by Allison Lynn
“His assistant? Is that what he tells people?” Pete said, caustic. What Emily had taken for impatience a moment ago was beginning to sound more like dejected weariness. “It’s hard to believe that, really, after eight years together as a couple he’d be portraying her as an assistant. What a conjob.”
“I’m sorry?” Emily said, again a question, again an apology. Conjob, that’s one word she’d forgotten to call George Bedecker when she’d screamed at him this morning. Conjob. Shithead. It was all the same. She squeezed Nate’s hand. His eyes were on the water behind the house. He seemed to be holding his breath. “It’s hard for me to believe that after eight years George would barely have mentioned his only child,” Emily said into the phone, her close breath condensing on the mouthpiece, “a son who grew up in his own house, who George lectured on the Bauhaus and Modernist movements from the time Nate was just six years old.”
A taut silence took over the conversation. So Pete’s mother and George were lovers. Or at least companions. Emily couldn’t imagine the man she’d seen in the Warwick hospital bed having a love life.
“No harm meant,” Pete said, breaking the tension. “He’s in Rhode Island? My mother will want to be there. Let me get a pen, I’ll need the hospital’s number, and a way to reach you and George’s kid—” Pete stumbled for a name.
“Nathan. His name is Nathan Bedecker.”
“George is in Rhode Island?” Pete sounded more present, suddenly, as if the news was sinking in. “He said he was going to Brussels for a conference or what have you, a symposium, for a few weeks. He never calls while he’s gone. My mother wasn’t expecting to hear from him until November at the earliest. Not my idea of a romance.”
“Love and delirium,” Emily said, following Nate’s gaze and looking out at the water, “have many points in common.”
“Thomas Carlyle,” Pete said.
“Badly paraphrased Thomas Carlyle.”
“I didn’t know anyone read him anymore.”
Emily grinned, turning back toward the house to hide her small smile from Nate. “I guess they do,” she said.
And then Pete fetched his pen and wrote down Nate’s phone number and the contact info for the hospital in Warwick. Emily hung up the phone and just like that she and Nate had passed George off like a baton. He was largely out of their life again though, from the looks of it, the weight of these three days would never leave Nate.
At the car lot an hour later, Nate was, on the surface at least, managing to hold it together. He opened the Jeep’s side door and ducked into the front seat, his legs hanging out of the car like magician’s props. The Jeep’s radio was gone, that was the first thing Nate and Emily were told when they got here, as if the sound system was their most coveted possession. The radio! The baby Rasta CD! How about the engine? That was gone, too, but seemed too obvious to mention. What about their tax forms, their clothing, Nate’s laptop? All gone. As Nate slid out of the car, Emily smiled. It was so typical of him, doing a final, thorough search even after everything was confirmed gone. He hadn’t changed, not completely.
“Come on,” Nate said, taking Trevor from her arms and strapping him into the car seat—their car seat—in the Audi. “We should get to the house before dark, we’re down a headlight, I don’t want to be driving at night.”
With all three of them seat-belted in, Nate started the motor and then laid his right hand on the seat between him and Emily. Slowly he opened his palm. A hundred-dollar bill, crisp, lay folded in it.
“For emergencies,” Emily smiled. “It was still there?”
“And this, too.” Nate reached into his shirt pocket and took out a small Ziploc of marijuana and rolling papers. Emily looked back to Trevor, oblivious, and then looked at Nate. “You told me you didn’t smoke anymore.”
“No more secrets,” he said, starting the engine and driving toward downtown Newport. Trevor sneezed from the backseat, three rapid-fire rasps, and Emily turned to him and reached back to pull his hand out of his mouth. The boy had been trying to eat his own fist. His small O-shaped mouth dripping with saliva, he smiled. They all had their vices.
Nate effortlessly steered the Audi toward their new house. He seemed to already know his way around Newport, a city Emily feared she’d take years to master. She was so accustomed to Manhattan’s grid. Here, amid the looping side streets and unmarked cul-de-sacs and narrow village lanes, she was oblivious again, a greenhorn.
