“They went to get ice cream.”
“Ice cream.” Tory looked at her watch, which like Slade’s was a gold monstrosity. His and hers. “At four in the afternoon.”
“What? There a problem, Babe?”
“It’s an hour before their, like, dinnertime.”
Slade shrugged, what does he give a shit. Slade’s core competency was the deployment of financial assets, not the eating schedules of children.
Ariel was now supposed to inquire after Tory’s kids, that would be the polite thing to do. But she just couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t ask what her old friend was up to, how she happened to find herself here, so far from her nexus of high-end summering. Ariel was afraid that if she started asking questions, she’d be obliged to answer some in return.
Madison hadn’t even pretended to browse for books before summoning Persephone to the café counter.
“I’ll do a decaf almond latte.” Madison ordered while using her phone’s camera as a mirror, angling her face this way and that. Ariel remembered this woman, she never stopped finding excuses to look at herself, touching up lipstick, mascara, pouting into mirrors, teasing her hair, this was a person who would just bust out a hairbrush and start grooming not only whenever the opportunity presented itself, but inventing opportunities where none whatsoever existed, whenever she had a spare thirty seconds—in a car, or waiting to be seated at a restaurant, or at a cash register.
“I’m so sorry,” Persephone said, “we don’t have almond milk.”
“Seriously?” Madison looked up from admiring herself. Ariel felt herself cringe; she used to order the same exact thing, and she’d have been the same exact disappointed.
Tory rushed over. “Oh my God, how cute is this?” It was a hand-tinted greeting card, a predictably nautical scene.
“So cute!”
The shop did a brisk business in banal.
“Would you prefer whole or skim milk?”
“Cow?” Madison was appalled. This was a woman with an alligator-skin handbag dangling in the crook of her arm.
Ariel felt as if she were observing a different species, in some simulacrum of its natural habitat—like the zoo, or the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. The little brass plaque would read HOMO OBSCENICUS, NORTH AMERICA, C. 21ST CENTURY. And yet there was no denying it: Ariel had been one of these beasts.
She responded to Tory’s “Let’s do lunch!” with “Absolutely,” even though she had no intention whatsoever. Ariel was no longer a member of the tribe, and everyone knew it, but this was still what you said.
“It’s so good to see you,” Tory said. “So good.”
“You too,” Ariel agreed, and she was surprised to find that she was telling the truth. It was good to see an old friend; she felt the impulse to actually follow up; she knew she wouldn’t.
The Wassermans and their Madison sidekick exited in a flurry of more air-kisses and high-pitched laughter, leaving behind a lingering miasma of Hermès and Botox and impending gentrification. There had been other signs of change in the village, including the tattooed Brooklynite who’d inquired about buying the bookshop, which at first seemed ludicrous to Ariel, then intriguing. Things were changing, and Ariel was not sure that she wanted to be a part of what’s next. First it had been the homesteaders who were fed up with the rat race, talking about composting and mulch, then the hipsters, and next thing you know it’ll be the black–Range Rover crowd. She used to be one of those too.
“I know a lot of people are showing up here, buying land, talking about organic this, heirloom whatever.” This is what Ariel had said a dozen years ago, in her first conversation with Pedro. He’d farmed these same fields for the previous landowner, potatoes plus some corn and tomatoes and Brussels sprouts.
Pedro had nodded, straw hat in hand. “Yes Miss.” His rent covered the taxes but not much more. Nobody was getting rich farming eighty acres here.
At that point in her life Ariel had given up on a great many of her ideals. They hadn’t done her any damn good. She had plenty of battles to fight, and organic farming wasn’t the hill she’d die on.
“Not me,” she’d said. “Do whatever you need to do.”
*
Ariel looks out the hotel room’s window, surveying the street and the square for the guy who was following her. She doesn’t see him.
“Persephone, was anyone strange in the shop this weekend?”
“Strange? How do you mean?”
“Anyone looking for me? Or asking after me?”
“No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“If anyone does, please make a note of it, and let me know.”
“What do you mean, make a note?”
“Write down the day and time, and what the person looks like and says.”
“Does this have something to do with those women who came into the shop on Friday?”
“What? No.”
“Then are you going to tell me what this is about?”
“P., I’m sorry, but can you just do this for me, please? I don’t have time to explain now.”
Persephone is tremendously curious, constantly asking questions, thinking that she’s entitled to answers. Ariel doesn’t really blame her. Persephone had been raised in a post-privacy era when there were no longer any boundaries, even when it came to other people’s skeletons; perhaps especially then. Ariel regularly catches the young woman looking at documents that don’t concern her, asking questions that aren’t her business. At first this bothered Ariel, but she can’t do anything about anyone’s fundamental character. So instead Ariel accepts that Persephone will pry, and controls the things that can be found.
For nearly everything else, Ariel keeps a safe under the desk. She doesn’t make any attempt to hide the safe. If anyone ever breaks into the shop looking for valuables, she doesn’t want them ransacking the whole goddamned place. And if the thieves are able to actually crack a safe, hiding it isn’t going to help. Anyone who can crack a safe won’t be looking for the day’s cash receipts.
Ariel is prepared for that too.
*