Annika came into the house slowly, shaking her head as if she were getting water out of her ears. “I thought I would die in that car.”
“The heat?”
“No. I thought Tom would kill us. He insisted on driving.”
“His car?” William said.
“Have you seen his car?” she said. Tom owned a Charger of uncertain vintage, with a dented, crooked rear fender and tatty floor mats that covered but did not conceal a riot of discard: gum wrappers, receipts, hair, lint, pennies. It was in the shop more than it was out of it. “Mine, though I let him drive. He can be very forceful in his arguments. But there’s no way he’s driving us home.”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“Neither do you.” They squinted at each other until she remembered. “Oh, that. I’m not Swedish. I was born in Chicago. My mother’s Swedish, though. She was a film actress there.”
“Would I have heard of her?”
“It’s possible.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is her dress I’m wearing. It was on-screen with Marcello Mastroianni.”
William took the opportunity to stare. He was staring too much. The woman was too full. “My shirt was on local cable access,” he said. “It was discussing the lagging housing market. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about.”
“I never know what to say to celebrities,” Annika said to William’s shirt. Then, to William: “Should we go in? I should be a good date and fix Tom a drink. Maybe I’ll water it down a little.”
William sent Annika ahead and tried the junk room door again. “Louisa,” he said. “Your brother’s here. With a woman claiming to be his girlfriend, even.” There was a shuffling and scraping from within, but still no answer. “You coming?” he said. “I’m going. There’s hosting to do. We have guests to feed.”
Tom was already in demand, occupying the center of at least two conversations. He not only taught art at the local college but was an artist himself, which gave him the special status of a seer, or possibly a madman. “Sculpture is dead also,” he was telling Helen Hull, which meant he’d already made the same pronouncement about painting. Tom billed himself as a chart artist. He made large-scale graphs that he transferred to canvas. Sometimes he called them meta-graphs, sometimes still lifes of information, sometimes “data tragedies.” It depended on his mood, and to a lesser degree on his audience. Annika was evidently familiar with the performance as well; she stood off to the side, drinking white wine.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Tom said, catching sight of William. “It puts a man in mind of nature. Mother Nature, I mean, not human nature. Human nature, well, the less said about that the better.” He laughed sharply and returned to the discussion, probably to drive a stake through drawing’s heart.
The matte-black grill sat atop a white concrete island. From where William stood, he could see the window of the junk room, and he squinted to see if he could catch the curtain moving. He lost himself in the grilling. So many small pieces of meat about to disappear into larger pieces of meat. He put sausages on, took them off. Chicken followed. He added vegetables, peppers, and onions. The food hissed as it hit the grill.
Alcohol, a fuel, had increased the speed of the proceedings. Graham Kenner was explaining that city government had its own special brand of corruption, which he said was “homegrown and thus perfect for survival in the local ecosystem.” Gloria Fitch was recalling how, in college, her boyfriend had rouged up her cheeks so she looked like a doll and made her sit cross-legged in bed, completely naked. People had moved closer to the edge of the deck, but no one had yet ventured onto the lawn. A squirrel patrolled the zone between the eagle tub and the lion tub.
Tom appeared at William’s elbow. “Burgers?” he said.
“Getting there,” William said.
Tom made to drain his beer, which was already empty. He puffed and relaxed florid cheeks. “I haven’t seen Louisa yet. She’s around?”
“She is,” William said. “I think she might have run out to the store for more ice. Our ice maker is on the fritz.”
“Fritz,” Tom said. “Fritz.” The way he said it made it sound ridiculous. He stepped up onto the concrete island that surrounded the grill, where there was not quite enough space for both of them. “Damned precarious up here,” he said. “But the view is really something.” Annika was coming across the deck now, and Tom hopped back off the concrete onto the grass. “Well, well, well,” he said loudly. “And they told me there wouldn’t be any women here today who would meet my high standards.”
“When I think of you,” Annika said, “high standards aren’t the first thing that come to mind.” She encircled his thick wrist with her eloquently thin fingers and they wandered off, Tom weaving as if avoiding obstacles. William plated the food.
After another trip inside, and another session spent thumping on the junk room door — lightly enough, so as not to draw the attention of the guests — William went back outside and collected shards of conversation. He heard Graham Kenner on the fiction of a benevolent government and Paul Prescott on brandy’s healing powers and Helen Hull on how pleasure was a subdivision of something, though he didn’t hear what.
He looked around for Annika and found her sitting on the stairs leading down into the yard, holding an unlit cigarette and smoothing her forehead with her fingertips. She wasn’t talking to Tom, who was halfway across the deck with Eddie Fitch, swinging his drink like a pendulum. More precisely, she was not-talking to Tom: she stared in his direction, slightly baleful, every once in a while taking a sip of wine.
William walked up to Annika. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said.
She blanched. Her wine was next to her, on the railing, and she picked it up as if that were the problem.
“You’re not eating. That’s against the rules.”
“Oh,” she said. “I was just admiring the lawn.” She meant the tubs, but she didn’t mention them. That happened often.
“Very admirable, I agree. But you have to eat.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“I know you are,” he lied. “Tom told me. That’s why we have grilled vegetables — for you and people like you.”
“Okay,” she said. “You sold me. I’ll get myself something and be right back.”
She returned a few minutes later, plate heaped high. She slid it onto the railing until it balanced and then she lit her cigarette. She was about the same height as Louisa, which meant that she was almost as tall as William. He looked toward the house, toward the junk room. Were the blinds moving?
“Well,” Annika said after just one drag on her cigarette. “If I’m going to eat healthy, might as well get rid of this.” She looked around for an ashtray, couldn’t find one, then bent down and dropped the cigarette into a beer can.
“Don’t do that on my account.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “Although…”
“Although what?” William said. He was excited to hear.
“I think this was someone’s beer. It belongs to that bald man over there.” She pointed to Graham Kenner. “What if he wasn’t finished?” She knelt to pick up the can.
“It’s no matter now,” William said. “That beer is, for all intents and purposes, no more. It has left our world for another world. We should wish it well.”
Annika came up slowly, like she wasn’t certain she wanted to. “I can’t bear that tone,” she said. “The tone like we’re in a play. Don’t you think I get plenty of that with Tom?”