Four
FOUR
THAT NIGHT, EMBOLDENED, she put on lipstick, leather leggings, finger-combed her hair, called Lynne and asked if she wanted to hit Le Coin to inspect the new hostess who had been flirting with Judd.
Lynne, bitterly divorced and always looking for a reason to get out of the house, said “damn straight I do” and showed up at the apartment in black jeans and a black beanie like she was prepared to commit violence.
“We’re not shooting anyone,” Amy said. “We’re just there for some surveillance.”
“These are my surveillance clothes,” Lynne said. “I’m fifty-two years old and invisible.”
They arrived at Le Coin a little after seven, the bar crowd already spilling into the narrow space around the front banquettes. Meret stood at the hostess stand, black dress, leather boots.
“That’s her,” Amy said.
“Obviously,” Lynne said.
Had this woman been fucking her husband?
She seemed so extraordinarily—young. That unlined face, the cheap shine of her dress; Judd didn’t pay his staff enough, really.
She was attractive, obviously—almost cruelly attractive—but also somehow unformed-looking.
Her face had no lines whatsoever, no depth.
Of course that didn’t mean Judd hadn’t been fucking her, only that Amy probably wouldn’t have, in his place.
“You okay?” Lynne asked.
“I’m okay,” Amy said, and took a deep breath. She probably was okay. She nodded at Meret quickly, walking past her like she owned the place—which in a way she did—and Meret had the good sense to blush and step aside.
“And you’re sure nothing’s happened between her and him? I mean nothing physical?”
“I’m sure,” Amy lied. Well, she wanted to be sure.
Amy and Lynne took a two-top by the windows that was usually held empty for impromptu VIPs.
Judd was nowhere to be found: probably in the kitchen, then, or the office upstairs, paying bills.
Or was he somewhere else? A secret place of his own?
Amy gestured to Fred, the bartender, for a martini; he sent two over promptly.
The restaurant had gone through a few understated renovations since it had opened: the key was to keep it timeless without also making it look like a period piece.
The zinc bar with Fred in his white shirt and black apron behind it, mixing cocktails with a silver shaker, the broad framed mirror behind him like the one in the Manet painting.
The brass shelves of top-tier alcohol, including bottles from brands nobody had ever heard of or, if they had, couldn’t find in their average liquor stores.
The round tables, a little too close together, to give the room some energy. The noise bouncing off every surface.
“So what’d that busty cunt do?” Lynne asked, sliding olives off her martini’s stirrer. She had a trace of an Irish accent from a childhood in Belfast.
“Sent a naughty pic,” Amy said.
“Can I see?”
“On Judd’s phone,” Amy said.
“You didn’t forward yourself a copy? You should always forward yourself a copy.”
“I was too traumatized.”
Lynne shook her head. “She probably looks amazing naked.”
“She does.”
“But you probably do too, you skinny twat.”
“Thanks,” Amy said, sipping her martini, so icy it crunched. “But I’m not twenty-three anymore, you know?”
And then the waiter came around—Neil, a few years ahead of Ferry at St. Ann’s, an aspiring modern dancer—and Amy ordered the risotto for Lynne and the agnolotti with chanterelles for herself plus a bottle of Bruno Duchêne Pét-nat ($180 on the menu; Judd’s supplier charged $22).
Carbs, alcohol, butter, foods of strength.
“Can we get the oysters? I love the oysters here.” The kitchen did a fiery oysters Rockefeller: garlic, spinach, Calabrian chiles. Amy either did or did not eat shellfish depending on the company she was with and her mood; today she did not feel like she could face them, but ordered six for Lynne.
“I can pay for this, you know.”
“You won’t pay.”
“I know,” Lynne said. “But I feel like less of an asshole if I make it clear that I would pay.”
Amy was watching Meret across the room. Meret leaned over a lot, more than you’d think a hostess would need to. She gave great cleavage.
“So what are we going to do about her?” Lynne asked.
“I haven’t decided yet.” Fuck the wine, Amy wanted another martini, but she didn’t want to alarm Fred.
Anyway she was already buzzed enough to be as curious about Meret as she was disgusted by her.
She watched as the girl gracefully managed the crowd at the hostess stand, the pushy men, the women who were already a little drunk.
