My Ex-Life: A Novel

by Stephen McCauley

  Craig pulled up against the curb and stuck his head out, the headband a reminder of the afternoon they’d gone up to the water tower. “Hey, ladies,” he said.

  “Hey, gentleman,” Wallis said in a surprisingly deep and mature way. It seemed like something she’d practiced and made it clear that she and the senior boy she’d dated last year had probably gone all the way.

  This made Craig laugh. “You got that wrong.”

  There was a little more back and forth that Mandy felt completely excluded from. She checked out, mostly because she felt jealous and betrayed, like the time she’d spent with him in the van hadn’t happened. Then, through the fog of laughter and cooing, she distinctly heard him say, “You want a ride, Mandy?”

  Everything around her froze. Michelle and Wallis looked at her with disbelief that she suspected would quickly morph into some version of jealous anger. Lindsay was staring at her in slack-jawed wonder. When Mandy stood, Lindsay said quietly, “What are you doing, Mandy?”

  “What?” Mandy said. “It’s just a ride.”

  But as she opened the door and looked back at the expressions on the faces of the girls, she understood clearly that it was much, much more than that; it was a triumph.

  25

  “This has nothing to do with a lawsuit,” Michael said, “so you don’t have to make the mandatory apologies about not being litigious before attempting to cash in. You have a lease, your landlady is selling, and you’re getting kicked out. It’s a buyout. They’re as common as almond milk in this town. Even more so in New York. Someone there held out for seventeen million a few years back. Don’t get your hopes up, dear; I’m not suggesting you’re in the seven-figure league. San Francisco has good tenants’ rights, but sadly, you’re not in a wheelchair or in your late nineties.”

  “Some days I could pass for ninety, if that helps.”

  “I think you’re looking at low six figures, assuming you let them know you’re willing to play hardball.”

  This was an encouraging sum, already far better than David had been hoping. “Who pays it?” David asked.

  “The landlady, of course. She’s making millions. It’s not as if it cuts into her profit in any meaningful way.”

  The whole idea still struck him as exploitive. After his landlady had been reasonable about the rent for so many years, this was a betrayal. The only way he could justify it was by reminding himself that he wasn’t using the money selfishly.

  “How would you define ‘hardball’?” he asked.

  “You start off asking for an outrageous sum, and then you let them know you’re willing to hold out and torpedo the deal until they make a decent counteroffer. It helps that Soren and the surgeon want to close by the end of the summer. If they back out, the landlady has to go through relisting and having showings and all those unpleasant things she avoided by having the buyer handed to her.”

  That might be true, but what was less helpful was that Julie needed the money as soon as possible. David had no desire to tell Michael why he wanted the buyout or what he planned to do with it, but it was probably best to emphasize his own timeline now, before Michael began investing energy in the project.

  “I should let you know that I want to settle the matter as quickly as we can. Have you contacted Renata yet?”

  “No, but I can’t wait. She’s dropped over a few more times; I act as if we’re old friends, a sort of gaslight approach since I can tell she’s scrambling to figure out who the hell I am and why I seem to know her. It’s great fun. I make her espresso.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. What’s your commission?”

  “I was joking when I mentioned that. I couldn’t take a penny. But if I were the sort of person who could, 30 percent would be standard.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. When can you get the ball rolling?”

  “I have a letter written up, and if you tell me how to use the printer you’ve got here, I’ll send it certified mail to Miss Renata this afternoon.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to just go to the Penthouse and use your own?”

  “I’m trying to make the most of every minute I have here. You were so right about boys and real estate. Last night…”

  David did not want to hear the details of what Michael was doing in a place he still considered home. And in his own bed. Especially since he had nothing to contribute in response. He’d walked past Kenneth’s store a few times, but business seemed to have picked up, and he didn’t want to intrude. The one time he had gone in, there had been a high school student behind the counter, and he ended up buying more dog biscuits and leaving without asking about Kenneth.

  “I hate to cut you off,” David said, “but I have to go to a cocktail party.”

  “How 1950s. I suppose there’s a lot of alcoholism in that town.”

  “It’s a small town on the ocean with a commuter train to the city and a lot of tennis courts and churches. You do the math. Let me know when you hear back.”

  David mentioned none of this to Julie as they walked to Amira’s house. It had been a few days since the woman had dropped off the jewelry. He was going to have to tell her the bad news soon, but if he could tell her something definite about the buyout, it would soften the blow. She’d been dealing with the benefits office at Crawford School about her retirement and had lined up closing out her accounts. There, too, she was ending up with less than she’d been expecting, thanks to penalty fees and taxes.

  They cut through an opening in the privet hedge and walked up the driveway. Although the house had been completed only two years earlier, the yard was lush with the impeccable gardens and mature trees that money can install, full-grown and healthy, in an afternoon.

  As for the house itself, it was a striking two-story glass box, a nice contrast to the heavy Victorian piles and dull, shingled Capes that David had begun to tire of. It was surrounded by soft lights that blended with the early evening glow to create an amber halo around the whole property.

