Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

Just past the new year, heading into the dreariest weeks of the calendar, almost three months since the Oyster Bar lunch, and Bea was still dithering about showing her new work to any of the three people (Leo, Paul, Stephanie) who could or should see it. After her phone call with Jack earlier in the week, she felt a new urgency. Jack said he was heading out to Brooklyn to see Leo. He was vague about why.

“Do I need a reason to visit my brother?” he’d said. “I want to see how he’s doing.”

“And?” Bea had asked.

“And, okay, I want to see what’s going on. Has he said anything to you?”

“No,” Bea’d said, trying to think of something to tell Jack that might assuage him but also be the truth. “He looks good.”

“What a relief,” Jack said, his tone sour.

“I mean he looks healthy. Alert and focused. He seems optimistic. He’s been hanging out with Paul. I think they’re working on something.”

“You’re joking.”

“Why would that be a joke?”

“ This is his big plan? Working for that putz Paul Underwood?”

“ I work for Paul Underwood,” Bea said.

“I realize that — and I mean this as a compliment — there are lots of things you would be willing to do that Leo wouldn’t.”

“I know.” Bea did know. Leo’s interest in Paul was bewildering. Paul seemed to believe Leo was working with Nathan Chowdhury again, but Bea found that unlikely. And Leo had never liked Paul. Ever. He’d called him Paul Underdog behind his back for years and had only shown a grudging kind of interest in Paper Fibres or what Bea did every day. He’d been visibly shocked to discover that Paper Fibres was a thriving publication. Not that she ever volunteered to talk about work; nobody was more dismayed than she was to find herself still going to the same office every day. Over the years, she’d managed to assume mostly managerial duties. She eagerly took on any job that removed her from working with writers and let Paul be the editing face of the magazine, which he loved. He still sought her input and shrewd pen, but those exchanges happened between the two of them, in private.

“Apparently Leo’s meeting with Nathan,” Bea told Jack.

“Nathan? Nathan Nathan?”

“Yes.” She knew Jack would be happy to hear Nathan’s name. Everyone would.

“Well, that’s very interesting. Sounds like the perfect time for an in-person progress report.”

She didn’t tell Jack what else she thought about Leo, that for all the moments he seemed terrifically healthy and eager and nearly like his old self — his old, old self, the Leo she loved so much and missed even more — there were nearly an equal number of times he seemed remote and anxious. Bea knew Leo better than anyone. On the surface he was fine, stellar even. But she’d also seen him staring out the office windows, jiggling his leg, eyeing the harbor and the ocean beyond like a death row prisoner from Alcatraz who was wondering exactly what distance the body could survive the open water in February. That was partly why she’d chickened out every time she thought to talk to him about what she was writing. If Jack was going to start putting pressure on Leo — and Bea realized it was a bit of a miracle he’d held off for this long — she needed to do something. Once his divorce was final, Leo would be free to roam. She didn’t understand what was going on with him and Stephanie, but those two made Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton look like slouches in the on again/off again department. But this she knew: She needed to figure out what to do. She needed to commit to what she was writing or move on to something else while she was writing, before her confidence and inspiration fled. Again.

She’d been hiding in a corner of Celia’s enormous living room, pretending to examine the bookshelves, which were full of what she thought of as “fake” books — the books were real enough but if Celia Baxter had read Thomas Pynchon or Samuel Beckett or even all— any! — of the Philip Roths and Saul Bellows lined in a row, she’d eat her mittens. In a far upper corner of the bookcase, she noticed a lurid purple book spine, a celebrity weight-loss book. Ha. That was more like it. She stood on tiptoe, slid the book out, and examined the well-thumbed, stained pages. She returned it to the shelf front and center, between Mythologies and Cloud Atlas . Satisfied, she waded into the crowd to find Paul; maybe he wouldn’t mind if she left. If Stephanie wasn’t here by now, she wasn’t coming.

Bea heard Lena Novak before she saw her, that old familiar hyena laugh. She froze, thinking she had to be wrong, only to see her old — her old what? They hadn’t been friends but they hadn’t exactly been enemies either — heading in her direction. Bea could not handle Lena Novak right now, absolutely could not . She turned on her heel and fled into a nearby powder room, nearly slamming the door behind her. Seeing herself in the mirror she was only mildly surprised by how terrified she looked.

Lena Novak was another one of the Glitterary Girls who, unlike Bea, had gone on to publish a well-regarded book every few years. Bea had recently stumbled across a feature in a glossy magazine on Lena and her handsome architect husband and adorable daughter and their “ingeniously” renovated Brooklyn town house and the horse-barn-turned-weekend-home in Litchfield, Connecticut. She’d been increasingly nauseated by every paragraph and had finally tossed the magazine into the recycling bin at work. “Hey, I wanted to read that!” one of the interns had said, fishing it out of the bright blue receptacle. “I love Lena Novak!”

In the powder room, Bea washed her hands and found an old lipstick in the corner of her purse. She carefully applied the color, checking to make sure none of it was on her teeth. She used her dampened fingers to calm the hair around her face that had frizzed under her winter hat. She moved as slowly as possible, trying to remember where her coat had been ferried off to and the most direct route to the front door. She eyed a glass shelf housing an impressive collection of tiny antique perfume bottles. Really? she thought. Where do people get the time? (And then: Who am I kidding? I have the time. ) Someone rapped gently on the door.

“Hold on,” she said. She squared her shoulders, happy that she’d worn her favorite zebra-print wrap dress from her favorite secondhand clothing store. She took a deep breath and opened the door. Maybe Lena wouldn’t even recognize her, she thought, as she walked into the front hall. But the moment she emerged from the tiny powder room, Lena pounced, squealing and pulling Bea into an alarmingly fierce hug. “I heard you were here, but I didn’t believe it!” she said, rocking Bea a little as if they’d just been reunited after a lengthy, involuntary separation.

The Glitterary Girls were just an invention of some journalist for an urban magazine. Bea had been horrified when the article came out, which made them sound like silly socialites. (“Perched on a Soho rooftop on a languid summer night, the most buzzed about writers in Manhattan glitter like beads on a particularly smart necklace.”) The breathless writing was awful, the designation didn’t even make sense, a meaningless phrase assigned to a group of female writers who happened to live in New York City at the same time, happened to be around the same age, and, for the most part, disliked one another. At best, they were grudging acquaintances bound by a name they all wished they could shake — except for Lena, who had adored the catchphrase and taken it literally. ( Gliterally, Bea had joked to the one woman in the group she actually liked, a poet from Hoboken who had also seemed to drop off the face of the earth in the ensuing years.) Back then, Lena was always trying to gather “the girls,” for drinks or dinners or suggesting they go to events together, as if they were a lounge act in Vegas.