The Guest, page 6
Alex found a fifty in the pocket of Simon’s pants, a pair he’d left in the hamper, then picked up and put down one of his watches twice before she finally dropped it in the purse. The purse Simon had bought for her.
* * *
—
The day was bright and the sky was clean. Lori had her sunglasses on, cheap gas-station sunglasses whose lenses were blue mirrors. She was waiting by her car.
“Ready to go?”
Simon’s car was already gone.
“Where is he?” Alex said.
“Not sure,” Lori said.
Instead of going to Lori’s car, Alex listed off in the direction of the office.
“Don’t,” Lori called after her. But what could Lori do? She wasn’t going to physically restrain Alex.
When Alex opened the door, the office was empty.
“Told you,” Lori said, from behind her. Alex didn’t know what she’d expected—some last chance, some opportunity for appeal. She had always managed something.
Lori didn’t wait for Alex to follow her back to the car, but of course Alex did.
* * *
—
Beyond the white clapboard station and the broad concrete platform, a line of trees shivered in the breeze, a ripple of green. A green deeper than green. It all seemed too vivid. It would only take a few hours, a single transfer, and Alex would be back in the city. And now a membrane would close over this summer, sealing it off. It would become something that had happened, something that was over. A life she had gotten right up to the edge of. Alex had known exactly how lucky she was: that hadn’t been the problem.
* * *
—
Lori was chatty on the car ride to the station, almost manic, her tone gossipy and cheerful. The situation must have been familiar to Lori—perhaps this happened regularly, some young woman, some girl, needing to be spirited away while Simon kept himself conspicuously hidden, deputizing Lori to clean up his mess.
You were the exception, until you weren’t.
Lori’s car was cluttered: coffee souring in paper cups, a metallic sun shade folded in the backseat on top of a sleeping bag. The interior smelled like Simon’s dog. Alex’s hangover had crystallized, hijacking her nervous system.
“It might be nice,” Lori was saying. “Being in the city.”
Alex didn’t respond, watching out the window as Lori drove, passing through the many shaded lanes until they got close to the station, close to town. There were restaurants she had gone to with Simon, roads that led to the houses of his friends. None of it was available to her anymore.
“You know,” Lori went on. “The city empties out. In August. It can be great.”
When Alex didn’t say anything, Lori looked over.
“He’s a complicated guy,” she said. “It’s not you.”
Alex didn’t know why Lori was suddenly being nice—apologetic even.
“I’m fine,” Alex said.
“He’s kind of a child, to be honest,” Lori said. “Totally incapable of being in the real world. Useless. If I wasn’t around, he would probably starve to death.”
Alex studied Lori’s face. Lori hated Simon, had always hated him—that was obvious now. Strange Alex had not noticed it before.
* * *
—
Alex let Lori buy the train ticket. Lori kept the receipt—for Simon, Alex supposed, tallying her expenses. Or maybe she was supposed to present it as proof Alex was gone.
“Is that all?” Lori said, as Alex stood there with her single bag. It wasn’t a question.
4
Alex sat on the platform. On a nearby bench, two guys in faded chino shorts and baseball hats chattered away, their knees spread wide. They cradled giant plastic water bottles and only stopped speaking to take dramatic gulps. They were talking, now, about an eclipse that summer, a partial eclipse. Discussing how the moon was going to start to wobble. Not this second, apparently, but soon. The moon wobbling up there in the sky, and we’ll all be fucked then. The prospect appeared to excite them. When they noticed Alex, it only made them talk louder.
The louder they talked, the more Alex felt her headache pulse, piercing the painkiller fuzz. You could occasionally be overcome by dislike for strangers: if these boys got zapped into nothingness, would the world really miss them?
But who would really miss Alex either?
Alex flipped through a free magazine from a stack on the platform. Interviews with local restaurant owners and culty exercise instructors with amphetamine grins, a summer gift guide for hostesses that featured a lot of blown glass. A limited-edition rosé produced by a supermodel, now in her fifties. The magazine was mostly ads. Looking closer at the interviews, she saw that those were ads, too. One whole page was taken up by the headshot of a beefy realtor, in a suit and no tie, smiling in a queasy way.
Alex’s breath was stale, sweat gathering along her hairline. There was an apple in her bag, a green apple, and a package of flavored almonds. A squished protein bar. The air seemed extraordinarily heavy. Another punishment. Things toggled swiftly between real and unreal.
Alex looked through her phone. The names scrolled past—some people she had met once, men whose last names Alex had never known.
Chris Party
Don’t Answer
Ben’s friend gramercy
86th Street
A list of people she had either forgotten or alienated in some way.
How many months of back rent did Alex owe her old housemates? Anyway, Dom seemed to know she’d lived at that apartment. She was not welcome at the Mercer, not welcome at the Mark. Alex could think of no one to call, no one to plead her case to.
She started a text to Simon.
Can’t we talk?
