This wasn’t true, but at that moment, most of David’s anger was directed at Renata. She could have told him they were coming so he could have stayed at home or attempted to lose three pounds before venturing out. She was wearing a pretty camel’s hair jacket buttoned incorrectly, and was making a pained, apologetic face. The three of them arrived at the faux fireplace and introductions were made. Joyce bid Soren a chilly hello—so thoughtful of her—but once she heard Porter was a thoracic surgeon, she looked at him with reverential wonder, and warmed up to his younger companion.
“It was such a nice surprise to hear Leonard had invited Porter,” Renata said, a blatant attempt to explain the situation to David.
Porter described a development project Leonard had him investing in. He made a jokey comment about the fact that “with my luck, I’ll probably lose my shirt.” This fell flat; he was too attractive and accomplished to pull off self-deprecation.
Porter was probably in his mid-sixties. He was a meticulous man in the hygienic way surgeons and military officers often are, and he gave off a scent of limes and sandalwood. Everything about him appeared well designed, from his haircut to his sleek leather shoes. Although he and David had technically been rivals and David had lost to him, he nonetheless felt a kinship with Porter. David was probably a decade younger, but in the presence of not-quite-forty Soren, they were the same age. It was as if they were colleagues and he had passed on to Porter the duties of mentoring an interesting but difficult student. The duties, to a great extent, involved finances. That seemed right. There are certain things in life you must expect to pay for—electricity, dry cleaning, sushi. Past the age of fifty, a younger lover with a perfect ass must, realistically, be added to the list. While Soren’s departure had knocked David into a whirlpool of depression, he couldn’t blame him for having gone with someone in a far stronger position to support him.
As for Soren, he seemed rakishly amused by the encounter. He winked at David and adjusted the collar of his shirt. “Hi, sweetie,” he said, his standard term of endearment for him. The role of the person who’s left a relationship is to show that he still cares and feels fondly for the person he abandoned, while the role of the abandoned is to show that he has no feelings whatsoever.
“I hope you’re not too upset about your landlady selling the house,” Soren said.
“I’m upset that word about it has gotten around so quickly.”
Soren’s face showed a shadow of sorrowful disapproval. “Nothing lasts forever,” he said.
“I’m learning that,” David said. “It’s lucky Porter has such a terrific house.”
“Thank you,” Porter said. Unfortunately, he was a man without malice, which made him hard to dislike. “I don’t know how Soren talked me into believing we need a bigger place.”
“I’m sure Renata could help you with that,” David said.
“They called me,” Renata said.
“Apparently that’s the pattern,” David said. “Your phone must be ringing off the hook.”
“That’s a dated expression, David, and if you’re not nice, I’ll bring Leonard over to join the conversation.”
Joyce muttered a few mournful words of condolence about David losing his rental, and Louis spoke for the first time, tonelessly describing the way he’d redesign the carriage house and break the main residence into five or six luxury condos. He and Joyce had come to David’s place to discuss their daughter’s essay, the first draft of which had included the memorable sentence: “One of my educational goals is to move away from my parents.”
“Admittedly, it needs a lot of work,” Soren said. “But it would be a shame to break up the main house. You could make the carriage house into two units and get enough rent for each to have the property pay for itself. The main house would be a great place to hold parties.”
“I can’t imagine I’ll ever know enough people to fill those rooms,” Porter said. “But the light and views are wild from that second floor.”
David took a cocktail in a martini glass from a passing tray and sipped. “Wild” was such an incongruously beatnik word to come from such an established person. Then he had a flash of understanding.
“Oh,” he said, and finished off the drink. “From the second floor.” He looked at Renata, but she refused to meet his gaze, a clear indication that his suspicions were correct. Soren gave David one of his sly smiles and shrugged, as close to an apology as he was likely to get.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” David asked.
“Let’s face it, sweetie, someone’s going to.”
“But there are so many others you could afford.”
Porter looked genuinely confused. “Renata said you were planning to move anyway. No?”
Throughout his life, David had admired people who could work themselves into a rage over perceived injustices being done to them, blindly lashing out and reveling in the role of victim. Unfortunately, he was not one of those people. If he couldn’t be angry, he could at least make a stab at self-respect by pretending to be. He tossed a few caustic remarks in the general direction of Renata and Soren but began to feel the approach of panic, as if he was on a train that only he knew was about to derail.
He sauntered to a bathroom off a hallway behind the living room, but once inside, he made the mistake of looking in the mirror. He hurried into Renata’s office, a small, tidy room with a view of the Bay Bridge prettily muffled by a frame of bougainvillea. The room was dark, making the view that much more sparkling, the thrusting lights of the bridge and the water blurring into one glittering impression. It was precisely the kind of view people crave and pay good money for, mostly, David suspected, because it tricks you into believing you’re lucky, privileged, and maybe even happy. It was a variation on the view from David’s bedroom, where it had tricked him into believing for a couple of decades that he belonged and had a home in this city.
