The Privileges_ A Novel Part 3

"This," Jonas said, "is the coolest house I have ever seen."

No one came outside to greet them; he wasn't sure how to let their hosts know they had arrived. Honking felt wrong on multiple levels. "So what time is the next tour?" Cynthia said, but just then Mrs. Sanford #4-she introduced herself to Cyn as Victoria, thank G.o.d, because Adam had blanked on her name-came gaily through some side door that they hadn't even noticed was there.

Sanford himself was waiting in the foyer to shake hands with Cynthia and the children, in whom he took no pains to seem interested, and then he and his wife did something that struck Adam as truly old-school: they segregated their guests immediately by gender, with Victoria taking Cynthia and the kids upstairs and Sanford leading Adam down some steps, through a media room, and onto what turned out to be a screened back porch that faced directly, with only a few feet of mowed gra.s.s intervening, into the dense woods. The porch was crowded with dozens of large potted and hanging plants, creating for a moment the effect that the spanking-new house was actually a sort of ruin the birches and pines were intent on reclaiming; but in there among the fauna were two large and very softly upholstered rattan chairs, and in between them was a table that held a pitcher of b.l.o.o.d.y Marys. The porch was cool and dark, despite which Sanford wore a pair of sungla.s.ses on a cord around his neck. His own gla.s.s was already three-quarters empty-he must have been sitting out here before the Moreys arrived-and he filled Adam's with a stately flourish. "You have a beautiful family," he said as he sank back into his chair.

"Thank you," Adam said. "Where have they been taken?"

"Not much to do out here," was Sanford's answer. "You're at least a hundred miles from the ocean, is what I don't like about it. Still, it is quiet." He took the celery stalk out of his drink and stuck it in his mouth.

Victoria had launched without prelude into a house tour, recounting the difficulties she'd had getting the various painters and decorators and contractors to adhere to her clearly expressed vision, a separate haughty narrative for every room in the mansion. By the fourth or fifth room Cynthia had a powerful urge to burn the whole place to the ground with this Botoxed stick figure inside it. There was no way they could have been more than ten years apart in age-unless she was a mummy, Cynthia reflected while watching the jaw move in her eerily smooth face, or possibly a vampire, preserved for centuries by the blood of her social inferiors-and yet she spoke as if from some great experiential height, as if, at the end of her remarks, there might be time for a few questions.

"Three times, we painted this room," she was saying, as if she would even know which end of a paintbrush to hold. "And I had a chip from Barry's house in Stowe for the painter to match. h.e.l.lo? Is that so hard? But you know how it is up here in these small towns, you just have to make the best of what you're given, in terms of contractors and such I mean."

"Sounds rough," Cynthia said.

"Are you from New York originally?" Victoria said.

Cynthia, who had turned around to make sure the children hadn't fallen too far behind, or maybe been s.n.a.t.c.hed by silent ninja domestics, said, "What? No. Near Chicago."

"And what line is your family in?"

Cynthia repeated the question in her head to be sure she had heard it right. "They're small-town contractors," she said.

That she had put her foot in her mouth seemed more plausible to Victoria than the idea of being openly mocked; embarra.s.sed, she looked away, and in avoiding Cynthia's eyes she seemed to remind herself of the presence of the two children, who, though of course they could have cared less about paint shades and window treatments, were awestruck by the house itself, the scale and gadgetry of it. There were environmental-control panels in every room, touch screens that not only calibrated light and temperature and music but also gave you access to security-camera views of the garage, the grounds, the driveway, and even the other rooms inside the house. It had taken Jonas about ten seconds to figure it out. "There's Dad!" he said. Cynthia kept throwing him doomsday looks over her shoulder, but having solved the puzzle of the touch screens he couldn't keep his hands off them, and anyway she was half rooting for him to figure out how to make it rain in there. Soon he had left a trail of images of his father and Sanford flickering in every empty room through which they pa.s.sed.

