Orient (30 page)

“No,” she said.

Gavril’s art dealer, Samuel Veiseler, entered the kitchen through the back door, still miming the act of wiping his feet on the mat. His suit was wrinkled from the two-hour drive from the city, and his red eyes were strained from handling the icy turnoffs after sundown. Beth shook his hand and offered him a drink. Luz heard his order—gin and Coke—and went about preparing one. It was no secret that Nathan Crimp wanted to leave his own gallery and join Gavril at Veiseler Projects. For all of her conspicuous rebellion, Luz recognized this as an opportunity to play the dutiful wife, and to Beth it seemed like she even managed to intensify her beauty, as if she could turn on her attractiveness with a switch—eyes wider, lips parted, her sweater slipping down just enough to present the contour of a breast. Beth stepped out of her way.

Nathan and Gavril emerged from the living room, bringing its loud voices with them. Gavril was holding a plate of figs dolloped with crab and sprigs of thyme. “I’m honored you could come,” he said to Samuel as he stumbled forward with his platter. “I’ll take you to the studio later and you can see what I’ve been working on. I’m still in the early stages, so we both have to use our imaginations.”

“I’ll come too,” Nathan interrupted. Only Beth caught the flinch in Gavril’s shoulders.

Nathan yanked at his tie, trying to unleash himself. Luz proceeded to straighten the knot. He kissed her forehead, and she pinched his sides. They somehow made even a simple display of affection seem holy in its intimacy and the rest of the world smaller for a moment than they were. Beth noticed that she and Nathan had the same light hair and skin color, that of a mildewed paperback novel. They were about the same height too, with the same thin bones that flared at the knuckles and joints (although Nathan suffered the lingering injuries of the rich: a bad back from horses, a bad stomach from too much foreign meat, a jittery nervous system from never having to wait in a line). For no conceivable reason, Beth imagined what her children would have looked like if Nathan had
been their father: small, nonspecific humans not unlike the drawing Shelley’s daughter had created on her iPad, beige slabs of human material with openings and hair in all the right places. Finishing her vodka, Beth forced herself to leave the kitchen to tend to the fire.

She used her father’s steel poker to flip the logs. Anthony Shepherd had known the art of keeping a fire going: Keep the logs moving. Use newsprint and kindling only at the base. Let the flames find their own way in. As she started crumpling a piece of newspaper, she discovered the
Suffolk Times
article on the Orient monster: “. . . elaborate hoax conducted against Plum Island, timed to its impending closure. Investigators believe the prank was orchestrated by area teenagers or environmental advocacy groups angry over the impact of the controversial animal disease center on soil, water, and wildlife.” She balled the page, along with news from farther away, which she discovered only as she prepared to burn it.
Spaceship on Mars, Chinese drilling in Angola, a new species of grasshopper discovered in Laos
—all of it so quick to light. There would be more tomorrow.

Isaiah passed her en route from the bathroom, saying hello to a few of the artists lounging on the sofa or clumped around the windowsills. The downstairs toilet was already groaning under the stress of too many flushes. Beth touched Isaiah’s arm.

“I have to ask a favor,” she said. “I have a friend coming who’s staying out here. He’s a kid.”

“Like how old?” Isaiah asked suspiciously, as if she had confused him for a willing babysitter.

“Like almost twenty. That’s still a kid to me.”

“The foster kid at what’s his name’s place?”

“Yes. At Paul Benchley’s. Can you just do me a favor and be nice to him? Not everyone here always is.”

“Vince and I heard about him from our neighbors,” Isaiah said. His dark hair was messily parted, as if by fingers instead of a comb. “We drove by the house he’s staying at and saw him dragging out bags of trash. He’s cute.”

“I’m just asking for you to be kind. He’s young, and I don’t want—”

“Luz to lay into him?” Isaiah nodded. “Of course I’ll be nice. When am I ever not? But Carson is coming, and I’m sure he’s bringing his own boy gang, so he won’t be the only kid. And honestly, Beth, have you taken a good look at—”

“Mills.”

“He looks like the type that can handle himself. Oh, and you may want to tell Gavril that I don’t mind seeing my collage above the toilet, but it’s going to fall apart if anyone showers in there. Paper is extremely sensitive to moisture.”

“I’m sure he’ll move it tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” Isaiah smirked. “We all live the lie for each other. Better you don’t leave it up. Last month our cleaning lady spent an hour Windexing one of Anne Shore’s Plexiglas paintings. ‘Meester Isaiah, I finally clean dirt off glass.’ And sure enough, she did. How do you fire someone for doing their job?”

