He knew Carver had wanted to go to California. They both knew it. It was why their fight got so ugly. What Carver had his eyes on wasn’t happiness but revenge, an amount of success he could make his parents choke on, and Scott failed to reach him. He failed to make his case. It sometimes felt to Scott like this had predicted his every failure since, which haunted him as an artist and a professional. If he couldn’t seduce the willing into betting big on him, how could he trust himself to convince anyone else?
Letty ran a finger along the table and interrupted his thoughts with, “What if I said I feel like he was lying when he said he didn’t want to talk?”
Scott felt suddenly tired. “How would you know that?”
“Familial intuition. I’m familiar with our style of lies.”
“If you leave us alone, I’m not gonna press him and end up looking like I convinced you to.”
Letty put her hands up. “I leave the subtleties to you. I’m just telling you it’s time for us to go.”
“We need our beauty sleep,” Sana said. “And my sisters want to henna me before I go to bed.”
Scott glanced through the windows along the back of the house, trying to discern Carver’s shadow moving around, but the blinds and curtains were drawn for the night. “Alright,” he said. “Alright.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Carver stepped back outside with another glass of scotch in his hand, he could tell the mood had changed. As he approached the table, Letty said, “So, I think we’re gonna head out, but don’t let us break up the party.”
Scott gave her a sort of half-nod, half-shrug. The hair on the back of Carver’s neck rose, alert. Now there was the potential for something unexpected to happen.
He shouldn’t let it. He was inebriated and not thinking clearly. He should finish his drink and go to bed. But he dreaded going upstairs to Lillian, who even at this hour was probably still working on finding a solution to their disagreement with Deutsche Bank after Lloyd had called a few hours ago and apologetically informed them the credit committee said they could go kick rocks. In the end, Lloyd had turned out to be too impotent a person to bother threatening. And DB had intentionally waited so long to deliver this verdict that they were now coming up on the weekend.
But Lillian could handle this, and probably preferred to. When she got into a certain mood, the one she’d been in earlier, she became suddenly and completely disinterested in other people. When she was in these moods Carver was afraid of even breathing too loudly for fear that she would order him to take it somewhere else.
So instead Carver could sit here with his scotch and shoot the shit with Scott. That sounded fine. The alcohol and weed were warming him from inside, making him floppy and content to obey the night’s inertia.
“Okay,” he said, sitting down in the same spot he had before. “Sounds good.”
Letty looked over at Sana. “Ready to make the long journey home?” She was kidding. They were staying with Josie and Hank, who lived fifteen doors down in a tidy Georgian with a less ostentatious driveway.
Sana extended her hand to Letty, fingertips down, as if being escorted out of a carriage. Letty took her hand, kissed it, and helped her to her feet. They said goodnight and went away giggling.
When the door shut behind them, Carver realized he was grinding his teeth, and stopped.
Scott glanced over at him. Carver felt enough liquid and gaseous courage to return his gaze without fumbling it. It was Scott who fumbled, looking down at the oak table.
“Carv,” he finally said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I know you said we don’t need to talk. But I’d like to talk, if you’re willing.”
Carver’s body began to hum like it knew something his mind didn’t. “About?”
Scott tilted his head with acome onlook.
“I just don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of that,” Carver said.
He knew the thinghewanted — a blinding glimpse at what might have been — was not possible. They could talk all day, it didn’t matter, it would never get them to California. All talk did was prolong the two equally disastrous scenarios at hand: them having sex tonight or them not having sex tonight.
And Scott was this thing he wasn’t used to anymore, this sincere naive liberal, almost like he had stayed seventeen in his heart. He didn’t even know how to pay his taxes. He was going to say Sesame Street shit to Carver like “I’m sorry” or “You hurt my feelings,” and then actually wait for an answer. It would be like therapy without the blessed sacrament of transaction there to protect them.
“Closure, I guess,” Scott said, with nefariously large and soft brown eyes.
“I thought we closed what needed to be closed.”
“Okay.” Scott dug his cigarettes and lighter back out. “A postmortem?” He lit one. “No part of you wants that?”