Victoria hadn't noticed that, but she picked up on the kids' general enchantment and felt gratified again. April was walking a few steps ahead of her brother now, embarra.s.sed by his youthful enthusiasm, trying to blend in with the women, mimicking their facial expressions like someone trying to sneak into the second act of a play. She loved it when new people thought she was older than she was. She was leaning toward Victoria like some kind of thirsty plant, but Victoria seemed disinclined to engage her too directly. "G.o.d, these are gorgeous children," she said to Cynthia. "How old did you say they were?"

"Seven and six," Cynthia said, ignoring a scowl from April, who felt ages should be rounded up.

"They could model. They look like a Ralph Lauren catalogue. They go to school?"

"Why, yes," Cynthia said. "We thought that would be wise."

"Where, though?"

"Dalton," April offered.

"Very nice," Victoria said. "And you were smart to have them so young. Easier to bounce back." And she reached out and casually patted Cynthia just below her waistline, approvingly, a touch so condescendingly intimate that Cynthia was speechless. She tried to remind herself that this was the wife of her husband's boss and so she would just have to suck it up for the weekend, and when that didn't work she tried to drum up some sympathetic revulsion at the thought of what old Vicky here must have had to deliver s.e.xually in exchange for this life of high-end vision realizing. But that didn't really work either, because Sanford, even in his late sixties or whatever he was, was a ridiculously handsome guy.

It was apparently his intent to sit there on the porch drinking b.l.o.o.d.y Marys for the duration of his guests' stay. He was talking now about the upcoming Newport-to-Bermuda yacht race. The b.l.o.o.d.y Marys were excellent; Adam was starting to recall the pleasures of getting drunk before lunchtime but this seemed like an odd setting for it, like a myth or a fairy tale in which he might drink the proscribed drink and never find his way back to the surface of the earth. Not that he was nervous around the boss-they'd been drunk together many times-or felt he needed to keep up appearances of any sort. On the contrary: the more he was himself, the more the old man seemed to like him.

He looked abruptly at Adam, struck by an idea. "You could crew," he said. "The crew I had last year was hopeless. Interested? We'd be out anywhere from four to six days."

"Sadly," Adam said, "I know f.u.c.k all about sailing." Sanford's disappointment lasted only an instant. "You could pick it up," he said. "I know a sailor when I see one. I see great things in you, you know."

Adam pretended he hadn't heard, which was his nearest approach to modesty.

"Those others, they'll do fine," Sanford went on. "But they're lieutenants. You give them a job to do and they'll get it done-any business needs that. But I see bigger things for you. G.o.d knows I won't be around forever."

Rather than allow Sanford to stray any farther down this path, Adam said, "So I'm meeting your pal Guy in Milwaukee on Monday morning. I have to fly out there tomorrow night." "Your pal" was said with some levity; Sanford scowled at the mention of Guy's name.

"The man is an animal," he said. "I think there's money to be made there, but I'm not sure I can spend another hour in the same room with him. Last time we met he threw a pen at my head. I'm sorry to sacrifice you to this lunatic. Maybe you can get it done, though. People like you. You know that? That's a gift. You can't teach it. I'm hungry," he said suddenly.

"Can I ask you something? Is there a pool here?"

"Good Lord," Sanford said, "you and the swimming."

"No," Adam said, "I was thinking of the kids. They brought their suits. Throw them in the water and they're good all day. It might give them something to do while we're sitting here getting loaded."

Sanford folded his hands on his chest. He had sunk quite low in his chair. "Helicopter," he said. "That's the term, right? These days? Helicopter parents, helicopter parenting."

"Sorry?"

"You're close to them, aren't you? I think that's great."

"You have children yourself, sir?"

The old man loved to be called sir. "Oh G.o.d yes," he said. "Of course. Anyway, no, there's no swimming pool here, but we do belong to this little club in town where they can swim all they like. Maybe we can even get some G.o.dd.a.m.n lunch there, since no lunch appears to be forthcoming here."

