“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
His cell phone vibrated again and he leapt at it.
It was Shy, finally.
I fucking won a fucking table tennis match you cunt!
She sounded happy. Liam didn’t answer. He didn’t want to be a buzzkill. Luckily his dad had introduced him to the Smiths, whose music was moody and morose. He stuck in his earbuds and put his phone on Do Not Disturb.
* * *
“I almost died today,” Wendy announced when she finally returned home to Strong Place with the U-Haul.
Roy was exactly where she’d left him six hours ago—in the library, furiously typing on his laptop.
“I’ll need your help, and Shy’s too, unloading the U-Haul van. I have to return it by nine p.m.” She poured herself a glass of white wine and drank the entire glass standing up. “I’d like to do it soon so I can take a shower.”
Roy did not look up. He was completely engrossed in his writing, which was nice to see, but also infuriating. She really had almost died.
“I believe the person who dismembered that woman whose body parts they’ve been finding in the water is alive and well and living on the far side of Staten Island.”
“Almost finished,” Roy said without looking up. He’d been typing like a madman ever since the table tennis. He’d come to love Isabel’s Russian family so much he’d decided to pare down the assassin nonsense and amp up the amusement of sneaking her family members onto Mars. He’d also thrown in a lot of pregnant table tennis. There were some sad bits too. Now he was working on one of his trademark optimistic endings.
“Where’s Shy? Oh, of course, she’s at a match,” Wendy said, answering her own question. She really did need a bath. The essence of serial killer was all over her. She poured herself a second glass of wine, wishing Roy would get out of his chair and embrace her and make her sit down and put her feet up and tell him all about her near-death experience while he fixed her a Kir Royale and Camembert and crackers.
“Done,” Roy announced, triumphantly hitting a final key and closing his laptop. “I might need to tinker with it and add a brilliant last line and pad it out quite a bit, but it’s mostly there. I’d like to give it to you to read. See what you think.”
“I almost died,” Wendy repeated. She tossed aside her phone and gulped her wine. She didn’t want to read the rough draft of Roy’s new book. In fact, that was the last thing she wanted to do. He always said he threw out about 75 percent of his first drafts because they were completely inane. He could show it to his school nurse friend, his reader, the one all the men in the neighborhood seemed to lust after. Or his skinny, nervous, suit-and-tie-wearing friend who couldn’t handle his liquor. Or his friend’s crazy artist wife. Or his twenty-eight-year-old agent, for Christ’s sake—that was her job.
For the first time Roy noticed that his wife looked particularly harried and even a bit drunk.
“Was the traffic awful? I thought it might be on a Friday. I can unload the U-Haul and return it to the garage if you’d like to have a bath,” he said gently.
Wendy stared at him. What was the point?
The front door clicked and Shy flounced into the house. She ran the kitchen tap and drank straight from the stream.
“I won at table tennis.” She slurped some more water. “I’m starving. What are we having for dinner?”
“I went to watch for a bit. She’s quite good,” Roy shouted from the other room.
“Mr. Streko has been a bit of an arse lately, but at least he let me play. I thought maybe his cat was sick, but then he posted a picture of his cat looking totally fine. I asked Dad to leave because we were having a team meeting after,” Shy explained breathlessly. “I still can’t believe I won. The other girl was pretty crap. But maybe it’s my talent. Maybe I’ll go to the Olympics.”
“The team could do with a proper coach,” Roy put in from the library. He didn’t like that Streko, not one bit.
“I almost died,” Wendy said for the hundredth time.
Shy snatched up her mother’s wineglass and took a sip. “I’m going to take a shower,” she announced and dashed upstairs.
“I’ll unload the wood,” Roy said, and began collecting his keys, jacket, and shoes.
Wendy retrieved the bottle of wine from the fridge and took it upstairs with her. They didn’t care whether she worked at Fleurt or Enjoy! or the National Enquirer, or that she’d just survived a terrifying encounter with a serial killer. In fact, the problem with having a family at all was that nobody noticed if you were dead or alive until dinner went unmade and they found your torso floating in the dirty water behind Ikea.