And then Meret’s ass in that tight black dress, swishing past as she led a trio of finance bros to their table.
“I miss that feeling,” Lynne said as the oysters arrived on their artfully tarnished platter.
“Of revenge?”
“No,” she said. “No, you know. Of being wanted.”
“Wanted like—”
“Like wanted,” Lynne said. “Like—being flirted with, being needed. Having a man make a fool of himself over me. Back when I was young, it was so intoxicating—I would sleep with the silliest men just because they wanted to sleep with me, because they went too far to have the chance to sleep with me.”
Amy kept her eyes on Meret’s ass.
“That probably happened to you all the time,” Lynne said.
“I guess it did,” she said, turning her eyes to her friend. “But it’s been years.”
“I used to think—” Lynne said. She was still wearing her black beanie, but loose curls had escaped from underneath, girlishly.
Lynne’s eyes were sparkling with loss. “I used to think I really lusted for these puny little men. Even when Peter and I were married, when we were married for ten years, fifteen, and the sex was just—whatever it was, something we did with our shirts on—every so often, there’d be a guy at a bar or a man I’d meet a conference and he would be just ridiculous over me, and I’d convince myself that I wanted him.
But I just wanted to see myself reflected in him. Do you know what I mean?”
Amy did.
“I wanted to see myself as someone worth acting ridiculously for.”
“It doesn’t happen much anymore, does it?” Amy said.
“It doesn’t happen at all,” Lynne said. “Men who were in no way as handsome as Peter, as—as sophisticated as Peter. Men without money, without anything. But they wanted to fuck me—they were, in fact, desperate to fuck me, texting me at weird hours, and I just—I melted for them. It didn’t even matter who they were. They made me look so good. To myself.”
“Did you sleep with them?”
“Never,” Lynne said. “Never. When it came to that I ran away. I couldn’t risk everything I had built on a stupid ego trip.”
“It’s not such a little thing though,” Amy said. “Feeling wanted.”
“Feeling want-able.”
Amy nodded.
“It was my last gasp. Forty-seven. Forty-eight.”
“You think that’s a last gasp?”
“For some women. For me, that’s how it felt.”
Amy understood. Her mother’s last gasp had been when she was thirty-five, the year before she had her kids; she often told them that.
“You never cheated,” Amy said.
“I never did—I mean not technically. Peter did.”
“The nanny.”
“Oh, he slept with lots of women before her. She was just the one he wanted to blow up our lives for. And listen—” Lynne slurped an oyster—“I get it. I get it! I even got it then. She was gorgeous, and she wanted him so much, and reflected back in her eyes he must have felt like a god. He didn’t care about her, not really—he cared about what she saw in him .
You know? That she thought he was perfect.
Which I didn’t anymore. I knew him too well. ”
“Of course. You were married for twenty years.”
“Twenty-four,” Lynne said. “According to my kids, they fight all the time now. He doesn’t want to go to her family events, doesn’t want to go to her best friend’s wedding.”
“That’s not what it was about,” Amy said. “He didn’t really want to be her partner.”
They were quiet for a while, drinking and staring into the past.
“I remember that feeling too,” Amy finally said.
“Wasn’t it the best?”
And now—what to say about who she was now, how she felt now?
The crazy mood swings, the faltering marriage, the trip to Georgia, which was insane.
And she was almost certainly perimenopausal, which was something she would never talk about or even think about.
Her body was a secret she liked to keep from herself.
“Did you ever cheat on Judd?”
“Never,” Amy said.
“I didn’t think so,” Lynne said. “Would you ever?”
“I doubt it,” Amy said. “It’s hard to imagine a man who would make me want to. Even after all these years.” She finished the dregs of her martini. “Isn’t that crazy?”
“The problem is, Amy, if I may—” Lynne said.
“You may not.”
“The problem is that you still think Judd is some kind of star. You’re still a starfucker.”
“Lynne, cut it out.”
“You still feel like you owe him something for marrying you when frankly it’s the other way around. He owes you! You’ve stood by him all these years, despite all his—missteps—”
Amy lifted her finger for another martini. “That’s not exactly how it’s been.”
“You don’t owe him anything. I’m telling you. Men who are married live an average of eight years longer than unmarried men. They owe their wives everything. They owe us their lives .”
“I’m not a starfucker.”
