In the most recent meeting, Dave asked her about our travel. Having now become completely versed in the minutiae of The Manual, Alice relayed in great detail the weekend trip to Twain Harte that I’d planned and the four-day trip to Big Sur, which she’d planned for three months hence. We hadn’t yet gone on either trip, but the fact that they were on our calendars should fulfill the travel requirement for this quarter and the next one. Alice used these conversations with Dave to check off as many boxes as she could, things that might get The Pact authorities looking elsewhere, as JoAnne had so emphatically said we must.
Dave talked about his recent trips as well, even writing down some hotel suggestions. While she knew he was likely reporting the details of their conversations back to someone, she felt that he was a nice guy who genuinely had our welfare in mind. He never came on to her in even the smallest way, which was a big plus in her book. After the first week, she didn’t seem to mind the visits. As difficult as it was for her to slip away from work in the afternoon, she said it was a good way to clear her head. “Like therapy,” she said. Although she’d never actually been to therapy, unless of course you counted those group circles in rehab the week we met.
Then, on her fourth and final week of conversations, she called me. I hit the Answer button, and all I heard was “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Alice?”
“The fucking judge kept us late.” She was breathless and running, and I could hear the street sounds around her. “I only have nine fucking minutes to get to Dave’s. There’s no way I’ll make it. Uber or BART?”
“Um—”
“Uber or BART?”
“BART is your only chance. Blame it on me,” I said, thinking of JoAnne’s warning. “Tell him I made you late. Tell him—”
“No!” she yelled. “I’m not a rat.”
“Listen to me,” I said, but the phone had already gone dead. I called her back, but there was no answer.
28
If I drove quickly, I could get to Draeger’s at the exact time I last saw JoAnne. I was worried that Alice’s tardiness was going to put her back on the radar, and I wanted to talk to JoAnne to find out what exactly that would mean.
I got there early, parked my car, grabbed a shopping cart, and started wandering the aisles. No sign of JoAnne. I held my phone, willing it to ring. Alice would surely call to say everything was fine. The whole thing was ridiculous. After all, showing up ten minutes late to a meeting in Northern California is like showing up ten minutes early for a meeting anywhere else.
I wandered for nearly half an hour, bought some cereal, Ovaltine, muscovado for my cookies, flowers for Alice. Eventually, I gave up, took my pricey bag of groceries, and left.
By the time I got back to the city, there was still no word from Alice. I drove home, but her car wasn’t there, so I parked in the garage and walked to my office. I had several clients the next day, and I hadn’t yet done any preparation. Email had stacked up in my in-box. Documents, journals, and internal billing items covered my desk.
Later, I got a text from Alice. Went badly. Have to go back to work. Will be late. We’ll talk when I get home.
OK. Text when you leave. I’ll get Burma Superstar for dinner. Love, me.
She texted back one word, love, followed by a sad-face emoji.
It wasn’t until after ten o’clock that Alice and I finally sat down together at the kitchen table. Alice had kicked her shoes off at the door—her coat, suit, and pantyhose forming a trail to our bedroom and the dresser where she keeps her flannel pajamas. She wore the pajamas now, a ridiculous, oversize pair that I’d bought her one Christmas, covered with monkey faces. She had mascara smeared under her eyes, and a tiny pimple had emerged just to the left of the dimple on her left cheek—the exact same spot where she gets a pimple every time she’s especially stressed out. It occurred to me that I knew this woman, really knew her, better than anyone else ever had, and probably better than I knew myself. Despite the walls she was so good at putting up, I specialized in my own course of study: the Observation of Alice. While there was much she could hide from me, there was much she could not. God, I loved her.
“So?”
Alice got up to grab a couple of beers from the fridge, then she relayed her meeting with Dave.
“I ran about a mile in my heels, and got there fourteen minutes late. If I hadn’t just missed the first Daly City train, I almost could’ve made it. Anyway, I sprinted down Twenty-fourth Street, through the alley, up the stairs to his office. I was sweating through my blouse, and my shoes were pretty much destroyed.” Her legs were crossed, and she swung the top one back and forth while she ate, as jittery as I’d seen her in a long time. “Dave could tell that I had raced over there. He got me a glass of water and led me into his office.”
“That’s good,” I said. “So he understood.”
“That’s what I thought. I expected that when I apologized for being late, he’d say no problem. I thought he’d be impressed that I’d booked it all the way across town, even running a good part of the way. You know me, I never run anywhere. So I’m half-expecting Dave to give me a pat on the back and tell me how much he appreciates that I worked so hard to make our meeting. Instead, as soon as he closed his office door behind me, while I was still standing there catching my breath, he went and sat behind his big desk in his big chair and said, ‘Alice, frankly, I’m kind of surprised that you’re late. Fourteen minutes.’?”
“Jerk,” I muttered.
“I know, right? So I explain about being in Federal Court. I mention the case, the finicky clients, the difficult judge, and Dave doesn’t say a word. He just sits there, turning a paperweight over and over in his hands, like the villain in a James Bond movie. No empathy at all. He just says, ‘Alice.’ He uses my name a lot, did I tell you that?”
“I hate it when people do that.”
Alice took a bite of sesame beef and pushed the plate toward me to share. “He says, ‘Alice, in our lives, we are forced to prioritize many different things each day, some large, some small, some short-term, some long-term.’ I felt like a kid in the principal’s office. He was so different from how he had been in our earlier meetings. It was like a switch had flipped from Friendly Dave to Bossy Dave. He goes on about how most of our priorities—family, work, eating, drinking water, exercise, leisure—are such ingrained habits that we don’t even have to think to put them above the usual mundane things that life throws at us. The longer something remains a priority, he said, the more it becomes second nature, hardwired in our minds and actions.”
Alice had finished her beer, and went to the cabinet for a glass. “Anyway, he says that one purpose of The Pact is to help people get their priorities straight.”
“Vivian said the purpose was to strengthen our marriage. She never mentioned anything about priorities.”