PART V NOVEMBER 5
Chapter 23
“Come in, come in!”
Roy Clarke led the group of newly arrived neighbors into the house, through the kitchen, and into the library.
“I should say, ‘Come out.’ The party is outside in the garden, just through the French doors. It’s a bit chilly, but the fire will take care of that. It’s going to be enormous.”
“Thanks so much for doing this. What a treat.” A chubby man wearing thick glasses, a plaid wool shirt, and hiking boots held out his hand for Roy to shake. “Your wife stopped by the store yesterday. She said you’ve written a draft of a new book. I’m excited.”
Roy could not remember ever having met this man.
“Yes, yes. Good to see you. I gave the draft to Wendy to read.” Roy shook the man’s hand, trying to place him. He seemed like the type to own a store that sold complicated backpacks, freeze-dried camping meals, and mosquito netting.
The man laughed and patted his puffy pink cheeks. “It’s Jefferson. From Smith Corner Books? I shaved, I shaved. No beard, no beard!”
Aha. Jefferson, owner of the not-so-new-anymore bookstore where Roy had made his Brooklyn debut over a year ago. Roy had only been inside the bookshop maybe once or twice since moving in. Wendy went all the time—just to browse, she said, although he suspected she was really making sure they kept the Roy Clarke Rainbow in stock.
“Full disclosure: Wendy forwarded the manuscript to me. I read it yesterday in one sitting. ‘Blast Off, Roy Clarke!’—that’s the headline of the prepublication review I’m going to submit to Publishers Weekly. You really outdid yourself this time.”
Roy was horrified. Wendy had sent the bookstore man his possibly terrible new book?
“Shabba Ranks for your help, Claire,” he mumbled nervously in Cockney rhyming slang.
But Jefferson had already barged past him and into the library. He threw his arms wide and spun around in a circle. “I’m in the home of one of my favorite living authors!” he shouted exultantly before dancing out the French doors.
Roy hung back as more guests followed Jefferson outside. They knew who Roy was, even if he wasn’t quite sure he knew them, but they were either too intimidated or too rude to stop and introduce themselves.
He could not mistake the hairy, tattooed creature skulking past him and making a beeline for the food tables in the garden: Streko. Shy must have invited him. Well, he had nerve.
“Food’s over there. Drinks by the fence,” Roy shouted aggressively after him. “Take as much as you like, there’s plenty!”
The garden was large and had been designed and planted by a botanist from the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, a former tenant of the previous owners. Two enormous rhododendron bushes, their leaves still green and shiny, divided the brick-walled space into thirds: a slate-paved patio area featuring a massive teak table laden with food; a grassy area where the drinks table was—large enough for groups to mingle, lounge on various weathered wooden benches, or duck behind an evergreen completely out of sight; and a potential vegetable patch, where the bonfire had been erected.
Gabby and Manfred had insisted that Wendy hire a caterer, even though Wendy wanted to order all the food from Full Plate and prepare it herself. “It’s not dinner,” she insisted. “Just nibbles and wine and beer.”
&
nbsp; “That’s what caterers are for,” Gabby had advised.
Gabby and Manfred had been called away to LA by Enjoy! and Fleurt to cover Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Bonfire Night party in person. Wendy should have been annoyed that she hadn’t been called away to LA too, but in fact it was a relief.
Wendy’s nerves were fried. She’d stayed up very late last night trying and failing to read Roy’s book. It was either brilliant or awful, she couldn’t tell. Did it have to be set on Mars? Why not in Marfa, Texas? Or Lima, Peru? Was Mars a metaphor for something she didn’t understand? Roy had gone to Oxford. She’d only gone to NYU.
Roy kept shooting her anxious, hopeful glances—even in his sleep. She knew he was waiting for a report. But the truth was, just like so many of his so-called fans, Wendy had never been able to get all the way through a Roy Clarke novel, not even Orange.
How would she tell him? There were so many things she needed to tell.