As he turned from the window, he bumped against Renata’s computer. The screen lit up the desk and the view dimmed, and he saw a stack of papers in a manila folder with his name on it. Inside were listing sheets of apartments that Renata apparently thought were in his price range. At the very least, it was a flattering misconception. None was affordable in anything other than a lurid fantasy of his financial position. Five years of paying to keep Soren happy had depleted his savings to a shocking degree. Even so, as he basked in the coziness of self-pity, he felt a wave of sadness about Soren’s departure lapping at his feet, bringing in with it the detritus of regret for missed opportunities that would never be presented to him again.
The computer screen went dark and the view of the bridge lit up again, and he found himself floating once more above the expensive, unstable landscape, apart from it and utterly inessential.
The familiar view brought him back to an evening shortly after Soren had left, an evening when everything—moving on, staying put—had seemed pointless and impossible. There had been tears and phone calls, some expensive vodka he’d found in the freezer, and, most embarrassing of all, a small quantity of the pills he’d been stockpiling to circumvent an announced diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or the imminent start of an ecological implosion. He’d woken up twelve hours later, less groggy than he’d felt after taking melatonin. Still, his assumptions about his control of his own behavior had been badly shaken.
Sitting at Renata’s desk, he tried to summon up a combination of people and places from his past that might gel into a vision of home for him or at least a safe harbor that felt like a place where he belonged. Mostly, he saw a blur of faces of former lovers race through his mind as fleetingly as he’d encouraged them to race though his life.
And then he paused on an image of Julie Fiske and felt more at ease. He saw the damp gray of the Upper West Side and felt the wind from the Hudson in late afternoon and heard the yapping of the small dog he and Julie had adopted. Objectively, it was the most tenuous and ill-conceived relationship of his life, but thoughts of it filled him with a sense of calm and belonging
.
It was after nine on the East Coast, and if the weather app on his phone was to be believed, they were having thunderstorms. He’d been missing summer thunderstorms for decades. Mandy had, after all, invited him. A vacation would do him good, give him time to get his thoughts together, research his rights as a tenant, stall the sale of the house in a way that might prove unproductive but would at least be satisfyingly spiteful. All thousands of miles from his troubles and humiliations.
He dialed Julie’s phone.
7
About ten minutes after the storm knocked out the electricity, and while Julie was still lighting candles and choking on the panic induced by the mortgage mess, she decided that her mother, dead for more than a decade, wouldn’t forgive her if she sold her jewelry but that she, Julie, could live with the guilt.
A week before she died, her mother had grabbed Julie’s hand and made her vow that she’d never sell this part of her inheritance. “Some of it, the Cartier pieces, came from your grandmother, but your father gave me most of it. It’s worth hundreds of thousands, sweetheart, but its real value is as a reminder of how much your father adored me. Swear you’ll cherish it.”
Julie, who’d always felt like an interloper in her parents’ hermetically sealed marriage, didn’t need a reminder of the way her father had worshiped his wife, but she’d said she’d always keep it.
“No, Julie,” her mother had insisted. “Look at me and promise me you’ll never sell it.”
What choice did she have but to look her mother in the eyes and promise?
It was highly unlikely the collection was worth what her mother thought it was worth, but if she could get even a hundred thousand and combine it with her retirement account, she’d be close.
The front door opened and Amira appeared in the living room, her hair dripping. Her beige silk blouse had gone transparent from the rain.
“You scared me,” Julie said.
“I’m such a selfish bitch, I sometimes scare myself,” Amira said. “And I do not call a town civilization when the lights go out every time it rains. You’d think my husband could afford a generator. You don’t mind if I sit, do you?”
Almost the last person Julie wanted to see an hour after Charles Phillips’s call. She’d been avoiding Amira since Henry had told her about her husband’s offer on the house. It was hard to know where she stood on any issue since she deflected everything with outrageous comments about herself, the truthfulness of them impossible to discern.
She did, however, have a childish fear of thunderstorms that Julie found touching, and her showing up like this probably meant Richard was out of town.
“Take a seat,” Julie said. “I’m just about done here.”
“Do the inmates all have candles?”
“Inmates” was Amira’s name for the guests Julie took in, a sadly accurate one in the case of Natasha and a few others. Amira had names for lots of things: “The Horror of Little Shops” for the downtown of Beauport; “Les Miserables” for the wives who lived in the neighborhood, wore holiday-themed sweaters, and exchanged amusing repartee about finding their husbands physically repulsive. The “Anonymous Alcoholics” were the interchangeable husbands of Les Miserables who talked anecdotally about drinking and their teen years. If she had a nickname for Julie, Julie was in no rush to learn what it was.
“I brought up lanterns. Hopefully the lights will go on soon.” Hesitantly, Julie said, “Is Richard at home?”
“He’s the kind of man who is at home everywhere, which in this case means Berlin or maybe Tokyo. Who can remember?”
The exact nature of Richard’s work was unclear to Julie, mostly because Amira claimed not to know it. It involved consulting with multinational corporations and required frequent trips to foreign capitals. “I am lonely when he leaves,” Amira had said more than once, always adding after a significant pause, “but not for long.” Julie wanted to think he was a “good man” who was offering beneficial political or environmental support, but his elusive personality and wealth made it more likely that he was involved in nefarious activity and was part of the problem. His attempt to buy her house out from under her confirmed this suspicion.