Carson Fore preferred
entering a house by the front door, even though Gavril had taken pains to install battery-operated lawn lights leading around to the back to emphasize the view of his studio. Carson rang the doorbell. It was his nature to make a grand entrance. After Beth opened the door, he scurried into the foyer with a skullcap over his balding head, thick black glasses perched on his nose, a moth-holed coat already swirling off his shoulders, and rubber boots tracking frozen dirt on the runner.

“Hello, dear,” he said, hugging Beth. Carson was an urban landscape photographer beloved in the New York art community, a keeper of art world memories in more lurid, less prosperous times, and while he had no money to speak of, he did have friends, and he made himself a guest in their homes, sweeping in and overstaying and rearranging their bookcases and mementos, bringing a Victorian spirit more fitting to the houses than to their current occupants. (Even
his complexion was a shade of yellow-green that recalled the row houses in certain parts of London.) At present, he was overstaying at the house of a successful art adviser on Tabor Road, whom Gavril refused to invite for fear she’d pass out business cards.

“It’s practically Antarctic out there,” Carson said. “I thought we should all wear sleigh bells, and I worried I’d have to throw a few of the boys to the wolves like that wonderful bridal-party scene in
My Ántonia
.” The boys were behind him, crew cut acolytes in tight jackets who used Carson like a passport to enter the homes of artists they admired. There were four of them, and even though Carson listed their names as they entered, hovering an unsteady Parkinson’s hand over each of their heads, she hadn’t caught a single one. They were young and gay and the femininity of their teenage years had only recently hardened into the muscle of a competitive sexual economy. Their muscles met the demands of the city, and the city met the demands of their muscles.

Behind them appeared another visitor: Mills Chevern, holding a bottle of wine Paul must have given him. He was skinnier than Carson’s boys, less sculpted, but, for Beth, he was the first guest she was relieved to see all night.

“Wait, I don’t recognize this one,” Carson said, staring at him. “Maybe the wolves spit him back out.”

“He’s with me,” Beth said. Mills handed the bottle to her and nodded his head, lifting his chin as if to speak, but no words drifted from his lips.

“Okay, I’m shutting the door. Down the hallway,” she ordered. “Carson, please eat some of Gavril’s
jumari
. No one has touched it.”

“Can you blame them? I’m trying to stay alive, not give myself dysentery.” His voice traveled through the hallway and boomed in the living room. “God, Isaiah, you and your
lifetime companion
were supposed to pick us up. We ran here with wolves at our heels while you two were lip-synching to NPR.”

She turned to Mills, who was standing against the wall, a wool hat bunched over his heart. “I’m glad you decided to come,” she said.

“I said I would.”

“Well, there are a lot of new people here for you to meet. Don’t be scared. Come on.” She swept her arm around his shoulders and led him toward the noise.

After her second
sip of vodka, Beth decided it was unwise for guests to use the hot tub. She worried about finding towels for them, about their level of intoxication near the warm water, about the body fluids that might swirl in the jets come morning. Gavril hushed her, smoking a crumbling joint between his thumb and chubby pointer.

“When did you start smoking pot again?” she asked.

“Samuel rolled it. I couldn’t refuse,” he said, inhaling and straining to keep the smoke from escaping his lips. “Why don’t you join them in hot tub? Put on your swimsuit.”

She shook her head. Shelley’s daughter raced from under the kitchen table, a lighter in her hand. The little girl ran into the living room, offering to light people’s cigarettes. Finally, Luz took her up on the service, bending down to catch the thin blue flame. Luz walked into the kitchen and touched Beth on the shoulder. She took a drag and ashed in the sink.

“Shelley’s stoned and she’s breast-feeding like crazy,” she said. “Or maybe I’m stoned, and watching Shelley breast-feed is crazy. Are we going in or not?” She looked at them. “The hot tub.”

Gavril told her that he had to show Samuel his studio first and to go ahead without him.

“Do you want to borrow a swimsuit?” Beth asked her.

“No need,” Luz said. “Everyone here has seen me naked. After that, modesty is just a construct. Where’s Nathan?”

Nathan tapped the kitchen window with his wedding band and circled around to the door. He opened it halfway, beckoning them outside. His cheeks were red from the cold, and the skin around his eyebrows was as white as clay. As Beth stepped out onto the porch, the wind ripped through her dress, kiting it to the side.
The temperature must have dipped near zero by now. The hot tub steamed at full boil, and several bodies jumped and resettled in the mist.

