Bored by now, I spray my feet with the Ultra Placid, slip into my shoes, and walk around the corner for a brush for scrubbing the tub. I return home and clean the bathroom from top to bottom. After that, I draw myself a big bubble bath. Tomorrow marks the start of a big week. I have my dinner with Kevin tomorrow night, a meeting with Steve on Tuesday, a meeting with Vickie on Wednesday, lunch with Sandy Christmas on Thursday, and the gallery opening with BuzzBuzz on Saturday. For someone with neither friends nor job, my life seems remarkably full, and it feels nice that way. I lie back in the charming-but-chipped footed tub and contemplate a suspicious patch of mold on the ceiling that has probably been around as long as the building has. I have a good feeling about Sandy Christmas: She’s going to offer me a job.
And not a moment too soon.
NINETEEN
TO: Iris Hedge
FROM: Vickie Benjamin Sokolov
SUBJ: Steve
Dear Iris,
He sent flowers! Three dozen white roses. So sweet! That also hasn’t happened since we first got married. He says he chose white so they won’t show plaster dust. Isn’t that thoughtful?
TO: Iris Hedge
FROM: Kevin Asgard
SUBJ: Agenda
Arrival 7 p.m. tonite for pre-dinner consult, dinner at 8 p.m. (reservation confirmed). KA.
“So how will you answer when he pops the question? My advice is, don’t say anything firm until after you’ve had the ring appraised. I had a client who only found out after the wedding that hers was a phony. Four-point-two carats of cushion-cut moissanite. Can you imagine? Everyone else in town had already known for months, too. Needless to say, she used the divorce money to take a gemology course so no man could ever pull a stunt like that on her again.” Simon lowers my mascara wand so close to my right pupil, I jerk backward. “Don’t pull away. I’m a professional.”
I’m in Simon’s apartment, where he’s preparing me for my dinner with Kevin. I inhale slowly and try to hold my head steady, open my eyes wide, and not blink. “He’s not proposing marriage, Simon.” I focus on the candles flickering in Simon’s fireplace. “This has got to be business-related. His company is transferring him to New York, something like that.”
“Will you let him move into your cozy love nest?”
I’d laugh if I weren’t terrified of having my eye poked out. “I’m not even divorced yet! And I’m not ready to get serious with anyone. Honestly, I think I may give up on men altogether.”
Simon puts the wand down. “That’s too bad, kitten. You’re a knockout. See for yourself.”
He ushers me over to his full-length mirror, a battered antique rotating oval in which some woman much like Great-aunt Zinnia would have admired her cunning new Easter bonnet. Now it’s my turn. I look into the glass.
“There she is . . .” Simon sings.
There she is indeed.
My gradual and unplanned metamorphosis from San Fernando Valley yokel into chic, sleek femme fatale is complete. I take in my new haircut, my elegant makeup (Simon has gone with understated eyes but played up my mouth with classic red lipstick), my siren-red fingers and toes, my sexy, expensive new dress. There have been moments when I’ve felt more swan than duckling—on my wedding day, for one, before the ocean swallowed up my veil. This seems as if it could last.
Simon has been watching me absorb it all. “What do you think?”
“I think I just turned into a different person.”
He says, “You did that when you moved here.”
“It’s the transformational power of divorce.” I speak to my own reflection.
“That’s not it. It’s New York City. It changes everyone. In your case, for the better. You don’t understand that yet, but you will.”
At the moment, I am happy to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Thank you.” I hug him. “I feel like Cinderella with her fairy godmother.”
“That’s ‘alternative-lifestyle godmother.’” He squeezes my arm. “Now, kitten, I have a little favor to ask.”
“. . . and he needs me to dog-sit in August, while he’s on Fire Island. He rents a house there every summer, but Rocky doesn’t ‘do’ the beach and needs to stay in the city. He’ll pay me, though, but I’ll feel pretty bad about taking his money when I’m going to be at work all day. You know, after I get that job with Cassandra—Sandy.”
Kevin refills my glass. It’s hard to tell, but his hand appears to tremble. He arrived here at my apartment with a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan and suggested a drink before dinner. It seems to be for medicinal purposes. I’ve served his in the newly discovered wineglass.
“The dog-walking lady could have watched him, but guess where she’s going? Bridgehampton,” I continue. “And Vickie and”—why am I blushing?—“and Steve, they’re going to be in Southampton.”
Kevin jingles the ice in his glass.
“I am so sick of hearing about the Hamptons. Hamptons, Hamptons, Hamptons. Nobody back home has a summer place. It’s such an affectation.”
“You’ve never been in Manhattan in August.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Hot, hot, hot. Humid, humid, humid. You know what New York is? A city of whiners. So, in August it’s a little sticky. It’s sticky out now. I’m not that tough, and I’m handling it.”
“Iris . . .”
“These New Yorkers, they’re a bunch of pampered poodles.”
Even Steve. It disappoints me that Steve would be the name-dropping, social-climbing, Hamptons type. Vickie most certainly is, and Val swears up and down that Steve is exactly like Vickie. But the Steve I’ve seen shows no insecure, I-must-be-seen-at-this-week’s-restaurant-or-people-won’t-like-me tendencies. He seems comfortable with himself.
