Emerald City

by Jennifer Egan

  “I want to know everything,” Josephine began. She took an enormous bite of hamburger, her lipstick smearing the bun. “I can’t tell a thing from your letters.”

  Lucy laughed. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Anywhere. You pick. Europe, Africa …” She grinned over her Coke. “I’ve started a stamp collection.”

  Lucy felt shy suddenly. “Well, a lot of the trips are business.”

  “Do you fly first class?”

  The question made Lucy uncomfortable, it was so overt. She gave a brief nod.

  “So, is it like we imagined, like in the magazines?” Josephine said. “I mean, you know, do you feel like one of those girls in Vogue?”

  Lucy squirmed, looking down at her tuna sandwich. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Josephine’s eyes narrowed. She took another bite. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Tell what you’ve been up to,” Lucy said.

  Josephine had a boyfriend who sold sports equipment. She was taking painting classes at the Y. Lucy relaxed while her friend did the talking, but too soon the description ended.

  “What does it look like from an airplane, when you land at night?” Josephine asked. “I always try to imagine it, how cities must look from above with all their lights blinking. Is it pretty?”

  Lucy pictured herself and Parker in an airplane, both of them tired and eager to land. “Well, it’s …” she paused, wondering what Josephine wanted her to say. She longed to say the right thing, to acknowledge the beauty without dwelling on it in a way that would seem self-satisfied. “It is pretty,” she said. “But you get used to it.”

  Sure enough, Josephine looked disappointed. “You’re not eating your sandwich,” she said. Then she leaned across the table and took Lucy’s hand in her strong, warm grip. “Is Parker treating you right?” she asked, looking directly into Lucy’s face.

  Lucy drew back a little. “Sure,” she said. “What makes you ask?”

  “You seem”—Josephine cocked her head—“I don’t know, different. I just wondered.”

  Lucy hesitated. The problem was that she wasn’t used to talking about airplane lights and riding first class. With Parker she simply did them. Being with Josephine demanded another side of herself, the side that used to pore over magazines and imagine living other people’s lives. Parker was practical; he would never understand that sort of thinking. She had fallen out of the habit.

  Josephine’s apple pie arrived, and she heaped a bite with ice cream and ate vigorously. Her jaws flexed under her wide cheekbones. “You remember,” she began, speaking slowly, “how we used to imagine being rich? Do you remember that?”

  Lucy nodded. She sensed from Josephine’s tone that this was a last attempt to get at some basic thing. “Yes …” she said, cautiously.

  “All I’m asking is, is it actually like that?”

  Lucy considered. It was true, there had been moments when she’d thought, I can’t believe this is happening to me. The feeling came sometimes when she and Parker traveled, sometimes just when she looked around her own house at the fireplace and thick rugs, at the vast green lawn outside. Whenever she had that feeling, Lucy longed to tell someone. She would turn to Parker, who was usually reading, or anyone else who was there, but no one ever behaved as if anything special were happening. Soon her wonderment would begin to fade. As time went on, it came less and less often.

  “I get excited,” she said, speaking carefully, “but it’s not like the magazines.”

  She could not explain. Something separated her from Josephine, for the first time in her life. Josephine seemed to feel it, too. She sighed and pushed her pie away, lighting a cigarette and looking out at the rain. “Well,” she said, “at least you’re happy.”

  It was worse each time they saw each other. Josephine married, moved into a small ramshackle house only blocks from where she grew up, and had several robust children. She continued to paint in her free time, and Lucy’s only recollection of her house, which she saw once, was a huge canvas hanging on one wall: a wild assemblage of red slashes and tumultuous grays. It reminded her of paintings she and Parker had seen in European museums.

  Lucy remembers Josephine’s soft hips and thighs, the warmth and strength of her hands. She must enjoy sex, Lucy thinks, for even as a child Josephine was passionate, romantic. She lacked Lucy’s own self-consciousness, whatever it was that made her hide away the honeymoon bathing suits.