“That house,” Nathan said, pointing across the lawn toward Magdalena’s cottage. “That little house with the little old dead woman inside.”

“I see it,” Luz said. “It’s adorable.”

Isaiah joined them, toweling off as he walked across the patio, his footsteps creating ice prints across the concrete. The hair on his arms swirled like the grain in split wood. He followed their gaze across the property line. “Whose place is that?” he asked. “There are no lights on.”

“It’s the woman you were talking about,” Nathan said to his wife. “The one who keeled over into her bees.”

“I didn’t know her,” Luz replied. “I’ve never been in there before.” She rubbed her arms and threw them around Beth for warmth, her forearm pressing against Beth’s breasts. Beth felt a surprise sensation at Luz’s touch, a stirring of blood like a lamp in a cave. If things had been different, if they were younger or still unmarried, she wondered if they might have been lovers. Maybe it would have been Luz she fell in love with, like Magdalena and her girlfriend, Molly. For a single freezing moment Beth wished she were still young enough to experiment, that she still possessed the capacity to explore. They shivered against each other, and Beth placed her hand on Luz’s fingers to keep her close.

“Is that house for sale?” Luz asked.

“Beth, you know more than me,” Gavril said. “Is it on the market?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh, Nathan, we should buy it.”

Nathan frowned. “We just bought a house. We already have more land than we need. Our backyard is full of holes. We spent millions of dollars to live in a construction site. We literally don’t have walls.”

“I could use it as my studio,” Luz said, squeezing Beth tightly, as if to enlist her support. “I’d paint it black. I’m sure we could afford it. It’s just a speck of a place. How much could it really go for?”

“That’s not the point,” Nathan said, shaking his head in a rare show of restraint.

Luz grunted. “The privileged must be circumspect when it comes to money because they’re conditioned to consider affluence a measure of their intelligence. People like me, people from nothing, we don’t have that hang-up. We just like to spend. There’s nothing I love more than when someone poor wins the lottery and five years later they’ve run through it and have to go back to waiting tables. Why does that shock anyone? That’s exactly what we were told to do—to treat money as something we weren’t meant to have.”

“Luz considers bankruptcy an aspiration. But let’s ask her when she gets there,” Nathan replied.

“I’ll never be bankrupt as long as I have you,” Luz sang deviously.

“Maybe we should buy it,” Gavril ventured.

“Gavril,” Beth snapped. “We don’t need it either.”

“What? It is next to our property. It is a smart investment to add to our land.”

Beth didn’t mention the faulty logic in Gavril’s premise—that the house they lived in didn’t belong to them. It belonged to Gail. This was her mother’s property, and she and Gavril were living on it, rent free, only temporarily. Did he actually think this house and its Sound-front acres were going to end up in his name? Even if they did stay out here permanently, it would be decades before Beth inherited the place.

“If you guys aren’t interested, I have a friend who’s been looking for a house just about that size.” Isaiah stepped onto the lawn with his cell phone to take a photograph. Beth felt a wave of protection for Magdalena’s tiny home, which had resisted as much as a fresh coat of paint for as long as she could remember. She fought the urge to grab Isaiah’s phone before it flashed. “The bigger houses are so overvalued this year. Vince and I had to bid way over price just to get ours.”

“We did too. Practically broke us,” Nathan said, as if it were a secret that his family bankrolled whatever he couldn’t afford on his own.

“This one’s perfect, because it looks like nothing,” Isaiah said.

“I want it,” Luz insisted.

“Are you drunk?” Nathan asked her.

“Maybe we all buy it together,” Gavril said, “and add it to our colony.”

The dark shape of an animal wavered across Magdalena’s porch, a cat or possum. The wind whistled in the gutters. These artists had fought so hard to leave the bland sinkholes of their beginnings, throwing their childhoods away to escape to the city, and now here they were, desperate to return to the suburbs, paying obscene amounts for the kinds of houses and neighborhoods that had trapped them in their youths. Beth imagined a perverse nightmare future: artists pushing lawn mowers, clogging supermarket aisles, running PTA bake-offs, bullying their boys and girls for low-batting-averages in Little League, attending church, singing in the choir. It was as if the whole system had finally caved in on itself, a picture inside a picture of what was supposed to be the way out.