“I’ve told your husband once, I’ve told him a thousand times,” Raj said to Mina, kissing the back of her hand with a flourish. “If you call ahead, I’ll always save you a window table! We can’t have you out here among the riffraff!”
She never knew whether he was going to fawn over her or ignore her completely. Truth be told she preferred the latter; when he was like this, touching her wrists and clutching her upper arm and glowering at her like she was some just-ripened exotic fruit to be sliced and pared for one of his fusion dishes, it was all too easy for her to imagine what his role must have been back at Princeton. Always at Tom’s side but shorter, stockier, sweatier. His face a collection of soft, rounded features, as though a stronger face had been smashed against the wall and remained that way. When he flirted with her, however harmless or false it was, she could only imagine him approaching the women at the crew parties, talking, getting them loose and lubricated, preparing them for the moment when her husband would swoop in for the kill.
“Maybe he prefers life among the riffraff,” she said, smiling up at him and returning her hand to her own lap. Tom cleared his throat and sat down again. Raj remained at the table, looming over them, crossing and uncrossing his arms.
“Sure,” he said. “Sure, sure he does. This is why you’ve all settled in Greenwich. Living in a little garden shed, was it? Have I got that right, Monsieur Dawes?”
“All right, Raj, ease up,” Tom said. “I know deep down you’re happy to see us.”
“Not pretending otherwise,” Raj said. “I’ve got a killer new dish actually, I’ve been hoping for someone I trust to stop by so I can test it out. Might be a bit out there for the good folk of Wellesley, Mass. They’re happy with their tandoori chicken and nothing too spicy, thanks much.”
“You don’t even have a tandoor oven here, you fraud,” Tom replied. “And you still talk about this place like it’s the boonies. You are that worst kind of New York City snob. You can take the kid out of Queens, but . . .”
“Don’t even finish that, it’s tired before it’s been said,” Raj said, and began describing his new curry to Tom.
Mina watched her husband listen. So little about his face had changed since the night they’d met that the few concessions to age were all the more unsettling. He looked like a handsome young man who’d been exposed to some sort of apocalyptic weather conditions, the skin on his cheeks and nose and neck strafed by wind or hail. If he went more than a day without shaving, now, he looked grizzled rather than scruffy and adorable. There was a general heaviness around his eyes and mouth, as though the handsome original face had been simply weighed down, pebbles placed somewhere beneath the skin to drag it all toward his chin. When he smiled (or, as was the case tonight, grimaced) wrinkles fanned out from the corners of his eyes, like fragile clay that hadn’t been kept long enough in the kiln.
And still, she knew, he was handsome. In an unusual way, more than just daily handsome. If he sat down next to you on the train, you’d blink and look again.
She felt a sudden urge to lean across the table, knocking over the water glasses if necessary, to kiss each of the wrinkles emanating from the corner of his left eye.
“So,” Raj said, clapping his hands. “I’ll pull out my special Tom Dawes bottle of scotch, of course, but what can I bring you, darling?”
She shivered again at the false obsequiousness, the hollow chivalry. “I’m sticking with water for the moment,” she said.
“I’m not,” Tom said.
“I don’t blame you,” Raj chortled, pausing for a moment and looking at them both before he continued. “Greenwich must be a bit of a fishbowl right now, no?”
Of course he was going to ask, because the man had not one truly tactful bone in his body. He knew that she was friends with Isabel. He’d come down to Greenwich for Tom’s fiftieth; he’d probably kissed Isabel’s hand, for God’s sake.
“I’ve barely been there, to tell the truth,” Tom began, and she could see him parrying with himself, trying to say as little as possible and keep a smile on his face. “You can imagine the scene downtown. It’s not pretty.”
“Well of course it isn’t. Did you guys think it would be?”
Tom gripped his fork, lifting it from the table and then replacing it with such exaggerated care that it was more disturbing than if he’d thrown it right at Raj.
“Easy there,” he said. “I wouldn’t be saying ‘you guys,’ if I were you. Weiss is its own animal.”
“But of course,” Raj said, back to soothing. “And D’Amico made his own bed to lie in, I’m sure. How’s he holding up? They’ve got kids, right?”
“Well, he has a lot to answer for,” Tom said. “No way around it, right? History is not going to be kind to Bob D’Amico.” Raj chuckled as though Tom had told an off-color joke.
“I think we can all give them some privacy,” Mina said. “I think a little empathy might be in order. This could have happened to anyone. Or to many people, I mean.”
Tom looked up from his silverware and fixed his eyes on hers. Raj stood above them for a few moments more, dead weight, before saying something about Tom’s scotch and bustling off, removing his suit jacket as he crossed the room.
They sat in silence until a waiter returned with the glass of scotch. It was a generous pour, something Tom usually frowned upon, because he said only frat boys and unrepentant alcoholics poured more than a few fingers’ worth. It had always seemed to her that only alcoholics had to craft for themselves such a complex rule system, but she kept this to herself. The fact was that the alcoholics she’d grown up with guzzled Crown Royal and so on down the scale, and in that way her husband resembled not at all what she thought of as an alcoholic.
He drank the scotch down in one gulp.
“Get up,” he said then.
“Excuse me?”
“Get up. We’re leaving.”
“Sweetheart, we haven’t even eaten.”
“I. Am not. Fucking. Hungry. At the moment. Get in the car. We’re driving to the inn.”
Out on the sidewalk, the evening was unusually brisk for early October. Tom’s fist was in the small of her back, propelling her across the street, toward the car. She stopped short when a car’s headlights reeled up out of the darkness at the end of the block. Tom collided with her for a moment, an embrace without warmth.
“What the fuck was that,” Tom said, though she noticed that he waited for the car to pass. You never knew, these days, who might be driving by with a camera phone. Her husband was nothing if not careful.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tried.