Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

The performance began at 6:30 p.m., and it was 6:25 by the time the cab pulled up at Lincoln Center. “Hurry,” Oliver said, already several steps ahead of me.

“We still have five minutes.” I was moving as fast as my heels permitted.

“When they say six thirty, they mean six thirty. Not even a minute later.”

“Well, that’s not friendly. What if your subway gets stuck?”

He turned and shot me a look. “Then you should have planned better.”

I rolled my eyes at his back. We reached our seats with seconds to spare. Oliver took my hand as the lights went down, but I pulled it back into my lap. He looked at me crossly. Then he whispered, “By the way, you can’t look at your phone during the performance. Your job will have to wait.”

“I’m not an idiot, Oliver.”

“Good.” He turned his gaze back to the stage as the orchestra began playing.

At the first intermission, as we took our seats at the Grand Tier restaurant, Oliver spotted someone he knew. “He’s on the board of Lincoln Center,” he said. “The nominating committee, in fact. I have to say hello. I’ll be right back.”

The first part of the opera had left me unmoved, but the building was another thing. Alone at our table, I was free to gawk: the red carpeting, the starburst chandeliers, the murals. It was like an exquisite jewel box. And the people! The men in tuxedos, the women in long dresses, holding glasses of champagne and greeting one another with intimate recognition. It felt part of another era, St. Petersburg in the time of tsars and tsarinas, Fifth Avenue in the Gilded Age. Across the restaurant, Oliver laughed heartily with a silver-haired gentleman. Oliver was confident he’d be asked to join the board soon enough. There were a few board members pushing ninety, in poor health. He was, he said, just waiting for one of them to die.

In a weird way, I admired this about Oliver, the brutal clarity with which he understood his own ambition. We had this in common. There were boxes to check, and he checked them no matter what. Maybe this was why I had once found myself attracted to him.

But there were factors holding Oliver back. He was too many generations removed from the origin story, the great-grandfather who made the Bradley fortune. Wealth was the ultimate safety net, but it made your edges duller. Born into different circumstances, Oliver could have been a corporate killer, the guy who started in the mailroom and wound up in the corner office. But this world, the world of tuxedos and ball gowns and board seats, only countenanced that bloodlust in the first generation. Oliver could make partner at his law firm, but he would never be on the cover of Forbes. He could run for the Senate, but never for president. There were very few heirs and heiresses who avoided this trap, who kept their edges razor-sharp. Stella, strangely, had turned out to be one of them.

“Success?” I asked, when Oliver returned to the table.

“Time will tell,” he said.

The performance was nearly five hours long. At the second intermission, back in the restaurant, a woman approached our table, an old family friend of the Bradleys. Oliver stood and kissed her on the cheek.

“How is your family?” the woman said, gripping Oliver’s forearm, leaning in close. Old people loved Oliver. “Your poor parents.”

Oliver changed his expression to look solemn. “We’re holding up,” he said.

“I just can’t stand it,” the woman said. “That beautiful girl. I hope whoever did this to her—well, I hope that when the police find him, they shoot him on sight.”

Oliver grimaced. “I agree. Although I wouldn’t count on the police. They’ve been, let’s say, less than efficient.”

“How dreadful.”

“But you know my mother,” he said. “She’s taking matters into her own hands. She’s up in Maine right now, in fact.”

“She is?” I said.

The woman smiled politely at my interjection. Then she turned back to Oliver. “That sounds just like Anne,” she said. “You’ll let me know if I can help in any way?”

After she left, I said, “You didn’t tell me your mom was back in Maine.”

Oliver sipped his espresso. “I thought I’d spare you. You don’t seem to like talking about the investigation.”

“But I still care,” I said. “And you’re the one who hates talking about her.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged, as if to say why should a pair of sociopaths like us split hairs? “It’s pointless. A wild-goose chase. But it makes my mom feel better. That’s why she keeps doing it.”

“What’s she looking for?” I was annoyed. Why had Oliver kept me in the dark?

Oliver cocked his head. “An explanation, of course.”

The third act was interminable. My dress was too tight, my heels pinched my swollen feet. I crossed my legs one way, then another, unable to get comfortable. I didn’t understand how you were supposed to keep track of the action on the stage, and also the subtitles on the tiny seat-back screen. Oliver had explained that most of the audience was already familiar with the story. They didn’t need the subtitles to follow along.

Well, I didn’t get it. These performers, singing grand words about love and passion and betrayal, without even a remotely plausible story upon which to hang the emotions—it made no sense. It required more than just a willing suspension of disbelief. Delusion, maybe.

But clearly I was a philistine. The audience, minus me, was rapt with attention as Tristan died in the arms of Isolde. The opera was underpinned by the philosophy of Schopenhauer—I had read about this on my phone, in the cab uptown. It had something to do with needing to renounce the material world in order to achieve true peace. Of course, the audience watching the performance probably possessed a collective wealth larger than the GDP of Slovakia. If their Patek Philippes and diamonds weren’t the apotheosis of the material world, I didn’t know what was.

There were now several performers on stage. I had completely lost track of the action. I felt disoriented, and suddenly panicked. I didn’t belong here. My heart was beating too fast. The music was overwhelming, the tone of voice prosecutorial. Someone had betrayed someone else. But I didn’t even know who I was supposed to care about. There were a thousand faces turned toward the stage, and I was the only person who couldn’t see what they all saw.

When I squeezed out of the aisle, several people grumbled. The usher at the door said, “You won’t be able to go back in, miss.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Where’s the bathroom?”

After I’d splashed water on my face, and sat down in the stall for several minutes with my dress unzipped, letting my rib cage reinflate, I felt better. Scrolling through e-mail, firing off responses while I waited in the bright lobby: it was like a fast-acting drug, erasing the panic I’d felt in the darkened theater.

But. But. Anne was stubborn, just like Stella. My tracks were covered, my alibi was intact—or so I thought. But how could I be sure? What if something had changed?

The doors to the theater opened, and the audience exited in a steady stream. When Oliver caught sight of me, he looked so righteously pissed off that I considered turning around and getting my own cab.

“I can’t believe you did that,” he said, as we walked outside.

“Why? I had to go to the bathroom.”

“That was unacceptable.”

“Just stop,” I said. “Stop talking to me like I’m a child.”

“It’s a breach of etiquette. And right at the finale. It is beyond rude.”

“I don’t care!” I snapped. “I don’t care about the opera, and I don’t care about the etiquette. This is so not my thing, Oliver.”