“Karen, sweetie,” Clay said, lowering his chin as he laid a hand on her arm. “I’m not suggesting we have sex.”
Mortified by the way he’d spelled out the subtext, reducing their flirtation to its crude essence, Karen felt blood rushing to her cheeks. “I wasn’t saying that!” she cried, as embarrassed by the suggestion as she was somehow wounded by its refutation. He must have been kidding in his e-mail about wanting to get lucky.
“So what’s your answer, lady?” Clay pressed on.
“Sure—why not?” said Karen, feeling she couldn’t turn him down now. Besides, she had no desire to. In truth, she rarely got the opportunity to slow-dance. She and Matt hadn’t done so since their wedding night, ten years ago.
“Good answer,” said Clay, taking her hand and leading her to the makeshift dance floor. There, he rested his other hand on her waist while Karen hesitantly placed her own on his shoulder. The band had just launched into a tinny cover of Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters.” As the two of them began to move to the music in tentative circles, Clay belted out the lyrics without any hint of self-consciousness. “‘This is no one night stand,’” he sang while drawing her toward him. “‘It’s a real occasion.’” When he got to the line about “the end of a perfect day,” he suddenly dipped Karen backward.
“Help!” Karen cried and laughed in protest. But it was too late. Her head was already by the floor, the world upside down. And Clay kept it that way for longer than she would have liked and until she was compelled to cry out, “Seriously! Clay! Lift me up.”
Finally, he did. But when she returned to an upright position, equilibrium had not been restored. All the colors around her seemed brighter, including Clay’s blue eyes, which appeared to her like two little swimming pools. Karen longed to dive in. The music seemed sharper too, and as if it were playing inside her chest. What’s more, she found some kind of electrical charge passing between her and Clay. And Karen could tell by the way he was looking at her—probingly, curiously, suddenly half smiling as his chest rose and fell—that Clay felt it too. He had also stopped singing. They were only inches apart now—so close that tiny beads of sweat were visible in the hair follicles between his nose and mouth. But for reasons Karen couldn’t explain, their sudden intimacy felt entirely natural, so much so that she longed to lean her head against his chest.
She didn’t dare. Clay’s wife, Verdun, was just on the other side of the dance floor, her head turned away but conceivably watching them out of the corner of her eye.
And Clay wasn’t just a man who wasn’t Karen’s husband. He was an unrepentant capitalist—a Moneyman with a capital M. If that objection made Karen sound like a college sophomore, so be it. Clay didn’t occupy merely another rung of the economic ladder; he occupied a wholly separate ladder than the one on which Karen and Matt currently rested their feet. His politics were another matter, if he even had any. “Did you like that?” he muttered suggestively in her ear.
Karen had just mumbled, “Maybe,” when the spell was suddenly broken for her. As the bandleader sang “‘So fine, so young—tell me I’m the only one,’” the unwelcome thought popped into her head that she was neither young nor the only one. Rather, it seemed suddenly and painfully clear to her that what she was experiencing was no more than a ridiculous, alcohol-fueled dance-floor flirtation between two old married friends. “I’m going to get something to drink,” she said, slipping away.
Troy caught up with her at the bar. “Well, hello there, dancing queen,” he began.
“Oh God, I was making a complete fool of myself out there, wasn’t I?” said Karen, horrified to think that he too might have been watching.
“Hardly! You looked smart and chic! Especially upside down,” he added with a smile.
“Ha,” said Karen.
“But last time I checked”—Troy leaned toward Karen’s ear, so his words were only barely audible—“that was not your husband out there on the dance floor with you. Though far be it from me to get all Moral Majority on you.”
Karen shut her eyes. “I actually wish you would get Moral Majority–ish on me. I think I’m having a midlife crisis.”
“He is sort of handsome in a windswept, captain-of-the-Sail-America-syndicate sort of way,” offered Troy.
“The what?” said Karen.
“Don’t ask me how I know this, but I believe they won the America’s Cup a few years ago.”
“How do you know that?” asked Karen just as Clay reappeared, a toothpick in one corner of his mouth. At the sight of him, Karen experienced another swell of attraction and misgivings.
“Drink?” he said.
“Sure,” said Karen, breaking her own two-glass policy.
When he returned with a sweet Bellini for each of them, Karen said, “Clay, this is Hungry Kids’ outreach director, Troy Gafferty.”
“Hello, man of good deeds,” said Clay, extending a hand. “I myself am a man of worthless numerical manipulation. Though I do try and donate a few of the proceeds to deserving causes. And I pay my staff well.”
“Well, good for you,” said Troy in a vaguely mocking voice. “So, are you having fun tonight?”
“A boatload,” he said. “Though I can’t say the same for my wife.”
Karen’s heart raced at the mere mention of her existence.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Troy.
“Unfortunately, she left early with a migraine,” Clay went on. “So I’m on my own for the rest of the night.”
Was he saying this for Karen’s benefit? And was it even true? Karen glanced across the room and confirmed that, in fact, Verdun was no longer seated at table 12. Had she seen her husband flirting with another woman and stomped off in a rage? If so, Karen didn’t blame her. Matt would have been infuriated by the sight of her and Clay on the dance floor. Or had Verdun really had a headache? As Karen considered the possibilities, dread and excitement commingled in her chest. It had been ages since she’d been the possible center of any drama.
“Oh, dear—benefit parties give me migraines too,” offered Troy. “Maybe it’s because everyone is so pleased with themselves—present company excluded, of course.”
Clay laughed. “Maybe that’s it.”
“Well, I hope she feels better,” piped in Karen, realizing it was the most generic possible thing she could have said but feeling she needed to display concern.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine after a night without me,” said Clay.
“My husband is on his own tonight too—at some dinner,” offered Karen. “No doubt enjoying himself on account of my not being there to nag him about his disgusting table manners.” Had she really just said that?
“Well, I’ll leave you two married people to discuss the infinite joys of conjugal relations,” said Troy, stepping away. “I’m going to see how Molly is doing—a woman for whom, it must be said, joy does not come easily.”
“And it has been said many times before,” added Karen, turning to Clay to explain. “We’re talking about the woman in the burlap sack who got weepy at the podium while thanking the movie star.”