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The twins, thankfully, have plans this evening: Will is, as usual, going to the gym, and Whitney has a Bumble date at Row 34. Brooke knows this because she’d lobbied for a family dinner tonight before she went away. Whitney accused her of being melodramatic (“It’s only three nights and you’re not even leaving the state”).
“There’s my angel,” Charlie says when he walks into the kitchen. He pulls Brooke up to her feet and kisses her sloppily on the mouth. (Charlie kisses like a boa constrictor—Brooke always feels like he’s trying to swallow her whole.)
“Did the sheriff’s department find you?” she asks.
Charlie pulls Brooke even closer. His body shakes, and he emits the high-pitched noise that accompanies his crying. It’s a pathetic sound, but Brooke doesn’t feel sorry for him. His actions are deplorable. Every bit of the pain he’s experienced as an adult he brought on himself.
“Who was it this time?” Brooke had asked the sheriff’s deputy to give her the summons, but he refused.
Charlie takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Irish, from the office.”
Irish Fahey, Landover’s new brand manager. Charlie has talked about her—the flame-red hair, the freckles, the first name that starts conversations. He refers to her as the “new kid” because she’s just out of college.
“What did you do?”
“She blew it completely out of proportion—”
“Charlie.”
“I grabbed her from behind. I was just kidding around. I thought she was cool.”
Brooke pushes Charlie away, although he’s so solid, he doesn’t move much. She looks down atStill Life on Kitchen Island—her glass with an inch of watery vodka and a raggedy lime wedge, the sweating bottle of Tito’s that had been so seductively frosted when she pulled it from the freezer, the can of almonds that she meted out so parsimoniously. She thinks of Irish Fahey, violated.Grabbed her from behindmeans Charlie fondled her tits and rubbed his crotch against her ass. Brooke isgladIrish filed charges. Irish’s lawyer will learn that Charlie has a history of this behavior. He groped a server named Lola at the Oak Room, which was where Charlie and his disgusting buddiesusedto drink. Charlie’s attorney had worked out a private settlement with Lola’s attorney—a hefty five-figure sum—and Brooke told Charlie that if he ever did it again, she would leave him.
But leaving Charlie right now isn’t a realistic option. Brooke’s mother lives in a one-bedroom condo in Boca Raton, so Brooke could never go there, and then there’s the matter of the kids, who are happy in their jobs and their comfortable home-for-the-summer-from-their-expensive-private-colleges suburban lives.
Even so, Brooke says, “I’m finished, Charlie. I’m done.”
Charlie howls. “You can’t give up on me!” he says. “I’ll have nothing left. I got fired today.”
Fired?Brooke thinks. Despite his reprehensible behavior, Charlie has always been a professional success. He’s wildly popular with his clients because he’s liberal with deductions and has masterful knowledge of every corporate tax loophole. And he’s a favorite among his coworkers, all of them former fraternity boys; there’s a Pike contingency (which Charlie is part of) and a TKE group. They’ve created a clubby, locker-room atmosphere in their office. Landover is all fantasy football, Friday Beers, Barstool Sports, and Pornhub, guys’ trips to Vegas and the Kentucky Derby, men complaining about wives who don’t put out and kids who treat them like ATMs. During high tax season—from February to April—they pull all-nighters with the Bon Me food truck stationed outside, cases of Red Bull, prescriptions for Adderall, and masseuses from the Happy Orchid.
Brooke has a hard time believing that the bros Charlie works with were morally outraged enough to fire him. Irish probably threatened to take the whole company down, and Charlie was sacrificed. Brooke imagines Charlie’s coworkers apologizing on his behalf, saying he “definitely crossed a line,” then privately whispering that Irish did him dirty.
Brooke resists the urge to swill directly from the bottle of Tito’s and dump the almonds over Charlie’s head (she would have to clean them up). She marches down the hall, Charlie following behind, to their bedroom, which is always its most delightful at this hour, suffused with the late-afternoon sunlight. Everything looks gilded—but that’s just the surface of things.
Brooke points to her suitcase. “I’ve already packed.”
Charlie throws himself facedown on the bed the way Whitney used to when she was an adolescent in the throes of a tantrum. Brooke feels sorry for the kids, and for Whitney especially. She will soon learn that her father groped a female colleague who’s only a couple years older than Whitney herself. And what kind of ghastly example is Charlie setting for Will?
As Charlie sobs, his strong back rising and falling, Brooke looks at him and feels… nothing. Even anger eludes her, although she sees clearly now that the reason they no longer have any friends isn’t Brooke’s social awkwardness (which is what Charlie has led her to believe) but Charlie himself.
Brooke takes her suitcase and her hatbox and decamps to the guest bedroom, where she will remain until she drives to the ferry the next day.
She checks her phone. Her post has fifty Likes and sixteen comments. It’s her most popular post ever. Brooke wipes a tear from her cheek.
8. The Third Margarita
There’s a domestic dispute in coach that delays the takeoff from Cancun. Kristen, the flight attendant in first class, pokes her head into the cockpit and tells Gigi, “This happens all the time. People always think the third margarita is a good idea, and they’re always wrong.”
“What’s going on?” Gigi asks.
“The marshal is escorting them off.”
Gigi twists in her seat and sees a cross-looking (andverysunburned) couple being shepherded down the aisle.This is your captain speaking,Gigi thinks.Bye-bye.She never had anything like this happen on her Atlanta-to-Rome or Atlanta-to-Madrid routes. But after Matthew died, Gigi gave those routes up. It was just too painful to land at FCO or MAD and not find Matthew waiting for her.
So now here she is—wasting away in Margaritaville.
She doesn’t get back to her home in Buckhead until nearly nine o’clock. Melba greets her at the door with an angry meow, and Gigi scoops her up and peppers her face with kisses. There’s a note on the kitchen table:We’re making paella tonight, come over!
