When Siobhan and Edward split, the ring bounced around a bit. In one impetuous moment, Siobhan threw the ring at Edward; he picked it out of the crease in the sofa where it had landed and took it home. He returned a few days later to talk, but Siobhan turned him away. He left the ring in its soft velvet bag on her doorstep with a note:
I bought this for you. It’s yours.
Siobhan had wanted nothing more than to return the ring, but she could not endure another confrontation with Edward. She mailed the ring to Edward at his office. Again the ring appeared on her doorstep. Siobhan got it: the ring caused Edward pain, he didn’t want it, and he didn’t need the money he would get if he returned it.
Fine,
she thought. It went into her sock drawer first, then into the secret compartment of her jewelry box, a hiding place straight out of the mystery stories her boys liked to read. The ring, when she thought about it, irked her. It was like a pesky tag in her knickers, a pebble in her shoe, a popcorn kernel between her back molars. She should sell it, pawn it; it would still fetch thousands and thousands of dollars, which she, unlike Edward, could really use. But she couldn’t bring herself to sell it, stupid as that sounded, and if anyone asked her why (which no one would, as no one knew she had the damn thing except, possibly, for Edward), she would say it was because she wasn’t ready to let it go. Whatever that meant.
Damn Edward for calling and ruining her pleasant morning! Damn Claire for meddling!
As she was filling and wrapping the spring rolls, Siobhan called Claire. It was nearly noon. Now that Claire was “back at work,” she told Siobhan she was “only available” at lunchtime.
“Hey,” Claire said, her mouth full.
“Edward Melior?” Siobhan said.
“Excuse me?”
“Edward is heading your catering committee?”
“Oh, yeah,” Claire said. “Jeez, I forgot about that. Are you pissed at me?”
“A little.”
“Well, don’t be. He volunteered for it.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“What freaked me out was being caught off guard.”
“Well, I’m glad he finally contacted you,” Claire said. “You’re going to give him a bid, right?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll take you as long as you’re lower. Even a little bit lower. You know that.”
“I know. But I don’t know what lower is, do I?”
“No, you don’t,” Claire said. “I don’t know, either. I didn’t look at the other bids.”
“No, of course not. You’re as pious as the pope’s mother,” Siobhan said. She considered mentioning Carter’s gambling loss but decided against it. Twelve hundred dollars was not the end of the world; he claimed it had been tip money, anyway, his own discretionary income.
Don’t overreact, baby.
If Siobhan told Claire about it, Claire would worry and the whole thing would get blown out of proportion. “How’s it going in the shop?”
“Ohhhhhkay,” Claire said. “Still trying to finish the vases for Transom. They’re not as easy as I thought they would be, and Elsa wants them in time for Christmas. And I have to start the chandelier for the gala auction. That’s what I really want to be working on.” Big sigh. “Lock keeps telling me I’m an artist, not an artisan.”
“Lock has a warped perspective,” Siobhan said. “He has nothing else to spend his money on other than museum-quality glass. Well, and private school tuition. And wax for his Jaguar. And cuff links. And Daphne’s meds.”
“And viognier,” Claire piped in.
“What?” Siobhan said.
“Nothing,” Claire said. “It’s his favorite wine.”
“Ooohhh,” Siobhan said. “Nice that you know his favorite wine. I wasn’t sure Lock Dixon even drank wine. He has such a pole up his ass.”
“He does not,” Claire said.
“Yes, he does,” Siobhan said.
“No, Siobhan, he does not,” Claire said. “He’s nothing like that. You don’t know him.”
“Sure, I do. He’s as self-righteous as the born-agains.”
Claire said, “I have to go.”
Siobhan rolled up another spring roll, eight rows of eight, sixty-four. They were all plump and perfect, like swaddled babies. “Call me later,” Siobhan said. She hung up.
Siobhan prepped the marinade for the satay, thinking,
Edward Melior, pink calla lilies. It’s too late to write a note for them now. It would look shoddy.
Thinking,
Viognier. It’s his favorite wine.
Not Edward’s, but Lock Dixon’s. Lock Dixon kept telling Claire she was an artist, not an artisan. Siobhan was a caterer, not a chef, not a genius; she had scored Bs and Cs during her years with the nuns. She sometimes got so caught up in the mood of things that her common sense suffered. Her husband had managed to gamble away four figures right under her nose. Right under her nose.
