“Et bien,” she said, wiping her nose manically, clearing the rim of a nostril, and joining Whitney and Jack back outside on the steps: “Me voilà, donc.”
The four rearranged themselves in a different shape than before, and they ate quickly. It wasn’t much food, after all that time in line. Jack’s legs ran like handrails down the steps. Leonard contorted herself between them like an ampersand, and flipped her hair so that it spilled onto the lap of his jeans.
An older couple wearing silk scarves approached the steps, and the man lowered his glasses to ask, quizzically: “Je ne sais quoi?”
Leonard stared back at the man, then turned to Whitney as though he might mean her. Leonard looked back at the man and said, “Me neither.”
“From Le Grenier,” the man said, in French-tinged English. “Jenna Saisquoi, no? We talked for some time maybe a month ago, after one of your shows. My wife, Celeste. And I’m Maxime? We shared a drink at Le Grenier…”
“I’m…sorry…” Leonard said. “I think you must have me confused with someone else.”
Maxime turned to Celeste and chuckled, not in confusion, but in clear comprehension.
“No, no,” Maxime said. “I’m sorry. Carry on. You know what they say: Once you turn fifty, anyone under forty looks the same.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Leonard said, and smiled without unsealing her lips.
“Well aren’t you a sweetheart,” Maxime said, grinning widely at having caught her out. “Can we take your plates in for you? We’re heading inside now, anyway.”
The four waved them off graciously, and the couple disappeared into the apartment.
“Well,” Leonard said, and everyone seemed to understand, and they stood, and they followed her in. As they passed into the light, Will pinched Whitney in the ribs, an acknowledgment that whatever this was, and whoever all these people were around them, they were part of the thing they’d noticed before, only now they were getting deeper.
Back inside, there was more wine. And Curtis had disappeared the pots of roasted chicken and replaced them with new wooden bowls of ice cream and berries. They sat beneath the bookshelves, their numbers dwindling now that it was creeping later. Curtis emptied another box of beer into the bucket of ice. Will and Whitney found themselves talking to the British architects again. They talked about politics, about the exit negotiations, about the new American president, about the elections in Holland and France and the Continent’s swift lurch to the right.
But all conversations in the room seemed to eventually return to the volcano. You obviously couldn’t return to London, the architects said, but there were still trains running east. They thought they’d head that direction for a few days until it cleared, go somewhere they hadn’t been before. Bosnia, maybe. Serbia. They’d disappear into the mountains for a while, wait for the skies to clear. Gram overheard them and declared it a marvelous idea. He parted the crowd and stood on the couch beneath one of the grand shelves, and selected a slim volume in a blue jacket that looked like it could’ve been printed in the copy shop they’d passed on the walk up. It was a guide to the Balkans, to old Yugoslavia, written by Gram himself. The book had been published, he explained, by Likken Zuigen, the Dutch publishers who’d put out his first magazine. The borders might be different, he said, but the particulars no doubt held true. They could have the book, so long as they brought it back someday, he said. It would ensure their attendance at a future dinner party.
The first overt things Will and Whitney noticed were the hands. It may have started earlier in the night, but it caught their attention when Gram gave the British woman the guidebook. His hands fell to her hips. His hands traced around her lower back and he shifted behind her like a golf pro, giving a full-body demonstration of how best to flip the pages. His arms spread over her arms, showing off the maps, showing off photos of Gram in grainy black and white. His hands lay upon her hands. His face was in her hair. Her hips pressed back into him. Her husband watched, pleased.
All around them, unlimited wine, plastic cups in long supply, Will and Whitney drinking to speed things up, as a way to get through the ice-cream course quicker. There was music now. Rock ’n’ roll in Italian. The conversations turned up to drown out the guitars. Jack and Leonard were in line for the bathroom, ignoring the books and photographs, locked into each other instead. Standing there like two different species, one practically twice the size of the other. Will and Whitney stood silent, watching them. They couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Jack had Leonard laughing. He was acting out something physical, hands in the air, up on his toes—the saddest slam dunk in history. She pointed to a book on a shelf. He turned and looked, but instead of reaching for it himself, he lifted her at the waist. She was featherweight. Her legs dangled like soda straws and her shoes slipped to the floor. Her park-stained feet, nails painted the requested color of the session, hung there like prized hooves. She reached for the book and the inner edges of her breasts announced themselves to the room. They fell straight down, concealed only by the indifferent fabric of her dress. She pulled Jack’s ear and he brought her back to Earth. She opened the book and showed him something. He laughed and she laughed, and then, as though forgetting about the bathroom, they disappeared up the stairs to the loft.
What had just been hands in the room was fully bodies now. No one was crossing the line yet, but there was a coziness all around, in the couches beneath
