Jonathan Dee - The Privileges

After dinner the kids disappeared downstairs and Adam brought four glasses filled with whiskey out onto the patio, where Conrad was pointing out various New York landmarks, not always correctly, to his wife. The moon hung over the park and the blue-lit planetarium, low enough to be scored every few minutes by the silhouette of a plane. “This is quite something,” Conrad said. “Who knew there was such good money in being a master of the universe?”

Paige sniffed her glass, made a face, and put it down on the table. “Maybe it’s not too late for you,” she said, in a kind of musical voice intended to suggest she was teasing. “Maybe you could still get into the family business.”

“I would,” Conrad said, “if I could even figure out what the hell it is he does.”

“Not a problem,” Adam said. “Always room for you, Fredo.”

They all laughed, Paige a little less heartily, because she didn’t know who Fredo was. In an effort to keep the conversation from escaping her completely, she said, “You know who would totally lose it over this apartment, Con? Tracy.”

Conrad nodded vigorously as if he’d been thinking the same thing. “Who’s Tracy?” Cynthia asked. “Tracy Cepeda is our show’s chief location scout,” Conrad said. “She would collapse if she saw this place. She’d offer you a mint to shoot in here. Even though we’d probably need to CGI some sand and palm trees out these windows.”

Adam felt his cell phone vibrate; he ignored it. It was hard for your eye not to be drawn to Paige because she was, in a way that was compelling without being at all sexual, so flawless. When she opened her mouth she became Paige but when she was silent, and still, there were no idiosyncracies in her face at all. Adam knew from Conrad that she had started out as an actress but did not like to talk about how badly that had gone.

“You better be careful he doesn’t write you all into the show,” Paige said, elbowing him. Conrad winced. “Please,” he said. “But it’s true that this place looks like a set. And so do the people in it. I mean, no joke, we spend weeks in casting trying to find kids who look exactly like April and Jonas. Adam, this is bourbon? What kind is it?”

“It’s rye, actually.”

“Wow,” Conrad said. He held up his empty glass and stared into it.

“Oh, Connie, you’ll have beautiful children too,” Cynthia said. “Provided Paige can find a way to reproduce without you, that is. What is that called again? Reproduction without sex? Paige, what’s the word I’m looking for?” Adam shot her a look intended to signal that she was close to the borderline.

“If you’re ever hard up for money, just fly the family to LA, and both kids will have agents before you’re out of baggage claim,” Conrad said. “Parthenogenesis, by the way, is what it’s called. Seriously, though, I can’t quite believe I’m related to them.” He stared at Adam. “You either,” he said, swiping at his older brother’s stomach. “Seriously, what kind of Faustian shit is going on around here? You literally do not look a day older than you did in college. It’s annoying as hell. What is the secret?”

Adam smiled. “Commitment, mon frère,” he said. “Commitment to the body. You should try it.”

“Commitment my ass. You’re a fucking vampire.”

The cell phone buzzed in Adam’s pocket. The incoming number was Devon’s, which was not something that was supposed to happen. “Excuse me a second?” he said, and went inside.

The three of them stood silently in front of the moon for a while, arms crossed on the patio railing. Conrad started. “Jesus, I just almost dropped my glass over the side,” he said. “Parthenogenesis. There, I can still say it. Cyn, where’s the bathroom?”

“There’s one off the kitchen,” she said, “and one just to the right of the front door as you came in.”

When he was gone, Paige and Cynthia exchanged a quick and awkward smile, and then went back to gazing over the railing, into the pocket of darkness that was Central Park.

“I’m sorry I said that about having children,” Cynthia said. “I mean, it’s really none of my business. I was just giving him shit. We’ve known each other forever.”

Paige tipped her head to indicate it was nothing. “You have a beautiful family,” she said. It was just one of those polite expressions people used when they couldn’t, or didn’t want to, come up with anything else to say; but for some reason it got to Cynthia this time. She felt a little sting at the corners of her eyes.

“Yeah, well,” she said, trying to stop herself but failing, “that’s what people start saying to you when you get a little older yourself. You have a beautiful family. It’s like, yeah, we can tell you were hot once. You notice I don’t get any of those remarks about how I don’t look any different than I did twenty years ago.”

Paige, for once, looked quite thoughtful.

“Time is different for us,” she said.

Adam walked back onto the patio, stuffing his cell phone in his pocket. He looked back and forth between the two women. “What?” he said.

It was an old story, how time favored men over women, but in Adam’s case, Cynthia thought, it was just as Conrad had said: he wasn’t growing more distinguished as he aged — it was more like he wasn’t aging at all. His waist size hadn’t changed since they got married, which was freaky but at least explicable, considering what a fanatic he was about it. But he wouldn’t even have known how to do anything to his face except wash it and shave it and yet that looked the same as it always had too. It wasn’t the first time someone else had confirmed it for her. True, he didn’t have too many vices, unless working out too hard counted as a vice, which she thought it probably did. He spent too much time in the office, he didn’t sleep enough, but whatever toll all this might have been exacting, none of it showed in his face. And if you pointed this out to him, he didn’t even understand what you were talking about.

She couldn’t compete with that. She still went to the gym three or four times a week, but she had long since come to consider it a chore and, in an effort to at least make it diverting, had gone through fickle infatuations with every bit of technology in there, every new fad and philosophy. The two of them belonged to different gyms — she would never have dreamed of working out with him, he was far too humorless about it. Still, like him, she was interested in hanging onto her physical prime for as long as possible — indefinitely, really. Together they did quite a good job of it. And there was one respect in which Cynthia — though she’d never discussed it with him — was prepared to go further in this effort than he was. They had three friends who’d had work done already; she told Adam about the first two, and then when Marietta had her eyelids and neck done Cynthia had said nothing and waited to see if he’d notice, which he never did. It wasn’t like Marietta’s tits had gotten bigger or something; she was only confirming Adam’s sense of what she was supposed to look like anyway. Aging would have been more conspicuous. Cynthia still looked fantastic — everyone said so, and she knew they were serious — but it was so hard to look at yourself with fresh eyes. That was the insidious thing about time and its effects: how incremental they were. So far, so good, was her thought, but whenever the moment came, there was no resource she wouldn’t call upon.

In the cold morning overcast, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and a lightweight ski hat and a pair of fingerless gloves, Adam put his palms flat against the façade of his building and pushed, until the tightness left his calves. He shifted his hips forward and slowly lowered one heel to the sidewalk, then the other, and when his Achilles tendons felt loose as well, he was good to go. He bounced on his toes a couple of times, exhaled once forcefully through his mouth as if preparing for an entrance onstage, put one finger to his watch, and started running.