She also had a paying job, sort of, a part-time freelance position reading manuscripts that had been submitted unsolicited, unwanted, and unacceptable to a literary agent named Isabel Reed. Ariel had been doing this work for a couple of years, and hadn’t once unearthed that fabled hidden gem that clawed out of the slush pile to find its way to a book deal. But even if all the manuscripts were crappy, Ariel still loved reading these mysteries and thrillers and police procedurals.
Ariel’s employment was optional, and unlucrative, and came to her as a favor that someone did for someone else, who wanted to do something for Bucky; New York was an endless web of overlapping circles of favors. But Ariel knew that her real job—the one she was obligated to do, every day—was being the wife of Buckingham Turner. Although she loved Bucky, she did not always love the job of being his wife.
She quarter-turned in the mirror to examine herself from the side. She smoothed her hand across her stomach, still flat.
One of this job’s chief responsibilities was being an attractive, charming companion at parties, and no party was more important than Charlie Wolfe’s summer bash, a dinner thrown on a wedding’s scale and budget, with two hundred guests at eight-tops on the lawn that faced the moonlit ocean; Ariel would not have been surprised if the party’s date had been chosen for optimal moonlight.
Arranged seating was boy-girl and spouses separated, but after the entrées were cleared, Ariel’s table reorganized itself by gender, and she found herself surrounded by the usual crowd. At the other end of the table the men were talking finance, or baseball, or the finances of baseball, while taking occasional bites of gold-leafed torte, drinking Armagnac and port, getting expensively drunk.
Charlie Wolfe’s parties were legendary for their conspicuous consumption, with raw bars and Champagne magnums, plated dinners of lobster tails and filet mignon, with money thrown at caterers with no mandate other than to impress. But Charlie was neither a stockbroker nor a tech bro, so there were no hookers, no piles of cocaine; not that sort of scene. Just plenty of the legal intoxicants, imported high-end luxury-lifestyle markers, the exact sorts of things you’d expect to be consumed by the one-tenth of the one percent at a South Fork oceanfront estate, this was behavior to be envied, this was how you courted the coveted high-net-worth demographic in the pages of Vogue and the Wall Street Journal and Elite Traveler: The Private Jet Lifestyle Magazine.
This party didn’t conform to anyone’s vision of a dangerous environment.
Ariel knew better. She knew that she had to be careful, always. She also knew that sometimes careful doesn’t suffice.
*
“Adorbs.” One woman was admiring another’s bracelet, vintage Italian from the sixties, all the rage those days, the sort of micro-fad that can be wildly fashionable among a tiny population who can afford forty-thousand-dollar pieces of jewelry, while no one else in the world is even aware of the trend. All the women at the table appreciated how the gold accentuated the tan of a forearm that was well-toned by tennis and sailing. These bracelets enjoyed renewed popularity every summer.
None of these women had consumed more than a forkful of torte, though a few had picked at the decorative berries. Someone was raving about her new Botox guy, and then the discussion turned to more invasive, more dramatic procedures. These women all had the same job as Ariel, with the same job requirements.
Ariel glanced at her husband, who was having a great time, no way he’d want to go home yet, and she couldn’t be that wife, the sort who asked to leave. That wasn’t acceptable performance of her job. Ariel realized much later that this was her mom’s definition of wife, and her dad’s, Bucky’s too. But not her own.
“Ezra’s test scores are off the charts,” Stacey said. “Literally.”
Other mothers were nodding in agreement, none of them apparently understanding what the word literally meant, or how charts work, or, possibly, both.
Ariel took a sip of water. Her alcohol consumption had been limited to one glass of Champagne before dinner, which she’d surreptitiously dumped most of into a planter of lavender. Ariel wouldn’t drink tonight, but she also didn’t want to be seen to be not drinking, she didn’t want anyone to ask about it, she didn’t want to lie, a common enough lie that everyone sees through. She could imagine the exclamation months later, “Of course! You weren’t drinking at Charlie’s party! I remember!” At any given party, some woman or another isn’t drinking, and all the others are noticing.
Another part of Ariel’s job—a large part, perhaps the largest—was bearing children.
“I want lots of kids,” Bucky had told her, a couple years earlier, when they’d been in that final pre-engagement stage during which both understood that a proposal would be forthcoming unless something went awry. They were vetting each other. Due diligence.
“What does lots mean?”
“At least three. Probably four?”
“Four?” Ariel laughed, uncomfortably. Four sounded excessive. Ariel was younger than Bucky, hadn’t met all his friends yet, their wives. She didn’t know yet that it was trendy among a certain crowd—his crowd—to raise big families in the city, in big apartments.
“You really like kids that much?” She was trying to sound curious, not contradictory. She didn’t want this to become a disagreement.
“Of course!”
Of course? Ariel wondered what Bucky thought he meant. He didn’t have younger siblings, nor nieces or nephews. He’d never been a teacher, nor a tutor, nor a mentor, nor a babysitter. Bucky’s sole experience with children had been being one.
“How do you know?”
Bucky was as a rule so sure of so many things, and Ariel was not. This supreme self-confidence had been one of the things Ariel had admired about him.
“Are you kidding? What’s not to like?”
Four kids would mean that she’d spend the better part of a decade pregnant or nursing or changing diapers: Four kids would mean, in all probability, not having a career. That’s what’s not to like. But at the time, she couldn’t see this forest she was planning to inhabit, because the tree directly in front of her was about to sprout a giant engagement ring and a couture bridal gown and a destination wedding and a Classic 6 in a good building.
Ariel wasn’t looking for reasons to ruin this. She wasn’t running out of time, not quite yet, but she would be if things didn’t work out with Bucky Turner, who was smart and funny and charismatic and handsome, plus already rich, and well on his way to being much richer.
“A big family,” Ariel said, conjuring up her most enthusiastic smile, “sounds great.”
She chose to believe that Bucky was telling the truth. She chose to pretend that so was she.
CHAPTER 34
DAY 2. 8:17 P.M.
At last they step into the suite; it feels like years since they were here together. John staggers across the living room, collapses onto the couch. Ariel fastens the security chain, then leans against the closed door, the peephole, these reassurances of safety.
“My God,” John says. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see a hotel room.”
Ariel slides to the floor, her back against the door. She closes her eyes, and drops her face into her hands. She allows a quiet sob to escape into her palms.