"The fucking French."
The rhythms and patterns of the past came back to them, crept back, stealthily. They had talked like this in the exhilarating late-night boredom of people whose jobs meant nothing to them, on and on into the morning, at restaurants, on street corners. Had they done anything else? Yes, there had been those vague sexual encounters, less the products of desire than of opportunity.
One of these former flames standing around Margaret was now a gay activist who was occasionally quoted in the New York Times. Another was a Marxist film professor at a community college. Margaret had argued with him into the wee hours of many a morning, but she couldn't remember his name. She'd see him on cable TV once in a while over the years. (Thin enough to be a drug addict, she thought, but certainly not one. Perhaps he jogged. No, Marxists didn't jog.) The last in this group of past follies was now a very hot editor of lurid minimalist novels. His picture appeared regularly in the tabloids with club celebrities. He nodded at Margaret, then left the party with a thuggish young man in a large suit.
Margaret sat down at a little table and closed her eyes and tried to remember. What had they looked like, these lovers, as lovers? Had she liked them? The spin of statues in Prague came back to her. The man on the plane, breathing, human and close, came back to her.
She opened her eyes. Desire is a state of uneasiness. She had read that in Rameau's Niece. She was uneasy and stood up to go home.
"Margaret!"
It was Till. Margaret had forgotten that Till might be here. Now she watched Till approach. Please don't yell at me in front of all these people, she thought. Please don't tell them I hate Art Turner, the man who discovered me. Please go away.
"Margaret! I'm so glad to see you! I was hoping you'd be here."
Why? Margaret wondered. She put her hand to her cheek, where the tooth throbbed. Had Margaret been forgiven? Had time healed Till's wound? Or had Till been storing her anger and resentment for lo, these many months, and now, with a really well stocked larder of the stuff, she was sliding through the crowd to share some of it with Margaret?
"Hi," Margaret said.
With a jangle of bracelets, Till threw her arms around Margaret's neck, kissed her on both cheeks, and said, "Margaret, I want you to know I've written the most wonderful play. It's about egotism. And selfishness and insensitivity, of course, and it's all based on you, and I'm really so grateful to you, you really are a wonderful friend, this is clearly my best work, commercial but serious—"
"You're not mad at me? You forgive me?"
"Forgive you? I want to thank you! This play is inspired, and inspired by you."
"What about Art?" Margaret said, looking around for him, for the smile, the teeth set perfectly, like traps.
"That's what I'm trying to say—this is art!"
"No, no, your husband."
"Art?" Till said. "Why, we split up last month. I'm living with my therapist. Didn't I tell you? I think I have you to thank for that, too, Margaret. You're loyal and honest in your way, aren't you? The truth shall set you free. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last. Do you and Edward want to come for dinner? Willibald and I are having a little dinner party. Friday..."
***
In the week following Jessica's party, Margaret's tooth continued to hurt, not all the time, but on and off throughout the day. Each time it hurt, she thought first of Till and Art, a couple who had uncoupled, and she felt instead of the triumph that she expected to feel, a nervous uncertainty. Then the tooth would throb again, and, like a dog in an experiment, she would think of her friends at Jessica's party.
One morning she lay on her bed after a shower, closed her eyes, and for a moment she remembered lying back in her narrow bed in a high-ceilinged room in Florence. It was a summer session of her college in a villa surrounded by hills blooming with lavender and olive trees. When she finished her classes each evening, she would stand and look across the hills and think of taking a long, solitary walk. But she hated to be solitary, she was tired, it was beastly hot, and so she would go to flirt with one of the professors, a young, fresh-faced midwesterner. At night, when the heat was unbearable, the two of them would plunge into the small swimming pool. In the dark they could not see the thick green algae. In the dark they could not see each other. But they sensed each other as they floated on their backs. They never spoke in the pool.
After staring at the stars and soaking in the cool, green brine, Margaret would silently leave the pool and go to her room to lie there, wet, to feel the water evaporating in the heavy heat.