“Lord, yes. They rolled out of there at eleven thirty. Happy smiling faces all around.”
“And then?”
“And then what, my love?”
“Where did she go? Stephanie. Is she in another meeting now?”
“Oh, no. Not one I know about anyway. She left the office straight afterward, and . . . da-da-da . . . let me check . . . nope, Miss Stephanie got white space in the diary. Nothing the whole rest of day, lucky thing. You want me to take a message, case she returns?”
“Just tell her I rang, would you?”
“No.”
“What?”
He laughed. “Yes, of course I will, silly. You have a gorgeous afternoon.”
Two text messages sent, and by the sound of it I’d sent the second one after the meeting had finished. No response. She wasn’t picking up her phone, either—at least not to me. I wasn’t liking the look of this.
Steph and I love each other. A lot. She is, if I’m honest, the only person whose company I genuinely prefer to being on my own. In addition to this, we’re on the same team and facing in the same direction. She even started working at the magazine in the first place because she knew it would get us access to an upper circle of locals—the art and gallery crowd, and those with the money to be their patrons—who it would have been hard to tap into otherwise. We send the occasional shot across each other’s bows if someone’s getting excessively cranky, but there’s never been anything anywhere near as blunt as ignoring the other’s attempts to communicate for half a day. It was like having half of my mind lopped off. I hadn’t worked out how I was going to spin Warner’s role in the photographs, but I had a strong sense it would be a good idea to get Steph and me around the same table as soon as possible.
I called her cell again. This time I left a message, cheery, saying I’d gotten to the bottom of something and would like a chat at her earliest convenience. I should have asked Jake if Sukey, Steph’s key ally on the magazine, was out of the office, too. If so, I could have sold myself on the idea that they were off somewhere sinking glasses of celebratory Pinot, having successfully achieved . . . whatever the damned meeting had been about.
I couldn’t face talking to him again, though, not least because I knew it would look weird that I couldn’t geolocate my own wife.
I called the house instead. It rang several times, and I was about to give up when I heard it pick up.
“Oh, hon, there you are,” I said, trying to sound confident and upbeat instead of just terribly relieved. “You’re a hard lady to pin down today. Didn’t you get my text messages?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Okay,” I said. “I know, I know. Last night was weird. But I promise I was telling the truth. And more stuff’s happened today. I think I’ve worked out what’s going on.”
She still said nothing, though I could hear her breathing. “Come on, Steph,” I said, now merely trying not to sound like I was pleading. “Let’s talk about this properly, ’kay? I’ll come home. Or we could meet. Get a coffee or something, grab a beer. Sounds like your meeting went well, right? Let’s celebrate.”
Silence. I fought the urge to fill the gap with more words, knowing that I needed her to speak next, to commit to dealing with me, to reopening lines of communication that I hadn’t realized had become so fragile. But after what must have been a full thirty seconds, I couldn’t keep it up. “Steph? Come on, honey. Talk to me.”
There was silence for another few seconds, and then a female voice said a single word, very clearly.
“Modified.”
The voice was not my wife’s. There was a soft laugh, and then I heard the phone being put down.
PART II
PRESENT TENSE
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
—FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Réflexions
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s the afternoons that drag.
In the morning you wake up, and bang—there you are, back in the world: and Hazel has gotten used to doing this in a bed with no one in it but her. She opens her eyes and stares up at the ceiling while she waits for reality to settle upon her. It is not a reality of her choosing, but it seldom is, despite the promises of the self-improvement industry. She’s read her share of the earnest books available on bereavement and guilt. None has helped, regardless of the hectoring assurances of whichever airbrushed robot graces the cover. They’re all the same. Snake-oil sellers in a hope industry.
She eventually gets up and puts on a robe—Phil liked the AC ferociously high, and it’s a habit she hasn’t gotten out of, and never will—and pads into the living room. At one end is the kitchen. It’s small, so as not to dominate the space (and also because The Breakers has two restaurants that would appreciate your custom, so why make cooking any more attractive a proposition than necessary?). She brews a cup of Earl Grey tea. She showers. She dresses. She fixes her makeup and hair.
On her way out of the condo she glances at the calendar on the inside of the door. This tells her how long it is until the next chunk of her life begins, before she goes to stay with one or other child. This morning the calendar tells her that it is three weeks until she goes to Klara’s house over in Jupiter, and gets to be grandma (and free babysitter, and occasionally tolerated advice giver) for a spell.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one days.
She spends her mornings wandering around a mall or taking a look in the (only, and not great) downtown bookstore, occasionally lunching with a friend. These are people she has met in the last few years, since Phil died and her life stopped being wrapped up in what she now thinks of as “the club.” Her friends are kind to her, and they meet up and talk and laugh, and Hazel finds it hard to understand why the world nonetheless feels as though someone had turned the volume down to zero. Maybe, she thinks, precisely because of the club years. Their entertainments go on, she supposes, but without her, like so much else. It is one thing to know the world will continue when you’re gone, another to observe it doing so while you’re still around.
Once in a while she will do something off the beaten track, like taking coffee with that handsome but smug Realtor the day before. She knows full well that he is using her to gain advantage in what passes for his career—knew it the moment he came strolling toward her with his hand outstretched—and she doesn’t care. She wants to redecorate, and has known the Thompsons long enough to understand that it would be easier to levitate than to influence their behavior. Phil could do it, having known them longer and better and being no stranger to bloody-mindedness himself, but Phil ain’t around no more.
So fine, let the boy wonder Realtor see what he can do. Hazel doubts he’ll achieve much. At his age, Tony and Phil were already very wealthy, men of action and result. It might be amusing to watch Tony Thompson wearing the little asshole down to dust, however, dust that Marie will then disperse with a single smoky exhale.
It’s something to do.
And maybe, Hazel realizes, she’s still playing games after all—albeit small and lonely ones of her own.
The evenings aren’t bad. She’ll take a glass of wine in the bar and eat something. A little television, a spot of reading, and early to bed. The evenings, oddly, are okay, possibly because the essence of the evening is the promise of the end of the day.