She stood by the food, rearranging the cheese knives and gulping champagne. Was it the cheese, or did the garden smell like pot?
Oh, what were they doing? Americans didn’t even celebrate Bonfire Night—they didn’t even know what it was.
* * *
One person was definitely celebrating. Ted Little was having a blast, lighting small objects on fire and tossing them on top of the still unlit pyre. He’d even found an aerosol can of insect repellent and was repeatedly spraying it and lighting the spray with the lighter he’d found in the schoolyard.
Ted couldn’t believe no one was yelling.
“That’s a cool trick,” the school nurse said appreciatively. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Do it again,” said the nice mom of his babysitter. It was even her house.
“Again!” his mom panted while doing jumping jacks. Lately she was always doing jumping jacks. Or giving herself facials. Or plucking her eyebrows.
Off in the corner, his dad smoked a little purple pipe, his skateboard propped up against the garden wall.
“Dude,” a hairy man approached him and reached for his purple pipe. “Your song ‘Omnia Vincit!’ is what made me want to be a Latin teacher.”
Ted lit another shot of insect repellent, then another, and another.
* * *
Liam sat cross-legged on the grass, half-hidden by a rhododendron bush. Shy spotted his worn gray pants and old Converse sneakers from her bedroom window and came down to talk to him.
“Mum can’t be happy. The whole garden stinks of weed. Why didn’t you come up? Why’re you being weird?”
“I’m not being weird,” Liam grumbled, even though he knew he was.
“You never answered my texts. Are you mad at me?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he said miserably.
“Hello, Daughter.” Shy’s father stood over them, wielding a cocktail glass, looking larger and older than usual. A button was missing from his cardigan. “Did you invite that git of a Latin teacher to our party?”
“Dad,” Shy complained, “Liam and I are talking. Also, the whole neighborhood is here. It’s fine. I can invite who I like.”
Liam hadn’t noticed Mr. Streko arrive, but he saw him now, stuffing food into his mouth, gross neck tattoo bulging. He wished Shy hadn’t invited him either.
“I’m hoping he’ll make me captain next year,” Shy observed. “I thought I should make an effort.”
Mr. Streko glanced over at them, tossed his half-eaten plate of food into the unlit fire, and headed in their direction, already holding a hairy paw out to Roy.
“Salve, Mr. Clarke. I just wanted to let you know there’s no hard feelings.”
Roy’s limp grasp grew firmer as he took in the ridiculousness of the man’s orange-and-blue tattoo of a smiling baseball.
“You weren’t going to let my daughter play that match before I turned up.”
“Dad,” Shy complained from the grass.
Liam appreciated the fact that Shy’s father seemed to hate Mr. Streko as much as he did. Go, Mr. Clarke.
“Yeah, but it turns out she’s pretty good. So I’m going to have to let her play.” Mr. Streko pulled his hand away from Roy’s iron grip and gestured toward the unlit bonfire. “Ignis aurum probat.”
Shy jumped to her feet. “ ‘Fire tests gold.’ Seneca. It was one of your tweets.”
Roy sucked in his stomach and swizzled the weak gin and tonic around in his glass. Mr. Streko was just like the scientists in his book, except smarmier. He was diabolical.
“ ‘Fire tests gold,’ ” he repeated. “I like that.” The book was only a rough first draft. He could still work it in.
“Dad.” Shy imitated her mother’s controlled, bordering on controlling tone. “Why don’t you go see if Mum needs help.”
Roy peered down at Liam. He seemed even more glum than usual. He’d interrupted something, a lovers’ quarrel. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Mr. Streko backed away toward the drinks table. “Great party,” he said to no one in particular.
* * *
Wendy had just poured herself a second or third or fourth glass of champagne. Five o’clock. The sky was darkening. The garden was nearly full of happily chatting people. The caterers had everything under control. The bonfire was piled high and ready to be lit. There was the neatly stacked firewood, the old door, the broken chairs, the dismantled picnic table, and the “Guy,” supplied by Roy’s friend Tupper and his extremely odd, extremely tall, artist wife. It was a broad-shouldered, yellow-haired, orange-faced papier-mâché “Guy” wearing a flammable blue tie and a shiny gray flammable double-breasted suit. He looked very much like the recent president, whose name no one spoke out loud. They’d strung him from a rope tied beneath his arms and hung him from the upended leg of the picnic table, where he dangled helplessly, head down, shoulders stooped.
