Or maybe it was all inevitable in the first place, and there was nothing to be faulted at all. It was just the way things had to be.
Regardless, he couldn’t pick out a coherent narrative from the previous night, nor could he really remember any prolonged conversations or a clear sequence of events. What was left in his head, as he lay there on the air mattress, was a fuzzy recollection of prolonged pleasure.
But a few specific moments did keep returning to haunt him:
Aoki, steering Jeremy toward her friends at the back of the gallery and talking about Cristina. “God, that museum woman was awful. Remember what I was saying about sycophants? That’s what I meant. There’s nothing interesting about being drooled over.” She says nothing at all about Claudia.
Pierre Powers falling to one knee in mock adulation, pressing Jeremy’s hand to his forehead. Murmuring “a rock God” in accented English, as the rest of the people standing around them titter: a small man with a Dalí-esque pencil mustache and exaggerated biceps, wearing something resembling a pirate costume, with a ruffled white woman’s blouse over tight black leggings. “I design my last collection to the sound of your music. I listen to it so many times I wear a hole in the—what do you call it?”—turning to a woman standing next to him and conferring with her in French—“lamination. I did not realize that was even possible!” His breath smelling like milk and cloves. “Aoki says you want to make a new album, yes? I would like very much to be a patron, like Medici. I have too much money. I will help you.” Beside him, Aoki smiling, victorious.
The back of Aoki’s town car, drinking more champagne en route to the restaurant. A strange new view of Los Angeles, from deep leathery bucket seats. A famous actress on one side, Aoki on the other; the flash and snap of a camera shutter as a photographer from Vanity Fair takes photos from the front seat. A slice of the southern sky through the tinted windows, neon reflections on the top of buildings, the night illuminated by a full moon. Everything so bright he can’t see any stars at all.
Dinner. Eating snails drowned in butter and parsley. Speaking about Japan with the fashion editor on his right, photography with the artist across from him, and the history of R&B music with Pierre. At one point realizing that he has unconsciously slung his arm around the back of Aoki’s seat and left it there. Eating a dessert Aoki chooses, something lemony and sour. No one talking about the collapsing economy, or their day jobs or mortgages; money being a perpetual assumption they all seem to share.
Sitting in an armchair in the lobby of the Château, Aoki perched in his lap because the hotel has run out of seats. She weighs almost nothing. A new group of people around him, whose names he can’t remember, whose conversations he can’t hear over the music anyway.
Aoki’s breath on his cheek. Aoki’s hand on his thigh, almost painful; his jeans far too tight. They are making a spectacle of themselves, but no one seems to notice. Aoki whispering in his ear: “Come to Paris with me.”
Kissing Aoki in the women’s bathroom, pressing her violently against a white-tiled wall. The sound of water running in the sink, a low-tempo throb from the lobby DJ vibrating the stall where they hide. Stooping to meet her upturned face, his back almost bent in two; her leg flung around his waist so he can touch the bare skin of her inner thigh. Everything so agonizingly familiar: how cool her lips and sharp her tongue, the strange way they always fit together despite their different sizes. Realizing that nothing again will ever be the same.
He cried as he kissed her.
Waking up on that air mattress next to Claudia, knowing what he knew and she didn’t, was a special sort of torture. For the first time since August, he was thankful for Claudia’s job and the merciful reprieve that her early departure for work gave him. And she was going to be late coming home, too—she’d e-mailed him that she was dropping by RC’s house after school—which gave him enough time to banish both the remorse and the exhilaration and settle himself into a Zen sort of state where each moment existed in a vacuum, divorced from the past and the future. Enough time to gather up his remaining fortitude and generate the best distraction that he could: cooking dinner for Claudia. (A distraction for himself? Or her? Perhaps both, he decided.)
He rose around four. Showered and dressed. Drank two cups of coffee, then a beer to calm his nerves. Foraged in the fridge and cobbled together a gourmet feast, a greatest-hits collection composed of Claudia’s favorites: salmon in shallot-mustard sauce, roasted butternut squash soup, grilled asparagus with lemon aoli. He put a Flaming Lips CD in the stereo and then tuned it out completely as he cooked. The onion browned in the bottom of the soup pot; the food processor emulsified the eggs into a thick cream as he slowly added in a cup of olive oil; the roasting squash sizzled in the oven. He almost felt OK. And then he didn’t feel OK at all.
Come to Paris with me.
He looked in the freezer again, discovered a bag of frozen blackberries, threw together a berry crumble. He set the table for two, but not with the good china; opened a bottle of wine, but not the Pinot Blanc that they’d bought in Santa Barbara and were saving for a special occasion. He didn’t it want it to be obvious that something had shifted.
He drank another beer and stirred his soup with a broken wooden spoon. By the time Claudia’s keys rattled in the lock, he’d finally taken the edge off his agitation and settled into a mild buzz, so that when she appeared in the kitchen he was able to look at her straight on and offer what felt like a sixty-three percent genuine grin.
“Hi,” he said. “How was your day?”