They followed the Sanfords in their car, in a silence generated by the fear that anything they wanted to say might later be innocently repeated in front of their hosts by one of the kids. It also required all of Adam's concentration not to lose sight of Sanford's Boxster, which he drove through the narrow roads at aristocratic speed. Adam thought the word "club" betokened a simple swimming pool, and had told the kids so; the family made a collective gasping sound when they came instead upon a clean, still lake hidden improbably high up in the Berks.h.i.+re foothills. A wooden sign at the gate told them the place was called Cream Hill Pond. The quiet was overwhelming: "No power boats," Sanford pointed out. "Sunfish city." White sails dotted the water. There were two tennis courts, but no one was on them. The kids were vibrating with impatience to get into the lake; Cynthia asked Sanford's wife where the changing rooms were, but Victoria, who looked unhappy and even somewhat baffled to be there at what seemed like the children's behest, didn't know and had to ask someone else.

The dark pines, the sun on the water, the s.h.i.+mmer of the triangular sails, it was all so postcard-beautiful that you felt a little stupid giving in to it; but April's and Jonas's uncomplicated pleasure was infectious. Cynthia watched them organizing some game in the water with a group of kids they'd met five minutes ago. Rarely did you see the two of them get along so well for so long a stretch and you had to think that the relations.h.i.+p between that and the sheer sense of s.p.a.ce out here wasn't coincidental. She lifted her head to admire the green bowl of the hills. Wide open yet secure. Maybe she'd been looking at this place, this life, through the wrong eyes. All you wanted was for your children to become their best selves, but how were you supposed to know if this was not happening? Victoria was right: they were beautiful, so beautiful you almost felt like you should apologize for it, like something fundamental had been rigged in their favor. Maybe you were denying them something they needed without even knowing it, just because you weren't thinking big enough, or far enough outside the box of what your own childhood was like.

But as she watched them play she admitted to herself that sometimes this anxiety over whether your kids' lives were perfectly realized could reach the point where it wasn't a lot different from Victoria's trying to match a paint chip: you had to justify the day, and your existence in it, somehow. It was impressive, in a way, that a woman Victoria's age not only didn't want children but didn't really even pretend to like them. Certainly such a life was possible. Certainly there were other things one might do. According to Adam, she sat on the boards of about ten different national charities, where she no doubt made herself a pain in the a.s.s, but what did that really matter when she had the a.s.sets and the social position to actually do some good in the world? What did it matter that the money wasn't hers, as long as it was hers to give away? Cynthia already lived better than anyone in her family ever had, at least until Ruth remarried; still, there was rich and there was rich. She glanced over at Victoria, who wore a huge straw hat that she clamped down on her head with one palm even though there was no wind onsh.o.r.e at all. Cynthia was sorely tempted to ask her how old she was. It wasn't impossible that they were actually the same age.

"You have a beautiful home," she said. Victoria was staring back in the direction of the parking lot and didn't seem to hear.

Sanford, though, nodded graciously. "Shame you all can't spend the night," he said. "Next time." Adam's shocked expression was luckily hidden behind his sungla.s.ses; they had their overnight bags in the car. "That's very kind of you," Cynthia said; she didn't know how she would keep the kids from howling, though, so she went down to the dock to give them the news out of their hosts' earshot. Adam saw her put her finger to her lips and give them the universal five-more-minutes signal as they stomped their feet in the water and complained. She knew how to be gracious. Even after ten years together, his more complex desires for her wound up translating themselves into the simpler language of arousal; and as he watched her walk back up the lawn toward the umbrella table where the adults sat, he experienced an untimely urge to pull her back to the parking lot and do her right there up against some old Brahmin's car. Victoria went off to use the bathroom, and Sanford went off to take a phone call, and Adam was able to give his wife at last the private eye-roll he had wanted to give her all day.

"I am so sorry to put you through this," he said.

But she just smiled. "Actually, I'm really glad we came," she said. "If you want to know the truth, it all makes me kind of jealous."

He was so surprised by that, he couldn't think of another word to say until their hosts returned. The kids had such a meltdown when the time came to get them out of the water that Adam and Cynthia wound up deciding to leave for New York straight from the club. Once again the men were cleaved from the women, the old man walking Adam in the direction of his own car, with his arm around him.