After leaving the car lot, they made two stops. First they paused at a gas station to add a couple of gallons to the tank and then at a liquor store on Broadway (“Look, Trev! Broadway!” she’d said, spying a street name to which she could relate). When buying wine to drink at home, in Manhattan, they tended to grab a just-okay Cabernet or an embarrassingly cheap Pinot Grigio from the front racks at the shop where the bottles wore Overstock signs shackled to their necks. Nate and Emily liked to drink but never claimed to be oenophiles and could barely taste the difference between a twelve-dollar table wine and a grand cru, so what was the point of paying up? Tonight, though, Nate walked into the store and started immediately picking up bottles that cost fifty dollars and up.
“We have a hundred dollars to spend, on a bottle of red, something full-bodied and rich,” he said to the proprietor, a woman in her sixties, tall and spindly and smartly dressed. “A red, right?” he said to Emily, who stood next to him, stunned. Rich wasn’t exactly something they were accustomed to.
“You really want to do this?” Emily said. A hundred dollars could go a long way, given their current finances and the expenses she saw looming in their future.
“It’s my hundred, I think I’m owed a good bottle of wine, at least.”
Back in the car, Emily turned the bottle over in her hands. A Barbaresco (Italian, in the spirit of Columbus Day, explained the proprietor, who Emily thanked profusely for her help, explaining that this was an uncommon splurge), already aged and ready to drink, it would easily fetch $250 in a restaurant. Looked at in that light, it was a bargain. As she ran her hands over the bottle, Emily found herself disconcertingly eager to taste the wine, even as she was sure that it wouldn’t give Nate any pleasure. He’d been understandably on edge ever since Emily got off the phone with Pete Antrim early this afternoon, ever since she’d explained, in one breathless swoop, that Philippa was George’s longtime romantic partner and that Pete was Philippa’s son, a man who had come to know George quite well.
“They’re his family now,” Nate had said. He’d looked back at the Narragansett house one last time. “That’s it then. We’ll bring back the car when we’re done with it and say good-bye forever.”
Even the Barbaresco’s label was elegant. Emily had expected something fussy and foreign in an expensive wine label, but this one featured only a line-drawing of a woman’s face in profile. Emily would hold onto this bottle after they drank the contents. She’d bring it out in a year or two, when they’d be able to look back on this weekend without fear. After enough time had passed, she and Nate would smile over their indulgence, maybe they’d spoil themselves with another expensive bottle then. Especially if they, all three of them, were all still alive and healthy and not yet incarcerated. And sane. They’d drink the wine tonight. Tomorrow she’d wake up at six and figure out what to say to the cops. She and Nate would lay out the options. Maybe she’d fess up. Maybe that was the only way forward.
“Shit,” Nate brought the car to a sudden, hard stop two driveways away from their home. Emily instinctively looked at the windshield for a wounded bird.
“No, there. There.” Nate said pointing to their house. A figure was squatting on their stoop, bent over. Nate inched the car closer. Both of Nate and Emily’s neighbors had their porch lights on bright, fighting off the falling darkness and casting a small glow on Nate and Emily’s lawn. This squat plot of grass between their house and the sidewalk was narrow, only twelve feet deep. “We’ve attracted the only homeless person in Newport.”
“No,” Emily said, smili
ng, leaning closer to the windshield to get a good look. “We’ve attracted the last tourist of the holiday weekend, and she brought us a pizza.” As Nate parked the Audi in their driveway (their driveway!), Emily unhooked her seat belt, opened the car door, and ran up the short walk to Jeanne, who grabbed her in a tight, tough embrace.
“You must hate me,” Emily said. Emily hated herself for the way she’d treated her friend.
“Close,” Jeanne said. She loosened her grip on Emily and kissed Nate, who’d arrived on the porch with a sleepy Trevor in his arms, on the cheek. Emily had tears in her eyes (again!), embarrassing tears that she quickly wiped away. “But I was getting really tired of all the yogis and yoginis.”
Emily nodded and they all clustered around the front door while Nate fished the keys out from the envelope that Bob Daugherty had handed over exactly three days earlier. Nate shoved the door open and Jeanne turned to Emily and continued, “If you bring up my cheating ex’s name again, even once, I’m out of here.”