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the exultant smile that Claudia offered him in return. She was wearing her usual conservative teacher outfit—knee-length skirt, average heels, cardigan sweater over a blouse—but she looked different than she had when she left that morning. More pulled together, maybe, even a half inch taller. Her face was flushed; her eyes, usually a dark hazel, were a vivid green. She was radiant, as if she’d just claimed some victory; or maybe just had a roll in the sack. A vague stir of hopeful desire passed across him.
She stood there in the kitchen doorway, silhouetted by the lights of the dining room, holding her book bag in one hand and her purse in the other. “We can stop worrying,” she announced. “About everything. I got a directing job. I’m going to make another movie.”
The meeting with Evanovich—he’d forgotten all about it. Evanovich is going to make her movie after all? For a moment, he thought she was lying; that she had somehow sussed out his misbehavior of the previous evening and had come up with this deception to disarm him. And then he hated himself for doubting her. Of course Evanovich wants to make her film! All the old familiar faith in his wife flooded back, and he was almost dizzy with love and pride and shame. For just an instant, it seemed possible that the last twenty-four hours could be entirely erased; that the last three months could be rewound like a faulty film spool, and they might find themselves back in early July, with possibility still spread out before them, the two of them poised to take on the world.
He stepped forward, wooden spoon still in his hand, ready to gather Claudia in a celebratory embrace, ready to disavow Aoki once and for all. “The human trafficking script? He’s going to make it!”
Claudia hesitated. “Not exactly,” she said. “No.”
Butternut-squash puree was dripping off the spoon and onto the floor. He cupped his hand underneath it and turned back to the stove. “What is it, then, a different film?” he said, not quite understanding.
She dropped her purse and book bag on the kitchen table and smiled again. “It’s a comedy, called Quintessence. It’s a go film, and he needed a director.”
The garlic for the sauce was burning; he scraped at the sauté pan with the dirty soupspoon, trying to salvage the least charred bits. Something about Claudia’s reaction felt suspect, slightly forced. “What’s it about?”
Claudia rummaged in her book bag and pulled out a script in a pristine red cover. She tossed it on the t
able. “Kind of a … high-concept romance,” she said, staring down at it. “It needs a little work, but it’s got a lot of promise. With a strong actress, I could really say something about gender roles in the modern age. It could be my … my Working Girl.”
Jeremy put down the spoon and picked up the script. “That’s so great,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
She kissed him on the cheek and walked to the sink to wash her hands. “I know! Preproduction starts in a few weeks, so I’ll be quitting Ennis Gates soon. And once the checks start rolling in you’ll be able to quit your job too. That’s what you want, right?” She turned to smile at him.
“Unbelievable,” he repeated. It was unbelievable; something about the whole scenario didn’t quite feel real to him, but maybe that was just because of his blurry mental state. He opened the script and flipped through it, half expecting the pages to be blank. “So I guess you didn’t have to worry about Penelope’s midterm report card after all. Or did her dad not receive it yet?”
“Oh,” Claudia said, her voice growing fainter. “No, they went out a few weeks ago.”
“So he doesn’t blame you for the fact that she’s flunking your class?” Jeremy glanced down at the script and read the last page.
BETH
rows frantically, the five babies in their life vests cooing with excitement as seawater splashes their faces. She docks alongside the sailboat just as MARK comes aboveboard. His dog barks frantically at them.
MARK
What are you doing here?
BETH
Before you sail away …. I just needed to
say—you were right.
(off MARKS skepticism)
I see now that my priorities were all
wrong. Why do I need big dreams about
changing the world when my family is
already this big? So I’m giving up my
architecture practice to stay at home
with my kids. That’s enough for me. I
was thinking I’d open a day-care center
in the house.
(beat)
But I could really use some help from a
professional. Will you give me a second
chance?
MARK
looks out at the Golden Gate Bridge, then flings an anchor overboard. He leaps over to her rowboat.
MARK
Beth, you know I’ll always be your Manny.
He holds her in one arm, hugs a child with the other. MARK and BETH kiss as we pull back to see the sun setting over the San Francisco skyline.
THE END
That was enough. Jeremy dropped the script quickly, as if the execrable dialogue might infect him, just in time to see Claudia’s face turn a curious shade of violet.
“Right. No. Yeah. Circumstances changed,” she mumbled. “So what’s for dinner?”
Lying did not come naturally to Claudia. She leaned down and took off her shoes, unwilling to meet Jeremy’s eyes. He closed the script and stared at her, understanding that something critical was going unsaid. “Wait. You didn’t flunk her?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Claudia wandered over to the stove, her back to him. “I smell fish?”
“Did you … ?” He didn’t finish his sentence, already understanding how the whole scenario had played itself out. The good grade, a bribe to the father; the script, his wife’s reward. She’d sold out—for this piece of crap? He couldn’t fathom why.
He looked up at Claudia, who had turned to measure his reaction. She leaned back against the stove and twisted her engagement ring back and forth, as if it trying to loosen it on her finger. Or maybe testing to make sure it still fit. She’s doing this for me. He suddenly understood. Somehow, this is intended for me. He wanted to throw up, finally feeling his hangover kick in for the first time that day.
“Yeah, salmon,” he said, instead.
“Yum,” Claudia peered in the oven. “Oh, the kind I like, with the mustard sauce?”
