The Nest

by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

  “Leo has a number of projects in the works,” the girl had said. She sounded ridiculously tentative and nervous. Stephanie suspected she was using the assistant ruse to discover the identities of all the women on Leo’s incoming call list. Well, good luck to her, she thought. “Can I tell Leo what this is in reference to?” the girl had asked. Stephanie had hung up and never called back.

  “I’ve called you,” Leo said.

  “Before today? Two years ago.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Two years.”

  “Christ,” Leo said. “Sorry.” He laughed a little. “If it makes you feel any better, I stopped being interesting about two years ago.”

  “I didn’t feel particularly bad about it to begin with, but thanks.”

  He frowned and looked at her, still unbelieving and a little pained. “Two years? Really?”

  “Really,” she said.

  “So come over here and tell me what else you’ve been up to,” he said, patting the place next to him on the sofa.

  HOURS LATER, after they’d eaten the lamb and replenished the firewood and she filled him in on the recent publishing news and gossip, after he’d finished clearing the table and loading the dishwasher (poorly) and rinsing some pots (even worse), he opened another bottle of wine and she dished out bowls of ice cream and they moved back into the living room.

  “Are you supposed to be drinking that?” she asked him, pointing to the glass of cabernet.

  “Technically, I guess not,” he said. “But booze is not my issue. You know that.”

  “I don’t know anything, Leo. You could be shooting heroin for all I know. In fact, I think I did hear something about heroin at some point.”

  “Completely false,” he said. “Was there excess? Yes. Do I realize I should probably steer clear of speed? Yes. This”—he raised the glass—“is not my problem.”

  “So are you going to tell me what happened? Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really,” Leo said. He wasn’t sure what Stephanie had heard that she might not be telling him. George assured him everything was sealed tighter than a drum. He’d paid a fortune to keep Victoria quiet, but he didn’t trust anyone. Stephanie let the silence gather some momentum. Out the front window the snow accumulated, a pile six inches deep balanced precariously on the rail of a neighboring stoop. A lone car crept down the snowy street, fishtailing a little as it went. She could hear the kids in the house behind her out in their yard screeching and laughing. Their dad was yelling: “Don’t eat the snow! It’s dirty.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it, Leo, but I’m a good secret keeper.”

  He felt the images from that night starting to surface: the sound of the car’s brakes, the bite of salt air, the incongruous voice of Marvin Gaye coming from the SUV that hit them, urging him to get it on. He wondered if he should talk about it. He hadn’t even tried at fake rehab. He wondered what Stephanie would say if he just unloaded the whole story, right then and there. At one time, they’d told each other everything or—he mentally corrected himself—she told him everything and he told her what he thought she needed to hear. That hadn’t gone very well.

  “Leo?”

  Leo didn’t even know how to start talking about it. He stared at the carved face on the marble mantel and realized why it was familiar, the swoop of hair, the slender patrician nose, the appraising gaze. “She looks like Bea,” he said.

  “Who does?”

  “Lillian. Your stone companion. She looks like Bea.”

  “Bea.” Stephanie groaned and covered her eyes.

  “She’s not bad looking. Bea.”

  “No, it’s not that. She’s called me a few times and I’ve been avoiding her. Something about new work.”

  “God. Not the novel.”

  “No, no, no. I told her a long time ago that I wouldn’t ever read that novel again. I told her, in fact, that she needed to find a new agent. Her message said something about a new project but—I just can’t.” Stephanie stood and started picking up their empty bowls of ice cream, the tranquil mood broken. “This is one of many reasons I’m happy to be part of a bigger operation,” she said. “I can’t stand feeling responsible for the formerly talented. It’s too upsetting. I can pass her off to someone else who won’t have any qualms about shutting her down.”

