” he asked.
“Erin is on Lexapro. It targets ruminating.”
Alicia was on something that made her jittery but did not prevent orgasm.
“Are you really talking about this?” Anne said, rolling her eyes.
“What should we be talking about?”
“Yes, please enlighten us, O Mistress.”
“Not all of us have your ‘inner resources,’ ” Alicia said, making air quotes and affecting a matronly accent.
“You’re right,” Anne said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Did she really just admit that?” Erin said, turning to Alicia with an astonished expression.
They giggled.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about even though my family has been single-handedly bankrolling GlaxoSmithKline for a generation.”
Richard looked at Anne, and then at Erin and Alicia. They had a bulky agility and unity against which it was hard to maneuver. An abrupt and aggressive solidarity struck him.
“Did you get the school to implement the environmental policy?” he said, his voice ballooning slightly with a defensive grandiloquence.
“What? Oh, that. We’ve moved on to more important matters now.”
“What could possibly be more important than that?” he declared rhetorically.
As if conscious now of a new adversary, they paused and appraised him. Behind them, Richard noticed again the chalkboard with the sentence scrawled in Spanish, question marks at either end.
“One of the question marks is supposed to be upside down.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” Erin asked.
“No, but everyone knows how to punctuate a Spanish sentence.”
“That’s a pretty privileged thing to say.”
“And who, exactly, is everyone? Do you speak for them?”
“And whom do you speak for?”
“Lo siento,” Alicia said, and burst into laughter.
They smirked, as though itching to continue the argument, but also as if it was merely a test to recruit him to their debate team.
“Want some cake?” Erin asked.
“Actually, I should get going.”
“We made tons. You can take some.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“I’ll walk you to the subway,” Anne said.
“Stay here with us,” Alicia said. “He can figure it out on his own. He’s not a child.”
“I need some fresh air,” Anne said.
They took the elevator down and went outside, not talking. The evening was balmy and superb; the humidity had dissipated. Sometimes the city was so perfect.
“How can you live with them?” Richard said finally, shaking his head, as they made their way down the block.
“I like having someone else in the apartment,” Anne said as they turned a corner.
Richard didn’t say anything in response.
“Thanks for pointing out the incorrect punctuation,” Anne said. “It has been bothering me for weeks, but I’m not allowed to say anything.”
“What do you mean, not allowed?”
“They say I’m too critical. We came to an agreement that I would try to tone it down.”
Richard rolled his eyes.
“You don’t see them when we’re alone. They’re not so bad.”
Anne said that she considered Erin and Alicia—she always thought of them collectively—one of those skeptics you keep close, an abrasive confidante who turns you into a sleeker, more illusionless version of yourself. They usually compensated for their testy carapace with a generosity and an occasional tenderness, a more expansive self that reminded her of those irascible genius protagonists of hospital dramas who have no bedside manner, yell at patients and condescend to colleagues, but who ultimately have the most profound humanity of all and find ways to cure incurable diseases.
“God,” Richard said at this gentle tirade.
“I’m making it sound worse than it is.”
She was comforted by their presence. She had always been surrounded by autocratic women, felt the undertow of their moods—her mother’s initially glum and then ecstatic persistence as she broke from Anne’s father, her sisters and the adolescent mutability and insomnia that had leveled into professional accomplishment in one and in the other accelerated and detonated. It had a certain abusive and touching familiarity. Erin and Alicia were intimidating, yet reassuring.
Staring at the ground ahead as they walked, Richard nodded. He could admit that they had a certain charm. Their truculence reminded him, in a roundabout way, of Patrick, of the way he and Patrick would swiftly ally themselves against a common target if they were in a certain kind of belligerent mood. Richard remembered, as an undergraduate, giving an oral presentation in an anthropology class when a self-righteous and impudent boy accused him of “cognitive imperialism.” From the back of the room, a previously unnoticed Patrick sprang to his defense, decrying the boy’s “jingoism” and “Il Duce tactics.” At which point, with tall, striking young Patrick on his team, Richard had been seized by a hawkish confidence. Over the next minute, they’d unleashed a volley on the poor boy that intensified until the professor stepped in to admonish them for using words like “nonsense” and “ridiculous” to describe the opinions of their fellow student.
