“Do you think you have a chance?”
“Yes, but only because it’s a small role. It’s a recurring character, but not one of the four major leads.” He pointed at a squirrel clinging to a second-story screen window and peering into the apartment. “Peeping Tom,” he murmured.
Looking up at the squirrel from the sidewalk was a huge orange tomcat, his fur so thick that Cassie could see only a bit of the collar. His tail was thwapping back and forth, sweeping the concrete. She thought about her cats at the shelter—and so many of them were her cats in her mind, at least until they found permanent homes—and wondered what they would do without her. Oh, there were other volunteers, but she didn’t know how diligent they were about sneaking in catnip and treats and toys, and brushing the poor things for hours and hours on end.
“When will you know?” she asked.
“If I got the part? Next week, I guess.” Then: “There’s lots of great sibling stuff in the script, too. That’s the kind of material that fuels my jets. My relationship with my brother and sister in real life is pretty complicated.”
“Yeah. Mine, too.”
“Are you and your sister close?”
“Not really.”
“You wouldn’t be friends if you weren’t related?”
“Probably not.”
“Even after all you two endured together growing up?”
“Even after that.”
He asked her what her sister did for a living and then what her brother-in-law did. He found her brother-in-law’s work far more interesting. Everyone did. No one asked follow-up questions when you said your sister was an accountant. But an engineer at an army base that disposed of poison gas and nerve agents? People were fascinated—especially men.
“I’ll bet he doesn’t talk about it much,” he said.
“Because it’s all so classified?” she asked.
“Because it’s all just so dark. Chemical weapons? That’s crazy. We’ve all seen the pictures from Syria.”
“I think he’s in charge of getting rid of them. Or one of the people in charge, anyway. But, yes, it is classified.”
“And not exactly Thanksgiving dinner table conversation, in any case.”
“Nope.” Then, feeling uncharacteristically defensive of her family, she continued. “He’s really not a dark person at all. He’s pretty chill. He’s very sweet. I get along better with him than I do with Rosemary.”
“Well, you and Rosemary have a lot more history together.”
“Yeah, we do. And most of it’s kind of dark,” she said. She asked him to tell her about his family, and he laughed a little bit, but then he started to talk, making jokes about Westport and WASPs and how his family’s Thanksgivings would have rivaled Martha Stewart’s when it came to detail and production values.
She leaned into him as he regaled her with tales of the crested blazers he would wear as a boy and his mother’s impeccable Christmas trees. She was tipsy, and she liked herself best when she was tipsy. She thought she was prettiest when she was just on the cusp of drunk. She’d spied herself (or studied herself) in enough mirrors—at parties, on airplanes, in her compact—to know that her eyes looked a little more wanton and her lips a little more inviting when she was just starting to leave the sadness of sobriety behind. When she was working, when she’d snuck a drink or two on the flight, she knew that men watched her differently, their own eyes more rapacious. She could feel their gaze on her hips, her ass, as she worked her way up and down the thin aisle. And so she stopped walking, which led Buckley to stop. She had to take her mind off this kind man’s childhood and the shelter cats and the travel and the liquor—all that she might be about to lose.
She felt no one was following her now. No one.
He stared at her for a long moment, regarding her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s you,” she said. “It’s a starry night in the city.” Then, for reasons that she didn’t precisely understand, she brought his fingers to her lips and kissed them.
* * *
? ?
And in the morning, it seemed, they still weren’t looking for her. Or, at least, they hadn’t come for her. The only text she had was a brief one from Ani asking if she had heard anything. She texted back that she hadn’t, and watched Buckley sleep for another moment more. It crossed her mind that she might never see him again after today. She just didn’t know what awaited her in the coming hours. The coming days. The indignities. The accusations. The public and private pain.
He was still asleep when she climbed from beneath the sheet and sat for a moment on the side of his bed. The shade was down, but she could tell it was sunny outside. It would be a delightful day at the zoo.
She checked the weather on her phone, punching in Charlottesville, Virginia. She saw it was going to be hot and sunny there, too. It was going to be, as these things went, a perfectly lovely day for a funeral.
* * *
? ?
A pair of sea lions popped effortlessly from the water onto the stone platform, spraying the young woman with the bucket of fish as if they were playful black labs that had just come in from the rain. The trainer smiled at them and tossed them each a couple of sardines.
Cassie was standing along the rail beside Rosemary. Next to her sister were her two children, Tim and Jessica. Dennis, Rosemary’s husband, had moved a few dozen yards away from them, photographing the animals from what he believed was going to be a vantage point that would allow him to capture both the animals and his family. Jessica hadn’t yet started third grade, so she was still young enough to laugh and squeal at the sea lions’ antics, but Cassie observed that Tim was watching with the feigned disinterest of a rising middle-schooler. At least she presumed it was feigned: how could you not enjoy watching sea lions frolic on a Saturday morning in August? Still, he seemed considerably more fascinated by the small drone the zoo had hovering above the sea lions for a video feed inside a nearby gift store. Cassie knew he had one at home that was probably just as sophisticated. Drones were such a guy thing, she thought. It was downright chromosomal.
They were both attractive children: Tim was in the midst of a growth spurt, but he was already lanky and slender, his hair the same reddish blond as hers. His jeans were baggy and his Royals T-shirt so faded it looked almost like denim. Jessica was overdressed for the zoo, but Rosemary said the child was overdressed for life: though she was eight and this was Saturday and it was the middle of the summer, she was wearing violet wedge heels, a black skirt that had been part of one of her costumes from her June dance recital, and a red velvet blouse with a scoop neck but very long sleeves. Cassie recognized the blouse from the American Girl store. She recognized as well the rhinestone headband Jessica was using to pull back her hair. Cassie had bought her niece the blouse when she had taken her shopping in the spring, and she had bought her the headband at the grand bazaar in Istanbul. It had cost maybe a buck.
“I want one,” Rosemary was saying, smiling at the animals. Her sister had gotten a job a year earlier crunching numbers with a health insurance company in Lexington and had fallen in love with the gym and the spin classes at the headquarters. Cassie thought she’d never looked healthier. “I think a sea lion would make a great pet.”
“You know that’s ridiculous,” Tim chastised his mother, rolling his eyes.