“He’s enlightened you, I take it, about his undergraduate transgressions?”
Liz didn’t want to admit that she and Jasper still hadn’t talked about what had occurred at Stanford. Instead, she said, “You seem really fixated on something that happened a long time ago.”
“As a professional storyteller, you must admit it’s a vivid tale.”
Vivid? Liz thought uneasily. They were almost to Edwards Road, and she said, “You said you live near Rookwood Pavilion, right? I’m going this way.” She gestured to the right, and as she did, she felt for the first time a peculiar awareness of the fact that she had just confided in Darcy (in Darcy) and he had listened, mostly with respect. The awareness was not entirely agreeable, and was perhaps part of why she said what she did before peeling away. She called, “Have a good night in the shithole that’s Cincinnati!”
AT THE TUDOR, Ham and Lydia were in the driveway, walking toward Ham’s navy SUV. “Since when have you run twice a day?” Lydia said. “Are you anorexic?”
“Do I look anorexic?” With both hands, Liz pinched her belly; though the flesh there was not inordinate, neither was it nonexistent.
“I like an evening run,” Ham said. “Think about life while the sun goes down.”
“You sound like an old man,” Lydia said.
Genially, Ham said, “Compared to you, I am an old man.”
Lydia snickered. “Just so you know, that makes Liz an old woman. Not that you’ll get any argument from me.”
“You grew up in Seattle, right?” Liz said to Ham. “Where’d you go to high school?”
“Seriously?” Lydia said.
As in other midwestern cities, the question was considered both a local cliché and a method by which residents not-so-surreptitiously ascertained one another’s social status.
“If he’s not from here, obviously I didn’t mean it that way,” Liz said. “I was just wondering because my boss at Mascara is from Seattle.”
Briefly—so briefly that Liz almost didn’t notice—Ham and Lydia exchanged a look. “I grew up in the uncool burbs,” Ham said, and Lydia tugged on Ham’s arm and said, “We have to go.”
Ham said to Liz, “It seems right now isn’t the moment, but someday soon I’ll explain my complicated and tormented adolescence, when I’m not being physically pulled away by your sister.”
“Did you just have dinner with my parents?” Liz asked.
Ham shook his head. “Although I met them, and Jane and Mary. Thumbs-up all around.”
“Next time you should come earlier and eat with us.”
Lydia said, “Liz, sorry to break your heart, but Aunt Margo just called and told Mom that Charlotte Lucas is moving to California to live with Cousin Willie.”
Liz hadn’t expected the news to remain secret for long, but still—immediately upon leaving 21c, Charlotte must have given Willie the okay to spread the word.
Ham clicked his key, and the SUV made a pinging noise. He opened the passenger-side door—Ah, chivalry, Liz thought—and as Lydia climbed in, she said to Liz, “I guess if Willie’s a chubby chaser, you really aren’t anorexic.”
LIZ’S GOAL HAD been to sneak back upstairs for a shower, but she was intercepted in the entry hall by her mother, whose countenance reflected a kind of outraged relish. “I’ll bet you’re having second thoughts about Willie now,” Mrs. Bennet said.
“Actually not,” Liz replied.
“Charlotte won’t have to work another day in her life.”
“Charlotte likes her job.”
Mrs. Bennet pursed her lips. “Well, she certainly didn’t need to think long before giving notice to Procter & Gamble.”
“YOU NEED TO tell me what happened at Stanford,” Liz said to Jasper. “I get that you don’t like to think about it, but not knowing is weirding me out.”
She was back in the bar of 21c, and they were waiting for a salad for her and french fries to share. Though Liz still hadn’t eaten—Jasper had ended up returning to the home of a squash coach for dinner—it was nine-thirty.
“I’ll tell you,” Jasper said. “But your buddy Darcy doesn’t come out looking good.”
“All the better.”
Jasper exhaled deeply. “It’s spring of senior year. What should be the pinnacle of college, a time to chill with your friends before facing the real world. I’m taking creative writing with this woman who has a graduate fellowship. So one, she’s not a real professor, and two, she isn’t even a fiction writer. She’s a black poet named Tricia Randolph, and by the way, I don’t think she ever published a book before or since, so God knows how she was teaching at Stanford. As my final assignment, I turn in a story about guys at a frat party. It’s satire, and I totally mean to make these guys douchebags, but Tricia Randolph calls me into her office and says, ‘Jasper, how do you think your female classmates will feel about your objectification of women?’?”