Remembering, Richard smiled.
“I thought I wanted to live alone,” Anne said, looking away. “But to be honest I was kind of relieved when they got bedbugs and had to move in. If they weren’t living there,” she said, “I’d be alone.”
Richard nodded again but declined to add anything.
“Anyway, you need to write up the bibliography for the conference,” Anne said, tapping him on the arm. “I’ll send you the links. It’s best if you’re familiar with the sources, in case Antonella asks.”
As they came to the end of the block, she detailed her method for the proposal: splitting the work into distinct but interrelated areas, such that they could plausibly act as collaborators without setting off alarm bells. Richard had contributed essentially nothing, but he figured he could give himself a pass again, if it meant a free trip to Montreal. It had been so long since he’d left New York. The last time had been to visit his parents, but that was over six months ago now. They were largely distracted by the blandishments of semiretirement anyway, and he hated to return, even for a night, to that bedroom that had become a storage space.
“Make any changes you want,” she said.
“I doubt there will be any changes to make, Anne. I’m sure it will be perfect.”
What had been bothering him about their collaboration—its entirely lopsided character—suddenly seemed less troublesome. Antonella was placated, and there was money in his bank account. What was there to complain about?
He swallowed.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Montreal,” she said, smiling.
“I’ve read articles in GQ about the food scene.”
The entrance to the subway was suddenly across the street.
“I’ll let you go here,” she said.
“Okay.”
“And sorry about today,” she said. “It felt like things took an odd turn.”
“Don’t apologize. I hope it wasn’t my fault.”
She shook her head, kissed him on the cheek, and squeezed his hand. Then she went around the corner and he waited for the light to change. The street was briefly a fabric of steel as a garbage truck sped past, then the previous medley of bank, salon, supplement shop, and bank was reasserted. Richard crossed the street. As he stepped onto the curb Erin and Alicia emerged from the Duane Reade direc
tly in front of him, a container of Häagen-Dazs visible in a plastic bag swinging from Erin’s wrist.
“We must have taken different routes,” he said, eyebrows raised.
Alicia stepped forward.
“Whatever you’re doing with Anne, be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s always falling for guys like you.”
“I’m into guys.”
“Duh.”
“Just, you’re nothing special, okay?”
They turned and walked away, leaving Richard fastened to the ground, his limbs tingling. He was both enraged and pummeled. He didn’t know what to do. Stand there and wave his hands in the air like a lunatic?
He turned and hurried down into the subway, his brow furrowed angrily.
Erin and Alicia didn’t give anything to Anne. They gave her nothing, in fact, except a kind of condescending pressure. Why did they want to shove everyone into such a small, desperate, and separate space? You had to resist petty, ideological people like that. He would text Anne before bed just to say good night.
EIGHT
The Amtrak Adirondack train paused at the edge of Canada. For two hours customs officers, with pugnacious blankness, roamed the aisles, inspecting passports and demanding to see the last fifty debit transactions of a Ugandan woman.
When the train rolled forward again, the landscape was green but stark, a thin fuzz of spring accrued on trees and fields. Soon highways roped into knots and tall buildings appeared on the horizon.
“It’s not that big,” Anne said, craning her neck to look out the window as a cityscape gathered nearby. They were moving across a bridge, stretched over a wide slate river. “It used to be very Catholic here, but they beat back the church. Families of twelve children—that kind of thing.”
There was a humping rhythm as they entered a tunnel.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Richard said, which wasn’t entirely true. Though he’d let Anne take care of the accommodation, train tickets, and registration for the conference, he had done quite a bit of research around the restaurant scene—other people cooking him food gave Richard such a sense of security—which he’d heard described as one of the best in North America. There were a number of places he planned to suggest: one establishment where, in a saucy version of surf and turf, they stuck a lobster into the mouth of a pig, another where they served oysters on an old radio.