While he talked to Elspeth, Audra and Bentrup strolled ahead, deep in conversation. Graham thought privately that Bentrup was in awe of Audra—her flirtatiousness, her prettiness, her forceful personality. But Elspeth never seemed the slightest bit jealous, even though Audra always tucked her hand into Bentrup’s arm as they walked, so maybe Graham was wrong about that. Later Audra would tell him that Bentrup was sixty-two, and that he grew up in Portsmouth, England, and that he used to go to tanning booths but didn’t anymore, his skin just sort of stayed that color. Also, he’d been married twice, the first time to a woman named Tillie, who had an unshakable belief that dishcloths should be folded a certain way to avoid bad luck, and the second time to a woman named Margaret, who disliked it when Bentrup spat in the rhododendrons.
Sometimes Graham and Bentrup walked together, but they never spoke of anything personal. In fact, Graham found Bentrup almost maddeningly impersonal, like some tour guide they’d hired and now regretted bringing along. He said things like, “Chinatown is the largest Chinese community outside Asia,” and “While much of the foliage in Central Park appears natural, it is in fact almost entirely landscaped.” Even worse, it took him easily—easily—five minutes to get to the end of any sentence with the way he drawled in his British accent. Was this the kind of conversation he had with Elspeth at home? Was this what she liked? But Graham never paid much attention to Bentrup because he was too busy trying to eavesdrop on Elspeth and Audra.
How opposite they were! How could one man have fallen in love with both of them?
“My grandmother always said that you should be totally packed and ready twenty-four hours before a trip,” Audra said. “But I don’t think she had so much stuff.”
“I agree with her,” Elspeth replied. “You should be organized.” Her use of you did not sound general.
And once Audra said, “Lorelei used to work at Baskin-Robbins and she believes your choice of flavor reveals all sorts of things about you.”
“Who’s Lorelei?” Elspeth said. Then a moment later, as though she were unable to resist, “What does my choice reveal about me?”
They had just come from Baskin-Robbins, and Graham had a moment of profound gratitude that Elspeth had not ordered vanilla, because God knew what Audra would have made of that.
“Oh, Lorelei says women who order Pralines ’n Cream are almost always PMSing,” Audra said. “They are craving the salt and the sweet at the same time.”
Salvation came from an unexpected source when Bentrup said, “Did you know there is a physiological basis for food cravings during premenstrual disorder?”
“Premenstrual syndrome!” Audra laughed. “It’s not a personality disorder, though I guess maybe it seems like one.”
She moved up to talk to Bentrup, and Graham dropped back to talk to Elspeth, as smoothly as partners in the Virginia reel.
One day they were having coffee at the High Line and Graham sat on a bench between Audra and Elspeth. He was eating a croissant with his coffee, and a flake of croissant stuck to the side of his mouth. Elspeth and Audra reached to brush it away at the same moment.
“Oh, sorry,” Elspeth said, and it was the closest to embarrassed Graham had ever heard her sound.
“Hey, be my guest,” Audra said. “I get to wipe crumbs off his face all the time.” This seemed to Graham like a dangerous thing to say, but Elspeth only smiled and brushed the bit of croissant away.
“There,” she said with satisfaction.
“I was looking forward to eating that,” Graham said, and both women looked at each other and laughed, a sound that was lost quickly in the wind and the screech of seagulls, but one that seemed to Graham to linger on and on.
—
For some reason concerning Lorelei’s apartment being renovated and unfit for company, Graham and Audra were having to have Lorelei and her husband, Doug, and their priest over for dinner so that Doug and Lorelei could get their godson baptized in their local church and not have to waste a Sunday driving to Staten Island. Or something like that. (Apparently the priest was outside Audra’s direct sphere of influence and a mere phone call wouldn’t suffice, hence the need for dinner.)
Graham didn’t mind—he was just happy that Doug and Lorelei weren’t moving in with them while their apartment was being renovated. (The den was available as guest quarters once more, now that Bitsy had finally gone back to her brownstone in Brooklyn—a move prompted solely by Bitsy’s desire to prevent Ted from moving back to the brownstone first. It was strange now to think that Bitsy had left the magnifying glass of their apartment and gone back to being a teeny beige tile in the huge glittering eight-million-tile mosaic of New York City. It always surprised Graham when houseguests left and resumed their lives elsewhere.)
“We should invite Elspeth and Bentrup, too,” Audra said.
“Why?”
“Because we, you know, owe them.” Audra made a vague circular motion with her hand, presumably to indicate—what? The vast confusing ocean of who owed what to whom?
But Graham understood. Now that they were friends, Graham and Audra had to shuffle Elspeth and Bentrup into the friendship deck of cards, to be dealt back out again evenly in the form of social commitments. A dinner party for seven was just as much work as a dinner party for five, so okay.
Audra left it up to Graham to call Elspeth and ask if she and Bentrup would be interested in spending an evening helping them emotionally seduce a priest. He thought he was calling Elspeth’s mobile, but it must have been her landline because Bentrup answered.
“Good evening,” he drawled. It was less of a spoken word and more like a sticky drop of amber resin that flowed slowly down the line.
“Hello, Bentrup. It’s Graham Cavanaugh.”
“Ah, Graham, what a pleasure.” Bentrup took nearly a full minute to round off the word pleasure. It made Graham want to snap his fingers in irritation.
“Yes, well,” he said. “Audra and I are having a kind of impromptu dinner party tomorrow and we were hoping you and Elspeth could join us.”
“How very kind of you,” Bentrup said. “I will have to check with my lady.”
Lady? Did he mean Elspeth? (Of course he did, because who else would Bentrup have to check with—the cleaning lady?) But did Elspeth know he referred to her this way? Did she like it?
“However, if I may be so informal,” Bentrup continued, his voice lingering over every consonant, “I’m sure she and I will be delighted to come to your soiree. Please consider us a soon-to-be-confirmed yes.”
“Okay, great,” Graham said hastily.
They said their goodbyes and hung up. Graham felt that if there’d been a snare drum handy, he would have beat out a staccato rhythm just to get the sound of Bentrup’s voice out of his head.
—
The buzzer sounded the next night and Graham went to answer it, expecting it to be Doug and Lorelei, but it was the priest, Father Hicks, a friendly, white-haired, round-faced man wearing a suit with a clerical shirt and collar under it. The only unusual thing about him was that he was very short, possibly under five feet, and Graham kept unintentionally talking to the area about six inches above Father Hicks’s head.