"So what do you think of all this?" Sanford said, and it sounded astonis.h.i.+ngly heartfelt, even if he was drunk. His life, Adam supposed he meant. The thought of being asked to pa.s.s judgment on it, even just as a matter of etiquette, made him almost resentful.

"Green with envy," he said finally. "You have a beautiful home. I mean, I'm sure you have several. But this is a great part of the world. And frankly," he said, tapping the hood of the Boxster, "this gets me a little hard too."

Sanford laughed enchantedly. Then he laid his hand on Adam's cheek. "Patience, my son," he said. "One day, all this will be yours."

While they searched for Route 22 signs, Adam noticed his fingers were white around the wheel. "Pretty quiet back there," he said. "Did you guys have fun today?"

"It was awesome," April said. "I thought they would have kids, though."

"Not everybody does, you know," Cynthia said.

"Dad?" Jonas said meekly. "Can we have a country house?"

Cynthia laughed. "Yeah, Dad," she said. "How about it?"

Adam said nothing, and after half a minute Cynthia turned around in her seat. "One day," she said to the kids. "One day soon. We'll have all that stuff. It just takes time. You have to remember that Mr. Sanford is almost two hundred years old."

Actually, Adam thought, there was no reason why they couldn't buy some sort of weekend home now, although having gotten a load of Sanford's place Jonas would no doubt feel let down by anything Adam could afford. But there was something in Adam that stiffened against that idea-more so after today than ever before. Some manor in the country to return to over and over again, in which to sit and drink among the plants and do nothing in particular: was that what he was supposed to want? All day long he had felt like the house, the car, the club, the view, that whole life was being conspicuously shown to him, held out in front of him. Patience, my son Patience, my son. Why didn't he want it, then? Maybe he just wanted to determine his own rewards, and the pace at which they would come. Or maybe it was the presumption that all this privilege, no matter how touching it was that Sanford wanted him to have it, was Sanford's to give him in the first place. Patrimony, even the sentimental kind, had nothing to do with it. Something in Adam bristled at the thought of inheriting anything from anybody.

The next night they had an early dinner together so that Adam could make his flight to Milwaukee. Guy-whose last name was Farbar but whose abusive phone manner had earned him monomial status in the Perini office-ran a company that made cryogenic rubber; he wanted financing to take it global. Adam didn't have a perfect understanding of what cryogenic rubber was or what it was used for, but one of the beauties of his job was that he didn't really have to. Sanford was high on the numbers, and with good reason, even though as a man of business Guy himself was essentially everything Sanford was not-loud, confrontational, impetuous, undisguised. His staff turnover was incredible, a fact that his seeming compulsion to f.u.c.k every single one of his female employees did nothing to diminish. In fact, probably the biggest red flag about getting into business with Guy at all was that there were already two pending lawsuits against him, one of which involved a temp who had been nineteen at the time.

He turned out to be even more of a character in person. He had bushy hair and a retro mustache and had taken this cryogenic rubber company from receivers.h.i.+p to eleven million in profit in less than three years. His office had one of those topless gas-station calendars on the wall. "We were up thirty-one percent last year," he shouted at Adam. "In f.u.c.king Wisconsin! What is taking you people so long? Where's the money already? f.u.c.king tight-a.s.s Ivy League Wall Streeters. None of you have ever run an actual business in your lives-I mean, a business that makes makes things. Calling me up and asking for this form and that prospectus. Get your heads out of your a.s.ses! I talk to that Sanford guy and it's like talking to one of those animatronic Disney things. The Hall of WASPs. You, on the other hand, seem almost like an actual person. Why can't I just deal with you? Just write me a f.u.c.king check already!" things. Calling me up and asking for this form and that prospectus. Get your heads out of your a.s.ses! I talk to that Sanford guy and it's like talking to one of those animatronic Disney things. The Hall of WASPs. You, on the other hand, seem almost like an actual person. Why can't I just deal with you? Just write me a f.u.c.king check already!"

"It's not my money," Adam said, amused.

Guy scowled. "Whatever," he said. "If it was your money we could shake hands and get rich. But you're still young and you still have a boss to jerk off, I get it. When do you fly back? Do I have your cell?"

"Tomorrow first thing. Here, let me write it down for you again."

