The Rule of Three, page 10
“Okay, honey.” I refold the list and tuck it back between the pineapples. “You know, you should really try and enjoy this time with Spence before those two pull up stakes and take off.”
“What?” He abruptly shoves his phone back into his pocket, approaches the island, and slaps his hands down on the countertop across from me. It feels like the molecules in the air around us have been reconfigured. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“He hasn’t mentioned anything to you?” I study my husband’s face carefully and catch the telltale twitch of his eyelid. “About moving out of Kingsland?”
“Honey.” He stares at me intently, his voice thin, the anger barely suppressed. I catch the tremor in his forearms from the pressure he’s exerting against the countertop. “I need you to tell me exactly what you’re referring to.”
“Don’t bite my head off,” I protest, taking a reflexive step backward. “I assumed it would have come up at your card game.”
“You assume what would have come up, Vic?” He’s putting a great deal of effort into speaking evenly.
“I don’t know the details,” I say. “Mon just mentioned that the idea of a move had come up recently. They’ve been discussing it, I guess.”
“Was this her idea?” he asks. “Some notion she’s gotten into that silly little head of hers?”
“C’mon,” I say. “You think she’s calling the shots in that relationship?”
“Right.” He nods.
“She was bitching to Laura and me about it. Saying that she’d finally found a place where she belonged after they had to leave Cali, and now he wanted to uproot them all over again. I don’t think that woman’s ever had a lot of friends.” I watch Terry consider the implications. “She’s really come to look at Laura and me as sisters. It’s sweet.”
He looks past me, sucking air greedily into his nostrils. “That ungrateful son of a bitch,” he says.
“You’re taking this awfully personally, honey.”
“Does he not remember who gave him a lifeline when he was drowning?” He’s speaking more to himself than to me. “Does he not realize who the fuck I am?”
“Terry, Jesus.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Maybe he’s just ready for a change. Give the guy a break.”
“Guy thinks he can just pick up and go.” He’s fully in his own head now, disconnected from the world around him.
“What’s your problem?” I ask pointedly. The edge on the question snaps him back into our kitchen.
“We had an understanding, Vic. He knew what the move here entailed.”
“What’s with you, anyway?” I shake my head in frustration. “You’ve done nothing but complain about this guy lately. Him and Gil, the two guys you spend most of your time with these days, the two guys who one might go so far as to mistake for your actual friends, and all you can manage to do is whine about them constantly. It’s a little boring, frankly.”
“Look,” he says. “I get that you’re tight with his wife, and you want her hanging around, but there are just some things that you don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand?” I ask. “The guy’s life isn’t tied to Kingsland. Just because he doesn’t revere this place that you were kind enough to help him move to doesn’t make it a personal affront to you, Terry.”
“It’s not—”
I’m hitting a nice stride, and I won’t have him nip it short. “I hate to break it to you, but not everything in this world, or even in this community, revolves around the whims of the almighty Terry Barnes.”
“Vic,” he growls, his lower jaw jutting forward. “You’re out of your depth here.”
“Right.” I feel my own jawbone tense. “Really glad we had this chat,” I say, my tone bathed in sarcasm, before I step out of the room, leaving my husband to stew in his suspicions.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LAURA
As I shut the front door and kick off my running shoes, the house is quiet around me. The air-conditioning is on full blast and my skin quickly prickles with goose bumps from the polarity of the ninety degrees I’ve just run seven miles in and the arctic temperature of our house.
“Gil?” I call out, and my shoulders relax at the lack of response. I expect he is holed up in his office, since his car is in the driveway, but I don’t make a move to hunt him down. Not yet.
I pull off my sweaty tank top as I move to the laundry room and toss it into the washing machine before doing the same with my saturated sports bra, underwear, and running shorts. Naked, I stand in the window and take in the vivid colors of the summer backyard. I scan the carefully landscaped scene for Gil and don’t see him lying by the pool or pacing around the fire pit on his phone, the two most predictable locations after his office.
I pull a clean beach towel from the top of the recently stocked linen closet and wrap it around my body as I step out into the sunlight. Barefoot, I walk over the freshly mowed grass onto the smooth stone walkway leading to the bamboo changing hut and open-air shower stall. I hang my towel on the hook and turn the handles, stepping between the two showerheads on either side of me, the warm water washing the sweat down the drain.
I look upward when I get a whiff of skunky pot and see a smoke cloud drifting out of Gil’s office window and into the otherwise cloudless blue sky above. I see him standing in the window looking down at me and I give him an acknowledging wave, which is returned with a vexed smile and the pull of the curtain across the window. The gesture is a perfect expression of my husband’s attitude toward me for the last few months.
