The Rest of Us: A Novel (31 page)

“Who’s Kate?”

“She’s a friend of mine—I have a weird feeling about her and Adán. I don’t like how cozy they are when we go over there. She has so many kids, and he kept picking them up and playing hide-and-seek, and running around and shouting like he was at his own first-grade birthday party. It was a completely different man from the one who agreed I was going to have my tubes tied. And when he talks about her it’s always with this sympathy, how hard it is for her raising the kids alone, and how sad they no longer have their father.”

“How did he die?”

“He didn’t die, he ran off. He’s sailing his yacht somewhere in South America with a twenty-year-old, his former assistant. Sad for the kids, but Kate’s not hurting for money—she seems to have more now than before. So I don’t know why Adán has to take on the weight of it. She looks pretty happy to me.” Hallie leaned closer. “I saw her car in the parking lot, and I pulled over to search it for evidence. Not everything—just the glove compartment, ashtray, those little pockets behind the seats. Not the trunk.”

I disapproved. “Did you find anything?”

“No. But I didn’t have all that much time. She’s an upstater but still, I don’t think she would leave the car unlocked if she was having a crown put in. Last time I cut it too close.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“A couple.”

It was then that I got concerned. When I asked her, half-kidding, if she’d also broken into Kate’s house, she said, “Not yet.”

“But that’s nuts. You shouldn’t be indulging this paranoia.”

She brushed me off, as if my advice was no longer relevant. “I know
how to settle it now. I’m going to throw a party. You’re coming. And you can even bring the old man. I’ve invited about thirty people.”

“To dinner?”

“Adán loves big parties. He’s always complaining our house ‘has no life.’ I told him to invite whomever he wanted, people from the company, friends of friends—I drew the line at kids. Anyone above the age of fifteen is fine. The more the better. If I’m going to catch him out doing something, I need a distracting environment where he’ll feel at ease. I even invited Ramón Marles.”

“Ramón from the East Village? You keep in touch with him?”

“No, but he got Adán drunk once. It’s this competitive Latin thing.”

I hesitated. “What exactly do you have planned? Maybe you should just discuss this with him.”

She got angry. “He’s my husband, of course I’ve discussed it. All he does is get pissed and then not speak to me for days. He says I’m trying to remove his balls. Well, fine, if nothing is going on then my plan will turn up nothing and he can have them back and we can all return to normal.”

I let it go, but secretly prayed she’d decide to cancel the idea before then.

•  •  •

Instead I received an invitation in the mail. We were to show up two Saturdays from now, wearing all white. Appropriate attire required for entry.

I told Rhinehart, who said, “A party! Sounds like fun.”

“No it doesn’t! It sounds dangerous and elaborate. She has some plan to catch her husband having an affair.”

Rhinehart scratched his chin, where he was growing a beard “to amuse the baby.” “Maybe it will turn out to be rather harmless. A big misunderstanding.”

I doubted it. I was seeing this entire situation through the veil of Hallie’s paranoia and general oddness and had a strong feeling the night would end badly. “I just can’t believe Adán would cheat on her.”

“I can. Even Ovid knew you couldn’t find one man in a thousand who believed virtue was its own reward.”

“I hope you’re not referring to yourself. With that new translator who’s been hanging around.”

He had finally found a legitimate translator to work on his books of poetry, an NYU grad student with diluted blue eyes, who always wore the same thing—fitted black pants, white blouse, and black sweater—an archivist’s uniform. She was slim, a little brittle looking, and serious. Her accent was barely discernible, more a slight hiss on the end of some words. They worked for hours together, three times a week, debating language choices—sometimes laughing.

Rhinehart was amused by my jealousy. He liked any emotional evidence he could relate to pregnancy hormones. “Marynia is the furthest thing from being interested in me. She’s engaged to an economics professor at CUNY. They’re getting married this winter. She wants to buy an apartment in Hoboken, but you can’t get much for your money there.”

“You seem to know a lot about her.”

“We can’t talk about poetry the entire time,” he said.

