It was not the graphic designer bit that made it odd to Graham that someone would want Audra’s advice because he actually thought Audra was very talented. And it wasn’t the part-time thing, either, because that was sort of necessary at least until Matthew went to high school (or possibly until Matthew got married, at age forty-five). It was more just Audra, who had recently wondered aloud to Graham where the fuse box was (they’d lived in their apartment for ten years) and had often said she considered herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel.
But there was no doubt that Audra knew people, and she knew things about people, and often she knew things about people who knew other people who knew people who had brothers who worked in the State Department and it was very helpful when your passport got stolen.
Lorelei went into the living room to talk to Audra, and Graham went into the kitchen to make tea for all of them. He knew just how Lorelei took hers—a single Ceylon tea bag, steeped for four minutes, with one sugar and a dash of lemon. He even knew which mug she preferred—an old-fashioned turquoise one with white enamel lining—and that she liked gingersnaps with her tea, although they didn’t have any gingersnaps right now.
Graham liked making tea. He liked cooking, he liked baking, he liked food, he liked kitchens. In another life, he would have made an excellent owner of a safe house in the Underground Railroad. He would have always been happy to get up in the middle of the night and poke up the fire, listen to the fugitives’ tales while he fried ham steaks and made hot biscuits. And although Graham had been a teenager in the seventies and never attended a consciousness-raising group, the idea had always deeply appealed to him. Political activism while you stirred the spaghetti sauce? What could be better?
He had started out as a medical researcher—Graham liked routine and order—and now he was in charge of medical ventures for a venture capitalist firm. There was just no market for underground safe houses anymore.
“So this very junior person in our office,” Lorelei was saying to Audra, “basically the girl who makes the coffee, tweeted something without approval—”
“What did she tweet?” Audra asked.
“Oh, just something about how the clients’ shoes are guaranteed not to give you blisters,” Lorelei said. “She didn’t realize the word guarantee was legally binding language and now the clients are furious, and I have to meet with them tomorrow.”
“Who are the clients?” Audra asked.
“Superguardian Footwear,” Lorelei said.
“Just a sec, let me look them up,” Audra said, and there was the muted clatter of her laptop keyboard.
Graham tried to remember how conversations like this went in the pre-Google world and found he couldn’t, although the pre-Google world was only what, ten or twelve years ago? (Some people, like his mother, still lived there.) Before Google, it seemed to Graham, there was probably a great deal more topic changing. Or maybe conversations were just shorter. Maybe you said, Have you ever heard of a company called Superguardian Footwear? and the other person said, No, and you said, Oh. Well, anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow.
“All right,” Audra said in that half-present, half-absent sort of voice people use when they’re looking at a computer screen and talking at the same time. “Let’s see. Here’s their website—wow, I really do not like that color blue.”
“Go to their company page,” Lorelei said. “Maybe you know the vice president or someone.” She sighed. “I wish you could go to this meeting for me, the way you broke up with Jeff Mayberry for me in college.”
Audra sounded puzzled. “I broke up with Jeff Mayberry for you?”
“Oh my God, yes, don’t you remember?”
“No, not at all.”
“I wanted to break up with him,” Lorelei said, “but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So you and I were doing a lot of role play and pretend phone calls, with you being me and me being Jeff, but whenever he called, I couldn’t quite do it, and finally you got impatient, and the next time he called, you pretended to be me and said, ‘Listen, Jeff, I’m just in kind of a crazy situation and I can’t see you anymore.’?”
“Did it work?” Audra sounded amused.
“Yes!” Lorelei said. “That’s the most amazing thing about it.”
“Jeff couldn’t have been that attached if he didn’t even recognize your voice—”
“I can’t believe this,” Lorelei interrupted. “I have, for years—literally, for decades—been going around telling people I couldn’t do things because I’m in kind of a crazy situation. It’s been my all-purpose answer to almost every awkward question and now I find out you don’t even remember saying it.”
“Who all have you said it to?” Audra asked.
“Everyone!” Lorelei said. “I’m sure I’ve said it to people who were collecting money for UNICEF, and my mother-in-law when she asks why I haven’t had children.”
This was the pleasure of twenty-year-old friendships, Graham thought. Tracing a memory back to its source. Like following a stream through the woods and up a mountain until you find the spring trickling from a rock and you clear away the dead brown leaves of the intervening years and the water flows as sweetly as ever.
Audra’s voice came clearly from the living room. “Really, the only connection I have at Superguardian—and it’s not much help—is that their chief operations officer is a man named Columbus Knox and I believe I gave a man by that name a blow job once outside the Raccoon Lodge in, like, 1990.”
“What?” Graham said, startled.
“It was a long time ago,” Audra called soothingly. “And I didn’t know him terribly well.”
You know, actually, it was nothing like being married to Warren Buffett at all.
—
The very next day, a woman ahead of Graham in line at the deli ordered a Reuben sandwich with French dressing instead of Russian, and Graham recalled that his ex-wife had often ordered that very sandwich, and then he realized the woman was his ex-wife. How could he not have recognized the back of her head? The long slender neck and smoothly gathered French twist? Her hair was the color of corn silk and Graham knew that it felt like corn silk, too—so soft it seemed to disintegrate when you rubbed the strands between your fingers.
“Elspeth?” he said. (“Stupid name,” Audra had once commented, she of the friends named Bitsy and Lorelei.)
The woman turned and yes, it was definitely Elspeth, same blue eyes, same pale face and delicate eyebrows. She looked older, but of course, she was older. Her skin seemed very slightly grainy, like the finest grade of sandpaper, like tiny calcium deposits on an eggshell. He realized abruptly that his eyes were crawling over her face and how unpleasant that must be. He forced himself to stop.
“Graham,” she said. She didn’t say anything else. He was glad she had her hands full—napkins, a can of soda, and a glass—because that prevented him from having to hug her or shake hands with her. He wasn’t sure which he’d do anyway. Did you shake hands with someone you’d been married to for eight years?
A silence spread between them like a puddle of oil, shiny and dangerous. Graham was certain that if he looked down, he would see his shoes beginning to blacken.
But then the deli guy slapped Elspeth’s sandwich on the counter. She turned to Graham. “Why don’t you join me?”