I’m conflicted about how his evasive behavior makes me feel lately. We’ve been strained for the past few years to varying degrees, sometimes indifferently, sometimes resentfully, but we’ve stayed stuck together, somehow. We aren’t a heroic story of a marriage plagued with scandal and tragedy that has emerged stronger and better. The less dramatic truth is that we were a problematic marriage from the outset, compounded by tragedy and scandal, resulting in utter emotional exhaustion and motivational defeat.
I shut off the water and stand for a few moments feeling the warm sun drying the moisture from my body. I run my hand across my belly and down over the mottled cesarean scar, ropy under my fingers. It is a reminder of what once was. The few inches of skin incite oppositional emotions simultaneously: the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, and the most devastated.
The shower has energized me and rinsed away any doubt of what I need to do. I wrap the warm towel around my body and tuck one corner into my cleavage to hold it secure before pulling a smaller towel flung over the stall and wrapping it around my hair in a turban before heading upstairs to get dressed and face my husband.
On the way to our bedroom, I hear Gil groaning loudly behind the closed door of his office. I backstep and lean my ear against the door and hear him moan again, and I’m unsure of whether the sounds are pain or pleasure induced. Knowing Gil, it could be a little of both. I pause in my irritation at him before knocking and hear him clear his throat and move around in the room quickly.
“Gil? Can I come in?”
“Gimme a minute.” He strains and I turn the knob lightly, confirming my suspicion that he’s locked the door. I step back from my lean and wait for him to gather himself.
“I can come back,” I say through the door, and take a few steps in the direction of our room. He doesn’t answer and I hear more shuffling. I take more steps away before he responds or comes to the door, wishing I’d restrained myself from knocking in the first place.
As I pad down the carpeted hallway, I hear the door open.
“I was doing push-ups,” he says to my back, and I stop and turn to face him from the door of our bedroom. His face is flushed and I can see sweat lightly beading his forehead.
I nod. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that Vicky and Monica are coming over this afternoon.” I clock his face for any tell when I drop Monica’s name. His expression stays the same.
“Okay.” He shrugs.
“I thought you’d like to know,” I say.
I can see his irritation slide into confusion about why I’ve intruded on his personal time with innocuous information. It isn’t standard practice for me to inform him about anything going on in my daily life, and he does me the same courtesy.
“I’ll steer clear of the pool, then.” He gives me a quick once-over in my towel, and his evident detachment scratches my emotional surface, only slightly.
I wish I could be straightforward and just ask him what has really been burning me from the inside out, but I’m scared of what I might do if he confirms what Monica has told me, or what he’ll do when confronted about it. I didn’t think it was possible for Gil’s secrets to hurt me more than they already have. But the cascading disappointments in my marriage have been like a never-ending game of Whac-A-Mole.
“I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable with my friends coming over.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, I know you’ve been working on something ‘top secret.’ I thought it was respectful to make sure that we aren’t disturbing you.”
He raises his eyebrow. Gil knows when he’s being baited, but knowing it and resisting it aren’t mutually exclusive.
“Top secret? Where’d you get that from?”
“Didn’t you say that?” I ask.
He looks perturbed. “No, I definitely didn’t.”
“Oh, I guess not.” I laugh nervously. “Terry said something to Vicky about a project he had you working on, but that was as much as she could suss out. He was uncharacteristically tight-lipped, for Terry.”
I see his face flush. “And I’m not doing shit for Terry. I only do work for myself, you know that,” he says defensively.
“Okay. I just thought it tracked.”
“How so?” He looks pissed.
I match my tone to his face. “Well, the locked door and secretive phone calls, your leaving the house at all hours of the night with no explanation, the new computer equipment and other mysterious charges on the emergency Amex. It all seemed like you were making sure I didn’t know what you were up to.” I feel my face getting hot. “Or maybe the simplest answer is that you are having an affair.”
He pales and I see his gears turning, and quickly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Am I?”
“Since when do you care about what I’m working on?” He cocks his head.
“Gil, I’ve always cared.” I push out this half-truth with a heavy sigh.
I actually did care about his work before everything fell apart. I cherished when he shared ideas with me and valued my input, when he couldn’t go onstage without rehearsing in front of me. But those feelings dissipated after Libby was killed. At present, I’m way more interested in whether he will lie to my face right now.
It is looking more likely by the minute.
“I know you’ve been unhappy being in between books and gigs, and I’m glad to see that you are inspired again.” I smile at him, trying to defuse the growing tension, pulling my arms around myself.
“What’s your angle, Laur?”
“I’m just trying to have a conversation with you. You are getting awfully confrontational.”
I can see him assessing which mindfuck tactic to employ right now. I am hoping for something good and dirty; I am looking for a fight.
“You are right, sweetie. I apologize.” His eyes are steely. “Thanks for checking in. I’m going to get back to it, then.”
I’m incensed by his refusal to even make an effort. “I have to say, Gil. The push-ups and whatever else you are doing are really working. You haven’t looked this good in a while.”
He can’t help himself from relishing a compliment, even if it is soaked in subtext. His stance changes; he leans against the doorway of his office facing me and smiles widely.
