Suddenly Calvin threw the dishcloth he was holding on the floor. “You think just because you can afford to speculate about this, everyone can,” he said, “when the truth is, most people can’t. Most people on this planet, we never feel safe and we never feel free. All we feel is scared.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Eva said, covering her eyes with her hands.
“Venice was a Fascist stronghold under Mussolini,” Bruce said. “In ’43 the city willingly handed over its Jews to the Germans.”
Eva turned to him. “What do you mean by that? Why did you say that?”
“I’m just agreeing with you that we shouldn’t pretend we can count on anything. Houses are Jake’s business, money is mine. If I didn’t believe I could protect wealth, I’d be out of a job. And I can do that. I can protect wealth. But I can’t protect people. Not even wealthy people.”
“You don’t understand what Eva’s saying,” Min said. “In Venice you’re immersed in the past, so the present recedes. Now, I’m not saying the history of Venice isn’t bad—a lot of it is horrible—and yet when you’re in such an old place, you don’t feel the pull of the immediate so much, or you feel it differently, maybe because you experience the past, even the violent past, as art, and that gives you a clearer perspective.”
“Sex and art are what have always drawn foreigners to Italy,” Aaron said. “The Brits who settled in Florence, for instance, they went because they thought that with all that sex and art they’d be freer than at home. And they were freer, until the Fascists came in, and even after that, some of them stayed. Berenson stayed. But it was dangerous.”
“Do you think I don’t know all this?” Eva said. “Do you think I don’t think about this every hour of every day? Having money didn’t save anyone from the gas chambers. The ones who escaped were the ones who saw the writing on the wall.”
“No, they had to have money, too,” Calvin said. “It wasn’t enough to see the writing on the wall. Escaping isn’t an option in ghettos. It wasn’t then for Jews and it isn’t now for blacks.”
“That’s comparing apples and oranges,” Aaron said.
“How? You don’t know what it’s like being a black man today. Every time I go out, every time I see a cop, I worry about getting shot.”
“This conversation isn’t getting us anywhere,” Min said.
“On the contrary, it’s getting us somewhere,” Jake said. “Just not somewhere any of us wants to go.”
22
“Rachel thinks I’m having an affair with Aaron,” Sandra said.
“She told you that?” Bruce said.
“She told all of us when we were outside smoking pot,” Sandra said. “You did realize we were smoking pot, didn’t you?”
“It would have been hard not to. Why didn’t you just go over to Grady’s?”
“He claims he’s allergic to smoke.” Sandra brushed back her hair so that it wouldn’t fall into Bruce’s mouth. It was five in the afternoon and they were lying, entangled and fully clothed, on one of the twin beds in Grady’s guest room. An hour earlier, Bruce had told Eva he was going out to get some WD-40. He hadn’t specified where he was planning to get the WD-40, or even that he was planning to buy a new can as opposed to borrowing the old one that Sandra had texted him to say she’d found in Grady’s garage. Though the WD-40 might be a ruse, it wasn’t a lie, a distinction Bruce still considered essential to the maintenance of his honor.
“Can you hoist yourself off me for a sec?” Sandra said. “My spine is going numb.”
He rolled to the left. “How’s that?”
“Oh, thank God. I can breathe again.”
He laughed. “Tell me honestly, do you think we’re too old to be doing this?”
“On a bed this narrow, yes.”
“Do you want to get up?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She kissed the veined top of his hand. He kissed each of her knuckles, then the tips of her fingers, then the phone she was clutching in anticipation of the text Grady had promised to send when his car was twenty minutes from the house. “It’s strange, I remember this feeling so vividly from when I was a teenager,” she said. “My grandmother would be out, and I’d have a boy over, and as the hour of her return approached—my grandmother was famously terrifying—the boy would start to get fidgety and want to leave, only I wouldn’t let him. I’d make him stay.”
“That’s where I’m different. I want to stay.”
“How does it feel, wanting that?”
Bruce considered the question. “Well, there’s a rush, certainly. The element of risk. Gets the adrenaline going. Not to mention the fact that I never get enough time with you, and so I’m always thinking I should savor every second, only how can you savor every second when every second you’re worrying about savoring every second?”
“It’s the being-in-love paradox.”
“Will it pass? Is it just a function of the newness of the thing, or that it’s … I can’t think of the right word.”
“Transgressive? Perilous?”
“Something like that.”
“I wish I could tell you. I only had two affairs while I was married to Rico, and they weren’t like this. They were crimes of opportunity.”
“What about Aaron?”
“He was never an opportunity. That’s why I was so blown away when Rachel said what she did. I mean, in retrospect I can see why she thought so, given that I spend so much time alone with him. And yet when she actually came out with it … I don’t know, maybe it was because I was stoned, but I was just floored. Now I wonder if my reaction was too authentic, if I should have taken advantage of the situation and pretended she’d hit a nerve.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s to our benefit. Remember, Min heard the whole thing, and you can bet she’ll report it all to Eva. It will put her off the scent.”
“You’re assuming she’s on the scent. She’s not. It would never occur to her that I could have an affair. That’s my doing as much as hers, by the way.”