The pizza was lukewarm and its sauce tasted like grocery-store brand ketchup, yet still it was satisfying. “Fuck, this is good,” Nate said, licking a drip of tomato off his finger. And the wine was outstanding. Nate had filled Jeanne’s glass first, a copious pour. Seeing Jeanne, Emily felt moored.
“It’s definitely rich,” Emily said, after taking her first sip.
“I think it’s supposed to be paired with a roast, not pepperoni,” Nate said. “But it’s good. It’s really good.”
Emily and Nate and Jeanne ate in a circle on the living room floor, sitting atop one of the pilfered bedsheets and passing Trevor from lap to lap. Emily’s shirt—a T-shirt she’d borrowed from Jeanne, thrilled to be in new clothing after three days—was plastered with crumbs from the crust that Trevor was gnawing.
“You’re only four hours from Rhinebeck, you know, if you ever get the urge to go away and spend a weekend ohm-ing,” Jeanne said between bites. “And your house is perfect, by the way. I adore it.”
“Liar,” Emily said. Jeanne’s intentions were good, but there was nothing to love about this house except for the fact that they owned it. “Look at that crown molding,” she pointed toward the ceiling, and Nate and Jeanne looked up. Emily hadn’t noticed, during their house tour, how shoddy the work was. The molding was coming loose from the ceiling at the corner of the living room. The banister on the stairwell felt shaky, too. They’d have to fix that before Trevor started walking, which could be any day.
“What, you want to live in a museum, one of those showpieces on the Upper East Side with perfect moldings? Those apartments are so lifeless.”
“Like the Barbers’ place,” Emily said before she could edit herself.
“The Barbers are ludicrous. That home is a mausoleum,” Jeanne said. “The Rufino thing, it couldn’t have turned out more ridiculously, you know?” She arched her back and stretched her sides, a cross between yoga and elementary school calisthenics.
Nate and Emily were silent and kept their eyes averted from each other. Had Jeanne heard that the cops were coming up to Newport? Emily hated how word spread in the city, how the proximity of apartment living made everyone assume nothing was private. Finally Emily said, her voice empty, as if she didn’t care about Jeanne’s answer (but she did care, more than anything, she had to find out what Jeanne knew), “How did it turn out?”
Jeanne looked at her. “No one called you?”
Emily gave an exaggerated shrug. “I got a call from someone in the NYPD,” she said, but she didn’t know if that’s what Jeanne meant.
“They’re calling all of the guests,” Nate quickly added. “They just want to talk to us.”
“When did they call you?” Jeanne asked.
“Yesterday, in the morning?” Emily said.
“You haven’t talked to anyone since?” Jeanne asked.
“No one,” said Emily.
“Oh, right, you’ve been avoiding your phone now that you’ve moved out of town. A clean break, and all. Well, the NYPD’s investigation is over. What I hear is that—and I wasn’t at the party, so you may know more than I do—Anna was hammered, completely tanked by the end of the night.”
“We left early,” Emily said. Nate, sitting across from her with his back leaning against a wall, looked as if he were holding his breath, playing a game of statue where the slightest movement might cause an intergalactic calamity.
“Well, she was tanked. Bess Van Rhyn says Anna was so gone she couldn’t even tip the caterers, and Randy has no idea how all of that works, so Bess and Tyler had to pay the tip themselves and dismiss the help. Those kitchen assistants would have stayed until morning waiting for their cash if Bess hadn’t intervened.”
“So?” Emily said, unsure of where Jeanne was going. “What, you think the caterers took the art?” She wanted to vomit at the idea that the help would be blamed for her own felonious sin. She would confess to the cops. It wouldn’t be so bad. Anna and Randy wouldn’t press charges. They’d tell the cops it was simply a misunderstanding and plea to the court that Emily’s sentence be light. They’d also never talk to Emily again, sure, but that was a minor loss, now that she and Nate weren’t living in Manhattan anyway.
“Oh, God no, though I wouldn’t put it past Randy, blaming those Barnard girls.” Emily tried to catch Nate’s eye, but he was staring unblinkingly at the pizza box. “No. They think Anna tore the painting out of its frame and threw it out. She has no memory of doing so, but she has no memory of most of the night, from what Bess says. Anna’s actually accepted guilt. The police have an eyewitness who saw Anna go into the study in the middle of her own party. And Anna never uses that study. It’s Randy’s domain.”
