Out the window, Franny and the boys were having their breakfast by the pool. The day was misty but getting warmer, and Fran, her back to Jim, was wearing one of her gauzy dresses that he loved. Fran had all the usual feelings about her body’s changes, about menopause, but to Jim, she still looked just as beautiful as she ever had. Her bottom was still round and shaped like a generously large fruit. Her face was still full and soft. He felt himself getting older, but Franny would always be younger than he was. There was no good way to tell her that, not without the name Madison Vance coming out of her mouth soon afterward.
At first it was just friendly office banter, the kind Jim had always enjoyed. There had been numerous other women he’d flirted with at Gallant, and it had always been innocent. There was the one whose large glasses took up half her face, and the one who had a fiancé in Minneapolis, and the lesbian who flirted with Jim anyway, because she flirted with everyone, a wonderful quality in a person of any orientation. He hadn’t for a second considered sleeping with any of them, even when he and Franny were having problems. Sure, had he pictured their bodies once or twice when he and Franny were having sex? He had. But he had never so much as picked an errant hair off their sweaters or stood too close to them in a crowded elevator. Jim was loyal to his wife.
She was telling a story—Franny picked up her fork and twirled it in the air like a baton. Charles and Lawrence, both facing Jim’s window, threw back their heads and laughed. Jim wished he could join them outside, just open the door and walk out and sit next to her.
Madison Vance had appeared like a lump of kryptonite, as suddenly as if she’d fallen out of the sky. She was forward, and brave, and when she told Jim she wasn’t wearing any underwear, he shouldn’t have raised his eyebrows in amusement. He should have called human resources and then tucked himself in a ball under his desk like an air-raid drill. Instead, he had smiled and involuntarily run his tongue across his lower lip. True youth was something magnificent to behold—not the youth of thirty-five or forty-five or fifty, all still young and vital when viewed from the other side, but the unimpeachable youth of the early twenties, when one’s skin hugged the bones and glowed from the inside out. Madison let her long blond hair hang loose over her shoulders, and it swung side to side, each tiny strand both delicate and wild. She had made it clear that she wanted him, in that way, in that ancient way, she wanted him. And Jim wanted her, too.
The moment he walked into the hotel bar to meet her, Jim knew he was making a mistake. Up until then, he had convinced himself that it was all in good fun—he was taking this young woman under his wing. She was a pip, a go-getter! And they would sit at the bar and have drinks and talk about journalism and novels, and then she would go on her merry way, taking the subway back to Brooklyn Heights, where she was sharing a sublet with a roommate. Once he walked into the bar, though, and saw what Madison was wearing, her pale thighs extending out from under her impossibly short dress, Jim knew that the situation wasn’t even close to the one he’d let himself believe.
He had walked to the desk, he had asked for a room.
He had tipped his face down to meet hers.
He had unzipped her dress and watched the fabric slide over her narrow hips.
Jim turned away from the window and let his head drop toward his chest. His eye ached and he wished that the rest of his body was as marked, one giant bruise, because he deserved it.
When she was in high school, Carmen had thought long and hard about her options. There was a boy in her class who loved her, and she loved him, too. They’d lost their virginity to each other in his twin bed, and their mothers were friends who liked to sit together on plastic chairs on the beach. When she was at Miami Dade, there was a guy she met at Starbucks and slept with on and off for the next six months, until it turned out that he had another girlfriend back home in Orlando. There were always lots of guys at every gym she’d ever worked at, eyeing her while she worked out. Miami was an easy place to meet someone if you cared about your body.
Bobby was different. The first time they went out, he told her about his family and New York. He was still in college, but seemed so much younger than when Carmen was his age. She’d been supporting herself since she was sixteen, and at twenty-one, Bobby’s parents still paid his rent, though she didn’t know that yet. What was clear was that he came from somewhere else, a different planet of wants and needs. She loved hearing about his mother—a writer! It sounded like a job from the movies, going around the world and writing about what she ate. Carmen started buying magazines that she thought his mother might be in, and sometimes when Bobby came over to her house, he’d confirm her suspicion, saying, Oh, I think my mother was in that one, and sometimes he’d say, Oh, my mother hates that one—total assholes, and Carmen would pretend that the magazine had been a gift from a client, disowning it quickly.
She tried so hard to get them to like her. She stayed quiet at their dinner parties and smiled blankly when they talked about something she didn’t know anything about. She wore her most conservative clothes and tried not to complain about the cold. But nothing she did ever seemed to be right.
The kitchen was warm—all the blinds were open. If it had been her mother’s apartment in Miami, all the shades would have been closed until just before dusk, but the Posts didn’t seem to mind the house heating up like an oven. She wasn’t going to say anything, it wasn’t her decision.
“Morning,” Bobby said. He’d been sleeping late. Carmen wound her hands around her orange juice. It was the first morning in a year that she hadn’t had a protein shake, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Good morning,” Carmen said. Everyone else seemed to be by the pool, and Sylvia was surely still asleep. The house was theirs alone. “Will you take a walk with me? Just a walk.” He hadn’t been saying much, and neither had she.
“Sure,” Bobby said, staring out the window at his family. He didn’t want to be around them any more than she did. They tugged on their sneakers and were out the door before anyone knew they were gone.
Pigpen was straight down a narrow road—a two-way street only when absolutely necessary, and they walked in single file, Bobby in front. There were all sorts of things like that—lessons Bobby hadn’t learned. Was she supposed to teach him? She’d tried. Walking on the outside in case a car jumped the curb or went through a puddle, letting her pass through doorways first. He didn’t do any of those things. If she’d asked, he would have said something about how they were equals, but really, he’d just never thought about it. Carmen stooped down to pluck a flower, and tucked it behind her ear.
The town was only a few streets long, the cobblestone blocks curling in and around one another in a tight knot. They walked past the small grocery store, and the Italian restaurant, and the bar that sold sandwiches. When they reached the end of the block and rounded the corner, Carmen was just about to open her mouth. Instead, they turned left and then stopped abruptly.
The street ahead of them was filled with people—one man with a guitar, some children throwing things into the air, and a few older women standing around beaming. The cars on the street were stopped, but the stymied drivers didn’t honk their horns or even look impatient. Carmen pulled Bobby closer to the action, and they watched from across the street—at the center of the group, standing outside the doorway of a small building, were a bride and groom. Another man stood just behind them on the steps, making proclamations. Carmen could understand most of what he was saying—This is a joyous day, God has given these two people each other—but it wouldn’t have mattered if the man was speaking Swahili. It was a wedding, in any language. The bride, a plump woman near Carmen’s age if not a bit older, wore a short dress with a lacy bodice, and a wrist corsage. Her new husband wore a gray suit and a tie, his mostly bald head gleaming in the sunlight. They gripped each other’s hands tightly, rocking back from side to side as their friend spoke. The woman let out a peal of laughter, and her husband kissed her on the mouth. The old ladies shook their handkerchiefs in the air, and the children screamed happily, consumed by their own role in the festivities. Carmen felt her stomach pump once, then again, and realized that she was crying.