Amira curled up on the sofa like a frightened girl, and Julie was torn between wanting to lash out at her and wanting to comfort her and dry her beautiful hair.
“If I was with a lover,” Amira said, “I would be enjoying the storm, but all the men here are horrible. What’s-his-name came over the other day to sell me his garbage marijuana, wearing this old T-shirt that smelled of sweat. I said to him, ‘You do not come to a married lady’s house dressed like that. Please, have a little respect and manners.’”
Julie nodded. This was a reference to Granger, the twenty-eight-year-old who supplied Amira with pot. Granger was from Hammond, the town that abutted Beauport on a rocky cape north of Boston. Despite the proximity, Hammond was a more rough and real place than Beauport, home to a once-thriving fishing industry that had fallen on hard times, as had most industries in the country. Granger affected a rough and real appearance of his own—skinny black jeans and ratty T-shirts, long hair under a bandana, no matter what the weather—but he was allegedly from one of the old families in Hammond, the ones with bankrupt claims to class superiority.
“It’s probably a good thing to have some boundaries with him,” Julie said. “You don’t want him getting the wrong idea.”
“No, I do not. You are right. The last time, after I had sex with him, he asked to borrow my car. I could not believe it. Do I look like Zipcar?”
No, she did not. Although she was Eastern European (either Hungarian or Bulgarian; Julie was afraid that asking for clarification at this late date would be insulting), what Amira did look like, especially in the flickering candlelight and occasional flashes of lightning, was a young, thin version of one of those Italian movie stars from the 1960s. She was olive-skinned and raven-haired and exuded sexual energy and heat just walking into a room. Meeting Amira, Julie had finally understood what people talked about when they talked about pheromones. Her accented English was one of six languages she spoke fluently, an indication that she had hidden reserves of intelligence. What else she had hidden remained to be seen.
“You’re so lucky you have your clarinet-player lover,” she said to Julie. “When is he coming back?”
In a fit of bad judgment, Julie had told Amira about the weekend in April she’d spent with Raymond Cross, or, more accurately—since he’d rented a room in the house—that he’d spent with her. Either way, it was obvious she hadn’t paid much attention.
“He plays the saxophone,” Julie said. “He’s not my lover, and I don’t know that he’s ever coming back.”
And yet, yesterday he’d emailed her a link to a piece of music he thought she’d like. He did this from time to time and occasionally sent her a sweet, noncommittal text message saying he hoped she was doing well.
“Don’t be so technical,” Amira said. “He will come back. You’ll see.”
“I’m not planning on it. I’m not even sure I want it. I have a lot to worry about right now without adding one more thing. I’m almost certain he’s married.”
“Of course he’s married,” Amira scoffed. “Why else would he have slept with you?”
Julie was insulted by this comment despite the fact that it aligned precisely with her own theory about Raymond’s interest.
“When he does come back,” she went on, “turn off all the lights and use candles. The house is prettier when you can see less of it.”
This struck Julie as an appropriate segue. “It is, isn’t it?” she said. “With the lights on, it’s a horror.”
“I have been telling you this for two years. You always defend it.”
“No, you’re right. In all likelihood I am the only person who’d want this ruin of a house.”
“Don’t forget,” Amira said, “the land is worth a fortune.”
Julie was appalled. “Yes, for those who want to tear down
the house and dig a swimming pool.”
“You have to admit, it would be nice in the summer instead of the ugly, rocky beaches in this town.”
Julie leaped off her chair. “Let me tell you something, Amira. It wouldn’t be nice for me. To be thrown out of my house, to lose everything. I’m going to buy this house. I’ll have to sell my mother’s jewelry and do some other things I didn’t plan on doing, but I’m going to put together the money. So you and Richard can just scrap your plans for a pool party anytime in the near future.”
Amira stared at her with amazement. “I am surprised you have such passion,” she said. “You are not as uninteresting as you like to pretend.”
Funny, Julie had spent hours with Amira pretending to be interesting. “I thought we were friends.”
Amira stood and threw her arms around Julie. Her hair smelled of lemons, expensive lemons. “You’re my only friend in this town. You’re like my mother.” Not how Julie viewed herself, but if it helped her case, so be it. “Henry is the one who came to us.”
“Henry?”
“He showed up in his short pants. American men all want to be children forever. He told us you might not get a mortgage, and he wanted to give us the first chance to buy.”
“So Richard’s not interested in buying the house?”
“Don’t be foolish,” Amira said. “Of course he is. I would try to talk him out of it, but I have weak influence and no moral center. You just have to buy it first.”
Julie’s phone vibrated in her pocket, and she saw it was David. Before she could say hello, he was asking her if he was calling too late, in a rushed, anxious voice.
“No, not at all. Are you all right?”
“Do I sound funny? I’ve just had an upset here, nothing too major.”
“I’m sorry.” She was tempted to tell him about her own upset. Misery does love company, but no one likes to have theirs trumped, and she hadn’t quite sorted through the significance of this latest insight into Henry’s betrayal. “Have you heard from Mandy?”
My Ex-Life: A Novel Page 6