CHAPTER SEVEN
When Carver stepped back outside with another glass of scotch in his hand, he could tell the mood had changed. As he approached the table, Letty said, “So, I think we’re gonna head out, but don’t let us break up the party.”
Scott gave her a sort of half-nod, half-shrug. The hair on the back of Carver’s neck rose, alert. Now there was the potential for something unexpected to happen.
He shouldn’t let it. He was inebriated and not thinking clearly.
He should finish his drink and go to bed.
But he dreaded going upstairs to Lillian, who even at this hour was probably still working on finding a solution to their disagreement with Deutsche Bank after Lloyd had called a few hours ago and apologetically informed them the credit committee said they could go kick rocks.
In the end, Lloyd had turned out to be too impotent a person to bother threatening.
And DB had intentionally waited so long to deliver this verdict that they were now coming up on the weekend.
But Lillian could handle this, and probably preferred to.
When she got into a certain mood, the one she’d been in earlier, she became suddenly and completely disinterested in other people.
When she was in these moods Carver was afraid of even breathing too loudly for fear that she would order him to take it somewhere else.
So instead Carver could sit here with his scotch and shoot the shit with Scott. That sounded fine. The alcohol and weed were warming him from inside, making him floppy and content to obey the night’s inertia.
“Okay,” he said, sitting down in the same spot he had before. “Sounds good.”
Letty looked over at Sana. “Ready to make the long journey home?” She was kidding. They were staying with Josie and Hank, who lived fifteen doors down in a tidy Georgian with a less ostentatious driveway.
Sana extended her hand to Letty, fingertips down, as if being escorted out of a carriage. Letty took her hand, kissed it, and helped her to her feet. They said goodnight and went away giggling.
When the door shut behind them, Carver realized he was grinding his teeth, and stopped.
Scott glanced over at him. Carver felt enough liquid and gaseous courage to return his gaze without fumbling it. It was Scott who fumbled, looking down at the oak table.
“Carv,” he finally said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I know you said we don’t need to talk. But I’d like to talk, if you’re willing.”
Carver’s body began to hum like it knew something his mind didn’t. “About?”
Scott tilted his head with a come on look.
“I just don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of that,” Carver said.
He knew the thing he wanted — a blinding glimpse at what might have been — was not possible.
They could talk all day, it didn’t matter, it would never get them to California.
All talk did was prolong the two equally disastrous scenarios at hand: them having sex tonight or them not having sex tonight.
And Scott was this thing he wasn’t used to anymore, this sincere naive liberal, almost like he had stayed seventeen in his heart.
He didn’t even know how to pay his taxes.
He was going to say Sesame Street shit to Carver like “I’m sorry” or “You hurt my feelings,” and then actually wait for an answer.
It would be like therapy without the blessed sacrament of transaction there to protect them.
“Closure, I guess,” Scott said, with nefariously large and soft brown eyes.
“I thought we closed what needed to be closed.”
“Okay.” Scott dug his cigarettes and lighter back out. “A postmortem?” He lit one. “No part of you wants that?”
Since Carver was high, and the son of lawyers, this Latin phrase made a bunch of others run through his head like lyrics. Postmortem. Ad litem. Ex parte. Pro forma. Contra legem. Mens rea. Mens rea, indeed.
He wished Scott would tip his hand. He couldn’t tell what he was thinking, only that he was slightly agitated. It was entirely possible that Scott was turned off by the person he now was and only kept bothering him out of this desire for finality.
“I mean, I’d like to hear what you thought about all that,” Carver said honestly. “I’m curious.”
Scott exhaled smoke. “You don’t listen to my music at all, huh?”
Carver’s heart dropped. “Is that a joke?”
“No, not a joke. It’s in a few songs, if you know what you’re looking for. I mean, I don’t say he…”
What a fucking nightmare. His business was out there and he’d been turned into a woman. “I’m not gonna sit here with Spotify open for an hour,” he said, then glanced at the house to make sure none of the first floor lights were still on. “Let’s go to the pool house.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Scott studied him some more with his eyes narrowed, then scraped his chair back and rose to his feet, tall.
