“But,” he’d added, making his way back over the rock, lowering his face to mine, kissing me. “I can make youfeellike you’re flying a plane.”
And here we are, two decades later in a Malibu strip-mall restaurant, making uncomfortable small talk. Had I really shared all that with this person? This stranger? Am I supposed to sit here in the present day and act like I hadn’t? Is he?
“Shall we order?” he suggests, casual.
I waste no time grabbing the menu. “Let’s.”
Later, when Lorry is downing a plate of fish tacos and I’m picking at a salmon, kale, and Manchego salad and trying hard not to revisit every intimate moment of our life together in my head, he fills me in on the essential stuff. His parents, enjoying their retirement, back east. His sister, Serena, a human-rights attorney. His ranch in Topanga. His practice, the new studio, the twin daughters, the fact that he’s been working on a book,Living with Mindfulness, that he’s now firmly agnostic.
I wonder what his parents have to say about that—his Ashkenazi father whose grandparents had fled the Nazis, his Waspy mother who’d converted. His kind rabbi at the welcoming temple in Greenwich.
“That’s a lot to process,” I say. “It sounds like you’re happy.”
He takes a half second to respond. The expression on his face unreadable.
“Mostly, I think. Or I was.” He pushes his plate away, swigs from his Modelo Negra. “I mean, well, obviously Bronwyn and I are going through a bit of a rough patch right now.…”
Bronwyn. It is the first time he’s said her name. The horsey brunette from the Louvre. I assume he was keeping mentions of her to a minimum to make things less painful for me. But it has been two decades, I can handle it. Or at least I want him to think I can.
However, it’s therough patchthat jolts me.
His delivery of it casual, unsettling. The offhand way that he’s referenced his marital woes. Is this why he had asked me to lunch? Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that after twenty years of no communication he’d reached out when everything was no longer hunky-dory at home. But Lorry had never struck me as a person who would take advantage of a situation. Our original introduction on the train to Brewster North notwithstanding.
“Oh,” I say after a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
And then I trip on something else. Why would he think such news was obvious?
“I assumed Anouk told you,” he says, as if reading my mind.
“No. Why would she tell me that?”
“Because Anouk…” He trails off. “Oh.”
I watch as he cocks his head to one side, and then the other. I’m trying desperately to read his expressions, but I’m out of practice.
“Never mind,” he says. “Sorry. I thought you knew. Forget I said anything.”
He sips his beer again. But it sits there. His slip. My brain attempting to grasp at fractured pieces and assemble them into a whole.
There are a handful of girls at the table next to us who are gossiping in lowered voices and then every so often erupting in laughter. It rattles me.
Because Anoukwhat? He thought I knewwhat? Why would his and Bronwyn’s rough patch have been obvious?
And then I feel a sensation that I can’t quite put my finger on. A tightness spreading across my chest. As though my body knows something that my mind has yet to figure out. My organs, my nerves, my skin constricting. There’s a sudden thickness at the back of my throat. It moves down toward my gut. And there, deep within, I know. I know.
What she had done.
Whattheyhad done.
Lorry is speaking again, but I can’t hear him. The terrace isspinning. I reach for my glass of water, but my hand is shaking, and I’m not sure I can get it smoothly to my mouth. And so I coil my hand there. Around the base of the glass. The condensation cooling the fire inside me. Taking me to another time and place. I am reminded of that first visit in Anouk’s living room. The bottle of ice-cold Pellegrino on the lacquered tray. Ames pouring it expertly. If only I could return to that moment. Before she had turned me inside out. Before it all went sideways.
“You’re wearing her necklace,” he says.
My hand moves to my throat. “We have the same one. She gave… It was a gift.”
“Really?”
“Are you seeing Anouk?” The words fall out, inadvertent.