  Thinking about Bea being shut down by some unnamed assistant made Leo feel unexpectedly wistful. He wasn’t surprised when her first stories ended up being some anomaly of youth and fearlessness (thanks to him), but she had to be at the end of her rope by now. And she’d been Stephanie’s first notable client, the person who’d made editors and other new writers take a very young Stephanie very seriously. He didn’t like to think of Bea stuck working with Paul Underwood at some obscure literary journal, living in that apartment uptown by herself. It was hard to think about all his siblings for different reasons, so he didn’t. Right now, it felt like there was nowhere for his thoughts to alight that wasn’t rife with land mines of regret or anger or guilt.

  “You’re right,” Stephanie said, standing and staring at the mantel. “She does look like Bea. Shit.”

  “Don’t go,” Leo said.

  “I’m just going to the kitchen.”

  “Stay here,” he said. He didn’t like the sound of his voice, how it wavered a little. He really didn’t like the sudden, rapid acceleration of his heartbeat, which prior to this moment he’d associated with a certain class of stimulants, not a living room in Brooklyn in front of the fire with Stephanie.

  “I’ll be right back,” Stephanie said. Leo seemed to go slightly pale and for a moment he looked lost, almost frightened, which briefly alarmed her. “Leo?”

  “I’m fine.” He shook his head a little and stood. “Is that your old turntable?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Put something on. I’m just going to rinse these.”

  In the kitchen Stephanie could hear Leo flipping through her record albums. He yelled to her from the living room. “Your taste in music still totally sucks.”

  “Like everyone else in America, my music is on my computer. That’s the old stuff. I just brought the turntable up from the basement a few months ago.”

  Leo was reciting from the album covers: “Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar, Huey Lewis, Paula Abdul? This is like a bad MTV segment of ‘Where Are They Now?’”

  “More like, guess who joined the Columbia House Record Club when she was eighteen.”

  Leo flinched a little hearing Columbia Records. He shook it off. “Ah, here we go,” he said.

  Stephanie heard the turntable start to spin and the familiar scratch, scratch of the needle hitting the album grooves. Then the weirdly dissonant first notes of a piano and the slurry, graveled voice of Tom Waits filled the house.

  The piano has been drinking

  My necktie is asleep

  Stephanie hadn’t heard that song in years. Probably not since she and Leo were together. The album was probably Leo’s. He would wake her up on his hungover mornings (many mornings; most mornings) singing that song. He would pull her sleeping self into his arms, his semierection pressing into her back. She would half-heartedly try to burrow farther down into the bed, clinging to sleep and the reassuring feel of Leo’s limbs holding her close.

  “You stink,” she would groan, feigning more irritation than she felt, not even really minding his funky breath. “You smell like my uncle Howie after a night at the bar.”

  He would sing into her ear, his voice pockmarked from whiskey:

  The piano has been drinking

  Not me, not me, not me

  AT THE SINK, she started to rewash the roasting pan that Leo had left with a film of grease on the counter and tried to reconcile the Leo in her living room with the Leo she’d last seen almost two years ago, out one night with Victoria; they’d both seemed hammered. This Leo was slimmer and in spite of what she’d heard—and occasionally witnessed—about his recent years of late nights and marital troubles and genera
l rabble-rousing, he somehow looked younger. He was quieter, more subdued. Still funny. Still quick. Still beautiful.

  She shook her head. She was not, absolutely was not, going to get swept into Leo’s orbit again. In fact, she’d better set down some hard and fast rules about how long he could stay. And she needed to run upstairs and make up the pullout sofa in her office.

  Then, Leo was behind her. A hand on her shoulder. “Want to dance?” he said.

  She laughed at him. “No,” she said. “I most definitely do not want to dance with you. Also? You are terrible at washing dishes. Look at this.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. He lifted her hands out of the soapy water in the sink.

  “Leo”—she held herself rigid—“I was clear.” Her posture was combative, but he could hear something new in her voice, a fleeting hesitancy.

  He inched closer. “You said no fucking. I respect the no-fucking rule.” Leo was entirely focused on her. His desire was physical, yes (it had been twelve weeks, not counting a couple of breezy flings with the rehab physician’s assistant in the weight room), but he also remembered how much he’d loved this part, getting past her prickly exterior, cracking her wide open like unhinging an oyster. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, how satisfying it was to watch her steely carriage collapse a little, hear her breath catch. How good it felt to win. Fuck the firefighter.