“You heard this from Bess yourself?” Emily said.
“She didn’t call you? She left me like five messages yesterday while I was in my Brahma-Viharas seminar.”
“I got messages from a bunch of people on Friday, but I haven’t heard much since.” Emily was starting to understand that with their move would come a sense of exile: out of sight, out of the Manhattanites’ minds. Soon, Jeanne would be the only one calling to inform them of the gossip.
“No one can get enough of this Barber shit,” Jeanne said. “It’s like everyone’s been waiting for Anna and Randy to slip up.”
“Why—”
“Why,” Nate interrupted Emily, finishing her sentence, “why the hell would Anna destroy her own painting?” And why, Emily thought, was everyone so eager to believe such an obviously untrue (as only she could prove) scenario?
“Because Randy is the art collector. And as of recently, apparently she detests him. He’s been fucking the barista at Café Panino. Anna was getting her coffee there every morning, totally oblivious to the fact that the woman steaming her milk was Randy’s special friend. Anna found out last week. Word has it that beneath her characteristically chilly facade, she’s been seething. She spilled it all—Randy’s cheating, her agony over the discovery of it, the way she wanted to crush his balls—to Lana Raines the night she found out about the affair. It seems Anna was under the misimpression that Lana was someone who’d keep her mouth shut.”
“Holy crap,” Nate said, as if waking from a dream to a reality far wilder than the one in which he’d fallen asleep. Emily might have plenty of reasons to resent Nate, but at least he wasn’t sleeping with a coffee-bar clerk.
“I know,” Jeanne said. “Sleeping with a barista. It’s every I-banker’s fantasy. His friends are probably slapping him on the back.”
“No,” Nate said. “Holy crap about Anna taking the blame for something she can’t remember.”
“She had the motive, and the drunkenness, to make it happen. I mean, she’s given up everything for Randy,” Jeanne said. “She could have had a decent career, but instead spends her days delivering his dry cleaning and planning parties for his friends. The very least she expected in return was exclusive sex from the guy.”
“Emily gave up a lot for me,” Nate said.
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��No I didn’t,” Emily said in a voice that was nearly a whisper. “The cops—” Emily could barely speak, this turn of events felt so undeservedly fortuitous, “the cops believe this? I mean, do they have proof?”
“They have a witness placing her at the back of the apartment, which is sort of proof, but I don’t think they care anymore. I mean, if Anna destroyed the Rufino—there was so much trash at that party, and it was all gone by the time anyone realized the painting had been taken. If Anna got rid of it, it’s somewhere in the city’s decaying mountains of refuse. And if she got rid of it, it’s not a crime, right? You have every right to destroy your own property.”
“Did they at least dust for fingerprints?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know. Bess didn’t say.”
“I used that back bathroom during the party,” Emily said with a sharp glance to Nate. “So they’d find my prints if they dusted, don’t you think? I mean, everyone passed through that apartment.”
“Anna confessed. It’s all moot,” Jeanne said. “And who cares? You’re free of all that bullshit now that you’ve moved. You won’t have to try to impress frauds like the Barbers anymore. Or like Bess Van Rhyn and her fellow vultures, for that matter.”
“They’re not all bad,” Emily said.
“Whatever. You’re going to be able to live high on the hog here. You’ll be the big fish in this town.” As Jeanne finished her sentence Trevor started to wail.
“He needs a bath,” Emily said. She’d always liked Bess Van Rhyn. Anna and Randy, well, they were due for a fall, just not necessarily at the hands of Emily Latham. Serendipity was an unjust thing. “We need to get some real baby shampoo and soap.”
Jeanne offered to do a shopping run, and after they finished eating, Nate and Emily drew up a list. Toilet paper, milk, instant coffee, the things they’d forgotten they’d need. Emily promised Jeanne that they’d pay her back after the fact, but it felt like a weak promise, heavy in her gut. Emily hated owing money. IOUs hung over her head like invisible highway signs pointing to her financial inadequacies.