Lara giggled. “And why the devil aren’t you there sipping a lazy Long Island iced tea in the poolside bar, may I ask?”
“I’m sitting outside the spa house with a cup of jasmine tea, dar- ling, waiting for my Blue Blossom Relaxing Many-Pressure Mas- sage with views of the splendid ocean. Jez booked it for me as a surprise.”
“But you hate massages.”
“Yes. He appears to have forgotten.” Stevie felt disloyal. “Well, it’s not something we’ve ever really talked about. I just assume he knows everything about me because we’re married, which isn’t re- ally fair. He means well.” Stevie smiled at a passing spa worker, neatly dressed in a tourist-friendly approximation of a kimono and wearing black silk flip-flops. A strong smell of essential oils wafted from the folds of the fabric as she tiptoed past. Stevie checked her watch. “I’m probably going to have to stop chatting any minute, but, just quickly, tell me about your apartment, your flatmate,
Nu Yoik
. Brilliant that you’ve sorted yourself out so quickly.”
“I was
hugely
lucky. A girl at the magazine had a friend who was looking for someone to share her apartment, so after a mere two nights of sleeping in a teeny basement in the East Village with banging pipes that sound like a madman, I installed myself and my three suitcases into a far nicer place in the West Village yesterday.”
“And, what’s she like? Single white female?”
“Casey. Thirty-eight. Single. Works in advertising. Waxes her nostrils.”
Stevie put her hand to her mouth. “No!” A woman in a leopard- print bikini striding past to the jangling accompaniment of low- hanging ethnic necklaces gave her a dirty look. It was an unwritten rule of the place that everyone spoke in hushed tones.
“I am the most hirsute woman in a ten-mile radius. But, seri- ously, Casey’s cool. Kind of a bit severe and a bit dry but, yeah, I re- ally like her.”
Stevie bit her cuticles. She felt an expanding emptiness in her chest—like a homesick feeling, but it was a homesickness for a city she’d only visited twice, a yearning for a life she could have lived, if circumstances had been different. “It all sounds incredibly excit- ing,” she said wistfully.
“Well, yeah, it totally is. But what you’re doing is exciting, too, in a different way . . .”
Stevie smiled. Lara was really trying. “I know.”
“Oh, God, that reminds me . . .” Lara suddenly let out a screech. “Ah, I
must
tell you . . . wait . . . wait . . . don’t go . . . lis- ten up. Casey told me she’s checking out sperm donors, I’m
so
not joking. She said it’s like customizing a handbag: eye color, hair, education . . .”
“God, that’s beyond modern.” Stevie checked her watch. “I’m getting beckoned. Time to get pummeled into oblivion. Call me
soon. Love you, bye. Oh, wait a minute. You still there? Almost forgot to say, thank you
so
much for the wedding present. Very gen- erous of you.”
“Well, I thought a flight was the one guaranteed way of getting you over here. The date is flexible.”
“Ace! I’m in between jobs when I get home. So it couldn’t be better timed. Thanks, Lara.”
“Not a problem.”
“And one other thing, er, just wondering, has Sam called?” “Yeah, he left a message on my mobile last night.”
“Already? Gosh, that’s keen.” Stevie’s hand clamped her phone so tight its plastic innards creaked. “But that’s great. Gotta run. Bye.”
katy turned the dials
on the deep outdoor bath and scat- tered the water with flower petals from a nearby limestone bowl. “Bath’s ready, darling.”
“You’re a pussycat,” mumbled Seb, striding lazily toward the terrace in a white four-ply Blue Blossom robe. He put one hairy big toe in the water. “Oh, hot.” He didn’t bend down to adjust the taps himself.
She adjusted the cold. “There . . . that okay?”
“Perfect.” Seb let the robe drop to the ground and pool around his slim ankles.
Katy licked her eyes over his taut torso, his round, recently worked-out shoulders. He looked better now than when they first met. As age withered women, it improved men, she thought. It caused a strange shift in the gender power play.
“So you were saying, Katy? Sorry I was half asleep. Yes, a bit
more cold. Crikey, that’s enough! Super. This chap who helped you . . . a husband of a friend or something?”
“Yes!” Katy clapped her hands together, in, she half-hoped, an endearingly girlish gesture. Charisma was something she felt she had to work at these days. “The friend is Stevie Jonson. Funny girl. Nice enough, though. We met years ago, when I was going out with Sam Flowers.” She paused. “Before your time, obviously.”
“Right,” he said stiffly. “She’s on honeymoon.”
