“Pardon me?” said the startled wife-mother-sister-in-law, looking indignant at the intrusion.
“I meant, wouldn’t it hurt ramming something up your brother-in-law’s ass? Or would it be fuhnnn-nnny?”
“I can’t believe these people,” went on the woman, continuing her cell-phone conversation with her husband. “Rude, rude, rude. Listening in on our conversation, don’t they have anything better to do with their lives?”
“Oh no, we do plenty. We ram things up our asses all the time,” added Rachel. “And we’d love to tell you how we do it.”
“Yuck!” She rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to speak to my husband, would you mind?”
“If you lowered your voice, we’d never know what you and hubby do to your asses — so would you mind?”
“Get a life.” Then, turning to her baby with a righteous maternal gaze, “Mommy will take your coat off and it’ll be all better.”
Olaf couldn’t help himself: “Mamy weell mek it ohhhhll betuh!”
Everyone among us burst out laughing, including those seated behind us and the young man staring at us from the nearby table. For a moment I noticed that maybe the reason why I liked both women and couldn’t understand why they hadn’t instantly taken to each other was that I’d always known they shared this one sprightly, roguish thing in common: the ability to draw ever so close to meanness without being cruel.
Or was I once again mistaken about Clara? Was she perhaps just cruel, and nothing less? Or did I like running into her presumed cruelty only to have an instance of kindness brighten up her face like compassion on the features of a stern inquisitor?
I noticed at some point, when the two had begun to speak, that Rachel was trying ever so subtly to draw my attention. When she caught my glance, she shook her head once, twice, very fast, as though to signal a question: Who is she? Where did you fish her out from? I hastily looked away, not wanting to engage in secret messaging, but then realized that she was asking an altogether different question: Is this the one you were bellyaching about all day yesterday? I was about to answer her signal, with a No, this is someone else, because I did not want Rachel, who knew me so well, to know that yesterday’s phantom woman was indeed sitting across from her. I did not want her to know more about us than I did, though, at this point, her guess was as good as anyone’s. I forced myself to think about last night’s phone conversation — our fleeting, blissful, shameful secret when her voice had touched my ear with its furry breath and then lingered on my side of the bed when she said, You can if you want to. Now, as I looked at her, I kept thinking that perhaps there was no reason to bank on anything whatsoever — nothing had happened or, if it had, it hovered in mid-sleep awhile and then vanished in the wee hours of the night without a trace — weren’t we both pretending it was a dream neither was sure the other hadn’t dreamed? A growing sense of alarm seized me as soon as I realized that this thing I’d been incubating all week without telling anyone was no better than a bubble that the slightest quizzical glance could puncture. Had I lost Clara again? Was I losing her right now by wasting my ration of time with her at Starbucks? Or was I always already losing her — because, in the end, I was in a state of perpetual furlough, hence on borrowed time, in hock?
Perhaps I didn’t want Rachel to know how much like strangers Clara and I were. Which is why I avoided answering her silent prods.
Perhaps I wanted to scare myself.
I had had no time to reply, when Clara raised her eyes and intercepted Rachel’s inquisitive glance, and immediately turned to me, catching the blank, noncommittal look on my face, which, despite my efforts not to respond, still betrayed there’d been clandestine communication between us.
“Wait a minute. What’s all this?” she asked.
“What?” I replied.
“This.” She imitated Rachel’s motions of the head. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing.” I liked being found out and enjoyed the naughty evasion that was really no evasion at all.
“Look at these two,” said Clara, turning to Olaf. “They’re sending each other secret signals.”
“I think we’ve been caught,” said Rachel. I could tell Rachel was going to give me away. Let her.
There was no point in pretending. “Do you want to know?” I asked Clara.
“Of course I want to know.” And seeing I was about to spill the beans: “Wait,” she said, “will it make me happy or unhappy?”
Rachel and I exchanged glances.
“You two!” said Clara.
“Okay, it’s about yesterday. Rachel was basically trying to figure out if you were the one I’d invited for drinks last night.”
“He did call — but with him one never knows,” Clara added, turning to Rachel for support. “Did he tell you how the idiot — me, that is — ended up going to the movies all by herself, hoping to run into genius here?”
“He did say something about going and not going, but then going and not going. We all told him he had to go.”
“Did he say why he wouldn’t go?”
“He looked upset.” Then, turning to me: “Is it okay for me to say you looked upset?”
Yes, it was okay for her to tell the world I was upset. And no, how could I possibly mind? Would she have the good tact not to mention Lauren, though?
“What happened at the movie theater?”
“Aside from the fact I was alone in the dark with every sexual pervert ready to pounce on an innocent single girl — nothing. Even the usher hit on me.”
“So, did you punish him?”
“Who? The usher? Or Oskár?”
“Oscar,” said Rachel, without the accent mark.
Rachel smirked as she spoke my nickname for the first time, trying to hide her hesitation. She was tasting a strange dish she didn’t want anyone to know she’d never heard of before and wasn’t quite going to swallow until making sure it agreed with her. “Oskár,” she said, as though she’d just discovered an amusing new mask on my face, a new me she was still reluctant to admit into her world and whom everyone in her house was sure to talk about later, certainly behind my back. It made me feel that this new identity, which Clara had cemented the day we’d driven up to Hudson, was no more me than a new pair of shoes I’d been parading in all week in the hope that everyone might think they’d long been integrated into my wardrobe, but whose price tag, as far as Rachel was concerned, was still showing and was not to be removed until those who knew me better had decided that they matched the real me. “So you forgave him?”
“I did try to make him pay for it, but I always fail at making men pay.”
This was certainly not the Clara I knew. Was she attempting some sort of us-against-them solidarity with Rachel, or was this her oblique way of undercutting Rachel’s attempt to tease me for my new name?
“Actually,” she continued, “we made up. He had the wisdom to call last night.”
I knew what Rachel was thinking. We must have slept together last night.
It occurred to me that Clara knew exactly what had crossed Rachel’s mind, and so as not to disabuse her, she reminded Orla that they really had to finish their shopping, got up, put on her coat, and, just as she was saying goodbye to everyone, leaned down and gave me a moist, hard kiss, tongue all the way in my mouth. “Bis bald.”
If anything could have made physical contact between us mean so little, this was it. Had we reached perfunctory touching already? Or was this her way of reminding me that, after last night, there were no more holds barred? Or was this intended for Rachel and not me? Or was this a replay of Inky’s kiss?