She watched the cursor blink—then erased the text.
The train was coming in thirty minutes.
* * *
—
Alex called Will. He was still in the city. Or she thought he probably was: they hadn’t spoken in a year. Maybe more. But they’d been friends, hadn’t they? She’d apologized to him, she was pretty sure.
“Hello,” Will said, after the second ring.
Alex stood on the shady part of the train platform. “It’s Alex.”
He exhaled and let out a sharp laugh. Not even a pause before he launched right in.
“Don’t call me again,” Will said, “seriously.” She heard him mutter something to whoever he was with, continuing some conversation, and then, without ceremony, he hung up.
Alex tried Jon.
“Hey”—the line sputtered a bit. Alex paced in the sun. “It’s me,” she said.
“What’s up?” Jon’s voice was flat. Jon was one of the last people Alex had been seeing before she met Simon, a semi-regular.
“Nothing.” Alex laughed. “You at home?”
“It’s Tuesday. I’m at work.”
“Oh.” There was a long silence. “It’s Alex,” she said.
“Yeah, I know.”
Not promising.
“So,” Alex said, “I’m thinking of coming back to the city.”
Jon had dropped the phone or something, a rush of noise through the speaker.
“Hello?” Alex said.
“I didn’t know you weren’t here,” Jon said.
His voice was flat, faint—not angry, just uninterested, deeply uninterested.
“Yeah. Well,” Alex said, her pacing constrained to tighter and tighter spans, “I wasn’t, but now, you know, I will be.”
“Great.”
Alex could picture the face Jon was making, up there in the recirculated air of his office. Alex had run up a hefty hotel bill on his card, she vaguely remembered—staying on an extra night, letting the staff call her Mrs. Anderson, or whatever his last name was. He had not been pleased. She kept the details out of focus.
“I was thinking,” Alex said, “maybe I could stay with you for a bit.”
She’d only been to his apartment once: a landlord-white studio in Tribeca. He had pee pads in the corner for his dog and a pull-up bar in his bedroom door.
“Um.” The line was quiet. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Just for a week. A few days.” Silence. “We have fun,” Alex said, pitching her voice into a softer register, “don’t we?”
Jon made a noise of pretend regret. “Alex. It’s just,” he said, “not a good idea.”
Alex’s phone died before she could respond. She turned it back on. When it came to life, a bar of static was wavering across the screen. She shut the phone down.
Not a good idea.
That was the second time someone had said that to her today.
She looked at her phone, out of habit, though she knew it was off. Her watery reflection stared back from the screen. Who else was there to call?
The station clock said it was almost noon. Alex could feel the tops of her arms getting hot, the first prickle of sunburn. She moved into the shade.
Had Simon already been informed of her departure?
Simon.
He was annoyed with her, yes. Right at this moment. But she knew Simon. The parts of him that were lonely and greedy and afraid of not having the things he wanted—he’d start to miss her. Soon enough.
And hadn’t he said he would call her? Hadn’t he made a point of not closing the door completely? He was too smart to say things he didn’t mean.
She replayed their last conversation with a mental squint. And replayed it again.
It was becoming clearer, now. The situation. How to play this through. He’d been sending her a message, Simon. Asking her to wait, give him a few days.
How had she not understood? A pause—that’s all this was.
Simple. Alex would stay out here until Labor Day. Just until Simon’s Labor Day party.
Simon would be a little drunk, at the party. He’d be expecting Alex, maybe even worried she might not show up. Worried she had somehow missed his signal, failed to understand his invitation.
Then Alex would walk in. She would make her way straight to Simon. She’d apologize, she’d appease him. And then what? Then Simon would take her back, because that was the whole game he’d set up, both of them hitting their marks, and all would be well.
It was obvious, now that she thought about it. Less obvious: how to burn the next six days.
* * *
—
There was something like four hundred bucks in Alex’s account. Maybe a little more. She hadn’t checked since she’d been out here, because she hadn’t needed to: Simon had taken care of everything.
It wasn’t enough—whatever way she circled the number. She could get a hotel room out here for one night. Maybe. But there weren’t even hotels here, just the old Victorian inns filled with people’s most disliked relatives or the milky Europeans. More than ever, this place seemed like a collection of houses, everywhere she looked, or more like a collection of gates. A good trick, when you thought about it. How everything was private, everything was hidden. The better to keep you out if you didn’t belong. It was unthinkable, enraging, how many of these houses were empty.
* * *
—
The train arriving from the city pulled into the platform and the doors shuddered open. A rush of people exited—a woman with a baby strapped to her chest, a couple armed with tennis rackets, moody teenagers who looked around, preemptively impatient, for the housekeepers who had been sent to pick them up. People aimed at someone or something, some end point awaiting their arrival.