“Do you make his doctor’s appointments? His dentist appointments? Did you raise his son? Still raising him? I mean I know you love that kid, but you took on an awful lot of work for someone else’s baby.”
“Come on,” Amy said, feeling her neck prickle. “Don’t say that.” Lynne was a mean drunk, which Amy often forgot until it was too late.
But she took it down a notch. “All I’m saying is you should make that bitch pay.”
Amy sighed. “Judd says nothing happened.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lynne said. “If we roofied her we could tie her up in the basement and give her a really good scare.”
“I’m not here to go to jail.”
“Then what did you mean when you said you wanted vengeance?”
“I’m not sure I said that at all? I think you said that?” Amy sighed. “Anyway I’m leaving.”
“Now? After you’ve just been defending him for the past twenty minutes? You’re really going to leave?”
“No, I’m not leaving Judd. I’m just going away for a few weeks. To Georgia. Not—” she said—“not Atlanta, Georgia. I’m going to Tbilisi, Georgia. In the Caucasus.”
“Why? What on earth is there?”
Amy sighed. “A dog rescue. I think.”
“A dog rescue?”
“I think,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure. I just—after all this, I just need to get away for a little while,” she said. “And I want to be useful.”
“So you’re going to Tbilisi,” she said.
“There’s a dog,” Amy said. “Please don’t ask me anything else about it. It’s too ridiculous to explain.”
“Aren’t there dogs in, like, the Catskills you could rescue? In New Jersey?”
“The people in Tbilisi don’t have any of the tools they need to find her. And it just feels—I can’t explain it, but it feels like something I’ve been called upon to do.”
“A mission,” Lynne said.
“That makes it sound religious.”
“It’s not?”
Amy sighed. “This is for an animal,” she said. “Not for Jesus.”
“A mission’s a mission,” said Lynne, a lapsed Catholic who still saw God everywhere. “Does Judd know you’re going?”
“Yes.”
“And does he care?”
“He likes that I have something to accomplish,” Amy said. “I think, anyway. Or I guess I like having something to accomplish.”
“That’s so American of you,” Lynne said.
“What can I say?” she said. “I’m American.”
Then Neil returned with the wine and a minute later with the food and a fresh basket of warm sourdough and cultured ricotta.
Amy tore into a piece of bread, Lynne guzzled the wine, Meret passed by again, this time with a group of jubilant-looking tourists, maybe Brits, maybe Midwesterners, and Lynne stuck out a toe but pulled it back before Meret took a spill, and then Judd appeared out of nowhere by their table and pulled up a chair.
“I didn’t know you were coming in,” he said. “I would have come down sooner. Neil took care of you? Lynne, you like the Pét-nat?”
“It’s gorgeous,” she said, dialing up her latent brogue. She talked a good game but was as susceptible to Judd’s charms as any other female. She smiled impishly, took her cap off.
“Did Amy tell you where she’s off to?”
“Tbilisi, Georgia, she just told me,” Lynne said. “That’s incredible. So brave.”
“Well, we all know Amy’s a brave girl,” Judd said, patting her knee.
How had she let this happen? How had she let them diminish her in this way?
Calling her a brave girl like she was a child about to go on her first bike ride, like she wasn’t a fully actualized human being who had left home at eighteen, built a life, raised a child, raised a husband , saved a million dogs, cooked a million meals, held up her world again and again and again?
Something inside her clenched and unclenched, a fist punching from the inside.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, standing.
“Already?” Lynne said.
“Babe, you okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s time for me to go.
” She thought, briefly, that she should apologize, but she didn’t.
She had nothing to apologize for: she’d had enough and wanted to go home.
But then she sputtered out an “I’m sorry, I’m tired,” and Judd nodded and Lynne nodded and then Judd said, “I’ll be home early,” and Amy shrugged as though she didn’t care.
But she did care. She wanted him where she could see him.
Because as she brushed her way out of the restaurant, swishing past crowded tables, she saw Meret leading a group of giggling girlies to the back, and she saw what Judd saw: Meret was so young, she was so beautiful, and so stupid.
But Amy also knew that she wouldn’t be that way forever.
Amy thought about approaching her, she thought about whispering you know nothing , but deep down she knew there was no point. Meret would learn for herself soon enough.