"Then by Wednesday morning latest I need sixteen million for starters or I go elsewhere."

"Understood," Adam said, meaning that he understood that Guy delivered this same ultimatum every time. Secretly he had an intuition that there was no way this maniac would not succeed, no matter what he was selling. Still, it wasn't Adam's money.

"Whatever way it works," Guy said, and turned around to make a phone call.

And that was it: no lavish dinner to woo him, no junior executives, no strip club. Back at the hotel Adam tried to book a flight home that same night, but there was nothing-some kind of storm was coming in, and flights were being canceled in bunches. A hotel room these days was basically like a mausoleum with a big TV in it: he couldn't just sit there. But the health club in the bas.e.m.e.nt was closed for renovations; and there was a Journey tribute band playing in the bar. It was like a nightmare. He hadn't even brought any work with him. Rain battered the windows, and in the lobby the staff ran around putting wastebaskets under new leaks in the ceiling. He went back upstairs to his room and called Cynthia.

"So what have you been up to?" he asked, drumming his fingers on the bedspread.

"Math homework. April's cla.s.s started talking about geometry this week. Not exactly my strong suit. She gets a little stressed if she doesn't pick up something immediately."

Her voice flattened out in the evenings, once the kids were in bed-he'd noticed that lately, but never as distinctly as he did now, when her voice was all he had of her.

"There's acute angles," he said, "and also some other kind."

"Okay," she said. "Home schooling probably not an option, then."

"Why so early, anyway? Didn't we start geometry in like ninth grade?"

"I can't remember," Cynthia said.

"Well, you have to talk to me about something," he said. "I'm in some kind of black Midwestern hole here. What have you got?"

She sighed. "Okay," she said. "Marietta has this shrink she used to see, and I called him up today and made an appointment."

He said nothing.

"Discuss," she said.

"An appointment for yourself?"

She laughed. "Yes of course for myself, genius. At least it's not like he's some stranger. I mean he's a stranger to me, but Marietta vetted him for like three years. It's just something I've been thinking about a little bit and I decided to see what it's all about."

He could feel that she needed him to say something, but something was preventing him, something that felt, at least, a little like panic.

"Adam, of course I won't do it if it's going to freak you out," she said. "I mean it. I know it's probably not something you approve of in general."

"Of course it's okay with me," he said. "Of course I approve of it. I mean it's not for me to approve or disapprove. It's just I guess I didn't know you were unhappy."

"Not unhappy," she said thoughtfully. "More like stuck. Anyway, Christ, it's like going to the gym, everyone does it. You know that, right?"

He tried to say the right things, and then he heard April come in with another homework question and he had to let her go. The truth was that he did disapprove, at least a little-not in general, not for other people; but the two of them were different. One of the things that made the two of them so great together, he'd always felt, was that shared talent for leaving all their baggage behind. Why would you want to go back and pick that up again? Everybody's got their own; just walk the f.u.c.k away from yours and don't turn around. He saw it borne out every day in the world of finance: the most highly evolved people were the ones for whom even yesterday did not exist.

Still, she was unhappy; she was unhappy, and that had to be his responsibility. He opened up the minibar, sat on the edge of the vast bed with his feet on the windowsill, his back to the empty room behind him, and watched the lightning over black Lake Michigan. A few mini-bottles later he felt less agitated; but he hated doing nothing, and these were hours he was never going to get back.

The first thing Jonas ever collected was Duplo animals. He was too young at the time to remember it now, but his mother liked to tell him stories about himself. The different Duplo sets had different animal-shaped blocks, and he would take them out of their sets and line them up on the coffee table in the living room, or on the rim of the bathtub, or on the floor under his parents' bed, always in the same mysterious order determined somehow, as best she could tell, by their color. Cynthia would find them arrayed like that, in different places around the apartment, two or three times a week.

