“Okay,” John said. “Send them in.”
She pulled the door shut. John pushed his chair back from his desk, and ran his hands through his hair. They were only coming in to talk; still, they were the movie people, and that made him more conscious of being seen. Another knock.
“Yes?” he said, and the door opened again.
2
I STOOD UP behind my desk as they walked in. Through Tasha’s introductions I remained standing, my fingertips splayed out and pressing down on the desk, and honestly that’s because I thought there was a real possibility I would fall down.
And this is his assistant, Tasha said, Molly Howe. Molly, John Wheelwright.
We shook hands, that’s what kills me. We didn’t let on right away what was happening. A door that has opened eventlessly a million times opens one day to reveal Molly standing on the other side: there was a time in my life, believe it or not, when such a moment wouldn’t have found me unprepared, when I burned with the unreasonable belief that just such a thing would happen, that she would simply turn up one day, as inexplicably as she’d vanished. But that was years ago. On this day, my astonishment was profound. I put out my hand; Molly reached across the desk and held it for just a second; then our arms fell back to our sides and we went on staring into the mirror of our own disbelief.
It didn’t last but a second, though; maybe it was the touch, the physical touch, that snapped me out of it.
Actually, I said, smiling a little, we’ve met before.
No kidding? I heard Dex say. I don’t think I’d so much as looked at him yet.
Molly said nothing. We had a secret; but if I thought we were going to share the private gravity of it somehow, even silently, I was mistaken. She did not return my smile; in fact she seemed immobilized by her amazement, fighting it for control of herself, like someone who comes face to face with a dead person, or a bear, or the Virgin Mary. Her eyes seemed to dilate as I stared at her. She was afraid of me. It was unsettling to see.
Not that I want to put it all on her; I wasn’t about to get into explanations anyway, not then, not in front of my assistant and some tall overeager guy I didn’t know. Actually, we’ve met before. Actually, we’ve slept together. Actually, we were in love. Actually, she left me, and I haven’t seen her since.
Years ago, I said. So anyway, Mal is tied up for a little while longer. Why don’t I show you around?
IF I SAY it was dreamlike, I’m not just talking about the unlikelihood of it, or about wish fulfillment. There’s a helplessness to dreams: things take their unstoppable course, no matter how bizarre, and even if your dreaming mind is allowed to smile at the absurdity of it, still you have no real choice but to go through your paces, speak your lines. Dex walked between us down the broad hallway, hands folded under his arms, doing all the talking. I could see why Mal had found it so hard to say no to him. He’s just the sort of highly motivated young eccentric Mal can never resist. About six-three, comically skinny, with short, loosely curled red hair; even on his best behavior he gave off a kind of poorly restrained restlessness, as if events, or other people, were never quite moving at his pace. Just standing next to him was like being in New York again. He’d crashed an opening at Mary Boone to petition Mal to be allowed to shoot a documentary about the remarkable rise of Palladio and its founder; and Mal, while making it clear he would never allow any filming to go on inside the mansion, was smitten enough to invite Dex down to Charlottesville anyway, just for a visit.
What I felt right then, I suppose, was the desire to be able to say to someone, as we walked past, Hey, look; look who just showed up from nowhere. But no one in my current life knew that about me — who Molly Howe was, I mean. The only one with whom I might have shared this revelation, that the sheer unlikelihood of something happening was apparently no guarantee that it wouldn’t happen even so, was Molly herself: and she kept turning to look out the little hexagonal alcove windows in the hallway, or wherever she needed to look in order to keep her face discreetly averted from me.
I led them down the broad front stairs and through the main entrance hall, with its original wooden chandelier from 1842; through the tiny, belfry-like east parlor, with the glass-fronted bookcases and the window seat where Alexa, the land artist from Los Angeles, sat folded up in the sunlight, looking up irritably from a copy of Elle; through the long parquet-floored ballroom, curtains drawn, animated by the hum of two dozen computers, in which a lavish all-night dance was held in 1861 to celebrate Virginia’s secession from the Union. These days we keep most of our video-editing equipment in there.
It’s hard to say how she’s changed. Her hair is darker now. She doesn’t dress much differently, that’s for sure: a baggy black sweater, fatigue pants, no comb or pin that would hold her hair in anything other than its most artless position. She’s put on some weight. Her face is fuller, the curves of her body somewhat more pronounced, but that’s by no means a bad thing: she always was too skinny. I don’t just mean that it makes her more attractive. I mean one can take it as a sign of stability, that she’s eating, that she’s not too depressed, that her life is settled at least to the degree that she can look after her own health. I used to worry about that. She was never someone who took great care of herself.
Awkwardly abreast, we passed through the dining room and kitchen to the back stairs that led down to the basement. It’s like a warren, all brick and low ceilings and the occasional inconveniently placed steel support beam the contractors made us put in. I thought I’d show them the soundproofed artists’ studios we’d installed down there, but they were all occupied, or at least locked, by the artists themselves. Milo, not content with a sign, had painted the words ‘Do Not Disturb’ in Day-Glo orange across the door itself. The whole basement had the thrumming, busy silence of a library, and I found myself whispering as we passed through. Just to the right of the stone steps leading out to the driveway is the so-called basement lounge, a doorless rectangle where for decades firewood was stored; Fiona (the artist I hired in Venice), Daniel the novelist, and my girlfriend Elaine were huddled together in there on an old thrift-store couch, watching what I knew must be some of Elaine’s work-in-progress on a laptop.
I started past the doorframe, but Dex, for whatever reason, took a few steps into the room. The three of them looked up. Elaine noticed me and smiled uncomfortably before returning her attention to the screen; I have an idea what she’s working on, but she doesn’t want me to see it yet. Daniel and Fiona glared darkly at the strangers — at the very idea of strangers.
Sorry to disturb you guys, I said. This is Dexter Kilkenny and Molly Howe. Guests of Mal’s. Dex directed Throw Down.
We’re working here, Daniel said. You want to stare, go to the zoo.
Somewhat embarrassed, I led them from there up the basement steps and around the southwest corner of the house, to where you could really start to get a sense of the layout of the grounds. Palladio used to be a plantation home; the greater part of that land was sold off nearly a century ago, but we still have about two hundred acres. The hedges make a kind of smooth geometry of it as it rolls up and down, folding over and over itself like chop on the ocean, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west. It was a beautiful Virginia spring day, hot, breezy, and fragrant.
That orchard, Dex said, sniffing like a hamster. What is that?
Cherry.
Beautiful.
I kept trying to fall a step behind him so I could catch Molly’s eye, but then Dex would deferentially try to fall a step behind me again. The wind was blowing, and she kept pushing her hair back from her cheek. She still wears it long enough to blow over her face, into her mouth. She hasn’t changed it at all.