  “Impressive,” he said.

  “It’s meant to be,” Julie said. “But don’t be too seduced by it. There was a beautiful house here from more or less the same period as mine. One day, I came from work and saw it had been extracted, like a bad tooth. If Henry has his way, Richard will do the same to mine, all for the sake of a pool. As if we don’t have enough problems with the water table.”

  “Anything I should know about the guests in advance?” he asked.

  “They’ll probably assume we’re a couple. And by their standards, we are. Most of them brag about sleeping in different rooms and not having had sex since the nineties.”

  The interior of the house was stark. What furniture there was was low and light in color with the crisp lines of starched shirts. There was so much neutral fabric and glass and reflecting metal, all of it seemed to disappear before your eyes the longer you looked. There were more people than David had expected, but the central room was so open and expansive, it still felt airy and underpopulated. Given what he knew of Amira and her relationship to the town, he suspected most had come not out of friendship but to get a look at the décor.

  David grabbed two glasses of wine from a passing tray and handed one to Julie. She refused it and went to hunt down Amira and her conniving husband. She seemed to be dealing with sobriety with uncomplaining stoicism, although he was noticing a little distraction creeping in around the edges. She seemed happiest when he was reading to her in the evening, both of them carried off together to another time and place, which they entered through the window of Queen Lucia. They were more than halfway through the book and already debating what occurred in the next volume.

  One of the most striking aspects of the gathered multitudes was that they’d parted, like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, into two groups. In this case, segregated along strict gender lines, all of the men along one side of the room, the women off to the other. It could have been a dance at a junior high, minus the expectations of hookups and the fears of pregna
ncy. The males were typical of the suburbanites David had grown up among—men who’d lost touch with their bodies a decade earlier, allowed themselves to be dressed by their wives, and grudgingly accepted being infantilized by spouses and children. The women’s efforts at keeping themselves fit and groomed were clearly aimed at each other since they’d become as invisible to the men as the men were to them.

  As he was surveying the crowd, trying to decide which side of the room to go to, he was approached by two smiling women who were probably in their early fifties. (Since turning fifty himself, years earlier, David had acquired mysteriously accurate abilities to evaluate the ages of others.) They introduced themselves as Maureen and Sheila. When David asked for clarification about who was who, one of them said, “Let’s not go there. You won’t remember anyway.”

  Good point. They were similar in terms of height (nondescript) and weight (healthily robust) and a slight blotchiness of complexion that one often saw in seaside communities where people tended to spend too much time sitting in the sun at midday and drinking wine at night. Michael’s guess had hit the mark precisely. They were both beautiful women who radiated the athletic, alcoholic glamour of lady golfers. Their style of declining beauty, with its aura of decay, was as authentic as that of an eighteen-year-old supermodel, but, like the decaying beauty of Detroit, a good deal less marketable.

  They assured David they knew all about him as an ex while at the same time asking pointed questions about how he got along with Julie’s husband, an obvious attempt to sniff out the current status of his relationship with Julie. He deflected by asking them about themselves, clearly what they most wanted to discuss anyway.

  They’d been friends since college. One was married and had lived in Beauport for decades, the other was recently widowed and had moved here to be closer to her old friend.

  “Which is your husband?” he asked the married one.

  She waved a hand toward the other side of the room and said, “He’s over there. Take your pick. They’re all pretty much the same. Sheila and I are much closer than me and whatshisname. Since men and women can marry and now gay couples, I wish they’d legalize friendship unions.”

  This would solve a lot of problems, he agreed, thinking that Julie had been right: in this crowd, their relationship was standard fare.

  Maureen and Sheila had an established routine of quips and mild insults, one more dominant, the other the more frequent butt of jokes. All couples start off as Romeo and Juliet and end up as Laurel and Hardy.

  When he asked them how they knew Amira, the married one said, “Everyone knows Amira. Naturally, she has no idea who we are.”

  “We’re not male,” the other said. “She can’t abide women.”

  “And having been friends with each other for thirty years, we sympathize.”

  “Don’t listen to her, David. Her misogyny goes back to her horrible mother.”

  “It’s true,” the other said. “My mother was awful. A real … oh, what’s that word? The terrible one that begins with a ‘C’?”

  “Catholic?” David asked.

  The two were delighted by this comeback (which also turned out to be true) and lapsed into companionable laughter. He could tell they would incorporate the line into their routine, probably as a bit they’d work out before the evening was over. They had an air of shared secrets about misguided drunken episodes from their past that probably counted as their fondest memories.

  Once it was clear they’d run through everything they could possibly talk about, David excused himself and went to find Julie. He was distracted by the sight of the bartender, one of those people who is so good-looking he has an almost alien appearance that’s as disconcerting as it is irresistible. David enjoyed the safety of flirting with this sort of person. The difference in age and looks was so great, there was no question of being taken seriously. It was like the time he and Michael had gone to an open house for a six-million-dollar apartment: it was so obvious they were out of their depth, no one resented them for their voyeurism.