Jeremy looked down at the table, set for a romantic dinner for two people he didn’t know anymore. Who was he kidding? Even without the special wine and good china, it was all so obvious; if Claudia hadn’t been so distracted by her news, she’d have known instantly what had happened the night before. All that was missing was candles and a big rose bouquet with a card that read: I betrayed you. Don’t be mad, OK? He wished he’d stayed in bed instead of cooking up this charade; he wished he could just go back to bed now and sleep the rest of his life away.
Come to Paris with me.
He could hear that annoying dripping again, under the floorboards, and Claudia’s careful breathing as she stared, for far too long, into the oven. His soup had come to a high boil, burping orange droplets of squash goo all over the stovetop.
He walked over and turned the burner off. “Yes,” he said. “I made it for you.”
Claudia
“HELLO, STRANGER!”
Claudia paused, coffee in hand, as Brenda lurched down the length of the teacher’s lounge to catch up with her. Brenda’s hemp tote had swollen over the course of the semester, spilling over into new bags, so that now three amorphous lumps hung from her shoulders, each more distended than the last. Their combined weight forced Brenda to walk with the shuffling gait of a prisoner in full-body chains. Claudia checked her watch impatiently—she had only half an hour before her senior seminar began.
Brenda arrived by Claudia’s side, groaning, and dropped her bags on the floor. “I swear the parents should be paying for my chiropractic bills,” she muttered. She peered into the pastry box that sat on the counter next to the coffee machine and selected a cranberry muffin, taking a bite. “Ew. Vegan. Must have come from the Hoyts.” She glared at the offending lump in her hand and then held the remains out to Claudia. “Want the rest? I’m not going to waste my calories.”
“I’m not hungry.” Claudia squirted a packet of creamer into her coffee and stirred it. She glanced over to the tables, where Jim Phillips (Gym) was mixing protein powder into a thermos of nonfat milk while flipping through a Runner’s World, and quiet Hannah Baumberg (Classic Literature) sat underlining passages in Jude the Obscure. Evelyn Johnson (Political Systems) lay back on a couch with a student essay tented over her face, her orthopedic shoes dangling over the arm of the couch as her feet flexed back and forth.
“I swear you’re the only new teacher to lose weight during her first semester here.” Brenda took another bite of the muffin, made a face, and kept chewing. “You’re looking skinny.”
“Let me guess.” Evelyn lifted the term paper from her face and peered over the back of the couch at them. “The brats have given you an ulcer. My first year here I spent a fortune on Xanax. Would pop two with breakfast every morning, another two for lunch.”
Claudia’s coffee tasted like wet ash. She steeled herself and drank it anyway, desperately in need of the extra caffeine jolt. “It’s not that. I needed to drop a few pounds anyway.” Brenda raised a questioning eyebrow. “Really, I’m fine,” Claudia reiterated, although she didn’t particularly feel fine today. This should have been her day of triumph—the beginning of a promising new chapter in her life, and the end of her brief tenure at Ennis Gates—but she’d been in a foul mood since she woke up that morning. Maybe it had something to do with dinner with Jeremy the night before, which seemed intended as some sort of mutual reconciliation and yet had been dominated by a freighted silence, as if the number of subjects they were afraid to discuss now officially outweighed the safe ones. They’d gulped down Jeremy’s salmon in less than ten minutes, and, rather than talking about the events of the previous twenty-four hours, they rehashed a debate about replacing the damaged bathroom linoleum with subway tile. Finally, they gave up any pretense of romance and ate dessert in front of the television set. Jeremy passed out on the couch by nine, and Claudia let him stay there, while she moved to the air mattress to sleep alone.
She didn’t ask what had happened with Aoki; she didn’t want to know. He’s h
ere, isn’t he? she’d told herself. That’s what’s important. We’ll figure out the rest with time. Or so she tried to convince herself as she lay sleepless on the mattress, in the same room as her husband and yet a world apart.
Brenda had opened the fridge and was peering in. “I also saw a fruit salad in here somewhere, if you’re doing the dieting thing, although I really don’t think you need to be,” she offered.
“That fruit is mine,” called Jim Phillips from across the room. He lifted a finger and waggled it in reproach. “And I would appreciate it if you’d stop eating my lunches, Brenda. I’m on a special diet for my ultra-marathon.”
Claudia began to edge her way toward the door. “Sorry.” Brenda rolled her eyes at Claudia, following her toward the exit. “Anyway, I wanted to confab with you before the school board meeting this week. I think the teachers need to present a united front against this new fascistic code of conduct the administration wants to implement. I’m sorry, but this is supposed to be a liberal arts school, don’t you agree?”
Claudia glanced at the clock on the wall again. The minutes were disappearing fast; she wanted to check her e-mail before class began to see if Samuel Evanovich had responded. Codes of conduct—thank God she’d never have to worry about the administrative arcana of high school teaching again, or about kissing the asses of her kid’s meddlesome parents. She almost felt sorry for Brenda and the rest of the teachers, trapped in a world where these banal worries were paramount. “I’d love to talk but I’ve got to get to class,” she said. “Maybe later?”
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