•  •  •

The closer we got to this dinner party, the more I began to dread it. To distract myself I began shooting at the Botanic Garden, bundles of roses that looked like bouquets. I found if I shot at midday and lit just the flower with a strobe, while underexposing the ambient light with the shutter, I got something that looked like a nineteenth-century Dutch painting. Highly stylized flowers illuminated against a background of midnight. In retouching, Evelyn brought up the whites in the petals, giving the entire image an eerie effect. So I was still thinking about Hallie. Those artfully manipulated arrangements were similar to ones I’d seen at her house.

T
he night of the party, we were running late. Close to six and Rhinehart was standing in his closet, still in his boxer shorts and socks. He brought out the white pants that I’d pressed, pointing at the crotch accusingly. “I forgot these were pleated! Pleats are too fey for this crowd. I’ll have to wear something else—these white jeans.”

“Those are too casual. It’s supposed to be formal.”

“Or these linen pants, then. I’ll need to iron them.”

“I hope you realize you’re not going there as a single man.” I got up from the couch, where I was sitting in my own white outfit, and followed him into the bedroom.

“I have a young, beautiful, pregnant wife. I need to look deserving.” He insisted on calling me his wife, saying he used it in the “emotional sense.”

I watched him remove the ironing board from the closet where I had just put it back, gently unfold it, and then return for the iron. I was getting increasingly impatient. Hallie had called me three times to tell me not to be late. “Maybe I should go, and you can meet me there,” I said.

This idea was evidently too ridiculous for him to comment on. He continued pressing the pants.

•  •  •

Rhinehart was behind the wheel and in the mood to reminisce. He was tramping around fondly in what I recalled to be a miserable afternoon, years ago, when he, Hallie, and I wandered around town
in an irritable state of indecision, searching for somewhere to have lunch. We couldn’t find the place Rhinehart had suggested, she blamed him for wasting our time with his “memory restaurant,” and the two of them began carping at each other so forcefully that I worried there was sexual tension between them. “If she and I were contemporaries,” Rhinehart was saying now, “she would have scared me out of my wits. Those mischievous eyes! She wouldn’t hesitate to pull a practical joke that would make you look foolish.”

I’d been keeping the two of them apart, not entirely by accident, and the idea of them seeing each other again was making me nervous. I hoped Hallie wouldn’t say anything unkind. Whenever she did, I initially dismissed it, but over time the comment worked on me with its souring strength. I had always depended on her opinion. Rhinehart’s, as well. They both had such a strong and polarizing pull, Hallie and Rhinehart, that I sometimes felt like a moon trying to orbit around two planets.

•  •  •

Hallie opened the door in a floor-length satin dress in an arresting, liquid red color, like the inside of a pomegranate, that made a V almost to the navel—flapper style—it showed off the delicate bones of her clavicle more than her cleavage, which was minimal. She’d had her hair cut in a glossy black sheet that came to her chin, with a few longer pieces in front. Even though I’d stopped comparing us years ago, next to her tonight, I was a milkmaid, a round-faced girl in a white cotton dress she’d mistakenly thought charming.

“Wow,” Rhinehart said breathlessly, clasping Hallie’s hands. “Look at you. You’ve grown into a beautiful woman.” Which made me cringe—it was something someone’s father would say.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve played it up for the party.” Leaning in to kiss me, she said, “Adán put up a fit because he wanted to wear his
black
tux. Nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Rhinehart said, “I think a black tux would have been perfect. The two of you set off against all the guests in wh—”

She interrupted in a cooing voice. “Come, I want to show you off. You’re famous in this crowd—they like to think of themselves as intellectuals just because they read
The New Yorker.
And Adán’s assistant has been dying to meet you. She’s a poet, too, evidently.” She linked his arm. “Terry must still be jealous over us. That’s why she keeps you hidden away.” I started to follow them, and she pointed to the kitchen, as you would to a dog. “Go tell Win to send around another tray of mushroom mousse.” Her look said she was angry I had arrived so late.

I watched them head towards the vaulted living room, where the guests crowded like a flock of trapped doves. Staring, I tripped on the corner of a rug and almost fell down on my stomach. I’d become so clumsy lately. Something to do with the excess fluid in the joints. I repressed a wave of self-pity.

