13
Three days after Vivian’s visit, we’re invited to the annual party for Alice’s law firm. Maybe invited isn’t the right word: Attendance is mandatory for junior associates. It’s at the Mark Hopkins Hotel atop Nob Hill. This is the first year that I’m on the guest list. It’s a stodgy, conservative, traditional firm. Boyfriends and girlfriends are never welcome; spouses, on the other hand, are compelled to attend.
I break out my best Ted Baker suit, the one I wore to the wedding. I try to go a little holiday with a green plaid shirt and a red tie. Alice takes one look at me and frowns. She places a box from Nordstrom on the bed. “That one. I bought it yesterday.” The shirt is blue, well made. “And that,” she says. There’s a tie box, also from Nordstrom. It’s silk, a darker blue than the shirt, with subtle purple stripes. The collar chafes at my neck, and I struggle with the tie. I didn’t learn how to properly tie a tie until I was thirty-one years old. I’m not sure if it is a fact that makes me feel proud or embarrassed.
I want Alice to come over and help me tie it, the way TV wives do, but of course, she’s not that sort of wife. Not the kind who does the ironing and knows how to tie a man’s tie, looking at you seductively in the mirror from behind with her arms wrapped around your neck. She’s sexy, but not the domestic kind of sexy, which is okay. More than okay.
Alice is all decked out in a tailored black dress and a pair of black snakeskin pumps. Pearl earrings, a gold bracelet, no necklace or rings. I’ve seen pictures of her wearing bracelets stacked on bracelets, lots of earrings, necklaces hanging every which way. But these days, her rule of thumb for jewelry is straight-up Jackie O: Two pieces is ideal, three is pushing it, anything more begs to be edited. When did her wardrobe go from nineties rock steampunk to Junior Associate Chic? Still, she looks amazing.
We valet the car in the roundabout at Top of the Mark. We’re a few minutes early—Alice hates being early—so we take a brisk walk around the block. She’s not big on makeup but swears by a swipe of red lipstick combined with the healthy flush of exercise, and by the time we arrive at the party she’s pink-cheeked and lovely. “You ready?” she asks, taking my hand, aware how much I hate this sort of thing.
“Just don’t drag me into a conversation on torts.”
“No promises. Remember, this is work.”
We walk into the party, and a caterer greets us with champagne. “I don’t suppose this is a good time to ask for a Bailey’s on the rocks,” I whisper to Alice.
She squeezes my hand. “There is never a good time for a man your age to ask for a Bailey’s on the rocks.”
Alice makes introductions, and I smile and nod and shake hands, going with the safe “Good to see you” instead of “Nice to meet you.” A few people make the usual therapist jokes: “What would Freud say about this cocktail?” and “Can you just look at me and know my deepest darkest secrets?”
“As a matter of fact, I can,” I reply somberly to a guy named Jason, as loud as he is arrogant, who manages to utter the words Harvard Law School three times within our first minute of conversation.
After a dozen or so similar encounters, I disengage from Alice—the shuttle separating from the mother ship—and head over to the dessert tables. They are substantial, featuring hundreds of delicate petits fours and miniature parfaits, mounds of truffles. I love dessert, but the real appeal of this corner of the room is the lack of people. I hate chitchat, small talk, getting to know people in that fake way that guarantees you’ll know less about them at the end of the conversation than you did at the beginning.
The important clients arrive, and I watch from afar as the attorneys go to work. At this level, parties are less about the party and more about the business. Alice moves among the groups, and I can tell she’s good. Clearly, she is well liked by the partners and her co-workers, and she has an appeal to the clients too. It’s a formula, for sure; the firm wants to present a seamless team of older, experienced, evenhanded partners combined with energetic, ambitious young associates. Alice plays her role expertly, the clients smiling and happy as she glides through their conversations.
That said, as I watch Alice, the same half glass of champagne in her hand, something feels off. She’s “at the top of her game,” as her boss likes to say, but something about it makes me—well—sad. Sure, the money is good, and without it we wouldn’t have been able to buy the house. Still, I think of Michael Jordan during those midcareer years, when he gave up basketball for a foray into professional baseball. I think of David Bowie and all that time spent acting—good movies, although in time they became nothing more than a hole in his musical back catalog.
A younger guy, Vadim, joins me at the dessert table. He seems less interested in meeting me, more interested in getting away from the game going on across the room. He’s wearing a green shirt and red tie, apparently lacking a wife to goad him toward good taste. Nervously, he recites his résumé to me. He is the firm’s investigator. When he tells me about his PhD in computer science and four years at Google Ventures, I understand why he was hired; still, I also understand why he will never entirely fit in at a place like this. The forced conversation leads us into some weird areas, including a lengthy account of his fear of spiders and of an ill-advised relationship with a Chinese national who was later indicted for corporate spying.
They say that Vadim is the future of Silicon Valley, that the Vadims of the Valley are procreating with the coder girls, producing a new generation of incredibly smart offspring whose offbeat social skills will not be considered a liability in the future but merely a different branch of evolution, necessary for ensuring the survival of the human race in a brave new world. While I believe the theory, as your basic arts and sciences kind of guy I sometimes find it hard to relate to guys like Vadim.
But then, after the résumé and the spiders and the long, involved story of spying, we finally do relate. Because what Vadim really wants to talk about is Alice. Apparently unaware that I’m her husband (although I’m not sure that would make a difference), he says, “I find Alice very appealing. Both in the physical sense and in the mental sense.” Then he goes on to analyze his competition—“the husband, of course, but also Derek Snow.” He points to a tall, good-looking man with curly hair and a yellow Lance Armstrong wristband standing a little too close to Alice, touching her on the shoulder. Watching Derek, I know that Vadim is correct: He isn’t the only one at the firm who covets my wife. With her former fame and her musical talent, she’s an anomaly at a firm filled with the usual crop of Ivy League grads.
“There was a betting pool about whether she would go through with the wedding to the therapist,” Vadim says.