Iris, stop thinking of Steve this instant, before your face bursts into flames. I take four discreet diaphragm breaths and try to pay attention to what’s happening now. I should not be pondering Steve’s inner life, or the shape of Steve’s mouth, or the heat of Steve’s hand on mine. . . .
I spring from my seat on the footstool. “Aren’t we going to miss our reservation? It must be time to get going.”
“We have plenty of time.” Kevin stands and steps over to me. He pats my shoulder and guides me to the armchair. When I’m sitting down, he, too, takes a seat—on the bed. He takes another bolt of scotch and clears his throat. Uh-oh, this seems serious. My stomach begins to churn.
“Our alliance has impacted me positively, Iris. We share critical alignment on a number of issues.”
What if he really is proposing marriage? I find myself staring at his jacket, searching for the telltale outline of a little box.
“But as this quarter has progressed, I’ve seen my personal goals evolve. I gathered data, conducted a personal diagnostic, established a strategy, and—”
To what surely will be my undying horror, his eyes start to water.
“Kev!”
He sniffles and again clears his throat.
I set down my drink and take his hand in mine. Please, let this go smoothly. “There’s something I’d like to say first.” No sign of resistance. Good. “Kevin, I’ve enjoyed our, um, alliance, too. In different circumstances, I might have wanted us to be more serious. You have so much to offer.”
“Thanks. You, too.” He seems to be taking it well so far.
“It’s just that we had an understanding. No commitment, remember? I hope you understand, and that you aren’t hurt. I would never want to hurt you. But if you’re feeling conflicted, it might be best to take a break from each other for a while.”
Kevin looks surprised. He looks astounded. He looks amazed.
He does not look crushed.
“You have no idea what a relief it is to hear you say that.”
I pull my hand from his. What?
“Iris, I’ve met someone.” He slides off the edge of the bed, rises to his feet, and throws an arm around my shoulder. “I wanted you to be the first to know. I’m getting married.”
There’s alw
ays somebody somewhere moaning about having been awake all night. Didn’t sleep at all. Tossed and turned until daybreak. The California variation on this theme is, “I always wake up right before the earthquake,” in which people insist they have a middle-of-the-night sixth sense that rouses them a second before the room starts moving.
It’s a myth. The earthquake savant isn’t waking up in advance; she simply remembers whatever her mind was processing just before the rude awakening. As for the up-all-nighter, he did so sleep, if only perhaps for minutes at a stretch. It only seems he didn’t, for the same reason—he remembers what he was thinking while unconscious. Your brain never stops churning, you know.
I, however, definitely didn’t sleep last night. Maybe it’s a first in human history, but I am quite certain I was bitterly conscious the entire eight hours.
“Are you all right?” Steve says when I show up fifteen minutes late for our Tuesday meeting. I’m not offended, because I look like death warmed over: cadaverous flesh, eye bags, matted tufts of hair spiking out at odd angles. That’s thanks to Simon’s industrial-strength styling goo and the fact that there was no time even to wet down my hair, since I didn’t hear the alarm go off. Perhaps that contradicts what I just said about not sleeping.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” he goes on. “It might make you feel better.”
It surely would, but I’m too tired to move.
Steve slides over on his park bench to allow me sufficient space on which to collapse. I collapse, throwing my left arm over my eyes. Dramatic, perhaps, but even with my sunglasses it’s too bright. I need something completely opaque there to block the light. A voice from my memory warns, “You shouldn’t do that, Iris. You need to see what’s in front of you.”
“Rough night?”
“You could say so,” I answer in a monotone. Officially my evening ended half an hour after Kevin dropped his marriage bomb. It took only that long for him to explain that he’d decided to “reallocate his attention” to this woman he’d been seeing in Los Angeles, this Lynn, and to hug me in a brotherly way and wish me “the best of luck in all future endeavors.”
“I’d guess it was husband trouble,” Steve says, “except, you’re not married.”
Kevin had wanted to take me to dinner as a show of friendship. I declined. Third-party proposal. I should have known. “Why does everyone assume I’m not married? Do I seem unweddable? Is there an ‘old maid’ sign over my head?”
He uses his thumb and index finger to pluck my left hand off my forehead. I don’t open my eyes but can feel it, a disembodied object dangling limply in his grasp. “No ring,” he says, and lets go. My hand falls back heavily onto my forehead. I jump, straighten up, force myself to open my eyes, and fix him with an indignant look.
“So what? You’re married, and you don’t wear one.”
“Not true.” He holds up his left hand. A gold band gleams on his ring finger.
He and Vickie really must be getting along better.
Vickie thinks so. Her “He sent flowers” e-mail from yesterday went on about the many ways Steve is responding to her new, more respectful conduct. It wasn’t just the white roses. She says she has stopped criticizing him, has stopped badgering him to discuss topics that bore him, and has begun listening to him with no objections. She says he has been nicer, too, making toast for her every morning now, paying more attention when she speaks. She still has no idea Steve is in on the whole thing. She truly believes she and I are the ones fooling him. She thinks he must accept me as a friend—a friend he keeps happening to encounter in Central Park and has never once mentioned to her. She thinks Steve must see her transformation as a coincidence that’s in no way related to the things he’s telling me. Despite circumstances that are far-fetched to the point of absurdity, Vickie believes what she wants to. If that isn’t cognitive dissonance at its purest, I don’t know what is.