“Right-o.” Seb’s pale eyes lost their suspicious slant. He periscoped his toes above the water. “With Sam?”
“No, no, not Sam.” Katy looked thoughtful. “His name was Jez.
Lovely guy, so sweet.” She brushed sand off her knees.
“Terrific. Another couple. It might be fun to hang out with them tonight,” said Seb, rubbing soap into his neck vigorously. Another couple would provide some light relief. They’d already had five “fine-dining experiences” at the most expensive terrace restaurant, and each one had disturbed him slightly more than the one before. Katy was so silent, as if she were waiting for him to say something, to create drama, conversation. And the more he talked to her, the less he felt he had to say.
“Tonight?” Katy tried to hide the needling disappointment in her voice. She was unsuccessful. “Didn’t you say earlier that you wanted to have a chat about something, something kind of important, tonight?” “Did I?” Seb looked up blankly. “Oh, wait a minute . . . Yes, that was it.” He soaped himself up behind his ears. “I wanted to ask you whether you minded terribly if, after the trip, I went back to New York a bit earlier than planned, rather than hang out in Lon- don that weekend. It’s work, darling. I want to be there early Mon-
day morning. I really think I need to look totally committed.”
NINETEEN
Æ
three and a half hours later, her muscles still
feeling bruised by the hands of the tiny but wiry Thai masseuse, Stevie wrapped her warm hands around a glass of icy Chablis and brought it up to her mouth. “The sky, Jez. Look at the sky. You can see all the stars. It’s like a disco.”
Jez craned his neck back. “Cool,” he said, eyes quickly returning their focus to his beer glass, then the cleavage of the woman at the next table wearing a fuchsia dress that took no heed of the style rule of only displaying one erogenous zone at a time. Or was Stevie being paranoid?
She shuddered, dark thoughts circling. “To think this is what those poor people caught in the tsunami must have felt, at peace, on vacation, just like us. And, then, God . . .” She shut her eyes. Yes, it did disturb her. She couldn’t pretend otherwise. The sea was dancing with bones.
“Don’t be so bloody morbid, Stevie. We’re on our bleeding
hon- eymoon
.” Jez stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it to get the pool water out. “Why all the bloody navel-gazing?”
“It’s like we have to pretend nothing’s happened. And all those poor people . . .”
Jez looked at her sternly. “Listen, no one’s asking you to pretend anything.” He slammed his beer glass down. “The Thais want to move on. And you know what? I’ve had enough of death. Can we talk about something else?”
“Sorry.” As always, her father-in-law’s subtle spectral appear- ance, channeled through Jez, chastened her. Colin had become the third party on the honeymoon. She’d learned how he wasn’t good in the sun, which would explain Jez’s sensitivity; his dislike of Thai food; how he preferred a good old-fashioned deck chair to the vul- gar horizontal exposure of a modern chaise . . . Yes, it was time to change the subject, and quickly, thought Stevie. But to what, ex- actly?
Since arriving in Thailand, conversation seemed to be limited to three subjects: the wedding, Jez’s father, the Blue Blossom (the coldness of its beers, the price of a lunch, the confusing labeling of the spa’s sunscreen). It was not the loved-up soul-searching that Stevie had hoped a honeymooning couple might engage in, but the kind of surface chatter she’d dreaded during her pre-wedding wob- ble. True, Jez was still grieving. It was she who had to take respon- sibility, nudge the conversation onto a higher plane. “Maybe in some ways it’s wonderful and appropriate we are here,” she said quietly, fingering the saltshaker. “It’s a place of life and death and new beginnings.”
Jez swallowed a belch and raised his glass with a closed-mouth smile. “And sun, sand, and sex.” He took a gulp. “A gorgeous wife. And bloody good beer.”
No, they were not two people fused into one, she acknowledged. They were two people linked in a neat and arbitrary way—through
rings and paper and ceremony and expectations and the presump- tion of a shared future—rather than through messily engorged hearts. But, perhaps, this merely meant that theirs was a more ma- ture relationship, planned and measured against their ages and ex- pectations. It was unrealistic to expect the dopamine swell of young love at their age.
“Where the hell’s that waiter gone?” Jez looked about him. “Check out that ocean, pumpkin. Wow, it’s, like, glittering.”
It did seem to be lit from within by thousands of LED lights. “Phosphorous, do you reckon?”
Jez sighed. “If only Dad was here, he’d know. He had an ency- clopedic mind. Of course, he’d have gone fishing, too. He’d be out there making friends with the fishermen. Good sea legs he had.”
