The conversation turns to interior décor and the recent renovation of the first floor, and it sounds like bottled noise to me, distorted by the waves and the thrumming in my head. I find something neutral to focus on and land on the platter of mostly eaten fish. Four branzino profiles gazing listless. Their bodies flayed and severed.
I excuse myself, seeking directions to the powder room.
“Down the corridor and to the right.” Minnie gesticulates, lifting her hand from Anouk’s arm to do so.
“Anyway,” she continues, as I step away. “Their work was flawless. Divine. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but this house is now one of my closest friends.”
For a good two minutes I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, attempting to analyze what I’d seen, and my response to it, or lack thereof. Had Anouk slept with her? Was she still? Were there others? Should it matter?
We were both married. There’d been no talk of exclusivity. No setparameters. For me to be jealous of her interaction with a friend who predated me was absurd. Assuming anything was happening between the two of them in the first place. Women were often affectionate with their girlfriends. It was par for the course. If Minnie had touched any other woman at the table, I would not have thought twice of it. And so ultimately, I decide that it is nothing.
I spend another moment or so taking in the powder room’s minimalist décor. The ceramic-brick tiles and wrought-iron fixtures. The twin bottles of Aesop hand cream and soap. A rough-hewn vase with a lone olive branch. Minnie’s closest friends.
When I return, the group has moved in from the terrace and is being led on a tour of the new renovation. I file in as we head down the corridor.
“I love this. Is it Matisse?” Kennedy asks, as we pass an abstract tableau in the main foyer.
“No. Ellsworth Kelly.”
“Wow. Gorgeous. I wish I could sell Jason on a piece like this.”
“You should really call our advisor, Patricia. She’s got exquisite taste. She’s a wizard at getting your husband to concede. I mean, Scott is a neophyte when it comes to art. Don’t tell him I said that. But, you know, my parents are big collectors. And Patricia’s wonderful if you’re just looking for investment pieces.”
“Coucou.” Anouk sidles up beside me, squeezing my hand. As if everything is normal. Perhaps it is. “T’esokay?”
“Ouais.” My response is equally casual.
“Tu es sûre?”
“Oui,” I repeat, and then force a smile.
We descend the open staircase to the lower level, and Minnie leads us into the newly completed home theater. It’s casually luxurious, intimate.
“Oh, my,” Jane says. “Is this real life?” Her enthusiasm is refreshing.
“It’s beautiful, right? I mean, it’s small compared to the theater in the Brentwood house, but it serves a purpose. Scott needs it for work.”
While Minnie explains to Jane how each weekend her husband and a select group of other power players in Hollywood receivehand-delivered hard drives of first-run movies, I take in the décor: the reclining love seats (there are six), the state-of-the-art surround sound, the insulated walls.
Anouk is positioned catty-corner to me. She’s wearing an aubergine-colored dress with a plunging neckline. Her breasts are small enough that she can get away with plunging necklines in the daytime without it looking risqué. I envy her. I watch as she makes her way through the space, her elegant arm extending to touch the taupe walls. The flick of her wrist, the length of her fingers. Her wedding band glimmering green. Her Cartier Tank Française. Her vintage Van Cleef bracelet. The transition from French schoolgirl to billionaire’s wife seemingly flawless. She folds her arm back in eventually, and strokes her neck, and my eyes linger there. The hollow at the base of her throat, the smoothness of her skin. I can taste her. Her perfume metallic, bold. The memory washes over me. My tongue running the length of her, between her breasts, along her torso, dipping into her navel, and south, over her pubic bone, between her legs, warm, wet, all of her.
I flinch. She catches my eye, somehow knowing where my thoughts have been, and smiles. Forgiven. I blush and turn away, into Jane. Who is looking at me. At Anouk.
Jane has just witnessed everything.
Later, on the car ride home, as we navigate stop-and-go traffic southbound on the Pacific Coast Highway, Jane breaks the silence.
“Well, that was interesting.”
“That’s a good word for it.”
“I know you tried to warn me, but oh my God. How far we’ve come from Annotto Bay,” she says, referencing the tiny port town in Saint Mary Parish, where my father and his siblings were born. Where they walked barefoot to school and had an outhouse in their backyard that occasionally flooded in the rain (or so they claimed), before moving to the big city of Kingston.
“Can you imagine Uncle Donovan and Mummy seeing that home theater?”
“‘Well, excuuuse me!’”
“‘Kiss mi’ neck!’”
