“Are we paying you to stand around?” she says.
He grins again. What a wiseguy! Marjorie thinks, and decides she will insist that Gary fire him. Surely Phong has relatives, dozens of them, who could work here.
“You tell me,” Justin says. His voice has a flat affectless quality that disturbs her. “I’ll do whatever you want. Boss.”
“Honestly,” Marjorie says.
She gathers her things—magazines, bottled water, suntan oil—gets up, and walks away, aware of his eyes following her across the long expanse of green yard. There are neat lines where he’s mowed. She hopes her bathing suit bottom isn’t riding up on her, hopes that her thighs aren’t jiggling at all, hopes that he understands exactly what kind of person she is.
MARJORIE AND GARY are eating on the patio. This summer, she has decided to serve only salads for dinner, and to eat out here whenever they can. She has citronella candles burning, the too bright outside light off. The salads tonight are mozzarella with fresh tomato and basil, and mixed greens with red onion and cannellini beans. There is sourdough bread, extra virgin olive oil, the pepper mill, all spread out on the table between Marjorie and Gary. Already Marjorie has had too much wine. She isn’t drunk, but she is light-headed in a pleasant way.
“That boy,” she says. “I don’t like him.”
One of the reasons she has kept the light out here off is so Gary won’t sit and read the newspaper while they eat.
“Which boy?” Gary says. His white golf shirt seems to glow in the candlelight.
“Jason, Justin, whoever he is,” Marjorie says, knowing it’s Justin but wanting to demean him, even here with Gary. “He gives me the creeps.”
“He’s only charging five dollars an hour,” Gary says.
“I liked Phong,” Marjorie says. She is pouting a little; all that wine.
“Phong has some awful cancer,” Gary says. “Bone cancer, I think. He certainly can’t come and cut our grass with something like that.”
She knows why they’ve lost Phong. She sent a fruit basket to his house.
From the yard next door, those children scream and play.
“Don’t they ever go to bed?” Gary says, his voice hushed. “They’re so . . .” He struggles for the word. “Untended,” he says finally.
Gary’s hair is silver, cut short. He is tall and lean, like he always has been, and he plays tennis and golf. Five years ago he quit smoking. He is aging well, Marjorie thinks, pleased.
It’s just for the summer,” Gary is saying.
“He’s the sort of boy who will break into the house and kill us while we sleep,” Marjorie says. She doesn’t really believe this. But how can she tell Gary her real problem with the boy? “Like those Menendez brothers,” she adds.
Gary laughs at her, affectionately. Even though she went to Wellesley and got a degree in English, he has always seen her as a scatterbrain. It charms him, this image of her.
“They killed their own parents,” he says, reaching across all the food for her hand. “Not someone else’s.”
He follows her hand like it’s a lifeline out of deep water, follows it around the table, holding on tight, until he is at her side. Then he lets go, and moves his hands onto her shoulders so that he can turn her toward him, then moves them inside her button down shirt and inside her bra until he finds each nipple. He is kissing her too, urging her off her chair down onto the stone patio.
“There are berries,” Marjorie says. “For dessert.”
Gary laughs. He is tugging on the zipper of his shorts.
“Here?” Marjorie whispers. “Not here.” But she is taking off her own shirt and shorts and underwear.
From next door, a woman’s voice, high, too shrill: “Jessica! Jessica!”
Gary has found his way inside her. Marjorie sees his tanned back, his white buttocks, clear in the candlelight.
“Jessica!”
The stone patio is hard and cold on Marjorie’s back. Above her the stars seem to drip from the sky, toward her. She hears herself sigh. She closes her eyes. The silly tufts of gray hair that have sprouted on his shoulders and back in his middle age tickle her hands when she moves them there.
“Oooh,” Gary whispers into her ear, his breath sharp with red onion. “I’m glad the little girls are having fun too.”
Of course they aren’t; one of them seems to be lost. But Marjorie doesn’t care. She lifts her hips up to meet her husband.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING Bonnie stops in for coffee. Like her mother, Bonnie is small boned, wiry. Her hair is the same dark blond Marjorie’s once was; now Marjorie gets hers frosted so that it is more of a silvery blond. They both wear it in a blunt cut, collarbone length, with headbands or pulled back in ponytails, which is what they both have today. People used to think they were sisters.