  She sighed and looked past him, out the rear windows, into the Brooklyn night and the snowflakes ecstatically spinning in the beam of the floodlight on her back deck. Her hands were wet and cold and the warmth of Leo’s fingers around her wrists was disorienting.

  Leo couldn’t read her expression. Resigned? Hopeful? Defeated? He didn’t see desire yet, but he remembered how to summon it. “Steph?” he said. She smiled a little, but the smile was sad.

  “I swear, Leo,” she said quietly, nearly pleading. “I’m happy.”

  He was close enough now to lower his face to her neck and breathe in her skin, which smelled as it always had, faintly of chlorine, making him feel as if he could swim into her, assured and buoyant. They stood like that for a minute. He could feel his racing pulse gradually slow and align with the reliable rhythm of her constant heart. He pulled back a little to look at her. He ran his thumb along her lower lip, the same way he had with the marble carving earlier, only this time the lip yielded.

  And then, from the backyard, an enormous crash splitting the outdoor quiet like a clap of thunder. Then flickering lights. Then darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Leo arrived at the Oyster Bar, he worked some magic with the surly maître d’. Within minutes the Plumbs were seated and had unconsciously arranged themselves around the red-checkered tablecloth according to birth order: Leo, Jack, Bea, Melody. They shed coats and hats and made a little too much of ordering “just water and coffee.” Leo apologized for running late and explained how he was staying with a friend in Brooklyn (Stephanie! Bea realized), and he’d taken the wrong train and had to retrace his steps. Obligatory chatter about how Brooklyn had become so crowded and expensive and why was the subway so unreliable on the weekends anyway and, well, the weather certainly didn’t help, snow in October! Then they all fell uncomfortably silent—except Leo, who seemed utterly calm while appraising his brother and sisters, who all looked back at him, ill at ease.

  The three of them wondered how he did it, how he always managed to be unruffled while putting everyone else on edge, how even in this moment, at this lunch, where Leo should be abashed, laid bare, and the balance of power could have, should have, shifted against him, he still commanded their focus and exuded strength. Even now, they were deferentially waiting, hoping, he would speak first.

  But he just sat, watching them, curiously attentive.

  “It’s good to see you,” Bea finally said. “You look well. Healthy.” Her light affection made Jack’s shoulders relax, Melody’s face unclench.

  Leo smiled. “I’m happy to see you all. I am.”

  Melody felt herself blush. Embarrassed, she put her hands to her cheeks.

  “I guess we should get right to it,” Leo said. In the taxi down from Central Park, he’d decided to address the unpleasantness head-on. He realized, somewhat surprisingly, that he’d given precious little thought to this moment during his long weeks at Bridges. He’d been so focused on Victoria and the dissolution of their marriage that he’d failed to consider the repercussions of Francie’s actions. To be fair, he hadn’t entirely understood Francie’s actions until a couple of weeks ago. When George first told him that his mother was funding the Rodriguez payout, Leo’d had a brief moment of hope that she was using her own—or Harold’s—considerable resources. Alas.

  “I know you want to talk about The Nest,” he continued, satisfied to see their surprise at his direct approach. “So first, I want to say, thank you. I know you didn’t have to agree with Francie’s plan and I’m grateful.”

  Bea looked at Melody and Jack, who both shifted a little in their seats; they all looked confused and troubled.

  “What?” Leo said, processing what was happening a minute too late.

  “We hardly had any choice in the matter,” Jack said.

  “We didn’t know until it was done,” Melody said.

  “Really?” Leo turned to Bea. She nodded.

