Jonathan Dee - Palladio

And those trips to New York the past couple of weeks, those were trips to see Molly. That one I figured out for myself. He had Dex’s address from Colette, he told me, so he just concealed himself in a restaurant across the street until he knew Molly was alone and then called on his cell phone. They went out for coffee, they went out to eat, and he gave her his pitch. Finally she agreed to leave her old life behind.

I never really got a straight answer as to how old Dex took it when she told him. I know Mal came along, which was standup of him, I have to admit — prudent, too, since Dex did always strike me as a guy with a temper. You wouldn’t send Molly alone on an errand like that.

* * *

SAW JEAN-CLAUDE today. He was sitting on the top step of the third-floor landing, both arms around his knees as if he were cold, drinking from a huge bottle of water. Behind him I could hear the roar of the vacuum cleaner; Rose had grown tired of waiting and had kicked him out of his room in order to clean it.

I sat beside him for a moment. I didn’t have anywhere else I needed to be. The sunlight on the stairs and the modulating whine of the vacuum cleaner being pushed repeatedly under the bed seemed as familiar, for a moment, as boyhood, as home. I turned to Jean-Claude; he was just staring at the scrollwork on the banister beside him. I nodded toward the water bottle.

So, I said. How’s that fridge working out for you?

He smiled at me, but I swear to God it was the smile you give to someone when for the life of you you can’t remember who they are.

* * *

A FULL WEEK now since her arrival and Molly, as far as I know, still has not made an appearance downstairs. Mal says she’s self-conscious because she thinks of the place as an office, and she’s the only one there with no work to do, no job to perform. Maybe so. It occurs to me, as it may not occur to Mal, that she’s avoiding me, that she’s embarrassed by this whole turn of events and understands that it may stir up certain feelings in me. She’d get why I might even be angry.

Of course I have no reason to assume Mal’s lying, either, when he reports that Molly is satisfied that she and I are all square now, just pals with a history. Fantasizing about how she’s avoiding me just takes me further into the vortex of the completely pathetic. At least I’m able to hide it from everyone, how humiliated I feel, how obscure are the sources of that humiliation: there are these two people I love, and now they love each other. A real disaster, right? It’s stupid. I’ll get over it.

* * *

A LITTLE SOMETHING to take my mind off it today, though not in a particularly pleasant way. We have more than half a million dollars committed to Palladio by an outfit called Virtech, out in Tucson; they’re trying to develop various sorts of virtual reality technology cheap enough for home consumers, and at this point they’re not much more than a gigantic R&D department. But they’re just two or three years away, from what we’re told, and if they hit first, they’re going to hit big. So today their CEO calls from out of nowhere, sounding very nervous. It turns out he just got back from some investors’ meeting at which a vocal minority, evidently not big fans of ours, wanted to know why these guys have ceded so much of their budget to their ad agency, when they don’t even have anything to advertise.

So why was he calling, Mal wanted to know. We were sitting in his office. He has a picture of her on his desk now, a picture taken one flight upstairs, which strikes me as ridiculous and boyish though of course I’d never say anything.

Because he wants to know what to say to the guy in response.

Jesus Christ. These high tech operations. The CEO is probably like twenty-four, right? Where are they again — Phoenix?

Tucson.

Can you fly out there and calm them down?

I frowned. Let’s wait and see, I said. I’ll go if it becomes necessary.

Well, let’s not wait too long. Mal rubbed his neck; he’s developed a sunburn there from spending so much time in the car. Eighty-six degrees yesterday. Spring is just about over.

* * *

A NOTE ON my desk this morning when I arrived at five of nine. Can I talk with you? I’m too nervous to run into you in the hall where there might be other people around. I don’t know how much you’ve told anyone and I don’t want to put you in a bad position. I’ll be in the orchard tomorrow morning at ten. On that bench where we talked before.

I folded it into my pocket and went back out to Tasha’s doorway. Was anyone in my office this morning? I said.

Tasha had the tiniest oscillating fan I’ve ever seen, and she was trying to get it to work but it kept tipping over. Present from my father, she said. They just came back from Japan. Anyway, no, I haven’t seen anyone, but I just got here about ten minutes ago. Why?

I turned and went back to my office, shutting the door behind me, bewildering her, I’m sure. I don’t know why Molly feels it has to wait until tomorrow; maybe she and Mal have plans today. Of course, I can’t assume that she’s keeping this meeting a secret from him either. Why would she?

If she starts to apologize to me over this I may lose it. But I don’t particularly want her to treat it like it’s no big deal either. I don’t know what I want. So I’ll go see what she wants.

ELAINE ASKED ME last night if I’m depressed about something. I should say that Elaine’s excellence as a girlfriend has its source in her emotional self-sufficiency. If I am upset, she doesn’t take that personally, she doesn’t assume that she must somehow be either the reason or the solution for it. Her independence lets her be utterly empathetic. She asked me this, as we sat having Brunswick stew for dinner at the big butcher-block table in the pantry (where the house staff used to eat, a century ago; it’s less stuffy than the dining room), with respectful concern — not that conspicuous overconcern that’s meant to hide the self-interest at its root.

I slept about three hours last night.

Elaine is very smart. I’m always drawn to these brilliant women, women I can look up to. (Rebecca was like that too.) She reads a lot, and I’m always finding these strange highbrow books beside my bed as if some set designer had snuck in there to help me look more intellectually audacious in my spare hours than I really am. She has a thin, slightly adenoidal voice, and a hyper-articulate manner — actually, manner is the wrong word there: she’s just very articulate — that she hedges with an appealing sort of fondness for self-deprecation. I sometimes wonder how she sounds when she’s talking to herself, if that makes any sense. Her latest kick is the weight room: a month or two ago, mostly at her behest, I filled one of the unused basement storage rooms with a few machines, a Gravitron, a StairMaster, a treadmill. She comes up to the room after dinner to change and she takes the back stairs to the basement. She wears a kind of halter top like a jogging bra, and a pair of Lycra bicycle pants which make her ass, not exactly small even under the best of circumstances, look enormous. No one sees her but me, usually; still, I love it that she doesn’t care.

I don’t know what keeps us together, really. We never have any problems. We’ve never talked about getting married. Which is fine with me, and with her too I’m sure. Not every relationship has to be about the rest of your life.

We should go away somewhere, is what I said to her at dinner. We should take a vacation together, travel somewhere. I’m tired of our always being here in the house.

It was an unassailable suggestion, strange only because it was coming from me, and so she couldn’t exactly say no to it. Sure, she said, let’s do that; keeping it, considerately, on that vague hypothetical plane, knowing it would probably stay there. She looked at me when she said it. I hadn’t been looking at her.