“So are you saying that since you got married, you’ve never—”
“Not until now.”
“Not even with Min?”
“Min! What on earth would make you think that?”
“Just something she said that suggested she knew certain … details.”
“Anything Min knows, she knows from Eva.”
“Are you sure? You can trust me. I hope you trust me.”
“Hold on, what exactly are we talking about?”
“OK, I’ll tell, but you have to promise not to look at me while I’m saying it, otherwise I might burst out laughing. When I get embarrassed, I laugh. I can’t help it.”
“I’ll close my eyes. There, they’re closed.”
“OK, deep breath. According to Min, you and Eva don’t have intercourse. And the reason you don’t have intercourse is that she has a small vagina, and you have a larger-than-average penis, and so intercourse isn’t—well—on the menu.”
Bruce opened his eyes. “Oh, my,” he said. “So it’s true that women will talk about anything.”
Sandra was laughing now. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The point is, I wouldn’t have paid any attention if I hadn’t had firsthand experience of your—well—person.”
“My person?”
“People say that. My grandmother did.”
“It’s true what Min said about Eva’s … person. For a long time it was a great worry to her. Now she doesn’t seem to be as bothered by it.”
“So with me, this is the first time … in all these years …”
He nodded.
She put her hands on his cheeks. “Oh, Bruce! Oh, I’m touched. Flattered. Probably I shouldn’t be. Oh, but you poor baby. How does it feel?”
“I think I’ve been fairly vocal about how it feels.”
“No, what I mean is, now that you’ve rediscovered it, how does it feel to look back on all
those years you went without?”
“You mean do I regret them? I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I don’t understand regret, maybe because my career has taught me to buy when everyone else is selling.”
“In other words, when you finally get something you’ve never had, you value it more than if you’d had it all along.”
“I don’t know. Having not had it all along, I don’t know what having it all along feels like.”
“You know, in a funny way we owe all this to Eva. I mean, if she hadn’t gone to Venice, you wouldn’t have gone that night to Aaron and Rachel’s for dinner. And if you hadn’t gone that night to Aaron and Rachel’s for dinner—”
“We wouldn’t be here now.”
“It does seem like serendipity, doesn’t it?”
“Probability theory suggests the opposite—that what looks like a plan is really just coincidence. Like all the numerological stuff people were spouting after 9/11, as if the numbers themselves were significant, when in fact you could do the same thing with any two numbers. It’s cooking the books.”
“I wonder what a cooked book would taste like. Probably it would depend on the book.”
“You could write a story about it for Aaron.”
“With whom, by the way, I’m not sleeping. With whom I’ve never slept. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. And even if you were, it wouldn’t be any of my business.”
“Yes, it would.”
“No, it wouldn’t. You’re a free agent now. You can do what you want.”
“I am doing what I want. And I think we’ve moved past the point where you can say I’m a free agent.”
A ping sounded, startling Sandra into dropping her phone, which fell to the carpeted floor. “Oh, but it’s not mine,” she said after she picked it up. “It must be yours.”
Bruce pulled his phone from his pocket and read the text. “It’s Eva. She’s asking where I’ve got to.”
“In that case you’d better scoot. I wonder why Grady hasn’t texted. He must be caught in traffic. Either that or he’s forgotten. Under the best of circumstances he’s forgetful, and then when you factor in the jet lag—”
“Oh, that reminds me—that’s something I need to warn you about. When you invited Grady and his friend to dinner tonight, Eva wasn’t exactly pleased about it.”
“Why not? I thought she thought of Grady as family.”
“She does. That’s not the issue. The issue is that you didn’t ask her first.”
“Didn’t I?”
“So it seems. I’m not as sensitive to these niceties as she is.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry. Should I apologize? No, I’d better not, otherwise she might suspect you told me. And yet, now that I think about, she’s right, I should have asked her, just as I shouldn’t have asked if I could stay the night that night.”
“Funnily enough, that came up in the conversation, too. Min brought it up. Don’t worry, I took the rap. I said it was my doing, which it was. I wanted you there. I suppose Eva must have told Min.”
“No, she didn’t. I did. It was when we were out having our breath of … fresh air. Of course, when I mentioned it, I assumed she already knew, and so when she let slip that she didn’t, I guess I took advantage of the situation. I went on a fishing expedition, as they say, in the course of which I learned that she’s jealous of me, that she thinks I’m out to steal Eva away from her.”
“Good. Let her think that.”
“But Bruce, she’s right. What I mean is, I’m not just pretending with Eva. I really have been courting her—and not just as a strategy, but because I feel a real connection with her. Is that terribly hypocritical of me?”
“There’s no law that says you’re not allowed to like Eva. And besides, it’s not like you’re lying to anyone. You’re just … not stopping Min from barking up a certain tree.”
“Even though we may not be lying, we’re being deceitful. There’s no getting around that.”
“Deception is often practiced for the purpose of protection.”
“But for how long? How long can you keep that up?”
Two pings sounded at once. They looked at their phones.
“It’s Grady.”
