Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“No, no!” Joe put his hand up, rising from his chair. “You’re being very insulting. Making me out to look like a miser. I’m concerned. I don’t want you under any pressures you can’t handle.”

He had been brusque in his manner, Eric had to admit. Joe’s dignity was important to him, even more important than his money. Eric slowed the pace of his emotions, sighing, and said evenly, “I’m grateful you’re giving me the time off. That’s the important part. I can borrow the money from Nina’s parents or mine.”

“What about your pension fund?” Joe said with abrupt happiness — delighted at his discovery of an out for both of them. “Why don’t you borrow from that?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. I’ll do that. Anyway, I’d like to clear out of here this morning.”

Before Eric could depart, Joe repeated his assertion that he valued Eric and would miss his help in the firm. Joe insisted on a solemn good-bye, clasping Eric’s hand in both of his own while he looked earnestly into Eric’s eyes: “You’re more than a partner to me, you know that, Eric. Take care of yourself.”

“Thanks, Joe. I’ll be back in six weeks and everything will be kosher.”

Eric went out to the trading room and told Sammy. “What!” Sammy said with disgust. He listened to Eric’s explanation with a stare, his thin lips disappearing altogether into a tight pout. When Eric finished, Sammy nodded, said, “Bye,” and turned his back, hitting keys on his terminal.

“Come on, Sammy. Don’t be like that.”

“You’re going away for six weeks — it’s no big deal. Good-bye.”

Eric packed up various investment surveys and annual reports to read in Maine and said his farewells to Irene and the other secretaries. Sammy continued to ignore him. Irene walked Eric to the door, hugged him, and said, her voice trembling, “You’re a sweet man.”

Her emotion gave Eric the creeps, made him feel he would never see any of them again, or, worse, that Irene believed Luke really was a burden that would cripple Eric. Eric opened the door and looked back. “Bye, Sammy!”

For a moment there was no response. Then Sammy, without turning around, called out, “Call in every week. I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“Okay.” That made Eric feel better about leaving. It was hot outside, but not humid. New York glowed from the light: peopled by bright-colored clothes; street corners flagged by the umbrellas of vendors; brokers carrying jackets in their wake, dappling the gray buildings with the pinks and blues and yellows of their Brooks shirts; the sallow or black faces of the service workers winked past Eric, and the tanned or burned faces of the middle class glanced curiously at his load of investment books. Eric was suddenly apart from them, free from their concerns. With his job on hold, Eric’s dismay at the future shriveled in the sun. He felt excited at the struggle ahead of him, his hands unbound, ready to fight.

Eric hailed a cab and endured the drive impatiently, irritated by what he thought were inept choices by the driver. He dashed into the lobby, got into the elevator, and hopped from one foot to the other at its slow ascent. When the doors opened, he moved out blindly and bumped into Luke’s baby carriage.

“Eric!” Nina said. She looked wan, but peaceful. He had been so distant from her emotionally that her appearance, her drained look, astonished him.

“I got six weeks off. We’ll go to your parents’ place in Maine.”

She stared at him. Not unhappily. Dully.

“Okay?” he asked, and kissed her.

She didn’t move her lips. “Okay,” she said, nodding. “That’s a good idea.”

“The sea air. Maybe that’ll help Luke,” Eric said.

“Maybe,” she said, nodding more vigorously.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she answered, and put her arms around him. She squeezed herself to him and put her head against his chest.

“We’re gonna be okay,” he promised.

DIANE AND PETER entered brian Stoppard’s Park Avenue apartment at five minutes after eight. Diane was astonished that the door was opened by a uniformed man and woman who took their Burberrys and umbrellas and asked if they wanted a cocktail. Astonished because the presence of servants implied a big, formal dinner — after all, Stoppard had invited Diane offhandedly, no embossed card in the mail, just a casual aside at the office: “We’re having some people over for dinner next Saturday, including the unhappy Gedhorn trio. Can you and Peter come?” The Gedhorn suit, insulation manufacturers whose former employees were suing over unhealthy working conditions, had been Diane’s primary assignment for a year, assisting Stoppard on the brief; thus she had assumed dinner would be the two Gedhorn senior vice-presidents and the in-house counsel. And she knew from Betty Winters that she and her husband, Tony, were invited, presumably because Tony, being a playwright and screenwriter, knew Stoppard’s wife, novelist Paula Kramer. Such a disparate combination of people would make Diane and Peter ideal guests, since Diane could chat up the Gedhorn trio, see a friendly face in Betty, while Peter, Tony, and Paula discussed show business.

But this was a much bigger event. At least twenty people were already in the living room. Stoppard should have warned her. Betty definitely should have warned her. Diane looked at the women’s clothes and instantly felt inadequate in her lawyer outfit, worn to soothe the Gedhorn clients. She was in a gray skirt, a white blouse with ruffles at the collar, and a blue blazer. Diane cursed herself for allotting no time to shop since Byron’s birth.

Peter waved to a group by the piano at one end of the living room: Tony and Betty Winters were talking to a cluster of movie stars, William Garth, Delilah, and Amy Howell. The women, even the normally dowdy Betty, were dressed . Delilah, with her long black hair draped down her back, was almost naked, swathed from her left shoulder to her groin in skintight white, her nipples darkly oozing through the fabric, her legs snaked by gold lamé, like a Roman soldier. Amy Howell looked like a child wearing a man-sized gangster’s suit, utterly covered by thick, woolly Japanese-designed clothes, her shoulders padded, her waist bound briefly, then billowing out and down to the ground. Normally cautious Betty had on a red jump suit and a short, unevenly cut hairdo; the look, instead of seeming punk to Diane, reminded her of middle-aged Jewish ladies in their weekend stretch pants. But that group, given its bohemian stature, wasn’t Diane’s problem. A glance at the corporate wives and dates truly made Diane feel unequal: they looked like Bendel’s manikins come to life. In her work clothes dress, with her big nose and horn-rimmed glasses, Diane thought she might be mistaken for — for what? I am a lawyer. That would be no mistake.

Brian Stoppard and Paula Kramer stood among the corporate people, their son and daughter huddled between the legs of the grown-ups. The boy was six, Diane knew, the girl three. Paula saw Diane and Peter, and came toward them just as they were handed their drink orders. Paula had her children reluctantly in tow. The boy, especially, hung back, his head down, his mouth closed in a sullen, shy pout. “Hi, glad you could make it,” Paula said breathlessly.

“I didn’t realize it was such a big party,” Diane said. “I wouldn’t have come like this.”

“Didn’t Brian tell you?” Paula was amazed. She shook her head of frizzy hair. “He’s perverse. You look lovely. Have you met Sasha and Rachel? Now that you’re new parents, I thought you might like to see the future. Sasha, Rachel, this is Diane and Peter Hummel.”

“Hello!” Peter said, and put out his hand to Sasha, who regarded it like a loathsome vegetable on a plate.