Chapter 8
Puck is trying to relax in the sauna, but they made the mistake of offhandedly asking Lena if climate change is going to make the whole world feel like this room one day, and now she’s monologuing about the apocalypse.
“… and here in the Southeast especially, the problem isn’t the heat itself so much as the combination of heat and humidity,” Lena is saying as Puck keeps their eyes glued shut, trying to think cheerier thoughts.
“That’s called the ‘wet-bulb temperature’ and when it climbs too high, your body can’t cool itself off with sweat anymore like it does when you’re in dry heat. ”
“Are you saying it’ll feel more like a steam room?” Anya asks Lena.
“That’s a great comparison,” she says, sounding a bit too enthusiastic to showcase her knowledge. “Picture the entire region as one big steam room. Basically, your body will never be able to get back down to a normal temperature, so you just, well, die.”
“Speaking of steam rooms …” Anya starts to say, and Puck briefly opens their eyes to see the bridesmaid standing up and cinching her towel tighter. “Anyone care to join me?”
Puck hopes Lena doesn’t follow, not because they want to hear more about suffocating on doomsday, but because they need to talk to her privately.
Tonight, when the guys get back from skeet shooting, Puck wants to get Mia and Zander together for the first time, which means distracting Damon.
It’s time to “use L,” which means talking to “L” alone.
“I’ll come find you in a little bit,” Lena tells Anya, to Puck’s relief.
The other bridesmaid shuts the door as quickly as possible to keep the heat trapped inside, leaving Lena and Puck by themselves, sitting on opposite wooden risers.
Puck takes a second to consider their next move.
They want to know about everything that’s happened in North Carolina over the last year.
And they know what they need Lena to do later today.
But this girl can be so sincere that there’s never an easy way to break the ice with her.
“So, Lena, do your conservationist friends know you’re away partying with the McLeods?” they say, taking a wild and somewhat impulsive stab at an opening line.
“The McLeods are one of our biggest donors now, actually,” Lena says. “It’s a bit of an offset situation given their overall impact, but they gave us three million dollars last December.”
That’s unexpected news for Puck, though it doesn’t make them feel any warmer toward the family. That donation, however sizable, is probably a rounding error for them. Still, this could be a way to gather some useful information.
“Did Damon arrange that?”
Lena tilts her head and considers the question for a moment.
“I’m not sure he even knows about it. In fact, I haven’t seen Damon and Mia since the engagement party.
I met Mrs. McLeod at a women’s conference a while back and she asked me to connect her to our fundraising lead.
Then one day I heard my boss scream from her office. I thought somebody had died.”
So Damon’s mom made the donation. That makes more sense: It’s exactly the sort of thing wealthy white women do to make themselves feel better about belonging to business empires.
How far does three million go, Puck wonders, toward saving the birds that drink from the same waterways the McLeods pollute?
But they need to stay focused on the wedding.
Lena’s been in North Carolina this whole time; she must have some actionable intel.
Shared disbelief could be the right tone to strike if they want to shake something useful out of her. They can invite Lena into a circle of confidence—without being fully honest, of course. “This is kind of surreal, right?” Puck asks, leaning forward on the sauna riser.
“What, the Athenian?” Lena says. “Yeah, it’s pretty wild. I won’t complain about a free spa day, though.”
“No, I mean … Mia and Damon,” Puck says, taking a more hushed, conspiratorial tone. “I still can’t get it through my head that they’re actually getting married.”
For a second, Lena looks like she might cry, and Puck regrets addressing the subject so forthrightly.
But then she clears her throat and collects herself without so much as a sniffle.
This is a woman who has practiced bottling her emotions.
Puck isn’t close enough to Lena anymore to ask directly about her feelings for Damon, but her face just gave away how fresh they are.
“That makes two of us, I guess,” Lena says, breaking the silence.
“Why are they together?” Puck asks. “Do you have any … local insight?”
Puck has heard Mia’s recounting of the start of the relationship over the phone a few times: After she broke up with Zander for what she swore was the last time, she left their Brooklyn apartment and went to live with a friend in the East Village.
She was grabbing a Coke from the bodega one Saturday afternoon a couple years later, bare-faced and still in her pajamas, when she ran into Damon, who was traveling in New York on business.