In the kitchen, Win was dressed in a lurid purple pantsuit and red apron—she was also exempt from the dress code. She was a big, coarse woman, and around her you felt crammed by her high-volume talk and the pressure to respond by laughing. She immediately got me on the subject of my pregnancy and its gastrointestinal effects. She had four children and a theory that the last boy was a depressive because she’d been going through a divorce and cried “all the damn time” while he was in utero. I didn’t like hearing this and let my attention wander to the darkened patio, where a waiter slouched against the garage smoking a cigarette, or a joint.

Hallie came rushing in minutes later. “Suspect numero uno hasn’t showed.”

I arched my eyebrows to indicate Win, who was standing behind me.

“She’s in on it,” she said, steering me into the dining room.

•  •  •

The long table twinkled, as if dusted with frost, tiny points of light refracting off the cut crystal glassware and vases and high polished silver. For a moment I was overtaken, subsumed by that wordless excitement I’d experienced as a child when I saw delicately beautiful iridescent things: cellophane, paintings of fairy wings.

In front of each plate was a fingerbowl of pink roses and a white place card with a name. Hallie pointed to the far end of the table. “I’m sitting there.” Of the nearer end: “Adán’s here. I don’t want to put him on guard by sitting too close. He knows I have sharp eyes.” She pointed to the seat to his right. “Kate’s here, next to him. Obvious, I know, but there’s no other way to do it. I put suspect number two on his other side. Liza, his golfing buddy’s wife. I don’t think it’s her—he’s not into the freckly thing. But he seems to think I’m jealous of her, so he’ll believe he has a buffer for Kate. If it is Kate. And if she shows up—I don’t know why the hell she isn’t here yet.”

My place card was next to Liza’s. Rhinehart’s was miles away. “How come Rhinehart and I aren’t sitting next to each other?”

Hallie rolled her eyes. “Couples are never seated together. It’s bad etiquette. So here’s how it works.” She sat in Adán’s seat, at the head of the table, to demonstrate. “This is the corner he’ll be sharing with Kate”—she waved her hand above that area, like a magician. “If he wants to touch her in secret—and believe me, if he’s fucking her, he’ll want to touch her in secret—he will have to stick his hand underneath the table here, bypassing the table leg and these weird little decorative things, to get to her knee, thigh, crotch, anywhere on her lap. He will have to do this while
not looking at his hand.
So here’s the genius—” In the flickering light, her eyes looked manic. “I’ve put a black substance, a marking oil—it took me forever to get the consistency right, it’s sort of like thick ink—on the leg of the table that he shares with Kate, and underneath the table here, along the diagonal path from his body to hers. If his hand is reaching for her there’s no way he can avoid brushing against the oil somewhere, and once he touches her, the evidence will be all over her
white
dress, wherever he put his hand.”

She stood up, triumphant. “I even extended it over on her side in case she reaches for him. I didn’t bother with Liza’s side.”

I was horrified. “Where did you come up with this?”

“I read about some Brazilian society women who did it with white powder to catch a man playing footsie. My idea’s better.”

She pointed to my seat, which was diagonally to his left. “You’re
there so you can overhear any conversation and watch their body language. I put a bore on your other side so you won’t get distracted.”

I rubbed my back, which was starting to ache. “I’m against this plan. If you’re going to make me do it, then at least put Rhinehart next to me. He’s the only person I know here.”

“Will you stop with that? It took me over a week to come up with the seating chart!”

I crossed my arms, annoyed, and she sighed. “All right, I guess I can put him across from you, is that good enough? He doesn’t know anything, does he?”

“No,” I lied.

“This is better anyway,” she said switching the cards. “Adán will be less suspicious of you then. And it puts that tramp Lindsay on Rhinehart’s other side—he’s out talking to her now. Serves you right for making such a big deal about it.” She inched over the flower arrangement so that I could have a better view of Adán’s seat.

Win stuck her head in the dining room and announced that dinner would be ready in ten minutes and to start getting everyone to the table. In the living room, I found Rhinehart, who was talking to a dark-haired, small-boned girl with ferrety little brows. She was in a tight white dress with lace over the cleavage. I came up to them and Rhinehart encircled my thick waist.