It’s his favorite wine
.
Was something going on between Claire and Lock Dixon? Never! And yet, it sounded like it. But Claire was a straight arrow; she was all caught up with being good and kind and sending positive energy out into the universe. She was all about her kids and the lofty precepts of art, and besides all that, she had a sex life with Jason that was directly out of
Cosmo
. Claire would
never
have an affair. And if she were, impossibly, having an affair, she would never keep it from Siobhan. Claire told Siobhan everything; she told Siobhan about her menstrual cramps, her hangnails; she told Siobhan when the mail arrived or the toilet backed up.
It’s his favorite wine.
Such a curious statement, and Claire had said it so proudly, so proprietarily. Claire and Lock Dixon? Never! And yet . . . it sounded like it.
Siobhan catered the Montessori dinner to enormous kudos, she got Edward the bid for the gala, she kept an eye on Carter’s gambling, she delivered the boys to and from their endless hockey practices. At Christmastime she went crazy around the house, cooking and decorating: she baked figgy puddings, she made smoked salmon dip with homemade Parmesan pepper crisps, she did a gingerbread house with the boys, even though they had outgrown it and did little more than eat all the candy. Her gift to her friends this year was wreaths made out of dried hydrangea and the giant pinecones that fell from the firs out by Tupancy Links.
Siobhan went on several pinecone-collecting missions, all of them bewitching and romantic. She wrapped herself in a candy-striped merino scarf and carried a woven basket as she wandered through the firs on cold afternoons, with the promise of Christmas carols at home, and a hot buttered rum to warm her up. She was a girl from a fairy tale in those moments as she gathered only the largest, most perfect pinecones, the only person for miles, alone on this pristine part of the island.
Imagine her surprise when, on her way home with an overflowing basket of plump piney beauties next to her, she passed Claire’s car. Siobhan was heading out of the evergreen forest and Claire was headed into it. Claire was driving way too fast, so that when Siobhan came around the bend on the dirt road, Claire’s car was right there on top of her; they nearly collided. Siobhan gasped at the near miss, then gasped again at the fact that it was Claire’s car, Claire at the wheel with somebody in the passenger seat—a man. Lock Dixon. Or at least Siobhan thought it was Lock Dixon. All she could say for sure was that the man was wearing earmuffs and Lock was famous around town for wearing earmuffs (pole up his ass). Siobhan knew Claire recognized her car—how could she not?—but Claire didn’t stop. She and Lock Dixon barreled into the deserted forest that Siobhan had just left.
Siobhan drove on, stymied. In the months since Claire had agreed to chair the gala, there had been two or three meetings a week, always at night. Jason complained to Carter, and Carter passed the complaints on to Siobhan.
Seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it? All those meetings. Don’t you ever chair anything like that.
Never,
Siobhan said.
It’s too much bloody work.
What were Claire and Lock Dixon doing driving into the forest together at one o’clock on a December afternoon? They weren’t going to collect pinecones, that was for sure. Siobhan considered following them. What would they be doing?
Later that afternoon, Siobhan called Claire at home, and Claire said, “Hey, how are you?” As though nothing had happened.
“Did you not see me?” Siobhan demanded.
“See you what?”
“Up at Tupancy. Coming out of the woods. In my car. Jesus, Claire, you nearly ran me over.”
Claire laughed, but Siobhan was her best friend, had been for fucking centuries, and she could tell it was a fake laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you, Claire,” Siobhan said. “And you had Lock in the car.”
Again, the laugh, one key off-tune. “You’re crazy, baby.”
Siobhan huffed. This was insane! She would know Claire in a dark cave with a paper bag over her head. “So you’re denying that you were at Tupancy today?”
“Tupancy?” Like Siobhan was crazy. “I haven’t been to Tupancy since the dog died.”
She was denying it! But why? Claire could have come up with any number of plausible stories. Claire could have told Siobhan
anything
and Siobhan would have decided to believe it—but to deny ever having been there when she had nearly crashed into Siobhan was an insult to the friendship, and stupid besides. It could only mean one thing: Claire and Lock were having a torrid affair. This was betrayal at its most exquisite.
But no, Siobhan thought. It just wasn’t possible. Claire was too much the choir girl. She had been born with a nagging conscience. She felt guilty when she missed a week of church, when she killed a housefly; she felt guilty when it
rained
. Having an affair was not something Claire was capable of.