The last passengers poured from the train, laughing and shrieking as they surged onto the platform. There were ten or twelve in a group, all in their early twenties, dressed for a certain type of leisure. Everyone was talking too loudly, performing the fact that they were on vacation, liquor bottles poking from tote bags. This year, women were supposed to buy tiny basket purses, as if they were Jane Birkin. Alex studied a girl carrying a basket purse. The unfortunate effect was to make you realize that the person holding the purse was not Jane Birkin. The girl wore a long floral dress that looked brand new, probably purchased expressly for this trip.
They were house-share people, Alex figured, fifteen or twenty people crowding into a flimsy new spec house, bottles of tequila bought cheaply in the city and transported wrapped in beach towels. They would leave here Monday night, imagining they had gotten close to something, had some rarefied experience. The truth was that the world they were imagining would never include them.
* * *
—
The two guys who’d been waiting on the platform stood to join the group. They were shaking hands all around, introducing themselves—so, Alex understood, no one knew each other that well. A boy clapped another boy on the back while they compared something on their screens.
When one of the girls looked at Alex, Alex perked slightly, out of habit.
“Hi,” the girl said, her voice rising in a question.
“Hey,” Alex said, waving. “Hi.”
The girl smiled reflexively; girls were so polite, so ready to make others comfortable.
Alex stood up when the girl came over.
“How was the ride?” Alex asked.
“Oh,” the girl said, “okay. Kind of third-world, though—everyone, like, pushing and shoving.” She wore tiny pearl earrings, a light Patagonia sweater. A tropical-print skirt that showed her pale legs. “So hot today, huh? But the train is so air-conditioned it’s, like, freezing.”
Alex laughed, but she was watching the girl and watching the people behind her at the same time. Alex angled her body toward the girl.
“I’m Alex. I think we’ve met, maybe? Right?”
“Yeah, totally,” the girl said, blinking rapidly. “Hey. Lynn.”
“Right, Lynn,” Alex said. “I remember.” Things were just happening, taking on momentum. “What’s the plan now?”
“Um, I think Brian called a car?” Lynn shrugged. “Or we might have to take a few trips, depending.”
One of the guys who’d been waiting on the platform came over.
“We’re just gonna take a taxi,” he said. “It’s fucking expensive but I’m burning vacation time sitting here.”
“Should I come now? With you?” the girl asked. “Shouldn’t someone text Brian?”
“We should just go now,” Alex said. “Let’s text him from the taxi.”
The guy looked at Alex and there was just a stutter of confusion, a slight double take.
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah. Good.”
And like that, Alex was piling into the backseat of a minivan taxi. The driver seemed already weary of the group as they loaded in, and so was Alex. Their voices were too loud, the jokes predigested, leached from some sitcom or movie. But Alex smiled. Important to smile. Everything would be fine. There wasn’t enough room in the minivan: Alex had to sit on one of the boys’ laps.
“Comfy?” the boy said. Was he pressing his crotch into her ass? Alex kept smiling.
* * *
—
Alex was trying to find a clean glass, but there were none in any of the kitchen cabinets. Just a sleeve of red plastic cups and a few used coffee mugs in the sink. When she opened the dishwasher, it was grim and humid, smelling of beer. No glasses there either. Music pulsed from the backyard and scrambled any attempt to think clearly. Hard to imagine the people staying here could stand it, much less the neighbors.
A girl came in the front door, rolling a big suitcase behind her. “Where should I put my stuff?” she asked.
Alex couldn’t hear whatever the girl said next over the music.
Alex gestured at the staircase. “Try the first room upstairs.”
The house was new, with fake plaster columns, a double-height living room with blocky wood furniture and cushion covers that could be put in the washing machine. It smelled like air freshener and potato chips bought in bulk. The counter was covered with liquor bottles in giant industrial sizes, the marble beneath glazed with spills. She’d already checked out the pool outside. It looked a little gray. Every so often, the mechanical pool cleaner jerked along the bottom, a half-inflated raft drifting on the water’s surface. Beer bottles dotted the surrounding tables and spilled out of a black garbage bag on the grass.
Alex changed into a bikini in the bathroom. A bikini was the correct choice for this place, for these people. The bathroom was disgusting—a hairdryer left plugged in, a towel streaked with self-tanner wadded on the floor. Stains marbled the toilet bowl. She flushed the toilet with her sandaled foot.
Alex hid her bag in the closet. She found a room with four bare twin mattresses and a futon and put a sweater on the futon to claim it.
She filled a plastic cup from the sink faucet, drank it down, then tipped in some vodka. She brushed her hair out with her fingers, ran her tongue along her top teeth. She made a second drink, this one with much more alcohol and some room-temperature cranberry juice, and took both cups with her to the backyard.
She surveyed the scene: a group playing beer pong, beer sloshing onto the patchy lawn. An audience of girls hung back in bikini tops and wedge heels, clutching anxiously at their elbows, expressions frozen in pretend interest. The setup looked taken from a low-rent porno, no one quite good-looking but intent on action.
