Owen just shrugged at Sunny as if to say, What can you do?
“Yo. Owen. Why are you here?”
“Me?” said Owen. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know you knew Izzy Radford. This is her house.”
“I, uh, I know her.”
“From where?”
“From her store.”
“Oh my God,” said Sunny Bang.
“What?”
“Do not tell me that what I think is happening is actually happening.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Owen.
“Oh my God! Oh my God, Owen!”
“What?”
“You and Izzy.”
“Me and—what? No.”
“Do not lie to me, Owen.”
“I’m not lying, Sunny,” said Owen.
“Stop lying, Owen.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Stop lying.”
“I’m not—”
“Stop!”
Owen took a deep breath and then said, “Lucy knows about it.”
“I know what Lucy knows. Lucy talks to me. I’m her friend.”
“So you, uh, know the deal.”
“I do know the deal. I think it’s a stupid deal, but I do know about it. I probably know more than you do at this point.”
“No doubt.”
“Which isn’t a problem, because I’m very good with secrets,” said Sunny Bang.
“Thank you, Sunny. I appreciate it.”
“You know who’s not good with secrets? Izzy Radford,” said Sunny. “And she has cancer.”
“Yeah, I—she told me.”
“It’s bad. It’s bad bad,” said Sunny. “So you two can stop whatever shenanigans you’ve got going on right now. I’m serious, Owen. Right now!”
“It’s stopped. We stopped already.”
“Good.
“Right.”
Sunny folded her arms across the front of her chest and cocked her head at him. “I’m arranging for people to bring her meals. I’ll put you down for a week from Thursday. Grill some of those sausages you do so well. Throw in a side salad and a so-so bottle of chardonnay. Oh, and drop it off at my house, not here. I’ll make sure she knows it’s from you.”
“Okay.”
“Now go home,” said Sunny. “I mean it, Owen. Go!”
*
Lucy and Victoria walked a few blocks west to a wine bar Victoria had been to before. Coffee for Victoria meant wine, of course, and Lucy was fine with that. It was barely noon, but drinking with Victoria was better than wandering around in the rain all by herself, and she wasn’t in the mood to go home. And Ben was with his girls.
Ben was with his girls!
“You seem distracted,” Victoria said once they sat down.
“I’m just cold,” said Lucy. “My feet got wet.”
“I’ll go to the bar and get us something. God forbid anyone actually waits on a table in this place. What would you like?”
“A glass of sauvignon blanc, thanks.”
Ben was with his girls! She had gone to such a dark place, and so quickly. I love him, Lucy thought. I really do.
“I can’t believe we haven’t talked since that night on our deck,” Lucy said when Victoria came back with their drinks.
“That was a crazy night,” said Victoria.
“It was.”
“I can’t remember being that drunk and still being able to function.”
“Some crazy stuff was said,” said Lucy. “Crazy crazy.”
“Oh my God, I wish I could take everything back. You guys must have thought we were insane.”
“We sort of did,” said Lucy.
“Three weeks after we saw you, Frank and Jim split up.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Frank filed for divorce out of the blue.”
“Why? What happened?”
“He fell in love,” Victoria said. She rolled her eyes when she said it, like love was an imaginary thing.
“With who?”
“With some stay-at-home dad whose wife is a managing director at Morgan Stanley. They’re going for full custody of all of the kids, and it looks like they’ll get it too. All five children. And neither of them will have to work another day of their lives.”
“Yikes.”
“It’s really awful,” said Victoria. She took a big sip of her wine. “Jim is devastated. Devastated.”
“So you didn’t go through with it?” Lucy finally asked Victoria after they’d ordered a cheese plate and olives. “The open-marriage thing?”
Victoria swirled the wine around in her glass for a moment and then said, “No, we did.”
“You did?”
“Yep,” said Victoria.
“And?”
“It was a total disaster.”
Lucy couldn’t hide her curiosity. “Really? What happened?”
“Let’s see,” Victoria said. “I became insanely jealous. Thom completely lost all perspective on his life. I begged him to stop. He asked for a divorce.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, it was a real shit-show there for a while.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” said Lucy.
“I was embarrassed. I couldn’t face anything or anybody. I’m sorry I was so out of touch,” said Victoria. “I think he had someone he wanted to sleep with and then sort of made this whole deal thing come up. And so he slept with her.”
“And?”
“Apparently it was great,” she said. “Apparently she was everything I’m not, in bed and otherwise.”
“He told you that?”
“Yep. Apparently, I’m a bitch,” she said. “And I’m cold and controlling and she is warm and sweet and kind.”
“So you’re getting divorced?”
“No,” said Victoria. “Not at the moment, at least.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, after he promised to stop seeing her and yet kept right on seeing her, and then promised again and then kept seeing her anyway, I did that thing women have been doing since the beginning of time.”
“What’s that?”
“I decided to look the other way.”
“Huh,” said Lucy. “So, I don’t get it; is he still seeing her?”
“Of course he is! But I’ve stopped asking. I’ve stopped snooping. You know me, once I set my mind to something, I follow through.”
“How do you do it?”
“Mostly I just play dumb. He comes home late from work? I pour him a drink and ask him how his day was. He has to go to Seattle for business? I send him a cheery e-mail around dinnertime saying I love him and I’m going to bed early and we can talk in the morning. Basically, I’m making staying with me easier than leaving me.”
“Why?”
“Eventually he’ll get as tired of her as he is of me. Eventually she’ll turn into a bitch and a shrew and a nag and a bore. He’ll come up for air, look around a bit, and see his son, our friends, his life, and our life together, and he’ll decide it’s easier to stay than it would be to go. And not just that it’s easier. He’ll see that he has a lot to lose, things that actually mean a great deal to him.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Lucy, nodding slowly. “But how long do you think that’s gonna take?”
“Three years.”
“Three years?”
“All the marriages I’ve seen go through something like this, three years seems to be the number.”
“Really?”
“I think sometime after the first year, the other woman starts to become demanding, maybe a bit of the sex haze begins to go away, and eventually the guy realizes that she isn’t the magical solution to all of his problems the way he thought she’d be. And instead of one unhappy woman in his life, now he’s got two.”