  Lucy looks down the beach at the bungalow. She thinks of the couple sleeping inside, their tanned naked limbs sprawled under the twirling ceiling fan. A warm glow fills her, as though she, too, shared in their exhausted delight. The light has begun to deepen, coaxing the white sand to gold. Overhead, the palm trees make a sound like rainfall. The sun casts a pale ribbon of light across the trembling sea. Lucy looks around her tenderly, overcome by the sheer beauty of the scene. She will describe it in her letter to Josephine, for it is exactly the sort of thing Josephine will want to know.

  That hour has arrived when sunbathers stretch and collect their belongings from the cooling sand. Lucy waits for Parker, who is moving down the beach. She is glad to see him.

  “Happy?” Parker asks, for she is smiling. She holds out both hands for him to pull her from her chair, then kisses his ear. Parker smells of soap and aftershave. His hair is neatly combed, and he wears trousers with a loose Polynesian-style shirt. There is something jaunty in his air.

  “I thought I’d go on up to the terrace and watch the sun set while you get ready,” he says. “Why not let’s try that fish place down the road for a change, since it’s our last night.”

  “Perfect!” says Lucy. She collects her magazines and stuffs them in the bag. “How’s the war coming?”

  He shakes his head, grinning like a boy. “Super,” he says.

  Lucy takes a shower and rubs scented lotion over her body. She stares at the closet for a long time, trying to decide whether to wear a pantsuit or the bright Polynesian dress Parker bought her as a souvenir. She puts on the dress and looks in the mirror. Its colors are similar to those the blond woman was wearing when she arrived at the hotel. Before she can change her mind, Lucy grabs her purse and leaves the bungalow, holding her white sandals in one hand as she makes her way back across the sand to the terrace. Parker is leaning back in his chair. On the table sit two exotic-looking cocktails, filled with pineapple pieces and small umbrellas.

  “Wow,” Parker says when he sees Lucy in the Polynesian dress.

  She looks down, determined not to feel ashamed. Parker keeps glancing at her as he drinks. “That dress is something,” he says.

  After two cocktails they leave for the restaurant. It takes a long time to reach it, and normally Lucy would have wished they’d taken a taxi. But tonight she follows the twists and curves of road with a joyous sense of adventure. A smudge of fuchsia lingers just above the sea. Already a gravel of stars fills the sky. The moon, like the Tahitian sun, shines with abnormal vehemence.

  The restaurant is a thatched hut filled with the smell of broiling fish. Flowers and vines dangle from the ceiling, and there is no floor, just cool white sand. Beside the grill lie heaps of gleaming sea creatures, blue-green parrot fish with gaping mouths, tangles of lobsters and crabs.

  “Reminds me a little of that place in Kenya,” Parker says when they reach their table, a block of wood wedged into the sand.

  “Much better!” Lucy says, for the restaurant has a thrilling, exotic atmosphere. She will mention it in her letter to Josephine. She glances down and notices her Polynesian dress, which she has forgotten she is wearing. It looks perfect here.

  Parker orders champagne. Lucy can see that he feels it, too, whatever she is feeling. There is a look he gets when he is excited, a puffy, breathless look, as if something inside him were swelling against his edges. His cheeks are flushed.

  “Are you thinking about the war?” she asks.

  He nods, and the flush spreads farther along his cheeks.
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  “Tell me about it,” she says, really curious.

  “I’m developing a position,” he says. “An argument. My own as opposed to other people’s. That’s what history is, just a lot of arguments.”

  “And you’ve come up with your argument by reading theirs?”

  “Yup. And disagreeing.”

  “I see. So what will you do with it? Your argument.”

  “I’ll prove it,” says Parker. “It’ll take a lot of research.”

  “Will you have the time?”

  Running the company takes long, steady hours of work. Parker rarely has free time, except on vacation.

  “That’s a question,” he says, looking off toward the grill. “That’s a question.” He adds under his breath, “I miss it.”

  Lucy looks up. He has never said this before.

