“There’s no way he wouldn’t,” Van says, her voice a little thick. Alice shakes her head—Van is literally perfect and she was just talking about how her own mother hasn’t gotten with the program—but Van clenches her fingers around Alice’s until it’s right on the line between pleasure and pain. “He’d be so proud of you, Alice.”
Proud of what? Alice wants to say. Working these jobs she hates, still in the same apartment she’s been in since he died,living every day like it’sGroundhog Dayand she’s waiting to be woken up from the most boring, tedious dream on the planet? Lying to Babs and Aunt Sheila and Marie to get a tiny bit of comfort and care in return? Touching Van every chance she can while she’s pretending to be halfway in love with Van’s brother?
Alice is pretty sure there’s not much to be proud of.
But Van doesn’t need to hear any of that. “Everyone in your life should be proud of you,” Alice says instead. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”
Van’s lips press together, and Alice guesses that Van’s inner monologue might sound pretty similar to hers right now.
Minus the enormous, ridiculous lie, of course.
They don’t say anything else, but Alice doesn’t move away, doesn’t pull her hand back, until Babs and Marie come in.
Eleven
“Okay,” Babs says, clapping her hands together three days later. Alice has just gotten to the hospital after work, and it’s officially been an entire week that Nolan’s been comatose, that Alice has been a part of this clan. “Let’s head over to his condo before the sun sets.”
It’s clearly a shift change—all the women stand up, and the men both settle into the chairs, each with an iPad already open on his lap. Alice doesn’t know what it is about middle-aged white men and their iPads, but it seems like the kind of true love that she thought only existed in storybooks.
The women head out of the hospital, and after a great deal of back and forth, they decide to all pile into Aunt Sheila’s Honda Civic, which has a smaller backseat than Van’s Volvo but is less likely to cover all of them in a fine but thorough layer of dog hair.
Alice finds herself wedged between Van and Marie in the back, insisting on yielding the seats with more leg room because she’s several inches shorter than both of them. Plus, theprospect of spending ten long, quiet minutes pressed up against Van, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, well. It won’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened to Alice.
However, it ends up being a little less tender than all that. It turns out Aunt Sheila drives like maybe this is her first time ever behind the wheel. It’s a short drive—they’re not even crossing a bridge because apparently Nolan lives in a high-rise building right on the river in the Pearl District—but Aunt Sheila manages to bump over two curbs, use the horn four times, and almost crash into seven other cars. Despite her seatbelt, Alice is careening back and forth between Van and Marie like a Ping-Pong ball, but no one is making so much as a muttered comment.
Alice figures they must all be used to it.
She can’t help but think about how gentle a driver Van is. She wonders what Babs and her husband drive like, if Van is so careful because of, or despite, whatever fresh hell this is.
They finally pull into a garage underneath an extremely fancy, very tall building that looks like it’s glass all around, and the second Alice steps out of the car she has an absurd urge to cross herself, like she’s survived some great journey.
She’s also immediately grateful for Aunt Sheila’s compulsive power walking because Alice doesn’t have to pretend to know where she’s going. She falls into step with Van, who is once again moving more slowly than Alice would have expected, able to follow Aunt Sheila without tipping anyone off that she’s never been here in her life.
They get into an elevator and Alice carefully positions herself in the corner farthest from the buttons so she doesn’t have to know which floor they’re aiming for. Babs pushes the button marked 19, and Alice commits it to memory. Nolan Altman, fourteenth floor at work, nineteenth at home.
Not like Alice Rue, who is in the lobby at work and a third-floor walk-up at home.
The elevator spits them out into a hallway that’s nicer than anywhere Alice has ever lived. Aunt Sheila practically sprints down it, calling out over her shoulder to Babs that she doesn’t remember which door is Nolan’s. Alice wonders why she doesn’t slow down and wait for Babs, but who is she to interfere with someone else’s process?
Babs and Marie stop in front of the door marked 1912. “It’s this one, Aunt Sheila,” Marie says, beckoning for her aunt, who is several doors past them by now, to come back. “Remember, it’s the year theTitanicsank.”
“I don’t do boats,” Aunt Sheila says, shaking her head at Marie as she gallops back to them. “You know that, Marina.”
Next to Alice, Van snorts, and Marie mutters, “I mean, I wasn’t suggesting we, like, get on the boat. ’Cause, you know, it’s literally at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Poor Leo,” Alice says as quietly as she can. “He totally could have fit on that door.”
Marie snickers and Van hums “My Heart Will Go On” as Babs enters the code the condo board gave her into the front door, because apparently this building is too fancy for keys. Keys are for peons, obviously. Plebs. Idiots who carry things and put them in things and might even have to jiggle them back and forth.
Alice remembers the worddoorgasm,the way Van had stood so close to her outside her apartment, and feels her cheeks warming, her fingers twitching out to brush against Van’s.
There’s no chance of a doorgasm here. The mechanical lock makes a whirring sound, and then Babs opens the door. They all trail in after her like ducklings and Alice makes sure Vangoes in front of her so no one will see Alice looking around to get her bearings.
They walk down a long, kind of narrow entranceway, turn left, and holy shit. Alice stops short. Like, she knew Nolan was rich. She knew from his office, from the outside of this building, from the way the hallway from the elevator looked like it was ripped right out of a catalogue, but, holy shiitake mushrooms, nothing in her entire life prepared her for this.
She’s standing at the edge of a large open space that makes up living room, kitchen, and dining room, and it’s glass all the way around. They’re so high up that she’s looking out over the entire city. The rolling hills of west Portland are straight ahead, and to her right is a glass wall overlooking the river, the park, and the Fremont Bridge. There’s a huge fireplace that draws her eye—got to be fake, right?—and the furniture is all black or white and sleek. The whole kitchen is incognito, with a fridge that’s pretending to be a cabinet, and cabinets that are pretending to be walls. Not a handle in sight. Alice has the absurd thought that maybe they’re all controlled by an app or something, like he points his smartwatch at the kitchen and the fridge springs open and a plate magically lifts itself from a cupboard and floats down to the counter.
There’s not a single cooking implement out, only what she thinks is either an espresso machine or a torture device. It has so many knobs and pokey things sticking out of it that the idea of having to use it before having any caffeine makes her armpits sweaty. Everything is clean. So clean. Too clean. It smells like…nothing.