Next it was pennies: he would arrange them by year, once he'd learned his numbers, and then he'd arrange them by color, really by gradations of dirtiness, from the bright polish of the new ones to the murky greenish-bronze that made the man on the penny look like he was sitting and thinking about something on a bench inside a cave. Then his mother was talking to another mother in the playground and after that she showed him how to bring the s.h.i.+ne out of all the pennies by soaking them in lemon juice. That was a lot of fun-like leading the penny man outside where it was light-though it was also the sort of fun that could only be had once and then it was done. This was often the case when grownups got involved.

There was one morning when Jonas walked into the living room to ask his mother for Oreos before dinner even though he knew he wasn't going to get them; he saw her sitting on the window seat, holding onto her knees, looking out the window, like she was sad about something she couldn't find. Think, she often said to him. Where did you have it last?

He loved it when she played with him, but when it came to the collecting she had a way of getting too involved. Like when Grandma Ruth sent him one of those state-quarter sets. His mother would go through her own quarters before he'd even seen them; she knew the ones he was still missing and she'd just walk into his room and hand them to him. Or later when he started reading the Nate the Great books. She saw he liked the first three and so she went out and bought the entire rest of the series, numbers four through sixteen. When it was almost more fun not to have them yet-to know they existed out there somewhere and waited patiently to be found. He didn't know how to tell her this.

Of course she didn't only bring him things he'd asked for. Once in a while she'd buy a few CDs and they'd sit on the living room floor and listen, and if there were one or two he didn't show any interest in, they probably wouldn't play those again. There was one called Flight of the b.u.mblebee- Flight of the b.u.mblebee-as soon as that one was over he asked if he could hear it again, and his mother's face softened, like that was what she'd been waiting for. Pretty soon she told him that he didn't need to ask permission every time. He knew how to operate the stereo himself though he wasn't supposed to fiddle with the volume k.n.o.b.

April said one day that if she heard Flight of the b.u.mblebee Flight of the b.u.mblebee one more time she'd go postal. He didn't know what that meant but it made him self-conscious so he didn't play it again for the rest of that day. one more time she'd go postal. He didn't know what that meant but it made him self-conscious so he didn't play it again for the rest of that day.

"He's got an unusual attention span," he heard his mother telling someone else in Zabar's one day. "For a kid his age, a boy especially, he can focus on one thing for a long time."

He finally found a way to pursue his interests without having to worry about others spoiling it with their own enthusiasm or else getting their feelings hurt: he started a secret collection, which, given his limited freedom of movement in the outside world, pretty much restricted him to collecting things from inside the apartment. Also, in order to maintain the collection's integrity as a secret, it had to consist of items people had forgotten about or would eventually be willing to forget about. He knew that this was pretty close to what people called stealing but he chose not to dwell on that. So far he had one of his mother's lipsticks, a combination lock from his father's gym bag, April's hairband with the sunflowers on it, four different wine corks, his father's empty money clip (this he had found serendipitously under a couch cus.h.i.+on), an electricity bill, one photo from his parents' wedding alb.u.m, April's preschool report card that said she had a "quick temper," two mismatched earrings from the bottom of his mother's purse, a tiny wooden carving of a cat from Dad's boss's house in Connecticut, and a book light that clipped onto the top of the book you were reading in bed. That last one almost undid the whole project, because his mother had searched for it with unusual thoroughness before giving up.

No one ever looked in the old Lego box that was inside a drawstring bag that was at the bottom of the toy chest that he sat on to read or to draw. He didn't need to look inside the box to remind himself what was in there-he could tick off its contents in his head at any moment of the day, or while lying in bed at night-but once in a while he liked to open it up anyway. It made each item seem even more valuable to know that everyone else had given up on it, because he was the only one in the family who knew the secret, which was that things might disappear but, thanks to him, rarely was anything ever really lost. He held each object between his fingers for a while, recommitting it to memory; then he packed them all away and opened the door of his room and walked past his mother at the kitchen table and into the living room to hear Flight of the b.u.mblebee Flight of the b.u.mblebee again. again.

For Christmas break they were going to a resort in Costa Rica; some guy from Morgan Stanley Adam still played basketball with had said the beaches there were the most beautiful beaches on earth. To the kids, one resort was the same as another, which was to say a kind of paradise where all strangers were nice to you and your parents never said no to anything or asked how much it cost and all you had to do to get anything you wanted was to pick up the phone. April was also mindful, though she knew she shouldn't be, of the jealousy these trips engendered in some of her school friends, who maybe got to go skiing for a couple of days or spent the break in Florida in the hot, featureless homes of their grandparents.

