I nod. “One of these days.” I pointedly return to my work. He stands there for a moment before he walks away.
At lunch, Vivi asks me whether Ollie feels ready to ‘date’ yet, and I try not to look like a want to set something on fire.
“Maybe at some point in the very distant future,” I reply dryly.
“Oh,” she says, taking in my look. “Do we hate him now?”
“A little.”
“Well, good,” she says. “I have no time for games. That whole thing about how he’s still getting over his ex-wife? If a guytold me that, I’d assume he was seeing somebody else he liked better.”
I think of Eliana. Vivi is more right than she knows.
Jody pullsme and Helen aside at the Friday social right after July Fourth, a week before our swing festival weekend. “We need to talk.”
“What’s wrong?” Helen looks between us.
“It’s Ben. I’m worried about our little investment banker.”
“I’m sure he is out drinking with his finance bro coworkers,” I say, “and they are helping him forget the whole thing with the judicious use of lap dances and bottle service.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Jody says. She hands me her phone. There is a text thread with Ben.
If you’re in the city just come hang out with us, Jody has written.
pretty much everything is pointless right now, reads Ben’s response.
Not in a suicidal way, right?Jody has replied.
There is no answer to Jody’s question, which was sent several hours ago.
I consider this.
Ben, suicidal? It seems unlikely. He has always seemed so even keeled. But it still reads as a cry for help, in the way that earnest, buttoned-up Midwestern guys will cry for help: the non-response.
“Give me the phone,” I say.
Ben, I text,it’s Laura. Send me your address right now. We are coming to get you.
I look at Helen. “Do you happen to own a car?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t even have a license.”
“I have a truck,” Jody says. “I got it in the divorce.”
“Hold on, you were divorced?” I stare at her.
Jody sighs. “I don’t need to tell youeverything, Laura.”
Ben’s apartmentbuilding is in one of the newer loft buildings in Long Island City that face Manhattan across a sweeping view of the East River.
“Of course he lives in one of these monstrosities,” Jody mutters as we get into his sleek chrome elevator. Helen is sitting in Jody’s truck outside to make sure it doesn’t get towed; you don’t find street parking in this neighborhood.
I push the button to the fourteenth floor as she continues her rant.
“I hate rich people. They ruin everything that is good in this city.” Jody sighs. “Now let’s go rescue that rich bastard.”
Ben grimaces when he swings open the door to his apartment. There are weary smudges under his eyes, and his usual polished look has drifted into casual despair.