  There is a pause. Parker glances down and flicks his wedding ring against the table. Lucy looks across the restaurant, not even surprised to discover the blond woman and her lover standing at the entrance. It is as if she were expecting them. The woman adjusts the purple flower in her hair. She, too, wears a Polynesian dress.

  “Parker,” Lucy says suddenly, “do you think it was right for you to give it up?”

  She knows she has broken some tacit code in asking this. Parker is silent. He opens his mouth to speak, but doesn’t. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

  Lucy wants to press the point, but is afraid of pushing him too far. She waits, almost holding her breath, the way one does in the presence of a squirrel or a bird that will scramble away at the slightest jolt.

  “I loved history,” he says. “It was exciting.”

  As the maître d’ leads the young couple to their table, the blond woman pauses at the grill and looks at the fish. Timidly she reaches out to press the shining scales of one.

  “The funny part is,” Parker says, “somehow I made a choice. I don’t even know when. Only after it was made, I noticed that I just—”

  “Thought differently?”

  “Yes! That’s right!” He seems elated that she understands. “That’s what it was, I thought differently. But what bothers me …

  The man and woman sit down and hold hands. The blond hair falls in a curtain down the woman’s back.

  “What bothers me is …” He can’t seem to finish. One hand waves halfheartedly, trying to conjure the sentence.

  “Money?” Lucy says very gently. “That somehow it was the money?”

  Parker drops his hand. They look at one another in silence.

  The meal is superb. Lucy and Parker linger at the restaurant a long time, long after the other couple has left. They drink a bottle of white wine and listen to the wind rattle the palm trees outside. It is as if they were afraid to go, as if, when they emerge from this den of white sand and rainbow-colored fish, a spell will break.

  Finally they make their way back to the hotel. The moon has grown brittle and white overhead, and the warm wind scatters silver light across the sea. Lucy and Parker are drunk. They lean against each other for support, giggling like children as they make their way along the twisting road.

  When they reach their bungalow, Lucy goes to the back deck and stands at the rail, watching the sea. She can hear Parker undressing inside, and finds that she is eager to make love tonight. The other bungalows are dark. Wind billows her dress, flooding it like a tent. Without looking away from the sea, Lucy unties the dress and lets the wind pull it from her. She stands naked, holding the dress at one corner, allowing the warm wind to engulf her.

  The following year, Lucy and Parker visit Santa Barbara. They have flown there to meet with clients of Parker’s, but will take several days to shop and enjoy the sun. After leaving their luggage at the hotel, they meander to a seafood restaurant at the tip of a long pier.

  Lucy sits facing the ocean. Sunlight does a shrill dance on the water’s surface, and she fumbles for her sunglasses. She can hardly see the waitress, who asks whether they would like drinks. When the woman returns with two iced teas, Lucy glances at her and jumps. It is the blond woman from Bora Bora.

  Parker is poring over his menu, squinting through his reading glasses and holding it at a distance from his face.

  “Did you see her?” Lucy hisses, plucking at his sleeve when the waitress has left.

  “See who?”

  “The waitress!”

  Parker stares at his wife.

  “Don’t you remember? I’m sure it’s the same person!”

  “Same person as who?”

  “On Bora Bora! That blond woman we saw.”

  “Are you serious? That was ages ago.”

  Lucy leans back in frustrated silence. But she is excited, and she twists around in her chair to catch another glimpse of the waitress. The woman returns to the table with her order pad, and Lucy looks directly into her face. There is no doubt that it is the same woman—the blond hair, the long, perfect limbs.

  “Can I take your order?” she asks.

  It occurs to Lucy that she has never heard the woman speak.

  “Crab salad,” says Parker.

  There is a silence. Both the waitress and Parker look at Lucy, waiting. “For you, ma’am?” the waitress asks.

  “Oh, I’ll have …” Lucy fumbles, looking down at the menu. “The same. Crab salad.”

  Lucy sits, watching the sea. She tries to remember Bora Bora. Like all their vacations, that one has faded, blurred with other hotels, other beaches.