  Ah. Leo leaned back and looked around the table. Of course. He mentally berated himself for that bit of miscalculation while, briefly, experiencing a wave of elation because Francie had acted so decisively and singularly on his behalf. But Leo quickly realized he was wrong about that, too. Francie hadn’t come to his rescue; no doubt she’d rescued herself—and Harold. Leo could hear Harold now, his adenoidal voice going on and on about what was all over the East End.

  Bea warily watched Leo absorb this new bit of information. “I tried calling you, Leo,” she said. “Many times.”

  “Right,” he said. “Okay.” This complicated things.

  When Leo and Victoria were first engaged, shortly after he sold SpeakEasy and “went on sabbatical” (as he thought of it) and after she refused to consider a prenup, he’d opened an offshore account during one of their diving trips to Grand Cayman. He’d acted on a whim while she was off shopping. The account was perfectly legal, and although he’d planned on telling Victoria about it, he found himself not telling her. He thought of it as a little insurance, a private pension of sorts, maybe a way to keep some of his money protected in case of a stormy day. As his marriage began to deteriorate, he started bolstering the balance. One upside to the prodigious way he and Victoria spent money was that she stopped noticing where the money went. A few thousand here, a few thousand there; over the years it added up. He thought about the money all the time and the day he would just pick up and leave. What had kept him from doing it years ago was the hope that Victoria would tire of him first, fall in love with someone else and leave him so he could avoid a financially decimating divorce. When it became clear she never would (why couldn’t he have married someone just as beautiful but not so strategic?), he surrendered fully to the more libertine aspects of his life. He wasn’t sorry to see the diminishing balances on their joint accounts. So even though the accident had been a humiliating and unfortunate event, it had also—in a strange way—loosened him from the life he was already desperate to escape. For months he’d expected Victoria’s lawyers to find and triumphantly expose the funds, but nobody had. He had nearly two million dollars hidden away, almost exactly what he owed The Nest. He’d never touched a penny of the low-interest savings account; it was safe and sound. Liquid. If he replenished the fund to pay his siblings, his two million would be divided by four. The math hardly worked in his favor.

  “I wish I had the money sitting somewhere and could write you all a check,” Leo said. He placed his palms flat on the table and leaned forward, looking each one of them straight in the eye. He hadn’t run a company for all those years without learning the art of a quick recalculation, without learning how to work a tabl
e. He still mostly needed to bide time. “But I don’t. I’m going to need some time,” Leo continued.

  “How much time?” Melody said, a little too quickly.

  “I wish I had the answer to that,” Leo said, as if having that answer was his most fervent desire on earth. “But I promise you this: I am going to start working immediately—and hard—to rebuild. I already have some ideas. I’ve already started making some calls.”

  “What’s the plan?” Jack said. He wanted specifics. “Is there a way for you to borrow the money you owe us? Pay us off and owe somebody else?”

  “Very possibly,” Leo said, knowing that his chances of getting anyone to lend him money at the moment were nil. “A lot of things are possible.”

  “Like what else?” Jack said.

  Leo shook his head. “I don’t want to throw out a lot of what-ifs and maybes.”

  “Do you think you might have the money—or at least some of it—when we were expecting to get it?” Melody asked.

  “In March?” Leo said.

  “February. My birthday’s in February,” Melody said, too panicky over how the conversation was going to be indignant.

  “I’m March,” said Bea.

  “Right.” Leo beat out a little rhythm on the table with his thumb and pinkie. He looked like he was doing a complex equation in his head. They all waited. “How about this?” he finally said. “Give me three months.”

  “To pay us?” Jack said.

  “No, but to have a plan. A solid plan. I don’t think I’m going to need three months, but you know how tough financing is these days.” He directed his last comment at Jack. “You’re a business owner.” Jack nodded in solemn agreement. Bea suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Leo. He really was full of shit. “And figure in the holidays, when it’s tough to pin people down. I think I need three months to come up with options,” he said. “Ideally, more than one option that will have you seeing full payment as soon as possible. I’m not promising February, but I am promising that I’ll work as hard as I’ve ever worked on anything to try and make good.” He looked around the table again. “I’m asking you to trust me.”