“I want to go home,” says Donnell.
“I’m trying,” says the lawyer. “We’ll talk again soon.” He removes a container of dental floss from a desk drawer and begins to unspool it.
“Really?” says Donnell.
“Sorry,” says his lawyer, floss stretched between two fingers like a tightrope for a tiny acrobat. “I thought the camera was off.”
30.
She answers despite being underground. A woman shouts nearby, an argument with God over compound interest (“Free will!” she imagines God’s reply), so Wendy sticks a finger in her ear and hustles toward the far end of the tunnel, slaloming around trash bins and a man with a feather earring playing slide guitar.
“When’s your train?” says Michael.
Wendy looks up at the electronic display.
“One minute.”
“Tonight?” Michael says. “I thought you weren’t leaving until early tomorrow morning. I didn’t know they ran a train this late. Oh, I’m so glad. You’re taking it to Hudson, right? Let me know what time you get in and I’ll pick you up. Doesn’t matter how late.”
It takes Wendy a second to figure out that he’s not talking about the subway train but an Amtrak that would, in theory, be bringing her to the Berkshires.
“Michael, I’m not,” she says, and stares at the track. A foot-sized rat dawdles by the third rail. It sniffs a Cheetos bag, then crawls inside.
“Not what?”
“Not coming to Hudson.”
“You’re taking the bus into Pittsfield then?”
“Let’s talk about it later,” she says.
The rat emerges, dusted orange. A little girl points and says, “Kitty cat.”
“So what time does the bus come?” Michael says.
“I’m not coming,” Wendy says.
“What?”
“I’m not coming to Ricky’s memorial.”
“I don’t understand,” says Michael. Neither does Wendy. All she knows is she can’t leave right now, with Devor’s conspiracy gaining traction, and the billboard campaign launching, and the supposed unveiling of the product on Sunday. She can’t go to the funeral because of work, and because work is an excuse for avoiding what she doesn’t wish to confront.
She can picture Ricky’s wake, his lips wired into a smile, still smug, even in death. Michael standing over the casket and reaching inside, maybe fixing Ricky’s tie. Lydia asking when they’ll try for another baby. The inevitable moment when Stuart stares at her breasts.
The last funeral she went to was Nina’s. Not a funeral, a burial. No friends or Mixners, just Wendy, Michael, a rabbi, and Wendy’s dad. The tiny casket, which they lowered by hand. No one spoke. The rabbi breathlessly recited the kaddish, intuiting their need to move quickly. And it was too warm. She wanted thunder and wind, no light on that horrible day. Michael said something about the cemetery being a place where flowers grow. How one day their children would come here and play among these daisies, and that Nina would like that, seeing her sisters.
“Look,” says Michael, near tears, she can tell, “I need you right now. Things are so fucked up, and I’m alone, and I just saw on TV that they arrested Donnell, and I keep seeing stuff on Reddit about your company’s campaign, and I just need to know what’s . . .”
Wendy loses service as she steps onto the train.
31.
They were married the following September on the sand. Broder wore linen pants and a band-collared shirt, buttoned, as instructed, to the top. She said he looked hip, but he felt like a priest. He sipped virgin mojitos and shook everyone’s hands. He sanitized his hands when no one was looking. Their friends from Recovery said: too soon.
And there were too many bridesmaids. High school best friends, Emma C. and Emma H., who both “lived” for Burning Man. A best friend from summer camp, Corrinne, in visible bra straps and cat-eye makeup; she was gay and played bass in a disco-punk band. And Aliana’s cousin, Alix, who’d had two lines in a Tom Cruise film and found a way to work it into every conversation. The bridesmaids primped, gossiped, posted to Facebook. They treated the wedding like a magazine shoot. And they smoked a joint in the club’s bridal suite, sort of half-apologetic—oh ha-ha, right, you guys are, like, sober—Recovery dismissed as passing fad.
Aliana wore white and a wildflower crown. Her dress was backless, with a lacy bodice and a gauzy skirt that caught the breeze. She’d had her teeth bleached for the affair, and her smile seemed inhumanly bright as she walked down the aisle. It was hard to believe she was Broder’s bride. And yet here she was, moving toward him, meeting his eyes. He’d spent years in Recovery struggling to get past its second step, faith in a Power beyond himself. Where others found God in the coastline, Broder saw only a nihilistic ocean, a long, empty sky. But in her, he’d discovered the elusive divine.
Broder stood barefoot, back to the surf. The barefoot thing was the bride’s idea. The groom had been pedicured in preparation. He’d never had one before and he liked it: the touch and attention, and the smooth result, heels planed like stones beneath a century of tides. It had drizzled that morning, and the beach was still wet. There was sand between his toes and caked to his ankles and the cuffs of his pants. He smelled sea salt and sunscreen. He felt himself sinking ever so slightly.
Broder’s dad and Patty, who was now Broder’s stepmom, sat up front. They were obvious outliers in their East Coast attire: navy and charcoal, worsted wool. Broder kept waiting for his father to smile. The bride’s parents beamed. This was their party and they presided, hands clasped, legs stretched into the aisle. Broder’s mom sat alone, sweating, fanning herself with a program. She was the largest person here, and Broder felt embarrassed, and then he felt badly about being embarrassed. He’d bought the small diamond with his own meager savings. He hadn’t asked his family for money in months.
The officiant was another of Aliana’s friends—a guy she’d once dated, or