Just a week or so before they were due to leave, the most recent hire at Perini-a guy named Bill Brennan, just barely out of college, whose junior status was unfortunately cemented by the fact that he was only about five feet six-strode around the office tossing postcard-style invitations on everyone's desk. "Some buddies of mine are opening a bar," he said. "Grand opening tonight. Actually, I have a piece of it too. You have to come. All of you are comped. They have to get some buzz going. Every hot woman I know will be there. Adam, dude, it's on 89th and Second, right in your backyard. You have to come. I know it's not your thing anymore."

"f.u.c.k you it's not my thing anymore," Adam said, laughing. He called Cynthia and told her to get the sitter they used, or some other sitter, it didn't matter. They hadn't been to a real meat-market bar like that in a long time, long enough that everything about it seemed hysterical now. The men-if you could even use that word, since despite their suits and loosened ties they all looked about twenty years old-nodded meaningfully to the pounding music and generally stood around hoping for disinhibited women to fall on them like some humanitarian airdrop. Parker and the rest of them were in heaven. Brennan comped all their drinks, but it was so crowded that it took Adam almost fifteen minutes to complete the round trip to the bar from the spot they'd staked out against the wall. By the time he made it back from his third go-round with a Scotch for himself and a vodka and soda for Cynthia, she was holding a different, brand-new drink someone else had bought for her; she was visibly smashed, and encircled by strange, hyena-like guys.

"This, losers, is my husband," she shouted when she saw him, because you had to shout in there to say anything at all. Even so, they smiled and nodded and were likely only pretending to have caught, or cared, what she was saying. A beautiful drunk woman standing alone, even for five minutes, drew these guys like touts at a racetrack; they were too young and callow even to check for a wedding ring. "He is more of a man than any of you will ever be. Especially you, fatso," she yelled, gesturing to one guy, who just smiled.

"Hey now," Adam said.

"You have lost a step, though," Cynthia said in his ear. "I mean, these bottom-feeders bought me three drinks while I was waiting for you to come back with this one." She took one gla.s.s out of his hand, took a sip from it, and then with drinks in both hands put her arms around his neck and started making out with him. He felt a little vodka splash on the back of his neck. He wasn't sure whether or not this was hilarious. The circle of guys may not have been able to hear anything she'd been saying to them, but this kind of display they understood, and with no hard feelings they turned away to see what else was available.

Cyn stopped kissing him for a moment and screamed after them, "His d.i.c.k is bigger than yours too!" That they heard. In fact, a number of people seemed to hear it. "Okay," Adam said, putting his hand gently on the small of her back, "I'm thinking it's time to call it a night."

When they were out on the sidewalk she turned around toward the bar's facade and made the sign of the cross. It was only about ten blocks home but under the circ.u.mstances he thought they'd be better off in a cab. He watched her as they rode, eyes closed, head against the window. He hadn't seen her this drunk in years; or maybe he had, but the difference was that he'd been that drunk too. She held her liquor like a champion, so if she was this far gone-and without him-it could only be because she wanted it that way. They got off the elevator and she went straight to the bathroom; Adam waited by the front door while the sitter, Gina, a round girl from Barnard about whom he knew absolutely nothing other than that she was from Minnesota, found her jacket and her shoes and wedged her textbooks back into her backpack. He counted out her money, including a twenty for cab fare. "Is it okay if I don't walk you out tonight?" he said.

"No problem," she said. "It's not like it's a rough neighborhood."

He waited until the elevator door closed. Walking back through the foyer he saw that Gina had written on a pad underneath the phone, "Cynthia-Your mother called," and then underneath that, "2x." He went to the bathroom to make sure she was okay, but the door was open again and she wasn't in there. She wasn't in their bedroom either. He found her in the kids' room, sitting on the floor against the wall between their beds. Her eyes were wide open.