“My guess is,” Steve says, “you’re divorced.”
All at once I’m too weary to keep my guard up. “Separated. It’ll be final in November.” I slither back down the bench and study my hands, the classy-sexy red manicure.
“I am sorry, Iris. Divorce is the most traumatic thing.”
“It is, I agree. But this had nothing to do with my husband, Teddy.”
“Then it’s some other guy.” He rubs his forehead. “You’re in love with him?”
“No. Lord, no. We were just . . .” I feel too exposed. “Never mind.”
“You can tell me. You’ve been helping me; maybe I can help you. And I almost forgot, I brought you this.” In his e-mail, along with his Vickie pointers, he instructed me to meet him an hour later than usual, not at the stretching area but at the lower west corner of Central Park, at a spot where the park road is bordered with dark green benches lined up end to end. The benches are mostly empty at this hour of the morning, but on nice days at lunchtime workers come here in uniforms and business suits to eat their deli sandwiches and stare into the park. Now Steve, who’s in street clothes and sans Jack Russell, takes two doughnuts from a white bag he’s been holding, and presents one to me. I stop wondering about his weird schedule and take a grateful bite. It’s a classic Krispy Kreme with exactly the right amount of glaze.
“He’s getting married. He told me last night. To a woman he met six weeks ago. He says it wasn’t that he was afraid of commitment; he just needed to meet the right girl.”
“Ouch,” Steve says.
I lay my doughnut on its piece of waxed paper on the curved seat of the bench. “It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t. I don’t want to marry him. Teddy was enough. If Kevin had asked me to marry him, I would have said no.”
“But you don’t want him to marry someone else.”
“Exactly. How petty is that?”
“It’s human.”
“In any case, I’m through with love. Forever. A date once in a while is fine,” I say, thinking about my pending date with BuzzBuzz. “But relationships? I’m done.”
Steve scuffs his running shoes in the beige gravel under our bench. When he notices me watching, he plants both feet on the ground. “That’s easy to say right after a bad split, but I hope you don’t mean it. Somewhere, there’s a person who, given the chance, would fall head over heels for you.”
I resume the scientific study of the topography of my hands. The faint white circle around my left ring finger, the reverse-shadow memory of the wedding band now retired to my jewelry box, has blended back into the surrounding skin as if I hadn’t worn that ring twenty-four hours a day, every day, for three years.
“Nice nails.” I’ve been quiet for so long, Steve must have started looking where I’m looking. “I like your, well, really, your whole look. You looked great before, but the sophisticated hairstyle—and the makeup—they suit you.”
I’m blushing again. He thinks I look good right now? With the raccoon rings under my eyes from last night’s mascara I didn’t bother to remove?
“We should get started.” I polish off the rest of the doughnut in three big bites.
“First, what are you doing Monday?”
And did he just say I “looked great before”? Would that “before” refer to my magenta- or beige-haired phase?
“Iris?”
And what is he doing commenting on my appearance anyway? The dog.
“Earth to Iris? What are you doing July Fourth?”
July Fourth is three weeks away. I assume I will be spending it as I do every other day—alone in my apartment, eating cereal. I hardly feel like celebrating; July’s arrival will mean only that August is right around the corner. August will mark the halfway point of my unemployment benefits. I have got to impress Sandy Christmas at lunch this week.
I crumple the piece of waxed paper. “Let’s talk about your July Fourth plans, Steve. Vickie told me—let’s see if I’ve got it straight. That Saturday you and Vickie are going to her parents’ house. While she stays for the fireworks on Monday, you’ll be catching the train back Su
nday night.”
“For golf. Right.”
What Steve doesn’t know, but Vickie also has told me, is that she’s not at all pleased about his early departure. But he insists he has an early golf date in Westchester County with an important overseas client he can’t ignore, and she’s managed not to grill him for details or take him to task for leaving her alone on a national holiday. I admire her self-control. I can only imagine what might really be going on. Is the so-called client a certain blond bombshell? Is there even a golf game at all? “You’re spending the day with your mistress. Jessica. Right?” I already know asking directly won’t get me anywhere, that restraint would be the better tactic.
“I’ve told you I won’t answer questions like that. It was part of the terms of our deal.”
“I think we should change the terms. Are you spending July Fourth with Jessica?”
He looks at me for a long moment and opens his mouth as if to answer.
I stay perfectly still. He’s dead serious. There’s no trace of smugness on his face. This could be it: the big confession.
He scuffs his shoe against the ground with extra force. A small cloud of dust rises up from under his feet.
A tickle starts at the back of my nose.
Dust floats higher into the air.
Don’t sneeze, Iris. Don’t ruin the moment. I’m finally wearing him down . . . down . . . ah . . . ah . . .
“Achoo!”
“Bless you,” Steve says. I wait for him to go on.
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