“Thank you, I appreciate that.” I suppress a smirk when I catch his biceps flex.
“Do you want to run anything past me? Maybe I can help with what you are working on. Like I used to?” I offer.
He tenses. “I’m still working out the kinks on some new material,” he says evasively. “Maybe later.”
“Sure,” I say sweetly. “If you need an audience, you can come down and share what you’ve been working on with Vicky, Monica, and me. I know you and Vicky don’t always agree, but I think Monica is very bright, don’t you?”
His face remains effortlessly unchanged and he crosses his arms over his chest. This pisses me off. I step into our bedroom and flip on the light since the curtains are still drawn and the room is dim. Gil follows me, evidently unmoved by the Monica comment.
“What else has Terry been saying about me?” His serenity from earlier has devolved quickly and he looks like he might put his fist through the wall.
I casually pull a pair of panties and a bra out of my dresser and a sundress from the closet and drop my towel onto the bed. I pull on my underwear and clasp the closure on my bra in two quick moves before sliding the dress over my head.
“You know Terry, Gil. He just loves to feel superior. Like he’s in control of everyone around here.”
Gil frowns. “Right.”
I walk closer to him and hold the question in my mouth that keeps trying to get out, and all the questions queued up behind that one. I see Gil scan the room and land on my copy of The Rule of Three on my nightstand.
“You are actually reading that crap?” he says disparagingly.
“For our book club. It isn’t bad.” I smile as he frowns.
“It is a stupid title. Sounds like a book about advertising. The author is a hack. Everything in there is just recycled from other books.”
“Sounds like you’ve read it, then?” I say.
He shoots me a look of death and slams the door behind him.
I walk to the closed door and rest my head on it and ask very quietly, if only to hear the words out loud for my own sake.
“Is it true about Monica?”
I already know the answer.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MONICA
When I cross the threshold of the Hot Shakti yoga studio, I am hit with the wall of heat and the smell, which remains rank no matter how much essential oil they diffuse.
I am never, ever going to get used to sweating this much on purpose. In every class, I keep hoping for the transcendent moment of bliss but can’t seem to get past the nausea and headaches. It is hard not to feel like a failure compared to all the other lithe, limber bodies of my neighbors flowing through each posture as though the environment is perfect. But with every class I survive, it does seem to get easier, and it is a guaranteed sixty minutes of complete mental diversion from everything outside these doors.
It is the subtle peer pressure that has me re-upping my class package, compounded by the fear of missing out. Hot yoga in Kingsland isn’t just the exercise fad du jour; it is more like a test of worthiness than of fitness. Every class I get through without puking on myself feels like a major accomplishment. And being there with Vicky and Laura every week makes it all worthwhile.
I step through the check-in point and deposit my belongings in a locker. I see a class regular reading a copy of The Rule of Three. “I’m totally obsessed,” she says when she meets my eyes.
“Me too,” I say brightly. “I’m reading it for the second time.” I smile.
When I enter the swampy studio, the few topknotted heads in the room turn my way as I survey the mats for Vicky and Laura, who are nowhere to be seen. Most of the women smile at me and return to setting up their areas, their perfectly manicured hands and pricey jewelry gleaming in the afternoon sun coming through the skylights. The woman from the dressing room comes in behind me, spots her friend, and hands her the copy she was holding.
Her friends gushes. “Did you see her on Super Soul?” she says in a heavily accented croon. She looks and sounds South American.
“Sawyer was amazing. This book has completely changed me.”
They are engrossed as I move past them.
I’ve made a point of getting here early so that I can hold three spaces for us. Happily, I see plenty of space, and then I am nearly bowled over by Milly Addison-LeFleur, who is beelining for her usual spot in the front row. No one with any sense takes the front-row right-corner mat, and on the rare occasion that it has happened, I’ve seen Milly ask them to move without any shame.
Our collision morphs into an awkward and sticky one-sided hug. “Monica!” Milly crows. My late mother would have said Milly has a ten-gallon mouth. She is as talkative as she is botoxed, which is to say excessively. The decibels of her voice draw looks from a few of the women setting up blocks and straps alongside their mats. I already feel the sweat forming on both of our bodies even though the heat in the room hasn’t reached its max yet. Soon we’ll be slick with perspiration and touching each other will be unthinkable.
I release myself from her grip, which is surprisingly strong for her five-foot frame. We generally aren’t “hugging” friends, but Milly has become extra-friendly toward me since I’ve become inseparable with Vicky and Laura in the last few months.
In the few interactions that she and I have had one-on-one, the saccharine demeanor that Milly exhibits in the company of the sisters is noticeably less sweet without them. I’ve come to learn that Milly’s been gunning for a regular spot in their circle of two since she moved in, which explains her apparent iciness around me in certain situations. The book club is a particularly sore spot.
