“Duck lo mein…” she says in an enticing voice. “Dumm-plingssss…”
He finally brushes his teeth, throws on a trench coat and borrows her mirror aviators, and they hit the street. In the crushed, steamy, loud restaurant, they’re so invisible, he feels stupid.
“And besides, I got dissed,” she says, licking plum sauce off her thumb. “You’re the rich boy, I’m the grifter.”
His cheeks redden. “It’s not like I feel sorry for myself,” he says.
“But?” she asks with impatience.
“It’s—that—” he falters.
“Fucking what?”
“I keep putting you in—these situations,” he announces. “I just feel guilty.”
Her face softens, and she finishes the last emerald shreds of bok choy in silence.
After dinner, they wander by the East River.
There’s an old man with a pole, a newspaper spread on the ground so he can filet his fish before packing it in recycled plastic containers. Pearl drops of light glisten fuzzily on the bridge.
“It’s good to be out,” Jamey admits.
An ancient Chinese lady with a man’s blunt haircut walks by—a shirt with tiny flowers under her jacket, ivory cane glowing in one hand, and her other arm looped through her daughter’s elbow.
“Yeah,” Elise says, and loops her own arm through his. “It’s a pretty night….”
Saturday feels like spring—it’s in the low fifties but the sun is sincere.
“Maybe we could go to the park?” Elise says in a carefully noncombative way.
Jamey nods. “Let’s do it.”
They take the subway, in hats and sunglasses, and get out at Eighty-First Street. They walk by Belvedere Castle scrawled with hieroglyphics, look at the scummy lake.
Central Park delicately offers its first crocus, a couple daffodils, forsythia opening their yellow buds, a few dangling snowdrops.
Jamey and Elise sit on grass, which dampens their asses. They eat hot dogs glopped with mustard and relish. The day is chilly enough to warrant sun on their faces, and sunny enough to need the breeze. A push and pull, petals falling occasionally, birds working in the sky. It’s the thrift of March, measured-out abundance. She needs to tell him she hasn’t gotten her period, but she keeps putting it off, and before she knows it, they’re walking home in twilit streets.
Someone knocks, and Jamey looks through the peephole, and hesitates before unlocking the door.
“Tory!” Jamey says, when he can finally speak.
“My poor child,” she says, hugging him. “Dragged through the mud. I’ve been there—I know how it feels.” And she keeps hugging him.
Annie hovers in the grim staircase. Outside, a white limousine trembles.
Elise raises her palm in an Indian How so they don’t touch her.
Tory claps her hands together. “I have a surprise. We’re going to France. Get you out of the limelight, away from these assholes.”
“I don’t understand,” Jamey says, after a moment.
“We are going to France. All of us! Today!”
Elise and Jamey look at each other. “I have to work,” Elise says unsurely.
“I’m sure you can get off for a few days!” Annie says benevolently—Annie who never had a job. “The plane is on the tarmac, and the house is ready, and the trip is all planned!”
Jamey frowns at Elise. “You don’t even have a passport.”
“Oh, yeah. I don’t.”
“We can’t go,” Jamey says brightly. “It’s a great idea, but some notice would have been helpful.”
“But it’s a surprise!” Tory says somewhat disingenuously.
“Thanks but no thanks,” he says.
“It’s your birthday,” Tory insists.
Elise touches his arm: “You know what, babe? Go. What’s a few days?”
“A few days is a few days,” he says to her with meaning.
“Honestly? I could use some time. Clean house, get my head straight. Go,” she says, fingering the bandanna holding her braids back.
He looks at her, confounded. “What’s the story, Elise?”
“There is no story,” she says as sweetly as possible, kissing him quickly. “I’ll miss you like crazy and want you to come back. Please go.”
Tory might barf. “Okay, then, it’s settled!”
On the plane, the ladies snuggle in red blankets monogrammed for Annie’s mother. Jamey sips club soda while Pilot Dick Keye gives the safety speech, politely flirting while also presenting an unexcitable, militaristic competence. He links his fingers and uses his fused hands to gesture. He is God, father, and servant, all in one buff, trim, diplomatic fellow.
They eat steak au poivre with golden forks. Then the ladies pop pills, turn chairs into beds, and mask their eyes.
Jamey opens his shade because he can’t sleep, and sees a vast and spawning field of so much nothing—or so much something.
Delicate night. But is it night? It’s just a darkness. Night loses meaning when separated from time, and the whole thing seems random.
The cabin feels like a chamber of ethylene, and Jamey suddenly pictures himself striking a match. Don’t, he tells himself gently, even think about it.
They get picked up at the airport by a Frenchman with criminal eyes but very silly buckteeth. He drives with what seems like bitter, silent pride—but could just be distraction—through dark hills in a Peugeot.
“I’m so happy we’re here together,” Annie says.
To Jamey, this sounds like Chinese. Is he “happy”? Are they “together”? Why or why not? Who are “we”? Is this beautiful or violent, that he’s in the French countryside, on a starless ride, with no control?
The car radio is tuned to the news, and the news sounds more serious here. He tries to imagine what they’re passing: lavender? Goats?
When they arrive at the house, the staff take bags and run baths. Jamey’s brought to his room. A portly woman turns down his duvet. She does a desperate ballet, saying “wah-ture” when indicating the bedside bottle, then speaking French when showing him the bidet and the steam cleaner.
“It’s hot,” he says, flicking his fingers as if burned to show her he knows what she means, and she grins and holds his hand, squeezes it.
Jamey feels ill from flying. His stomach is bloated with gas. When she leaves, he drinks Perrier and burps quietly. Something moves and he flinches, then recognizes himself in a mirror, broad shoulders in a tattered black cable-knit sweater, circles under his eyes, his white chinos stained with red wine. It took an opulent room for him to see what he looks like these days.
Elise pisses on the wand. She doesn’t understand how this could be—she’s taking the Pill! One day she forgot then doubled up the next morning—but that can’t really matter….
Buck watches as she waits. He licks her knee once because he can tell she’s anxious.
When she sees the result, she puts her hand over her mouth, crumbles to the floor, silent, not even rubbing Buck’s face.
At breakfast time, the trio wakes crankily.
“How you doing?” Tory asks Jamey.
“Fine, thanks. And you?”
“You don’t look so good,” she tells him.