Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, Lydia Millet [top romance novels .txt] 📗

fact that he knew this and usually tried to turn down such invitations, because Yoshi was uncomfortable with Roger and Lynn. Lynn was prone to ask him questions about Japanese culture in a loud, carrying voice, stressing the subjugation of women.

Ann was often anxious before social events but today she was curiously indifferent. Stepping out of the shower she stood behind Ben, who was shaving over the sink with a straight razor, and put her arms around his waist. She saw the soft pinkness of their skin in the mirror and the hardness of the tiles.

He turned to brush his foam-rimmed lips along hers and then away again, and she stood on tiptoe and rested her chin briefly on his shoulder, watching them in the mirror side by side. She marveled at their differences, how the two of them could be limited to their separate spaces in air, their outlines distinct.

Letting go and crossing the room, dabs of white on her chin and nose, it occurred to her that something was missing and she stopped mid-stride, spinning on a heel, afraid for a split second she had left it behind.

—Ben?

—Uh huh?

—Oh. Nothing.

The split-second had passed and she knew she hadn’t forgotten anything specific: just part of her had vanished before she even knew what it was. Something had escaped.

She stood still and tried to bring it back but could not. Instead she thought of Roger and Lynn in their adobe palace, holding their drinks in hands spangled with silver and turquoise, faces bored and expectant. Usually she was alarmed when she thought of people like that before she had to see them, usually it was dread, but now she saw them in their element, certain that the ground would never move beneath them unless they ordered it, and felt no apprehension. They were arrogant and they were right, they had always been right: the world was safer for them than for anyone else. They moved between adobe and a penthouse on Park Avenue and an alpine chalet on Interlaken and a beach home in the British Virgin Islands. The boards of their companies were peppered with men of girth with Pacemakers, men who had worked for tyrants. They would never be proven wrong.

Their smugness could be trusted, she told herself.

Always before this had bothered her, it had grated on her and rung with injustice, but now, oddly, it seemed like relief.

Then the next second, standing in the bedroom and looking back at the open door to the bathroom without moving, she saw the deep-blue tiles and caught a glimpse of a flash of metal as Ben flicked the razor along his jawbone. The relief was gone and she felt liquid, trembling from the center.

She had the fleeting recognition: I am not afraid of them now.

And then the next moment: Because I have more to fear.

She turned and opened the closet doors slowly and saw the worn shoes lying piled on the floor, the familiar grain of the closet door’s wooden trim, the winter sweaters folded and piled sloppily on the shelf, a paper clothes-hanger jacket that read We Our Customers.

Nothing routine could alarm her again: she was sealed off. Briefly this braced her, buoyed her up as though she’d won; but then the feeling was weak, with something dark and yellow behind it.

She thought: As long as I am surrounded by the life we all know.

The life we all agree on.

As they walked down the sloping street to the mansion Ben held her hand and told her that Roger and Lynn wanted waterfalls built for them, small hills and ponds sculpted in their garden. They wanted him to plant wildflowers that bloomed “at all times,” lupines and Colorado columbine and penstemon and evening primroses and Indian paintbrush. —They have to bloom at all times, Lynn had said to Ben. When he told her that would require constant replanting and constant vigilance she shrugged. Also, he told her, there was the niggling problem of winter, the pesky revolution of the globe around the sun. She waved her hand and said—Fine! Just remember, we want them to be blooming at all times. Through the snow. If you have to heat the ground, whatever, put in heat lamps or whatever, just do it. As long as the lamps are hidden by leaves or something.

Roger wanted a one-hole golf course, Lynn wanted his golf course concealed with ornamental shrubs. Ann thought: The world we all agree on. With its terrible gardens.

She clutched Ben’s hand and closed her eyes as they went down the hill, telling herself to let go of everything.

Ben decided to stay close to her at the party to ensure she did not wander off as she sometimes did in clients’ homes, wander off and stand alone in a dark walk-in closet where it was silent, or sit in an armchair in a neglected corner staring at some useless object she’d picked up off a shelf.

Because it was acceptable to pay attention to objects, and far easier than facing people she did not know, she would fasten herself to them sometimes to get away. Her lack of interest in the object was irrelevant: what counted was the envelope they made together, protected from intrusion.

Caterers in white shirts and black bow ties carried trays of rich hors d’oeuvres through the crowd, goat cheese and rosemary and foie gras and puff pastries full of crab from the Bering Sea. Lynn took Ben by the arm and walked them through the other guests introducing him, and then Ann as an afterthought. Ann was not anxious, only pleasantly bored, but wished Lynn would not introduce her at all. She wanted only to observe the party, to watch the others from a quiet and concealed position.

After they had run the gauntlet they were given drinks and left in a corner to talk to Yoshi, who stood alone beside the beehive fireplace. He was smiling a slightly embarrassed smile and politely holding an untouched martini