He paused for a moment and stared at Charles. Laugh and get depressed. Get depressed and laugh. What else was there to do?
“Why is that too much to ask? I don’t want slaves; I don’t even need servants. By the end of this year, I will have to sell my monster of an estate for taxes, and I’ll do it gladly—the state can have it! My great-great-grandfather built that place to house the Nashes for a thousand years. How could he have known that some cards and ponies would get in the way of our fortune? I don’t even care! I don’t begrudge the material loss of my birthright, but I don’t think a life of intellectual riches is too much to ask of the world! I give the world thoughtful observations and considered theses, and it gives me back a dozen Kardashians. You know what’s going to happen to my library when I sell it? Nothing. Flat nothing. It will probably go to some interior designer who will tell her client how authentic it is, but I’ll be damned if a single one of the books are cracked open by their video-game-playing fucktard children!”
Charles looked sideways at Nash. The key right now was to say something, but not too much of something. Enough for his friend to know that he heard him, but not enough to open up the vast floodgates of their twin losses. If the breaking down began, it might never end.
二十八
New Orleans, LA
SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED. Ever since the cake was served, his father and Uncle Nash had been talking, talking, talking at each other nonstop, but now, suddenly, they weren’t. Andrew could see the two of them through the window, sitting in the empty room, staring past each other. Merrily and Glenn’s friends had all headed down to the bonfire by the creek; Grace was out there with them.
That silence was weird. It scared Andrew a little. The two of them looked tired. Two worn-out men, deliberately quiet. Sad. They looked sad. When had his dad gotten so gray? Andrew wondered what they were not talking about. Actually, he didn’t have to wonder, because he knew—what else could it be? If getting money had once been the thing that occupied all of his father’s thoughts, losing it must be even more engrossing.
It smelled piney out here on the porch. Beyond it, everything was vast and dark. He heard a faint splash and a yell from the creek, voices that bounced off of the unseen rocks on the other side.
And then Dorrie was standing next to him.
Her sharp, bony fingers gripped his arm. She leaned in, close. He had drifted apart from the rest of the guests to get away from her, but now he didn’t half mind that she’d searched him out.
“You’re a beautiful thing,” she said, grabbing him tight.
“Um, you’re kind of freaking me out.” But even as he said it, Andrew knew that he liked her intensity. No one at school was like that. Especially not girls. She had these crazy blue diamond eyes with light eyelashes that were a very pale pink and amazing masses of goldish red hair like some sort of fairy queen.
“Do you think I’ll hurt you?”
Andrew laughed and flexed the arm under her fingers. “Never.”
“Never,” she repeated.
And then they were in her car together, headed towards the city. Dorrie drove a long, sleek Jaguar from the ’80s, still in good enough shape that it suggested the smell of fresh leather. Andrew’s father hadn’t said a word when he interrupted and said that he was leaving with someone else, just looked at him with eyes so strange and open that he grabbed Dorrie’s hand and rushed out the door.
“You’re a really good driver,” said Andrew, nervous, as she shifted gears and veered into the oncoming lane to pass a slow big rig.
“Are you unaccustomed to women who can drive?”
“No! Women can do anything! I just don’t usually see girls drive stick.” Dorrie turned and raised an eyebrow at him. Andrew shrugged. “I don’t,” he insisted. “I don’t even drive stick.”
“And you’re a man.”
Was that sarcasm? Andrew found that it was always best to ignore sarcasm. It was much easier to defuse that way instead of taking it on directly.
“So where are we going?”
“You said you were a comedian, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How funny are you?”
“I’m funny! I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I’m pretty fucking funny.” Just outside the blurred edges came the thought of Barbra watching him bomb in Austin, but he pushed it down.
“Good.”
“So where are we going?”
“You’ll like it.”