Elise waits, and waits, then nods almost imperceptibly. She looks away.
They sit there a long time, freezing, ankles and knees locking, but they don’t want to leave. It’s cold, the day giving up without a fight.
“It would take more than that, Jamey, to scare me off,” she says, without looking at him. Her face and neck turn scarlet. “I’m in love with you.”
Then she stares right at him.
“Well, I like you a whole lot too,” he says in his funny voice.
He focuses on throwing the stick for Buck, who doesn’t chase it, because he chooses this moment to shit behind the leafless bush.
Jamey watches with a bizarrely bland smile, like an old man observing ships drifting into a harbor. He’s stricken with terror and prays for the afternoon to end.
One more night, he thinks.
Annie rented the penthouse suite at the hotel, and gathers his mother’s admirers there.
“Hi, babe!” Tory calls out to Jamey as he walks in.
“Hey, Tory,” he says.
Then Tory shows how when she’s good, she’s the greatest, and she and the crew go on a run of fun.
The hotel room is full of folks, talking, drinking Mumm out of paper cups. Tory smokes, sitting on the floor with her impeccable posture, the gang of disciples around her. A few are straight, two gay, a couple in between, none more beautiful than her, most of them broken, half parasitic and half delightful.
She asks them questions so rude she must be kidding, and they pretend to be offended, and try to figure out if she’s joking at all.
She’ll throw a grenade of gossip into a silence, or hand out candy in the form of praise and affection—when it’s least expected. She riles them all up, churning a pile of puppies, tickling and pushing them away, pulling them gently back by the ear.
“Oh my god, I’m so demanding!” she says. “Why do you people put up with me? I’m like—I need this, I need that!”
“We love you!” they say.
“Look at you guys. You’re all goddamn beautiful.”
There’s a group sheepishness.
The room groans like a cruise ship forever changing direction, seeking the sun.
“I mean,” Tory says, “Look how beautiful Annie is. Look.”
Everyone coos at beautiful Annie.
“Annie, let’s go skiing! Can we?” Tory asks like a girl to a boy.
“Anything you want, sweetie pie,” Annie says, lying on the rug, getting drunk.
“Come to Vail,” says Tristan, “?’cause me and Toby are there all month.”
They’re all talking about how fabulous Vail is.
And Jamey knows by bringing up this story, he’ll ruin the night.
“Remember when you left me there, Mom?” he asks, smiling.
When Jamey was five, she and Alex—divorced but sharing custody then—muddled a handoff in Vail. When she arrived at her friend’s house in Santa Fe and found out, she almost threw up with cold fever. She thought Alex had the kid, Alex thought she had the kid.
She called the hotel. Where is he? Okay, give him some ice cream. You have a pool; take him swimming, for God’s sake! I’ll be there soon. Just tell him that.
Her friend Marie asked what was the matter; her husband walked up behind her with a tray of drinks. Nothing, I’ll be right back, Tory said, even though Vail was a six-hour drive. She couldn’t bear to tell them. She squeezed her keys so hard walking to the car her hand bled on the white leather steering wheel.
She drove through aspens and snow, and they were one piece—the trees and the land—a single whiteness.
Alex told the story whenever he toasted Jamey on his birthday and reminisced about his son’s “madcap” childhood. Tory never joked about it. That drive to Vail took a couple years off her life, although the way she talked to the hotel staff and even to Jamey when she got there would have convinced anyone it was nothing but a god-damn inconvenience.
Now she looks at him, and waves him away. “Jesus, I shouldn’t have gone back for you,” she jokes, and the group whistles shrilly, oh là là!
“You’re so cruel, darling,” says Evan, purring in his leather pants next to her.
“I can’t help it,” she says throatily, provocatively.
Jamey sneaks out when the group is hitting their peak of tipsy, catty hysteria, the boys trying on Annie’s scarves in the mirror, Terry and Sylvia having a serious talk in the corner, and Tory floating in the center of the ring, cigarette poised near her lush naked mouth.
Jamey is supposed to meet Tory the next day but he’s in Elise’s bed, happily stoned on fucking, eating graham crackers, and getting crumbs in the sheets.
Next door, Tory rings the doorbell, and waits on the sunny porch in her white jeans and trench coat. When Matt answers, she pushes her chin up and her tiny breasts out.
“Matty! So good to see you.”
She hugs him briskly and strides into the house.
“He should be home by now. But please make yourself comfortable—or take a look around,” he adds, since she’s already on her way up the stairs.
As she comes downstairs, she asks if he has any vodka.
“I don’t mind going out and getting some,” Matt says in a panic of etiquette, pulling at his Polo shirt like he’s hot.
“You’re sweet. Get Stoli if they have it.”
She lounges in their living room, looking through magazines, smoking. When Matt comes back and pours her a drink, she scans his face and sighs. “You dear boys. You have it so easy, you’ll never know what it feels like to make it on your own.”
Matt rushes to agree: “That is a problem.”
“I got to see what I had in me, you know? I had to prove myself.”
“Totally, I agree.”
She asks about Elise.
“It can’t last,” Matt says.
“He’s just acting out, right?”
“Definitely. They have nothing in common. And it’s good timing that the school year is over, almost, and he’ll be gone for a while, you know?”
“If that’s what it takes, sure!” Tory says, recrossing her long legs.
Matt awkwardly checks his watch. “I don’t know why he’s not here yet.”
Now Jamey watches from Elise’s window as his mother’s shoe kicks the air. He’s an hour late. No shirt, just corduroy pants. Deodorant wax smeared through underarm hair. His mouth parted as he stares. He’s enthralled.
Elise joins him at the window.
They watch Tory leave finally, and she waves to Matt, who sees her off. The Jaguar toots out lavender exhaust and slides into the city.
Elise plants kisses on Jamey’s back, and she runs her hand up his neck to his jaw, rubs his lip with her finger, until he sucks her finger, and then they’re on the mattress again, and she says Oh God with each thrust as if she can’t take any more when all she wants is more.