23. “Tristan”
“TRISTAN”
Tristan was at the coffee shop on Bleecker by nine the next morning.
I had picked the coffee shop. It was small.
It was public. It had a window onto the street.
It had been my mother’s. She had lived in the West Village before she married my father, in an apartment two blocks from this corner, and the coffee shop had been her morning ritual for the four years before she gave it up to move to the compound and start a family.
I had not been to it in two years. I had not been to it since I had broken up with Tristan.
I picked it because the owner knew my face. The owner was the same woman who had been making coffee in the same place for thirty years, and her name was Bea, and she had cried at my mother’s funeral, and she would notice if a man started raising his voice at me at one of her tables.
I had not slept much.
We had gotten home at twelve thirty. I had texted Tristan back at seven a.m. with the address of the coffee shop and a time.
I had not told Atlas. I had not wanted to tell Atlas.
Atlas would have insisted on driving me.
Atlas would have insisted on sitting at the next booth.
Atlas would have made the whole thing a thing it did not need to be.
I had left Atlas asleep in my bed with my note on the pillow.
The note said: errand. back by ten. love you.
He would not love that I had left without telling him. He would understand it. There was a difference. I had been counting on the difference.
Tristan was at the back booth.
He was wearing a navy suit, the navy suit, the one his mother had paid for at the place his mother sent every Beauchamp man before they turned thirty. His tie was undone at the throat. He had the small hard look around the mouth he got when he was preparing to be charming under pressure.
He was twenty-eight. He had grown up wealthy and unwatched.
He had spent the last six weeks in his mother’s apartment on Park, drinking too much, taking calls from his lawyer that I knew about because Atlas knew about them.
He had not yet signed the divorce papers.
The papers were sitting on his desk waiting for him to put a pen to them.
He had until Tuesday. After Tuesday his lawyer was going to lose his patience.
He stood up when I came in.
He did not move to kiss my cheek. We were past that.
“Eden.”
“Tristan.”
I sat down. Bea brought me a coffee without asking. She set the cup down with the small private nod that meant she had clocked the man across from me and would be watching the booth.
She walked away.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
“You said it was about Atlas. So I came. It is about Atlas.”
He laughed. It was a small uncomfortable laugh. He was trying for charm and not quite getting there.
“Direct.”
“I do not have time for the other thing.”
“All right. Direct.”
He pulled an envelope out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He put it on the table between us. He did not slide it to me.
“I have things,” he said.
“What things.”
“Photographs. Emails.”
“From whom.”
“That does not matter.”
“Tristan.”
“Eden.”
“Let me see them.”
He opened the envelope.
He laid out three printouts on the table.
The first was a photograph of Atlas with Helena, the same photograph from Senator Ardent’s portfolio at the Park Avenue hotel.
I recognized it. The second was an email — a printout of an email — between Atlas and a woman whose name I did not know, dated two months ago, the subject line CASE NOTES.
The third was a hotel receipt, charged to Atlas’s firm, for a single night at the St. Regis. Dated last spring.
I looked at all three.
I drank my coffee.
“Are these all you have.”
“Eden.”
“Are these all you have.”
“It is enough.”
“It is not enough. The first photograph is at minimum eight years old. Senator Ardent had it last week. She showed it to me at the Park Avenue Hotel on Sunday morning. Her office issued a retraction at two oh four p.m. that afternoon. The second is an email between Atlas and a woman named Margaret Chen, who is one of his junior associates and the lead attorney on the Faulkner trust case, which has been ongoing for two years. The CASE NOTES were case notes, Tristan, because that is what associates send their senior partners. The third is a hotel receipt for a deposition. Atlas spent a night at the St. Regis last spring because he was deposing a witness in a case involving an estate worth ninety million dollars and the deposition ran late. The witness was eighty-two. The room was the deposition room. He slept four hours and went home in the morning. I know because I edited the manuscript Margaret Chen wrote about that case as a chapter for a continuing-legal-education book my imprint was producing.”
The color started leaving Tristan’s face.
“You are very prepared,” he said.
“I have been preparing for this conversation for six weeks. You did not get the timing right.”
The color did not come back to his face for a long time.
He held the coffee cup in both hands. He studied the printouts on the table.
He did the small thing he had always done with his eyes when he was trying to recalculate — the slight narrowing, the brief look up at the ceiling, the small nod.
He had done it the day I told him I had a job at the imprint.
He had done it the night his mother called to disinvite me from a Beauchamp family weekend in Newport.
He had done it three years ago at a Yale homecoming when he had not yet realized I was the smarter one.
He sat back.
He drank his coffee.
He did the small smile he did when he did not know what to say next. The smile I had loved when I was twenty-three. The smile that had stopped working on me sometime around the second year.
“What do you want, Tristan.”
“I want you to come back to me.”
“No.”
“Eden. You have known me for ten years. You have known him for twenty-two and not slept with him for twenty-two. You don’t actually know him.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. Not the way you know me.”
“I know him better than I have ever known you. I know him better than I knew you the day I said yes to your engagement. I know him better than I knew you the day I found you in your office with Camilla. I know him better than I have ever known anybody and that includes my own father. We are done with this part of the conversation.”
He looked at the table.
He looked at his coffee.
“Camilla.”
“Yes.”
“You knew.”