“It’s Eva again.”
“You’d better go.”
“I’d better go.”
“Where have you been? What kept you?”
“I told you, I was getting some WD-40.”
“You didn’t answer my texts and your phone kept going to voicemail. For all I knew you could have been in a car accident.”
“You’re overreacting. I was only gone forty-five minutes.”
“You were gone an hour and seventeen minutes. And in the meantime they’ve arrived. Early.”
“Who’s arrived?”
“Clydie—and she’s brought along two houseguests. Naturally, she didn’t let me know in advance. What is this—why does everyone seem to think they can bring people to my dinners without asking me?”
“Have you told Calvin?”
“Of course I have, and he’s not pleased. I mean, two extra guests he can handle. But four!”
A screeching sounded. “God, that door,” Eva said. “Look, you’d better go and change. Give me the WD-40, I’ll have Jake spray it on.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t find any WD-40. That’s why I was gone so long. I tried three different places. Obviously there’s been a rush on it.”
Eva’s phone vibrated. “It’s Sandra. Grady’s just back, but he wants to take a shower first. They’ll be another half hour. That’s lucky, it’ll buy Calvin some time. Oh, and we have to reset the table. Jake, thank God!”
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry to ask you to do this, but I’ve got Clydie in the living room, and Pablo and Min’s boss—I can’t remember her name. Which means we have to add two more places to the table, which means changing the china. I used the Royal Copenhagen and I’ve only got ten settings of that, so it’ll have to be the stuff from Pottery Barn. Could you do it for me, Jake?”
“Hold on, what are Pablo and Indira doing here?”
“Clydie brought them. What’s her name again?”
“Indira.”
“Indira. Actually, since you know her, why don’t you go in? Bruce has to shower. He was gone an hour and a half looking for WD-40 and not finding it.”
“What about the table?”
“I’ll take care of the table. Oh, this is madness!”
“It’s your own fault,” Bruce said. “You know what Clydie’s like.”
“Yes, everything’s my fault, including your ridiculous last-minute wild goose chase after WD-40.”
“Only because you wouldn’t shut up about the door hinge.”
“What’s going on? What’s the matter?” Min asked from the stairs.
“Go into the living room with Jake. Your boss is here, with Pablo and Clydie.”
“Indira? Why?”
“She and Pablo are staying the weekend with Clydie. I’m getting very tired of explaining this over and over, so please, just go in and keep them amused while Bruce showers and I reset the table.”
Eva and Bruce left, one through the door to the kitchen, the other up the stairs. “Indira and Pablo?” Min said.
“So it seems,” Jake said. “After you.”
They put on smiles only once they were in the living room. From the sofa on which she was sitting with Indira, Clydie peered up at them through her huge glasses. Rachel and Aaron sat opposite them, on armchairs. Pablo was inspecting things.
“Have I met you?” Clydie said to Min.
“Yes, you have,” Min said brightly. “I’m Min Marable. I was with Indira the day we came by to see your apartment.”
“Oh, of course. With Pablo. The night of the long Canalettos.”
“Min, this is a surprise,” Indira said. “No one told me you’d be here.”
“I’m often here,” Min said. “Eva is my best friend.”
“I m
ust say, Jake, this is an original look,” Pablo said, examining the pinned-up curtains.
“Oh, that’s not a look,” Rachel said. “Eva just keeps them like that so the dogs can’t get at them. When they hear other dogs barking, they lunge at the windows and try to tear through the curtains. If you look closely, you can see the teeth marks.”
“What kind of dogs are they?” Indira asked.
“Bedlington terriers,” Min said. “They’re in the kitchen.”
“Aren’t they the ones that look like barracudas?” Clydie asked.
“More often they’re said to look like lambs,” Aaron said.
“They’re barracudas,” Clydie said firmly.
“I wonder if there’s an article in this,” Min said. “Decorating that’s pet safe.”
Clydie said, “I remember when we visited Nancy Lancaster once—I can’t remember which of her houses it was, she had so many—Ditchley, I think—and of course, you know, she had all those dogs. And there was dog hair everywhere, and they’d pissed on all the furniture. She’d had John Fowler make up these amazing little dog beds for them, with canopies, only they wouldn’t go near them. The dogs wouldn’t. They were always on the sofas, pissing.”
“She was famous for those dog beds,” Pablo said.
“Speaking of Nancy, I’ve been meaning to ask how Rose is doing. I haven’t seen her in ages.”
“I’m afraid she’s dead, Clydie. She died ten years ago.”
“Did she? Oh, well, that explains it. I ought to be dead myself.”
“Heaven forbid,” Aaron said.
“I mean it. I have no right to be as old as I am. I really have no idea why I’m still alive. I’m sure there are others more deserving of such longevity.”
“There’s an old Italian saying,” Jake said. “People who break your balls never die.”
“And who are you? I’m sure I know you.”
“I’m Pablo’s business partner. I was also at your apartment on the night of the long Canalettos.”
“Yes, I thought it was from Venice that I knew you. Back when Denise still had the palazzo. You were a lot younger, of course.”
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