Louisa pinched her mouth into a smile. “No,” she said. “I don’t think this is his scene.” They hadn’t seen Tom much in recent weeks. He was deep into new work. “When I’m at the beginning of a project like this, I’m clean as a dream,” he told William on the phone. “This is the best part of being on the wagon, the first part, before it starts to roll too fast and you have to jump off.”
In the seam between Louisa and Paul Prescott, William could see the side of Emma’s hip, a gray skirt and a band of leg. He experienced a pang of fear, not because he was about to come face-to-face with her, but because she was about to come face-to-face with Louisa. He wondered, suddenly, if he had even mentioned her by name. He was certain he had. Hadn’t he?
The crowd cleared. William took a deep breath and a shallow step. Louisa followed. “Hey, stranger,” Stevie said. “You had to come all the way across the neighborhood to see us?”
“Well, this was where the party was,” William said. He was offended when Stevie laughed. The man had that effect.
Gloria came to touch Stevie’s elbow. “These are the Wheelers.”
Emma extended her hand. “You’re William, right?”
“I am,” he said. “It’s easy to remember because it’s such an uncommon name.”
“We met before,” Emma explained to Gloria. “He came over to the house one of our first weekends in town. We were just getting out of boxes. He saw us struggling up the path, I think, and I asked him to recommend a place in town to eat.”
“I hope you didn’t go where he told you,” Louisa said. “He has terrible taste.”
“And this,” William said, waiting a beat, “is my wife.”
“Wait,” Stevie said. “Who has terrible taste?”
“William.” She pointed at him. “Him.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sure. I assumed that. In food, though, not wives.” He showed a high percentage of his teeth. And then, to Louisa, “I think you and I get home from work around the same time.”
“Ah,” Louisa said. “So you’ve seen my one-woman show, Louisa in the Driveway After Work. It’s doing very well. It’s been extended indefinitely.” She was holding an unlit cigarette now and she waggled it like vaudeville.
“Are these the new ones?” Alice Deutsch said, squeezing in next to Paul Prescott. She had been in the neighborhood for four months and was eager to be out of the spotlight.
“New one,” Emma said, standing and curtsying.
William felt a surge of weakness. “Can I get anyone a beer?” he said.
“I’m okay,” Emma said at his back. “I make it a policy not to get drunk the first time I meet people.” Alice Deutsch led a chorus of laughter, and it wasn’t until William got to the cooler that it occurred to him that the remark was not meant for the group. He took his time at the cooler. Through a small window, in the kitchen, Eddie Fitch minced garlic for Bloody Marys.
When William returned, Stevie was surrounded, eulogizing Chicago. “It was a great city, but I was a drone back there,” he said. “Huge hive. Then they split us off and moved us. Someone read a study that said that marketing does better if it’s semi-independent.”
Gloria Fitch held up a hand to stay him. “What did you do there?” she asked Emma.
“She was a caterer, and a good one,” Stevie said. “She had to stop her business, but she’s so great she’ll get it started again in no time.”
Emma stepped forward into a smile that looked like it was already hanging there.
“Right,” Gloria Fitch said. “Because it’s so easy to restart a business. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”
William felt an unexpected desire to rescue the man. “Did anyone read that article about the new convention center they’re proposing?” he said. “They say it’ll help local businesses.” No one took the topic up, not even Stevie, and so William went back to the cooler for another beer.
He was bent down, gripping a longneck, when he saw shoes he did not recognize in legs he unaccountably did. He straightened up and offered Emma his beer. She shook her head. “Bill, is it?” she said. The vagueness was gone from her voice. Her face was turbulent despite itself. Unexpressed ideas leapt up from it in a spindrift. For the first time, he felt a tremor of Chicago. “How are you, really?”
“Good,” he said.
“Good,” she repeated. Was she mocking him? Echoing? Words meant nothing.
“Well, it’s nice to see you,” he said. “Nice to have you in the neighborhood.” It wasn’t true, but William wasn’t certain this was a truth situation. On the other side of the yard, a girl — William thought it was the youngest Kenner — pushed a Fitch boy down roughly; he came to his feet, shoved her back, and then, almost as an afterthought, began to cry.
“Look,” Emma said. “I didn’t ask to come here. Stevie brought me. What’s my basis for objecting?”
“You don’t care for the kinds of people who live in a place like this?”
This brought a broad smile that she quickly condensed almost to a point. “I think we need a ground rule or two. You and I, well, we’re not going to see each other. Alone, I mean. We’ll be neighbors, fine, but there’s not going to be some weird moment when you and your wife and me and Stevie get together and drink dandelion wine and confess everything and end up in bed like it’s Culver City in 1969.” Her fingers were interlaced and at her chest, though he didn’t know if she was keeping something out or in.
“Right,” William said. “I hate Culver City.” He tried to open the beer bottle with his bare hand; the teeth of the cap tore into his palm.
“Good,” she said. “Better than good. Great.” She lowered her hands, one until it flattened against the wall, the other landing on her hip. She looked like she had in Chicago — younger, unguarded, with a fragile ridge of shoulder blade. “I welcome the opportunity to become a part of this neighborhood. You have lovely public parks, I’ve noticed. And one of these days, you’ll have to come over to the house. We have a deck.” This time she aimed the joke squarely at him, and he took it on the chin. He had his beer almost finished before she was out of sight.
Back by the tree, Paul Prescott was smoking a joint and telling a story about the nest of spiders he’d found in the basement when he first rented his bakery. Graham Kenner shook his head and said he was done buying muffins there, and Cassandra Kenner shook her head in a different way, and Gloria Fitch took the joint from Paul and put her arm around Graham Kenner’s neck. “Weren’t you supposed to think of some carols for the party?” she said.
“Carol was my first wife,” Graham Kenner said. “Now I’m with Cassandra.”
“Oh, her,” Gloria Fitch said.
“She’s right behind you,” Graham Kenner said, doing an impression of a scared man in a movie. “Don’t tell her about Carol. She’s very jealous.”
“I’d kill Eddie if he ever cheated on me,” Gloria said, and Eddie laughed like she didn’t mean it, and then Cassandra Kenner was laughing, too, screaming in like a jet.
Louisa, back now, chuckled along with them, even though she hadn’t heard the start of the joke. She’d been sharing a cigarette out front with Alice Deutsch. “She wanted to talk about this guy she’s been seeing. He sounds completely wrong for her. I gave her a checklist and told her, ‘Don’t be afraid to wait for the right thing.’”
A clatter went up from the kid corner, crying and laughing twined together into a noise William could not name.
The party wound on, high spirits floating out of bodies that were slowly sinking down. Graham Kenner and Helen Hull showed each other their stomachs. Paul Prescott showed pictures of earlier in the night. Alice Deutsch left, and then Emma and Stevie, and Louisa tugged on William’s arm just as he was thinking of tugging on hers. “Let’s go,” she said. “Treat a lady right.”