Then Skip came out and shook our hands, showing us his formidable teeth. His insistence that he was glad we were there was so convincing that I wondered if he remembered keeping his back to me for the entirety of the evening at the Century Club. All three men had on khaki pants and navy sports coats, as if there had been a memo.
“I haven’t met your husband,” Skip said, looking straight at Jonathan, shaking his hand. Topflight polite.
“Your firm handled our merger,” Jonathan said, playing his ace while we were still in the driveway.
“You’re a lawyer?”
Jonathan said the name of his hospital. “We worked with your team during the RFP.”
That would be Request For Proposals.
Skip willed himself to his full and former height. “Did youstay?” he asked.
Jonathan shook his head. “Took the buyout.”
Jonathan had taken the buyout. Skip had taken the buyout. In the span of two minutes, Jonathan had established the conversational triangle: I know your law firm, you know my hospital, we are both retired. We all went in the house together, but Skip and Jonathan immediately peeled away, heading to the sunroom at the back of the house. Skip said he wanted Jonathan to see the water, to see the restored Chris-Craft that bobbed at the end of the dock.
“Well, I need to see about the drinks,” Polly said, and then she was gone as well.
Eddie looked around. Only the two of us remained. “That was a neat trick,” he said.
“Give me a minute,” I said, walking through the entry hall as if through a strange dream.
“Pace yourself,” Eddie said. “It’s a lot to take in.”
Every item in the house appeared to have been chosen for texture. The living room walls were covered in what might have been raw silk, lightly padded from beneath. The extravagantly floral carpets, the sofas, the floral pillows arranged on the sofas, the arrangements of flowers on side tables and coffee tables both resplendent and familiar because, of course, Polly loved flowers. She had ordered the arrangements for the anniversary party—peonies, ranunculus, anemones, dahlias—and here they were again, both different and the same. They stood in contrast to the heavy swagger of the drapes restrained by multicolored silk ropes, the palest flash of lining showing at the edge like a slip beneath a dress. Even the glass in the windowpanes seemed different from other glass in other windowpanes, so freshly washed as to appearwatery. The art hung from satin cords attached to the crown molding. I had the strangest desire to run my fingers over all of it.
Polly reappeared. “Mimosas or Bloody Marys?” She looked at Eddie. “I know what you want.”
“Jonathan and I will have to pass,” I said. “He’s driving, and I’ve never been able to drink during the day.”
“So you’ll just have one,” she said. “One apiece. Which do you want?”
I shook my head. “Not unless you want to put me in the guest room.”
Polly clapped her hands. “Bloody Marys then. That’s what Eddie and Skip always have, and I don’t care. We’ll all have Bloody Marys. That will be fun.”
When she turned and left for the kitchen, I widened my eyes in Eddie’s direction and he held up one finger. “I’ll cover for you,” he whispered.
I took his sleeve, and together we crossed the flowered field of carpet to the far corner of the living room. “How often do you do this?”
“Come out here?”
I nodded.
“Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. Engagements and weddings, of course. We do birthdays in the city, the café at Le Bernardin, a play. When you put it all together, it averages out to something every fifteen minutes.”
“But you don’t usually do brunch.”
“No, no,” Eddie said. “Brunch is for you.”
“Eddie!” Polly called from somewhere offstage. “Come help me, please.”
Eddie looked back at me. “Come help me, please,” he said.
I followed him down the hall.
“Oh, Eddie,” Polly said, standing in the kitchen and looking only at me. “Now she’ll see the mess.”
