“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s just, there’s so much right now,” Rita said. “Moving day is coming—and Astor is being completely …” She dropped my gym bag and crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean, Dexter …” she said.
“I know,” I said, which was a lie, since I didn’t know, because she hadn’t finished a sentence yet. “But it’s just for a few days, and we can really use the extra money.”
For a long moment Rita just looked at me. Her face was like a mask of uncertain misery, and she seemed to sag all over. I wondered what she was thinking that could make her look so much like a damp and tattered dish rag. She gave me no clues, but she finally said, “Well … We really could use some extra money.…”
“Exactly,” I said. I handed Lily Anne back to her and picked up my gym bag. “So I will see you in just a few days?”
“You’ll call me?” she said.
“Of course,” I told her, and she leaned forward and gave me a sweaty kiss on the cheek.
“All right,” she said.
NINE
AND NOW HERE I WAS IN THE LAP OF LUXURY, FAR FROM THE hooting and screeching and dirty socks of my normal domestic life. It probably wasn’t fair to compare, of course, which was a good thing. This hotel made even my new, swimming-pooled house seem squalid—made my whole little life seem just a bit less bright and shiny.
I watched Jackie. She was lifting a large red strawberry off the platter and she looked as fresh and perfect as a human being can look. It definitely wasn’t fair to compare her to Rita.
“The seafood is very good here,” Jackie said, biting the end off the strawberry. She swallowed and licked her lips. “I guess it should be.” She smiled and sipped from her own mojito. “You probably get great seafood all the time,” she said.
“Actually, I don’t,” I said. “The kids won’t eat it.”
“Kids,” she said, and she gave me a strange and quizzical look.
“What?” I said.
Jackie shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just … you seem so, um.” She fluttered one hand while she took another sip of the drink. “I don’t know,” she said, putting the glass on the table. “So … independent? Self-contained? I mean, I don’t really know you that well, and maybe I’m being, um …” She touched my arm, very lightly, and then took her hand away again. “Tell me if I’m being too personal,” she said. “I
just got this feeling like I know you? And it seems like, you know.” She reached for a slice of kiwi fruit. “Like you are complete all by yourself. It’s hard for me to picture you with kids.”
“It’s even harder for me,” I said, and Jackie laughed. It was a nice sound.
“What’s your wife like?” she asked.
“What, Rita?” I said. The question took me just a little bit by surprise. “Why, she’s, um.” Jackie watched me, unblinking, and from the hours of daytime drama I have watched in order to understand human behavior, I knew that I was supposed to say something flattering about Rita, since she was, after all, my wife. And I thought about it, thought about how worn she had looked earlier, and I tried to think of a nice phrase for her, but all that came to mind was that I was used to her, that she was blind to my harmless little foibles with knives and felons, and that didn’t seem to be what the situation demanded. I thought some more. Jackie kept looking at me. The expectant silence grew, and in desperation I finally said, “She’s a terrific cook.”
Jackie tilted her head to one side and kept looking at me until I began to wonder whether I had said something wrong. “That’s kind of funny,” she said at last.
“What?”
A small smile flickered on and then off her face. “If you ask most guys about their wife, the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, she’s really beautiful, wonderful.’ Something like that. And you think about it forever and all you come up with is, ‘She’s a good cook’?”
I wanted to tell her that, after all, I had my priorities, and as far as I was concerned Rita could have looked like Shrek as long as she made mango paella the way she did. But it didn’t seem like quite the right note to hit, and I wasn’t really sure what was, so I stammered out, “Well, but you know. I mean, she’s very nice-looking.”
“She should be,” Jackie said, reaching for her glass again. “Married to a hunk like you.”
Human conversation is something I have studied diligently, since it makes no sense at all to me unless it follows the comfortable path of cliché, which it does ninety-nine percent of the time. So in order to fit in, I have learned the formulas of small talk, and I must follow them or I am lost in a jungle of feelings and impulses and notions that I do not share. I am blind to nuance. But I would have had to be deaf and dumb as well not to realize that Jackie was paying me a compliment, and I groped for an appropriate response, only managing to say, “Oh, thank you,” which sounded pretty feeble, even to me.
Jackie clutched her glass with both hands and looked out across Biscayne Bay. “Sometimes I catch myself wondering,” she said. “You know. Like … maybe I should have found a nice guy like you and settled down. Had a real life.” She went very still, just holding the glass and staring at the horizon, and I watched her. I admit I was surprised to hear what sounded like wistful regret in her voice—after all, she was beautiful, rich and famous, a star, and even the most levelheaded observer would have to say she had just about everything one could wish for.
And to her very great credit, she proved to be rather levelheaded herself, because she gave a small laugh and shook her glass. It rattled; it was empty, except for the ice. “I know,” she said. “It’s not very convincing, even to me. Besides, I’ve met plenty of nice guys and none of ’em made me want to give this up.” She made a rueful face and set the glass on the table. “Plenty of not-so-nice guys, too,” she said. “But the real truth is, I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.”
“Not even a Greek arms dealer?” I said.
“Not even two,” she said, smirking at me. “And anyway, those guys are horribly possessive, so I’d be like his property, you know. I guess they have to be that way, but …” She shrugged. “That doesn’t work for me.”