Carver got up too. Wordlessly they began following each other through the grass to the stately little construction on the hill which faced the house from the other side of the covered pool, the yellow lights inside it glowing through the many-windowed doors.
Flanking it from either side, abutting the narrow ends of the pool like bookends, were two elegant cedar cabanas.
The pool was the crown jewel of Nora’s renovative achievements, funded with money she inherited from her grandparents, the ground broken on the project exactly two weeks after probate had concluded.
At that point they were ahead on the mortgage and the kids all had healthy college funds, so Nora had been unusually reckless and spared no expense.
It was her dream, her oasis, her place to sunbathe while reading grotesque mystery novels starring detectives and medical examiners.
She wanted it to have all the grandeur of the pool from The Philadelphia Story or the one at the Dumbarton Oaks estate, where she’d spent many happy hours studying when she was at Georgetown Law.
She got her wish, and the kids loved it too.
They had one of the best pools in the school.
After Chip threw two disastrous house parties, both of which their parents found out about, all three of them were afraid to host anything big — but a pool hang was a different story.
From 1994 to 2007, they were the First Family of pool hangs.
Scott pulled open the doors to the pool house and stepped aside for Carver in a gentlemanly way.
Carver entered and looked around. Like most fixtures of his childhood, this place remained largely the same as he remembered it.
There was the kitchenette with its breakfast bar and wet bar, and the living room with its long navy sectional and entertainment center.
The sectional’s chaise was made up with sheets and a blanket, and two of Scott’s guitars rested on stands in the corner, one acoustic and one electric.
The interior design trends of the early 90s were alive in the warm ambient lighting from chunky table lamps, the soft curves of the furniture, the overstuffed couch.
The TV was new, skinny and large, but surrounding it in the cedar entertainment center were Playstations 1 and 2 as well as a VCR machine.
Even though the pool had been closed all off-season, the air in here still held the faint smells of its chemicals, which to Carver was the smell of summer. He was momentarily transported by sense memory.
“Proust’s Playstations,” he said to Scott, who was over at the wet bar filling a highball glass with water.
Scott glanced up at him, then looked at the entertainment center. “You guys read Proust at Duke?”
“No, it was recreational,” Carver said. “And I skimmed. Where’d you read Proust?”
“I didn’t, I watched The Sopranos.”
Carver laughed. “Can you bring me some water too?”
“Sure.”
Carver sat down on the couch and recognized his inebriation in how comfortable it felt. The pool house was twirling and sparkling around him. There was a mirror on the wall to his left, and he gave himself a quick assessment before Scott came over with the waters and put one in his hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
“We could play some Gran Turismo,” Scott said, indicating the TV.
Carver sipped his water. “Does that TV do Spotify? Maybe put on some music.”
Scott leaned forward to grab the remote from the glass and cedar coffee table. All here was cedar. Nora did not like to mix her woods. “What kind?”
“Inoffensive.”
“Chill jazz?”
“Sure.”
Scott opened up Spotify and put on some Paul Desmond.
Carver leaned back against the couch, feeling good.
He wished he could live in this moment forever, swimming eternally in the warm hope of getting his rocks off.
Once Scott started talking, his own mood would turn, he knew this.
Scott did not look as mellow as Carver felt.
He was grappling with complex and unhappy thoughts.
Carver stared at Scott’s thigh, hidden under his jeans, a mere six inches away.
As Scott leaned forward to put the remote back, Carver watched his quadriceps flex.
Scott had the lean sinew of a guy who didn’t go to the gym but who lugged a lot of heavy shit back and forth and spent a lot of time on his feet.
This was way more attractive to Carver than the cut, steroidal musculature that had become the fad among the males of FiDi.
Carver got the wild impulse to reach out and stroke the thigh he was staring at. To do that, then climb onto Scott’s lap. His brain was buzzing in his head.
“I’m not sure where to start,” Scott said. “I guess — I’ve wanted to apologize for how pissed off I got when you turned me down.”
“You weren’t that pissed off,” Carver said, turning toward Scott and arranging himself seductively.
“For me, I was.”
“You were eighteen.”
“It’s still on my conscience.”
“Well, take it off,” Carver said. “You felt rejected. It made sense to me then and it still does.”