And what if there were trouble? What if Embeth didn’t come? What if Embeth just hung up the phone and went to the salon and continued on with her day as she had planned? What if Embeth didn’t intervene and fix things for Aaron? How irritating that people always assumed that Embeth was the person to call when Aaron had caused a crisis. Weren’t there some wives who were protected from the truth at all costs? Why did no one ever think that Embeth was that kind of wife? The kind of wife who should be left in the dark when it came to her husband’s shortcomings?
Once, many years ago, Embeth hadn’t intervened, and look how that had worked out.
“Fine,” Embeth said. “I’ll come get her.”
“What should I do with her in the meantime?”
“Stick her in a broom closet! I don’t really care.”
“Broom! Broom!” said El Meté.
“Shut it,” Embeth whispered.
“You want me to shut the door of the broom closet?” Tasha asked.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Embeth said.
“Who are you talking to?” Tasha said. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
Indeed, it was not her business. “I’m with El . . . ,” Embeth said. “Friend.”
“Friend? Friend?” said El Meté.
“Yes, I’d call us friends,” Embeth said.
The bird nuzzled the nook of Embeth’s neck and cooed.
“I don’t even know if we have a broom closet, Mrs. Levin,” said Tasha.
“Tasha, honestly! In this world, to be overly literal is a profound weakness. It doesn’t have to be a broom closet. Just put her somewhere out of the way until I get there. It could be a basement. It could be the roof. It could be a neglected cubicle. The location of your motherfucking choosing!” Embeth hung up the phone. This girl was hopeless.
“Hopeless,” said El Meté.
Before Embeth drove to the office, she looked in her phone for Rachel Grossman’s number. Rachel Grossman, otherwise known as the Worst Neighbor Ever. Yes, this—and who knew what this was? — this should definitely be Rachel Grossman’s problem, not Embeth’s.
Embeth dialed the number, but the number no longer worked. She started the car.
AT THE OFFICE, phones rang. Some rings were answered enthusiastically; some rings had been ignored for weeks and would always be ignored. A girl in a dress composed a tweet, and a girl in a cheaper version of the same dress wrote yet another memo—“Re: pros and cons of Snapchat for incumbent political candidates”—concluding that at this stage in the campaign it was too late for the congressman to join. Everyone was being careful about what they put in e-mail or in texts because you never knew who was watching/hacking, and you could mean something to be funny, but nothing was funny without context, nuance, and, oh God, the vagaries of tone. Still, a text was preferable to an e-mail. An e-mail was preferable to a phone call. A phone call was preferable to a sit-down. A sit-down was to be avoided at all costs. But if you had to sit down, drinks were better than lunch was better than dinner. Everyone hated his or her phone and couldn’t imagine functioning without it. A girl in jeans shot a nasty look at the girls in dresses and told a boy in jeans that the girls in dresses didn’t really do anything important. (But everyone knew the girls in dresses ran the show.) A girl in a skirt and a boy in a tracksuit discussed whether Up Ticket would help Down Ticket this year. Someone tossed an old imitation Nerf football with LEVIN 2006 on the side, and someone yelled, “Quiet down, the vote’s on C-SPAN!” and someone else yelled, “No one cares!” and someone else yelled, “I care!” Two boys in blazers took lunch orders, and a girl in a dress said she wouldn’t take coffee orders so don’t even think about asking. A boy in a tie revised his résumé (but everyone was always doing that), and a girl in a dress said, “Can someone please explain to the congressman again that you need to put a period at the beginning of a tweet that starts with an ‘@’?” and then she muttered something about “working with old people.” A different girl in a dress sent an e-mail to someone she knew at CNN: “Out of curiosity, how does one become a surrogate?” A boy in a tie flirted with another boy in a tie, and a boy in khakis stole office supplies and told himself he was stocking his own eventual campaign larder. A girl in a dress cried on the phone to her mother and quietly moaned, “I have to stick it out or I won’t get credit!” And everyone was very important, and very underappreciated, and very underpaid, and in the way of all campaign offices, very, very young.
Embeth had known prior versions of these boys and girls, though she did not know any of the current versions personally, and her arrival was not noticed. Through years of tepid celebrity, Embeth had learned the art of entering a room. When she wanted to be noticed, she was noticed. When she didn’t want to be noticed, she almost never had to be. The trick was in looking as if she knew where she was going while putting out a benign and boring, if slightly unpleasant, energy. The trick could sometimes be her phone, her (and everyone else’s) fortress of solitude, and a practiced absorption in it. The trick could involve an unpretentious hat, but never sunglasses. Whatever method she used, the older she got, the easier it was to flip that particular switch to the invisible setting. Someday soon, she supposed, the switch would stick there, and Embeth would never be seen again.
Embeth arrived at Tasha’s desk, which was in a separate reception area outside her husband’s personal office. Across from her desk sat the girl. She wore a seersucker blazer and blue jeans with cheerful designs painted on them (a rainbow, a heart, the sun, clouds), and a T-shirt that said, WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, and pink running shoes. Her hair was frizzy with humidity and pulled into an awkward half ponytail. She had on circular frames, which emphasized the roundness of her face. Beneath those glasses were soft green eyes and Embeth could tell from looking in those eyes that school—nay, life—must be hard for her. She looked less guarded than was optimal for survival. She reminded Embeth of a turtle on its back, a porcupine born without quills. Either her mother had done a very good or a very bad job raising her. Very good, because the girl did not look as if she cared what anyone thought of her. Very bad, because the mother had not prepared her for the world. To Embeth’s eye, yes, the girl did resemble Aaron—the curly hair, the light eyes, though Aaron’s were more blue than green. But then again, Aviva Grossman’s features were quite similar to Aaron’s, so who was to say? What the girl mainly looked was Jewish, Embeth supposed. The girl looked peaceful and nerdy. She had on headphones and was reading something intently on a tablet.
If she was Aaron’s daughter, it would be completely out of character for Aviva Grossman to have kept such a secret for so long. That girl was the most indiscreet person Embeth had ever encountered. Have an affair with my husband, if you must, but don’t write about it on the Internet! Certainly don’t write about having anal sex with him, for the love of God. Even if you changed the names, it was only a matter of time.
“Mrs. Levin,” Tasha said, jumping out of her desk chair. “I told them to tell me when you were coming up.”
“I’m slippery,” Embeth said.
“That’s her,” Tasha said.
“Yes, I assumed a second girl hadn’t shown up,” Embeth said.