So what, then, was going on? Siobhan meant to find out.
W
hen he was younger, he used to pinch himself all the time. The money came rolling in, but it wasn’t the money that was exciting; it was the girls, so many girls, and guys, too, for that matter, and limousines and rooms at the Four Seasons with their fluffy towels, their waffled robes, the Veuve Clicquot chilling in a silver bucket, the bouquets of roses, a garden’s worth of roses thrown onto the stage. It was the deference, the respect shown to him by everyone from record execs to heads of state to Julia Roberts—she and her husband were fans and owned every album. Of Max West’s, Matthew Westfield’s, a kid from Wildwood Crest, a scruffy beach town in New Jersey.
Down the shore,
that was where Matthew had grown up, with a father who took off when Matthew was five, and a sainted mother who worked as the church secretary and who got most of her information about life outside Wildwood from the magazines she picked up at the grocery store checkout. What was he, Matthew Westfield, doing onstage with seventy thousand people waving their arms in front of him? They were worshipping him; he was no longer a punk kid from New Jersey, but a god. He could have whatever he wanted—women, drugs, guns, an audience with the pope (he went once and tried to persuade his mother to join him, but she wouldn’t travel to Italy, not even for the Holy Father).
He was in Thailand now, in Bangkok, hunkering down at the Oriental Hotel. Outside his room were two butlers (they had these for every guest) and two armed guards (these were only for him, since he had cavalierly suggested that a Muslim girl in the crowd in Jakarta rip off her
hijab
for him, inciting Muslim rage and necessitating a quick exodus from the country). It was winter in America but hotter than Hades here in Thailand. It was too hot to do anything but sit in the air-conditioning, drink the chilled champagne, smoke the delightful Indo weed they took as a parting gift from Java, and just generally seek oblivion. Because wasn’t it the sad truth that Max West, a person who could have whatever he wanted, wanted only oblivion. Some time in the great black box. A poor man’s peace.
They had sent some girls up, a group skinny and giggling, wearing short skirts and noisy earrings and makeup meant for white women. They were all beautiful, but very young, a couple of them maybe only fourteen, maybe not even menstruating yet. They clung to one another like schoolgirls, and this made Matthew melancholy. He gave the girls a wad of
baht
and sent them away. The butler looked at him questioningly, and Matthew said, “Too young.” Less than an hour later, there was a knock at the door and a lone girl stood there glowering at him. She
was
older—twenty or twenty-one—and she had a knowing, Western look: jeans, a black T-shirt, silver hoop earrings. Flip-flops, toenails painted and embedded with rhinestones. She looked smart, and bored with him already; she was a college girl, maybe, looking for some extra cash. Matthew liked her right away.
“Sawadee krup,” he said, and he grinned. It was his rule to know how to say “hello” and “thank you” in every country he visited.
“Can I come in?” the girl said. Her English was perfect, with very little accent.
Her name was Ace (probably not spelled that way, but the Americanized version of the name suited her; she was cool like a tightrope walker, a pool shark). She walked in, allowed Matthew to pour her a glass of champagne, and made herself comfy on the sofa. He poured himself a glass; then, seeing that this would not be enough to slake his greedy thirst for the stuff, he poked his head outside and asked the butler for two more bottles. He understood that what he was doing was wrong, everything about it was wrong, but he was on his way now, growing warm on the inside, jonesing for the weed and the dose of amnesia it would bring, wondering about the girl. Who was she? What was she doing here? Where had she learned English?
Matthew was, technically, married. His wife, Bess, was back in California, living in their glass castle in Malibu with their two border collies, Pollux and Castor. Bess had been a substance-abuse counselor at the place in Pennsylvania that Matthew had tried in between stints at Hazelden. She had not wanted to marry a rock star, and especially not one with the seemingly incurable addictions that Matthew had, but she had been undone by her desire to save him. After six years of marriage, she was now operating on a zero-tolerance rule, and she had announced—upon hearing his slurred voice on a call from Irian Jaya—that if he was indeed drinking on this tour (
which is what it sounds like, Max
), then she was finished with him. Professional credentials aside, she could not take another go-round with the booze. Detox didn’t help, twenty-eight days didn’t help (there had been eighty-four days sum total), because the problem was hardwired, it was connected to what Bess called his “deep-seated unhappiness,” which she suspected had been caused in childhood by his father’s desertion.