Stevie smiled, trying to visualize Colin, who only ate fish cov- ered in breadcrumbs, and had been about as intrepid as an old sofa. She pressed her hand to her face, supporting her freckled chin on her hand, the skin on skin sweating immediately on contact. Hu- mid gusts of wind filled the palms, making their leaves turn and rustle like tutus, creating just enough drama to fill in the gaps of their conversation and act as a diverting third party at the table.
Jez suddenly clattered his fork down. “Hey is . . . that? It is.” He waved and mouthed, “Whoa! It’s that Katy.”
Stevie groaned inwardly. This resort evidently wasn’t going to be big enough for the two of them. Spotting Jez’s enthusiastic gestic- ulation, Katy—unmistakable in a floaty rainbow-colored dress with a large pale pink bloom tucked behind her ear—got up from her seat with a flirtatious twist of the hips. Shit. She was walking toward them, dress inflating like a sail. Within seconds, she was at the table, teeth glowing coral-white in her tanned face.
“Hi, guys,” Katy chirped. “Isn’t this just, like, dreamy, no?”
“Stunning.” Stevie nodded.
“How’s the leg?” asked Jez, his eyes inevitably homing in on her long brown limb.
Katy giggled and stuck her left leg forward rather unnecessarily, like a model on the catwalk. “All better. Thanks to you.” His jaw twitched with pleasure. “I must congratulate you on your brilliant choice of husband, Stevie. Quite the savior.”
“Glad he was of service.” Stevie nodded toward a handsome, bored-looking man a few tables away. “Is that your husband?” When her gaze returned to Katy’s face, she suspected she’d asked the wrong question.
Katy quickly looked down at her feet with a pained expression, her hands twisting over and over one another. “No, not husband. Not yet.”
As was common in the second after an awkward moment, when the moment could either be extended or erased, Jez felt the wrong thing perch precariously at the end of his tongue, like a diver at the end of a quivering board. “Oh, you should get married. Everyone’s doing it.”
Stevie kicked Jez under the table.
“Yes, yes, quite. One day, hopefully, er . . .” Katy fiddled with a ribbon that circled her waist. “I better go . . .”
“Have you two finished eating? Fancy joining us for a nightcap?
Welcome, aren’t they, Stevie?” Jez said.
Stevie forced a smile. “Sure.” Oh, God. Welcome to Thailand. Katy looked from Stevie to Jez and back again, seeking reassur-
ance. “Yeah, Seb and I have finished up . . .” Not even a hint of a proposal had been forthcoming. She couldn’t sit there opposite him any longer without wanting to dive over the white linen and slap him on the face. “That’s a sweet offer, thanks. I’ll go get him.”
Jez watched the mango cheeks of Katy’s backside swell, then empty the fabric of her dress as she walked. “She’s a great lass, isn’t she?”
stevie had never been
able to drink in the heat. And the service was so prompt and smiley and it was all on a tab, so there was complete disassociation between consumption and purse. No wonder she was drunk.
Katy slapped her hand on the wooden table. “Wake up, girl! No rest for the wicked. It’s only midnight.”
Stevie protested about jetlag and the others snorted and ordered another round of shots, the glasses’ clink just audible against the slap of sea and a low vibrating hum that probably came from a gen- erator or insects, but seemed to Stevie to be the sound of stars burn- ing white holes in the sky. How she wished she were alone under it, staring up until her focus went funny, as if she were hurtling into space.
“So yeah, it’s through Sam that we know each other, isn’t it, Ste- vie?” said Katy, directing the question with an olive from her cock- tail.
“Yup.” Stevie resented the “we,” the assumption of collusion, that they agreed on the same history, the same version of events.
“Dear old Sam, do you ever still see him? How is he?” Thinking of Sam, Stevie smiled. “Really well.” “Married or still breaking hearts?”
“Single.”
“Breaking hearts, then.” Katy turned to the waiter, her voice be- coming colder and posher as it always did when addressing staff. “More water. No,
still
water. Thank you.”
Stevie bent her head back, felt the weight of her chestnut hair swinging over her shoulders. “I don’t know if he’s breaking hearts. To be fair, he’s changed a bit since you knew him. Well, he’s grown up, I suppose. It actually happens to some men.”
“About time,” Katy said. “Sam was always one of those men who seemed well-intentioned, not an arse, but distracted. Do you know what I mean? Forgive the cliché, but you know, a bit of a commitment-phobe? He couldn’t even stick to one career.”