She’d asked Roy to give a brief explanation of the meaning of Bonfire Night before the fire was lit. Roy said it wasn’t necessary, but Wendy didn’t want the whole neighborhood to think they were psychotic bonfire worshippers. Criminals, actually, considering the fireworks. She was about to go tap him on the shoulder and remind him to say a few words, but Roy was deep in conversation with Tupper and Elizabeth Paulsen, so she stayed away.
* * *
Stuart was with Mandy tonight, but not with Mandy. Since discovering her fakery, he’d maintained an imaginary distance. He even taunted her a bit, just to test her.
“Which is better, beer or wine, to mix with your meds?” he asked. “I hear unpasteurized cheese is dangerous for MS sufferers.”
Mandy was unruffled. She’d been faking so long, she’d become an expert. “Dr. Goldberg says it doesn’t matter, as long as I take my vitamins and eat well and get plenty of sleep and sunshine.”
She looked beautiful tonight. If Stuart wasn’t so angry he’d write a song about her.
You lie like a rug, like a kick to my face
But I see you, girl. Fucking pump that bass!
He’d installed one of Tupper Paulsen’s Macaws in the kitchen, to record the extent of her deceit. She had a CrossFit trainer now. They pushed the bed out of the way to get his equipment in. Other than working out, getting the mail and stuffing it under the bed, and cooking elaborate meals from boxed gourmet food delivery services, she still spent most of her time in bed on her iPad. Watching the surveillance footage was actually really boring.
Their son Ted was eating a huge pile of macaroni-and-cheese balls and poking the “Guy” in the foot with his fork. Had they raised Ted wrong? Stuart wondered. Was he fucked up too? It was difficult to know, but Stuart suspected their son was badly behaved. How did you socialize an only child? Going to parties like this was probably a good start, except there were no other young kids, just Roy’s daughter and Peaches’ son, who were sitting very close to each other on the grass with their limbs intertwined and their heads bowed, talking. That used to be Stuart and Mandy. They used to be all over each other. And he was still hot for her, or woul
d be if he wasn’t so angry. Spending almost all your time in bed for no reason was not cool, not when your husband was working at a job that bored him and your son was getting picked up from school by weirdos who taught him to play Dungeons & Dragons and tempted him with fire. How could she lie to him? In what scenario was lying to your husband/best friend/roommate/only person who really cares about you in the world/father of your kid about having a major debilitating disease a good idea? He had to tell her how pissed off he was. It was just so selfish and lazy and crazy of her. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
Mandy’s black hair was so shiny. Her dark blue denim jacket looked fantastic against her pale skin. Her black eyebrows had a fierce new upward slant. She had it going on tonight.
“What are they waiting for?” Mandy demanded. “It’s pretty darn dark already.” She leaned into Stuart and took a swig from her beer. “I feel good tonight. I feel like I’m twenty years old.”
“Why wouldn’t you feel good?” Stuart muttered bitterly.
Mandy took a step back. “What’s up? Are you mad at me?”
Stuart didn’t know where to begin. He wasn’t just mad, he was affronted. He and Mandy and the guys in his band used to pull pranks on their teachers and friends in high school all the time. Mandy was still his best friend. Couldn’t he at least have been in on it?
“Remember the first time I got pot for you?” he said, deciding to take it slow. “You hadn’t been outside in a while. We went and sat on the stoop. It was a nice night.”
Mandy smiled. “It was a really nice night.” She looked up at the darkening sky. A star or two twinkled overhead. “Tonight is a nice night.”
“Wendy? Should I fetch a torch?” Roy shouted from an open window above their heads. A few people laughed. Roy Clarke was so hilariously English. It was fun to be in his home.
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