  “Parker?”

  “Mmm?” He is going over some numbers the Santa Barbara clients have given him.

  “What ever happened with the Crimean War?”

  He looks at her in confusion.

  “On Bora Bora. You were so excited … you wanted to do research, remember?”

  “Vaguely.”

  She can tell he does not want to be interrupted, but persists. “What ever happened to that idea?”

  Parker shrugs, frowning. “No time,” he says. “Got to make a living.”

  The waitress returns with the salads. Lucy watches her pour dressing over them and tries to recall the woman she watched on the beach a year before. But already the vision has begun to cloud. No, Lucy thinks, looking down at her plate, no, this cannot be the same woman after all.

  When the waitress has gone, Lucy looks at Parker. He is drumming his fingers on the quilted place mat, staring at the bay. Lucy hears his stomach murmur. She watches this man who is her husband, his brown arms with their sparse coating of hair, his pale, timid eyes. She feels an urge to say something to him, but can think of nothing worthwhile: A comment on the view? The menu? The night ahead? Their conversation is exhausted.

  Instead, she thinks of Josephine. It has been a long time since Lucy recalled her old friend, but suddenly, now, she can see her exactly. Lucy pictures Josephine seated in Parker’s chair, leaning forward, resting her chin on one hand. She is poised to listen.

  “Wait, wait, back up,” Lucy hears her command. “So you’re having lunch on a pier—describe it to me. Is the sun out?”

  It’s low, Lucy thinks, it drifts on the water in flakes. There are gulls with gray-tipped wings and a dot of red on their beaks. The ocean shakes like reams of fluttering silk.

  Josephine laughs. It is a cackle of wonderment, a whistle of envy and delight.

  “I see it,” she says. “I see it exactly.”

  And for a moment the world ignites, it blazes around them with exquisite radiance. Each detail is right.

  “Look where you are,” Josephine says. “Look! You’re in the perfect spot.”

  For a magnificent instant, Lucy believes it.

  SISTERS OF THE MOON

  Silas has a broken head. It happened sometime last night, outside The Limited on Geary and Powell. None of us saw. Silas says the fight was over a woman, and that he won it. “But you look like all bloody shit, my friend,” Irish says, laughing, rolling the words off his accent. Silas says we should’ve seen the other guy.

  He adjusts
the bandage on his head and looks up at the palm trees, which make a sound over Union Square like it’s raining. Silas has that strong kind of shape, like high school guys who you know could pick you up and carry you like a bag. But his face is old. He wears a worn-out army jacket, the pockets always fat with something. Once, he pulled out a silver thimble and pushed it into my hand, not saying one word. It can’t be real silver, but I’ve kept it.

  I think Silas fought in Vietnam. Once he said, “It’s 1974, and I’m still alive,” like he couldn’t believe it.

  “So where is he?” Irish asks, full of humor. “Where is this bloke with half his face gone?”

  Angel and Liz start laughing, I don’t know why. “Where’s this woman you fought for?” is what I want to ask.

  Silas shrugs, grinning. “Scared him away.”

  San Francisco is ours, we’ve signed our name on it a hundred times: SISTERS OF THE MOON. On the shiny tiles inside the Stockton Tunnel, across those buildings like blocks of salt on the empty piers near the Embarcadero. Silver plus another color, usually blue or red. Angel and Liz do the actual painting. I’m the lookout. While they’re spraying the paint cans, I get scared to death. To calm down, I’ll say to myself, If the cops come, or if someone stops his car to yell at us, I’ll just walk away from Angel and Liz, like I never saw them before in my life. Afterward, when the paint is wet and we bounce away on the balls of our feet, I get so ashamed, thinking, What if they knew? They’d probably ditch me, which would be worse than getting caught—even going to jail. I’d be all alone in the universe.

  Most people walk through Union Square on their way someplace else. Secretaries, businessmen. The Park, we call it. But Silas and Irish and the rest are always here. They drift out, then come back. Union Square is their own private estate.