Jonathan Dee - Palladio

“Do it,” Roman said.

“Come on. We have more than we need.”

“Do it.”

“It won’t work. It can’t work. Can you really picture yourself flipping through Newsweek and coming across this?”

“It’ll work, god damn it. All of it will work. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

They stayed late at the office, getting ready for the pitch; Rebecca was working long hours those days too. John more or less took it for granted that no one would be home in the evening when he returned. The apartment looked half-decorated and impersonal. John didn’t cook at all; sometimes he would order Chinese food and save some for her, but more often he would just have his dinner delivered at work. With a sense of romantic diligence they hadn’t felt since the early days of their relationship, they met each other for long lunches at elegant restaurants, L’Espinasse, Arcadia, and they never paid for a thing.

The answering machine blinked with unanswered calls, from their parents, from alumni associations, from investment firms, and then finally, one evening before John, untucking his shirt as he walked in the door, had even turned the lights on, from Osbourne.

He was in Manhattan; he was free for lunch the next day. He wondered if John had had time to consider his proposal. He was sorry to bother him at home like this, but considered that a call at the office might have caused some awkwardness.

John was already asleep by the time Rebecca came home; but struggling mightily he raised himself on his elbows and said, “Mal Osbourne called today. I said I’d meet him for lunch tomorrow.”

Rebecca, her back to him, made no hitch in her motions to betray that she had heard. In the urban half-darkness to which his eyes were accustomed, he watched while she stood in front of her closet and slowly undressed. She looked like someone else, like a stranger with whom he wanted to have an affair.

He told Roman the next morning that he had a dentist’s appointment.

Osbourne sat at a banquette at La Réserve, staring into space, his back to the mirrored wall. He looked rather put out — nostrils flared, fingers tapping — just as if John were late for this appointment, when in fact he was five minutes early. When he sat down, Osbourne brightened somewhat, but only for a few seconds. He wore an expensive-looking gray suit, and his hair was now cut very short, in the fashionable Caesar style.

The waiter poured John a glass of mineral water from the bottle that sat on the table. Osbourne rested his chin on his hands, stared at John in the fully intent yet charmless way a surgeon might have stared at him, and said nothing. John, who was nervous enough anyway — he could never seem to get the wardrobe right with Osbourne; he wore a simple black sweater today, with no jacket or tie — became flustered and forgot the whole script by which he had intended to steer this meeting.

“How have you been, sir?” he said finally.

“Busy.” He smiled perfunctorily. “So have you come here to accept my offer?”

John laughed. “Well, not exactly, sir, no.” Osbourne’s gaze did not waver. “There are … there are a lot of variables. I have to admit I’m intrigued by all you have to say about what you want to do. But it’s a risk. I have — I have commitments here.”

Osbourne sat back into the banquette and began nodding sagely, as if he had heard what he was listening for.

“And if I were on my own, if I were a younger man, with no one else’s wishes to consider—”

Osbourne held up his hand. “Listen, before I forget,” he said, “how much money do you make now?”

John reddened, but he saw no reason for squeamishness. “Seventy-five thousand,” he said.

“I can match that. If there’s a bonus involved, I don’t know about that, but I can keep paying you that salary.”

“For how long, though? I mean, forgive me for—”

“I have no idea for how long,” Osbourne said, in a friendly manner. “The point is, the risk is minimized in that sense. And if we should fail, I know you could come back to New York with your book and get another job in a day, if that’s what you wanted to happen.”

The waiter, who had been not there, was suddenly and discreetly there; but Osbourne waved him away. Only John’s menu was open.

“Have you ever been down to Charlottesville?” Osbourne went on.

“Several times. I had a cousin who went to UVA.”

“Then you know what a beautiful place it is. You might not know that the housing market is also very reasonable down there. I don’t have any idea what your wife earns or how much you might have saved but it might even prove feasible to hold on to your place in Brooklyn, as a kind of hedge, if that’s what you … So you didn’t want to go to UVA yourself then?”

John shook his head.

“You went all the way to California, as I recall? Wanted to get away, was that it?”

John swallowed. He couldn’t remember when he might have told Osbourne this about himself. “Yes, sir, I suppose so.”

Osbourne, this time, was doing nothing to discourage John’s addressing him as “sir”; possibly he just didn’t hear it. “And now you’d like to go back?”

“Well, Virginia isn’t really my home, but in a way yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“Fascinating.” Osbourne shook his head abruptly. “Anyway, the financial risk, to you at least, seems pretty minimal. What does your wife do?”

“Girlfriend. She’s a trusts and estates lawyer.”

“Well, they’ve got rich people down in Charlottesville, too, you know. Lawyers, too. Law firms even.”

John finished his water; he was starving, but didn’t want even to start in on the bread until Osbourne relaxed the pace of his interrogation a bit. “She has a job here she likes, and she feels she’s put a number of years into it, toward partnership, years that I guess she would feel were wasted if she quit.”

Osbourne nodded again. “She doesn’t want to start her life over again.”

“Well, maybe just not in Virginia,” John said, laughing.

“And what about you?”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, we’ve been here awhile and I haven’t heard anything about you, about what you might want. So how about it? Do you want to start over again?”

Osbourne’s back was to the mirrored wall, and, as if by some trick, John, sitting across from him, could see simultaneously both his face and the back of his head, like the barmaid in Manet’s Folies Bergère . The restaurant was full, and where silence might have been there was the gentle ring of silverware and the low burble of unfamiliar voices.

“Yes,” John said. He was surprising himself now. “I do want to start again.”

“Because I’ll tell you what it sounds like to me. If you don’t mind my interpreting your personal life. I’m not unmindful of the risks for you here. But it seems to me that, for your girlfriend, the real fear is not that our idea will fail. It’s that we’ll succeed.”

The waiter appeared again, his face betraying nothing that would indicate he had been there before.

“Actually, I’m starving,” Osbourne said. “John, do you like cassoulet? They do a fine one here.”

“I’ve never had it,” John said.

Osbourne raised his eyebrows. “Well, I can tell you you’re never going to get a decent one in Charlottesville, so I’d suggest you try it now.”

“All right,” John said.

While they were waiting for their lunch, Osbourne suddenly said, “Listen, while we’re in this territory, let me ask you another personal question: is that all right?”

John nodded.

“How long have you and — I’m sorry, what is her name?”

“Rebecca Sanders.”