  Guthrie (naturally he couldn’t have a simple name like “Bob”) did him the kindness of responding with patient indulgence. While making a comment about the heat that might be interpreted as a crass double entendre, he felt the presence of someone behind him, and turned to see Kenneth from the kitchen store. He had his arms folded across his chest and a wineglass in one hand. In this light, and after gazing at Guthrie for five minutes, Kenneth’s relatively normal good looks were a visual relief. He seemed spectacularly accessible and, relative to everyone else there, practically a friend.

  “Greetings,” David said. “I’m the almost-uncle of Mandy, who—”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know who you are. I hope I’m not interrupting a meaningful conversation.”

  “We were discussing vernal ponds,” David said.

  “Oh? I was under the impression you were discussing your interest in unobtainable men.”

  “Now, now. Guthrie and I are old buddies from high school.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t admit to hanging around high schools.” He paused, sipped, and suggested David follow him to the rooftop deck. “There are beautiful views and fewer distractions.” With quiet and surprising sincerity, he added, “I’d love to show you.”

  David was flattered by this comment as one is always flattered by a show of kindness from an otherwise impossible person. He told Kenneth he’d noticed in walking past his store that it was often crowded. “I gather business has picked up.”

  “In sheer numbers of people, yes. Unfortunately, everyone is looking for a bargain. They’re all Airbnb-ers.”

  “I see.”

  Kenneth was dressed in the same polo shirt and shorts outfit he’d been wearing in the store that first day they’d met, with the same set of keys dangling from a lanyard around his neck. As David followed him up a glass staircase to the roof, he enjoyed watching Kenneth’s ascent, which, with its calculated rolling gait, seemed to have been learned from Marilyn Monroe.

  The deck was almost the size of the footprint of the house and had unobstructed views of the harbor in one direction and the hills above town in the other. It was furnished with the stark, refined taste of the rooms below, with one enormous chaise longue in a corner, adding an Alice in Wonderland note of whimsy. Although Julie’s house was right next door, the breeze here felt cooler, and the air smelled fresher.

  There was a small group of people on the far side of the deck, sitting on an austere wooden bench and smoking cigarettes. One woman was brushing back her hair with her hand as she clasped the cigarette between two fingers and tilted her head to exhale. The gesture was rooted in 1930s notions of allure, but in the context of current attitudes toward cigarettes, it made her look slightly demented. It was hard to pull off these gestures since cigarettes had become more commonly associated with chemotherapy than with Lauren Bacall.

  “Is your husband here tonight?” David asked.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you mentioned a husband when I met you in the store.”

  “I did, but only because I wanted to let you know I’m gay.”

  A simple hello would have been sufficient, David didn’t say. “I thought you were warning me off.”

  “I was hoping to encourage you.”

  David was charmed by the lack of guile. “I like that you cut to the chase.”

  “Taking age into consideration, I thought it was best.”

  “You’re hardly old,” David said.

  “I was referring to your age, not mine.”

  David laughed at this, and then gazed at him with what he hoped was a serious, assertive look. “You don’t have to work quite so hard with me, Kenneth. You have my full attention already.” He moved a little closer to him, so their arms were brushing. The sky was heavy, and the breeze was picking up. A line of dark clouds was blowing in. “How well do you know Amira?” he asked.

  “She comes into my store and buys a lot of thi
ngs she probably never uses or eats.”

  David pointed at Julie’s house, off to their right and looking, from this vantage point, like the unfortunately plain sister of a younger beauty. “Has she ever said anything to you about wanting to buy Julie’s house?”

  “I don’t believe most of what she says, which makes her more entertaining.”

  From this, David gathered she’d discussed the issue with him, which probably meant she’d spread the word around town.

  “You should invite me out one night,” Kenneth said.

  “I’m considering it,” he said, “but I’m risk averse. I want to be sure you’ll accept.”

  “It would depend on what you propose.”

  “How about a movie? Julie told me there’s an eccentric movie theater in Hammond with sofas and end tables that shows subtitled foreign films.”

  “I have lowbrow tastes,” Kenneth said. “In case that wasn’t obvious. I consider reading and watching a movie two different and incompatible activities.”

  “A long beach walk?”

  “I don’t like sand.”

  “I don’t either, now that you mention it. On top of that, it looks like it’s going to start raining soon. We seem to be out of luck.”

  The sky looked increasingly dark and threatening and the little group of smokers had made their way down the dramatic staircase.

  “I’m a good cook,” Kenneth said. “I could invite you for dinner.”

  “That’s kind,” David said. “But I’m trying to lose weight.”

  “I’ve noticed. And don’t worry, I didn’t say there’d actually be food.”

  Without the preliminary warning of stray drops, it began to pour.

  26

  “What are the odds,” Craig said, “that the story of me picking you up is going to spread through your school like an oil spill?”