Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney: The Nest

For so generously offering their support, time, and wisdom (and sometimes letting me borrow from their lives), I owe a million thanks and nearly that many cocktails to: Belinda Cape, Madeline Dulchin, Rory Evans, Kate Flannery, Robin Goldwasser, John Hodgman, Natasha Lehrer, Jenny McPhee, Liza Powel O’Brien, Rebecca Odes, Rachel Pastan, Amy Poehler, Amy Scheibe, Katherine Schulten (who enthusiastically read so many drafts of these pages that I began to fear for her sanity), Jill Soloway, Jen Strozier, Sarah Thyre, Janie Haddad Tompkins, and Paul Yoon. And to the late, great David Rakoff.

The Bennington Writing Seminars is an ideal place to invest two years of your life, and it was there that I found my Nest — true friends, trusted readers — Rob Faus, Erin Kasdin, Melissa Mills-Dick, Kathryn Savage, and the (sorely missed) Megan Renehan. Thanks to my workshop peers and to the faculty and staff at Bennington, especially Bret Anthony Johnston, who read the first thirty pages of what I thought was a wreck of a short story and told me it was the beginning of a novel. His enthusiasm gave me the confidence to start this book and his advice, insight, humor, patience, and friendship guided me to the finish.

My agent, Henry Dunow, and editor, Megan Lynch, not only made everything in these pages better but are an absolute joy to work with in every way. I don’t know what village I saved in a previous life to deserve them, but it must have been huge. Thanks also to Daniel Halpern and everyone at Ecco for working so hard on my behalf, especially Eleanor Kriseman and Sonya Cheuse.

I am grateful to my parents, for reading to me and passing along their love of books and language. I am grateful to my children, Matthew and Luke, for letting me read to them until they started staying up past my bedtime, for growing into remarkably interesting, intelligent, and entertaining people, and for filling our house with music.

Finally, and most importantly, a world of love and thanks to my husband, Mike, whose belief in me was so absolute on such flimsy evidence, that this book is my attempt to stop him from looking like a fool. As long as we’re making each other laugh, all is right in the world.

As the rest of the guests wandered the deck of the beach club under an early-evening midsummer sky, taking pinched, appraising sips of their cocktails to gauge if the bartenders were using the top-shelf stuff and balancing tiny crab cakes on paper napkins while saying appropriate things about how they’d really lucked out with the weather because the humidity would be back tomorrow, or murmuring inappropriate things about the bride’s snug satin dress, wondering if the spilling cleavage was due to bad tailoring or poor taste (a look as their own daughters might say) or an unexpected weight gain, winking and making tired jokes about exchanging toasters for diapers, Leo Plumb left his cousin’s wedding with one of the waitresses.

Leo had been avoiding his wife, Victoria, who was barely speaking to him and his sister Beatrice who wouldn’t stop speaking to him — rambling on and on about getting together for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. In July. Leo hadn’t spent a holiday with his family in twenty years, since the mid-’90s if he was remembering correctly; he wasn’t in the mood to start now.

Cranked and on the hunt for the rumored empty outdoor bar, Leo first spotted Matilda Rodriguez carrying a tray of champagne glasses. She moved through the crowd with a lambent glow — partly because the setting sun was bathing the eastern end of Long Island an indecent pink, partly because of the truly excellent cocaine wreaking havoc with Leo’s synapses. The bubbles rising and falling on Matilda’s tray felt like an ecstatic summons, an invitation meant just for him. Her sturdy black hair was pulled away from the wide planes of her face into a serviceable knot; she was all inky eyes and full red lips. Leo watched the elegant weave of her hips as she threaded her way through the wedding guests, the now-empty tray held high above her head like a torch. He grabbed a martini from a passing waiter and followed her through the swinging stainless-steel doors into the kitchen.

IT WOULD SEEM TO MATILDA(nineteen, aspiring singer, diffident waitress) that one minute she’d been passing champagne to seventy-five members of the extended Plumb family and their closest friends and the next she was barreling toward the Long Island Sound in Leo’s brand-new leased Porsche, her hand down the front of his too-tight linen trousers, the fat of her thumb inexpertly working the underside of his penis.

Matilda had resisted when Leo first pulled her into a side pantry, his fingers cuffing her wrists while he pelted her with questions: Who are you? Where did you come from? What else do you do? Are you a model? An actress? Do you know you’re beautiful?

Matilda knew what Leo wanted; she was propositioned at these events all the time, but usually by much younger men — or ludicrously older men, ancient —with their arsenal of lame pickup lines and vaguely bigoted attempts at flattery. (She was constantly being called J. Lo in spite of looking nothing like her; her parents were Mexican, not Puerto Rican.) Even in this moneyed crowd, Leo was unreasonably handsome, a word she was quite certain she’d never employed for someone whose attention she was almost enjoying. She might think hot, she might think cute or maybe even gorgeous, but handsome ? The boys she knew hadn’t grown into handsome yet. Matilda found herself staring up at Leo’s face trying to determine which variables added up to handsome. Like her, he had dark eyes, dark hair, a strong brow. But where his features were angular and sharp, hers were round and soft. On television he would play someone distinguished — a surgeon maybe, and she would be the terminally ill patient begging for a cure.

Through the pantry door she could hear the band — orchestra, really, there had to be at least sixteen pieces — playing the usual wedding fare. Leo grabbed her hands and pulled her into a little two-step. He sang close to her ear, above the beat, his voice pleasantly lively and rich. “ Someday, when I’m awfully low, when the world is cold, I will dah-dah-dum just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight. ”

Matilda shook her head and laughed a little, pulled away. His attention was unnerving, but it also made something deep within her thrum. And fending off Leo in the pantry was marginally more interesting than wrapping asparagus with prosciutto in the kitchen, which was what she was supposed to be doing. When she shyly told him she wanted to be a singer, he immediately offered that he had friends at Columbia Records, friends who were always keen to discover new talent. He moved in again and if she was alarmed when he stumbled a little and seemed to need to keep a palm on the wall to maintain balance, her worry evaporated when he asked if she had a demo, something of hers they could listen to in his car.

“Because if I like it,” Leo said, taking Matilda’s slender fingers in his, “I’d want to get on it right away. Help you get it to the right people.”