It seemed like an unignorable coincidence.
He took her out to dinner that night so they could catch up, and there was “just a different energy to him,” Mia liked to say.
But there were never more specifics offered.
“I mean, it makes perfect sense,” Lena says. “Damon’s very nurturing.”
Puck chokes down a laugh. Damon barely took good care of his Pokémon in college, and yet Lena is now talking about him like he’s an emperor penguin incubating an egg.
Puck feels like they’re living in another reality.
Is the grown-up Damon McLeod some kind of Rorschach blot that straight women see as only exactly what they want to see?
He was completely inoffensive in college, but “sweet” and “nurturing” is pushing it.
Lena keeps talking before Puck’s bewilderment becomes noticeable.
“I understand why Mia likes him,” she continues, casting a nervous glance at the small glass window in the sauna door. “I just can’t believe she’s doing this to Zander. And so soon.”
Puck has to read between the lines here.
A self-styled empath like Lena would never admit to feeling personally betrayed; instead, she has to couch her concern as being for someone else.
In Lena-speak, what she’s really saying is “I can’t believe Mia and Damon are doing this to me.
” It’s the closest she’ll come to confessing how hurt she is, and the fact that she has to do it so obliquely is genuinely heartbreaking.
Strategically, however, her emotional investment is helpful.
The thought makes Puck feel like a cat-stroking Bond villain, but they have to remind themself this plan will ultimately benefit Lena, too.
She’ll never land Damon despite how well she’s dressing now, no longer looking like she covered her body in superglue and rolled through an entire Buffalo Exchange every morning before walking out the door.
Lena shouldn’t have to spend the next decade watching someone she’s known since childhood buy a house and have babies with the man she loves.
Let him marry a stranger instead. Doesn’t the Tyson Foods family have a single daughter?
Surely the chicken world is due for some royal intermarriage.
“Did Damon say anything about Zander yesterday?” Puck asks Lena. “During croquet?”
“No,” Lena says, then smiles. “He mostly just really wanted to win. I guess Mia made him stop playing video games a few months ago and I think his competitiveness needs an outlet. You remember how he was with that one game in college.”
“Smash,” Puck confirms.
“Right,” Lena says. “I was so bad at it.”
Damon complaining about Mia to Lena is music to Puck’s ears, as is the fact that Mia is placing behavioral restrictions on Damon.
Puck may be gay but even they know you should never get between a man and his PS5 controller.
All is not well in the state of North Carolina.
There are plenty of preexisting fractures they can press on here. With Lena’s assistance, of course.
Like all the best ideas, this one comes suddenly. “Hey, that reminds me, can you do me a favor when the boys get back?” Puck asks.
Lena nods. “Sure.”
“I’d already heard about that video game ban, so I bought Damon a Switch 2 as a secret wedding present. It should be small enough for him to hide somewhere. I want to sneak it into his room. Can you pull him away somewhere for a little while tonight? Ask him for help with something?”
Puck knows Lena won’t be able to resist the prospect of some alone time with Damon, especially if it’s framed as being for his benefit.
But before Lena can agree, Puck feels a burst of cold air come from the entrance to the sauna.
They turn to find Robyn, her toned body barely hidden by a short white towel wrapped around her torso, standing in the doorway.
“You,” she says, and it’s obvious from her stern tone that she doesn’t mean Lena. “I need to talk to you. Now.”
Eyebrows raised, Lena looks back and forth between Puck and Robyn, then decides it’s the perfect moment to follow Anya to the steam room. “I can help you with that thing later, Puck,” she says, almost tripping in her hurry to clear the room.
“Lena, hang on …” Puck tries to say, but it’s too late.
The door has barely swung shut behind Lena when Robyn starts laying into Puck, her voice quaking. “What’s this I hear about you asking Mia if she really wants to marry Damon? Are you insane?!”
In their panic, Puck tries to remember if they spotted Robyn anywhere near the Grove after croquet.
Was she eavesdropping? Hiding in the topiary?
No, Mia must have told her. Did she really go running to her new best friend as soon as they made up?
That makes Puck feel even more alienated from Mia than they did yesterday.
She won’t share her deepest feelings with Puck anymore, but she will with Robyn?