Then we went back to the party. While we’d been away, afternoon had collapsed into evening, and the staff were setting out tables for a formal meal, lighting lanterns and hanging them in the trees. A four-piece band set up on a little stage and began to play jazz standards. People had disappeared to change, and were reappearing in cocktail dresses, jackets and ties.
Carter looked at the table map and moved our place cards so we were sitting with Leonie. only to find that when the meal started she sat down at another table, next to the man she had been talking to by the pool. The guests at our table were all twenty-something lawyers, eager young folk whose firms were attached to the Wallace Magnolia Group like barnacles on the hull of an oceangoing tanker. After a round of perky introductions, it became clear that I wasn’t worth talking to and Carter was ignoring them, so they made conversation amongst themselves. Carter sat with his phone between his legs, checking an auction on eBay. I ate my diver scallops and my duck and looked up at the lanterns in the trees, listening to the band amble through “Now Is The Time.”
After the main course had been served, Cornelius Wallace stood and gave a speech, acknowledging various people at the party and thanking us for “sharing this milestone” with him. He made a joke about being named the youngest member of the Magnolia board and claimed to be very thankful to have “Roger and Bill and Harry” to help him find his feet. Somehow he made his thanks sound like a threat, as if Roger and Bill and Harry would soon find themselves clearing their desks if they didn’t swiftly demonstrate loyalty to the new regime.
They served coffee and dessert and people began to move around. Some of the lawyers vacated their places and Leonie and her friend came over to sit with us.
—Carter, this is Marc.
Marc shook Carter’s hand, then sat back with placid self-assurance, crossing his legs and shooting his cuffs and adopting the expression of a man ready to be fascinated.
Carter said hi. There was a drawn-out pause.
Marc’s smile did not waver. Instead, though no one had asked, he told us how he knew Leonie. From downtown, he said, with a knowing underscore that made him sound almost archaeological. I did some quick calculations. Young in the eighties.
—Actually, I bought one of her videos.
Is that what you do, asked Carter. Collect videos?
—No, I have a software company. Lately some other projects too. I have an environmental nonprofit that takes up some of my time.
—Oh God, you’re that guy.
Marc was measured in the face of this unexpected aggression. Leonie looked furious. Carter sighed and scraped his chair back from the table.
—Ones and fucking zeroes. Excuse me, I need to piss.
He stalked off. I wondered if I ought to go too. The silence became awkward. Leonie filled it by introducing me to Marc, who shook my hand and gave me his ready-to-be-fascinated face. Up to that point, no one had acknowledged me.
—It was such a wonderful surprise to find out Marc was going to be here. It’s positively made my evening.
Leonie’s smile was almost as radiant as Marc’s. She behaved as if she and I were the greatest of friends, apparently hoping that I would help cover for her brother’s rudeness. Then she and Marc told each other again and again how pleased and surprised they were to see each other at the party, until I became convinced that they had arranged to meet, perhaps as part of some subterfuge. I looked on his hand for a wedding ring, but didn’t see one. As they played out their little scene, I shrunk further into myself. A silence descended which I made no particular effort to fill, and they began to look around for ways to move on.
There was whooping and shouting, and then a splash. Corny’s friends from the plane had met another half a dozen young men as moronic as themselves, and together they’d pushed a girl into the swimming pool. Leonie used the opportunity to pull Marc away. I watched them go, his hand brushing the small of her back as they made their way towards the house. More than twenty years older. Probably twenty-five. I felt very bitter, brimming with a poor young man’s outrage against the old and rich. His thickening body against hers, his knowing unworshipful hands.
Around me, the party was bifurcating, one faction already saying good night, giving out business cards and promising to be in touch, the other gearing up for some real fun, shots and powder and sneaking in and out of rooms. Carter reappeared and told me not to talk to him, because he’d lost the auction he’d been following and now it was all he could do not to punch someone. A complicated cascade of transactions had depended on him buying a hillbilly record, some Appalachian fiddle band. The fiddle band record would make some kind of set or package with two others he already had, and the three together might lure someone he’d been talking to online to part with a worn but playable copy of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver Blues.” But he’d been outbid. He’d not been paying attention. Someone else was using sniper software, so no John Hurt record. It wasn’t fair. The loss had put him in a foul mood. I knew from experience that it wasn’t a good idea to be around him. All he’d want to do was pick at his wounds and work up an excuse to lash out at me.
—What’s the deal with Marc, I asked, cautiously.
—Oh him. He’s another collector. Emerging artists, blah blah blah. All so he can impress his Teva-wearing tech buddies with tales of urban exploration.
—What about him and Leonie?
—Is she fucking him? I don’t even want to know.