Part 27 (1/2)

”It just has so much s.p.a.ce, so much potential,” Melissa said. ”It's like a ripe tomato waiting to be cut. Oh G.o.d, I can hardly stand knowing that house is out there.”

When Truman Capote was alive he had designed his Long Island home himself. He told Architectural Digest that his design principle was ”unfinished” and designers were a ”bore.”

Melinda sipped her drink. ”Though, I suppose it's all right. Right now, I'm doing Woody Allen's apartment. This is his third redo in ten years. It's the most exotic challenge. He says he wants this apartment to reflect his current self-image.”

I figured that was a lie as well but was proved wrong when a few months later, Melinda got sick with meningitis and called me to take over the job, with the promise that I give her 15 percent of my earnings. I became even more convinced when I stood on the terrace of Woody Allen's New York City penthouse, surrounded by a garden of lilies next to a small pond. I asked him whether he wanted his apartment to feel lived in, and he said, ”Yes, of course!”

”By whom?” I asked.

”By me!” he said.

”A good place to start,” I said.

”Or, well, by Kierkegaard,” he added.

”All right.”

”Or maybe Kokoschka.”

I wrote them all down in my notebook.

”I don't know,” he said, sitting down. ”I like that question. I'll have to think about it.”

”Jack is late,” Orrin said, looking at his watch. ”I guess everyone in this town is just late, late, late.”

”That's because the f.u.c.king houses in Greenwich are too far apart!” Adora cried. ”That's why I never trick-or-treated here when I was a kid.”

Barbara Walters's third cousin was by the water fountain explaining the difference between Sunni and s.h.i.+te over the mas.h.i.+ng of shrimp in our mouths, the African parrot was down the hall shouting, ”h.e.l.lo, banana!” There was the faint cry of the maid in the kitchen yelling on the phone, and the chitter-chatterings about the advantages of winter weddings-silky hair, red cheeks, frosted windows.

”You might even consider sewing seal fur into the bodice of your dress,” one of Adora's friends told her.

We were on a red couch that cost the same as a second mortgage for a house (not as big as this), but in a house (as big as this) there was too much s.p.a.ce for everything. The distance between Mondrian paintings was too vast. The house was like a museum in transition. The lamps were chrome, but the wood was dark mahogany; the pool was half-indoors, half-outdoors. The mirrors were kept too high up on the walls so n.o.body could see their own reflection, though Orrin was so handsome and Adora was so beautiful with blond curls down her back, this seemed like a nice thing to do for the guests since the last thing anybody wanted to be in this house was their actual self.

The more Orrin's friends talked, the less I understood: Williams is the new Harvard and has always been the new Harvard; being Indian is very fas.h.i.+onable right now.

”Has my mother arrived?” I asked Adora.

”My father just called,” Adora said. ”They will be late as well. He said to start without them.”

”Start what exactly?” Orrin asked.

”The general partying, I suppose,” I said.

”But the partying has started,” Orrin said. We looked around at the room, the guests barely moving, barely talking, the room looking more like a painting of a party.

”Begin!” I shouted so loud, a woman in purple cheetah print spilled her drink. ”Everybody, please begin amicably socializing!”

To be honest, by that point, I was a little drunk.

The room laughed.

”I love you,” Adora said, putting her arm around me. This meant she was drunk too.

What we could not see: in the kitchen, the maid put down the plastic ladle on the hot stove and called her boyfriend. She walked into the pantry. She cried on the granite tiles and stared at the endless variations of jarred Italian imports, roasted red peppers and a rare olive oil, while she tried to tell her boyfriend she didn't want to be with him anymore.

I was in the dining room and my mouth was hot and burning with horseradish when the front door opened. I could feel the pool on my skin, like a hotel pool warm and sweaty like a baby, the humidity emanating to all the rooms, clinging to the sweat on my skin. I told my clients never to build pools inside their homes, water seeks water, and you, I would say, are 70 percent water.

A brown-haired man stood tall in the frame, snow drifted inward, and he hung his black trench coat on the rack. He brushed the snow off his Florsheim shoes.

”Jack's here!” Adora screamed. She interlaced her arm with his and walked toward us.

”This is Jack,” Adora said to me, like she was introducing me to the president of the United States.

He stuck out his hand. I put my hair behind my ear.

”Emily,” Adora said to me, ”our friend is introducing himself to you.”

”h.e.l.lo,” I finally said.

Mr. Basketball or Jonathan or Jack shook my hand, our matching eyes still wild with surprise.

”Well, what was that?” Adora said, looking at the two of us, standing in the doorway.

Jonathan watched me from the bar, as if to say, so this is Emily: Emily is by the bar. Emily obviously doesn't know anybody here. Not even the cousins, and you should always always know the cousins!

And I watched him. Jonathan's hair was shorter now, and his skin was wrinkled at the forehead. He was thirty-five, and different again, except for his eyes. ”Eyes can never wrinkle and are eternal in this way,” my eye doctor once told me too close to my face.

Jonathan filled my gla.s.s two times in an hour and when he opened the vodka bottle to pour a third, it occurred to me that he had always liked to pour my drinks. It occurred to me his wife was not there.

”Who is this guy?” Kevin whispered in my ear.

”An old friend,” I said, shrugging Kevin's breath off me.

The third time Jonathan tried to pour me a drink, Kevin covered my gla.s.s with his hands. He took the vodka out of Jonathan's, and I took it out of Kevin's. ”I'll just pour myself a gla.s.s.”

At dinner, everything was formal. We were given a.s.signed seats and I was between Kevin and a man named Harry. Adora thought Harry and I could make a great couple someday, if we only set aside our major differences, and Kevin. Adora was sitting down, her name written out in purple cursive at the head of the table, where she was proud and long-haired like a purebred, nibbling on coleslaw vinaigrette, with fresh lime juice, Harry told me as he squeezed some onto my plate. Harry was staring at me. Adora was running her hand on Orrin's leg underneath the table. Orrin was not even smiling. Jonathan was asking me if I would like to pa.s.s him the bread basket as though it were an option to deny someone the bread basket.

”Hey hey, a toast to Orrin and Adora!” Harry said. ”May their marriage be a long and loving one!”

I was jealous that Adora was the kind of woman who could spread b.u.t.ter smoothly and mine ripped the bread. I was angry that Jonathan had come back as Jack without telling me, that he had started to part his hair down the middle of his head, and shaved his beard so close to the skin his chin s.h.i.+ned like some dope on a magazine we would have made fun of once. Jonathan started telling a story about his old law professor and everybody laughed, and I was certain it had become impossible to breathe at the table, so I went to the bathroom.

When I returned, Harry informed me that he was an arborist by trade.

”My campaign lately has been shallow roots,” he said.