She smoked some more. “That’s my question. This shit you dug up here, is it going to stay behind when we leave tomorrow? Or is this going to be a problem?”
Carver got a shiver up his spine and rolled his shoulders to banish it. “Why wouldn’t it stay behind?”
“You’ve never snaked me on a deal before. Six months ago it wouldn’t have even occurred to you. But I think you’re having an early mid-life crisis.”
“We had never been in that specific situation before, Lillian.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’ve never looked at me like you did a few minutes ago.”
“How?”
Lillian looked into and through him. “Like you had another offer on the table.”
Carver scoffed and looked out over the dark golf course. Nausea had begun roiling his stomach. He wanted desperately to find a way out of this, to say the thing that made it stop, but he only seemed able to dig himself deeper.
“To be clear, you don’t get to have another offer on the table,” she said. “Okay?”
“He doesn’t belong to you,” Scott said, sounding like a noble but oafish teenager. “A marriage isn’t handcuffs.”
“So who does he belong to?” Lillian said. “You? You were each other’s first fuck, or first love, whatever, so it’s rule of capture — first in time, first in right? Am I close?”
“That’s not how I’m thinking about it at all. I’ve never had a fucked-up thought like that in my life.”
“I’m not talking about yourthoughts,” Lillian said, like he was being obtuse, and she tapped him in the crotch.
Scott stiffened and moved to bat her hand away, but it was already away. Carver turned to look through the glass at the people inside the reception hall, who were still milling around and having a carefree good time. The Electric Slide was playing, and two dozen people were on the dance floor performing the moves. It’s electric, boogie woogie woogie.
“He doesn’t belong to anyone but himself,” Scott said.
“Yeah, sure, in theory,” Lillian said. “But you understand hewantsto belong to someone. You do get that about him, right?”
At the moment Carver in fact did not want to belong to anyone. He wanted to sink through the balcony, through the patio, down into the earth until he reached its molten core.
Scott looked between them and laughed in a disgusted way, the way someone would laugh at a hokey slasher movie. “Okay. So that really is the deal between you two? She’s a sadist, you’re a masochist?”
Lillian wrinkled her nose. “You think I beat him with a whip?”
“I was talking emotionally.”
“Okay, so nothing real. And you’re, what, Captain Save-a-Hoe, manbun Heathcliff?”
Scott spread his arms at this, looking astounded. “Who’s the hoe here, yourhusband?”
Lillian looked Carver up and down, raised a hand and blew air out of her mouth comically. “He’s got his tendencies.”
“You’re insane,” Scott said. “Carver, you get that, right? This woman is insane.”
“I’m not insane, I’m correct. God, you people are fucking boring. You’ve been boring the shit out of me all weekend.”
“Then hit the road!” Scott shouted.
Lillian put a hand up. “Shutuppp, don’t make ascene. Look, you’re right that he could run away with you tonight if he wanted, but I know my husband and I don’t think he has that in him. The most likely outcome is for him to stick with the status quo, and cut you off once we’re back in the city. I just want to be clear about something — that would need to be a clean cut. No texting, no mooning and crying, no second thoughts.”
This last part was directed at Carver, who felt like he had a concussion. He stared at Lillian’s statuesque face and watched her lips move. A moment after they stopped moving, she grabbed him by the face and forced eye contact onto him.
“You’re not going to embarrass me,” she said, her voice low and almost gentle.
Carver yanked out of her grip and walked backward toward the doors. She and Scott stared at him, watching him go. Their lips continued to move. Unfortunately for them, he had dolly zoomed out of his body and could only watch as he parted the reception hall crowd, ran down the staircase, through the downstairs lounge and out of the club. He ran across the patio into the grass and kept running, down past the driving range and onto the golf course.