“I walked in on you. I stood in your doorway for seven seconds. You did not see me. I walked back out and I called my father and I made up a story about incompatibility because telling him the truth would have meant Atlas finding out and Atlas finding out would have meant a problem nobody in this building had time for. I have been carrying that for six weeks. I am tired of carrying it. You are going to sign the papers tomorrow. We are going to be done. You are going to get on with your life and I am going to get on with mine. Your mother is going to send me one of her famously polite emails about how she always knew this would not work out and I am going to delete it without responding the way I deleted the last one.”
“Eden.”
“I am not finished.”
He went still.
“I have one question for you, Tristan. I am going to ask it once. I am going to leave whether or not you answer.”
He waited.
“Did you sell anything to Senator Ardent.”
His face changed.
The blood that had started leaving him a minute ago left in a rush. His mouth opened and shut and opened again. He set the coffee cup down carefully.
“What. No.”
“Did you sell anything to anybody. About me, about Atlas, about my father, about anyone in my family or in his firm.”
“No. Eden. No. I would not.”
“Did your mother.”
“I — no. No. She would not. She would never.”
“Did anyone in your circle.”
“Eden, I do not know everyone my mother knows. I do not know what my mother says at her own dinner table. I cannot promise you my mother has not said something to a senator’s wife. But I have not sold anything. I would not sell you. I would never have sold you. You have to know that.”
I looked at him for a long time.
I did know that.
Tristan was a lot of things. He was vain and uncommitted and he had cheated on me with my best friend on a Tuesday afternoon in October. He was not a man who would sell me to a senator. He did not have the imagination.
“All right.”
“Is that it.”
“That is it.”
I stood up.
I left a twenty on the table for Bea even though my coffee had been free.
I picked up my coat.
“Sign the papers, Tristan. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. The press knows by Monday morning. If your name shows up in any tabloid talking about my marriage to anyone, I will know who put it there. Are we clear.”
“We are clear.”
“Goodbye.”
I walked toward the door.
I had my hand on the door handle when he said my name.
“Eden.”
I turned.
He was standing now. He had stepped out of the booth. He looked younger than I had remembered. He looked the age he had been when I had met him. He looked like a boy who had grown up too rich to know what had happened to him.
“He is sixteen years younger than your father.”
He said it loud enough that the three other people in the coffee shop turned their heads.
I held the door handle.
I did not turn back to face him.
“He is not.”
“Two years and four months. I looked it up.”
“Tristan.”
“I am just telling you. So you know. So you know what people are going to say.”
I turned then. Slowly. With the door handle still in my hand. I let him see my face.
“I know exactly how old he is. I know exactly how old he was when I was born. I know exactly how old he was when my mother gave him the book she gave him. I know exactly how old he is going to be at every birthday I am going to spend with him for the rest of my life. I know everything I need to know. Goodbye, Tristan.”
I pushed the door open.
I walked out onto Bleecker.
I did not look back.
The morning was clear and cold. October the seventh. The trees on the block were beginning their orange. A woman with two children in a stroller crossed the corner. A delivery truck unloaded somewhere down the street.
I walked to the corner of Bleecker and Sixth. I stood at the curb. I waited for a cab. The cab took two minutes to come. I gave the driver the firm address. I sat in the back of the cab with both hands flat on my knees.
My father had once told me a thing about anger.
He had said: anger is not the thing that gets you. It is the thing after the anger that gets you. The thing that comes when the anger goes. The empty quiet thing. The thing that asks you whether you have spent it well.
I sat in the back of the cab and the empty quiet thing came in.
It came in along the back of my neck and across my shoulders and down into my ribs.
I had spent it well.
I had told the truth in a coffee shop on Bleecker to a man who had not earned the truth. I had told it without raising my voice. I had told it the way my mother would have told it.
I leaned my head against the window and I closed my eyes for the rest of the ride.
I got to the firm at ten fifteen.
Atlas was in the conference room with Foster.
He looked up when I came in.
He did not ask.
I sat down at the head of the table. I poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher. I drank it.
“He has nothing,” I said. “An old photograph and an email between Atlas and Margaret Chen and a hotel receipt from a deposition. He did not sell to Ardent. He has not sold to anyone. His mother might be talking to people but Tristan is not the leak.”
Foster nodded.
Atlas reached across the table and put his hand on top of mine.
He did not say anything.
He did not need to.
I sat there for a long minute holding the empty water glass and feeling Atlas’s hand on top of mine.
Foster excused himself. He said he needed to make a call. He took his coffee and he went out into the corridor and he closed the door quietly behind him.
The conference room was empty except for the two of us.
Atlas turned my hand over in his. He brought it to his mouth. He kissed the inside of my wrist. He kept his lips there for a second longer than he needed to.
“Eden.”
“Yes.”
“You went without me.”
“I know.”
“You will not do that again.”
“Atlas.”
“You will not. Not because I do not trust you. Because I cannot have you sitting across from a man who wants you back and not be in the building. Are we clear.”
I looked at him.
I had been waiting for this.
“We are clear. I am sorry. I will tell you next time. But Atlas. Hear me. He had nothing. He was never going to have anything. The conversation needed to happen. I needed it to happen with my voice and not yours. Are you hearing me.”
He held my eyes.
He was hearing me. I could see him hearing me.
“I am hearing you.”
“Good.”
He kissed the inside of my wrist again. He set my hand back down on the table.
He stood up.
“Come on,” he said. “Your father is waiting at the compound. We have a Sunday dinner to plan.”