She doesn’t even have to ask.
“It’s my fault really,” continues Fred, “not for trusting Michael, who I’m sure did the best he could with what he had, but for trusting the market. I’m not the only one who lost, and it would have been no different if I’d taken anyone’s advice.”
“I don’t . . .” starts Wendy, when the doorbell rings.
The first thing Lucas says is, “Smells like burnt hair.”
“Burnt potatoes,” says Wendy.
The date arrives on Lucas’s heels. She’s younger than Fred had led Wendy to believe: platinum blond and clearly an exercise fanatic—spinning is Wendy’s guess, though she wears the cool gaze of the yoga convert—roughly the same age as Lillian, but in better shape. She has the kind of prominent collarbone worn like a neckpiece by thin middle-aged women, plus the remnants of a Florida tan and toned shoulders visible in the sleeveless blouse she quickly stripped down to after Fred took her coat.
“And you must be the daughter,” the woman says to Wendy, who’s already irritated, not only at the brazenness of this woman’s poorly timed entry, but at her use of the definite article before the word daughter, a trope so familiar that a single use is enough to send a shiver down Wendy’s spine as she recalls her sleazy cousins who first referred to Michael as the Boyfriend, or the sleazy boyfriends who referred to her father as the Father, or the sleazy classmates who referred to their stepmothers as the Stepmother, or, in some cases, the StepMonster, like she was some kind of StairMaster machine.
“Yup, I’m the daughter,” says Wendy, trying to withhold the condescension from her voice, and mostly failing, though it doesn’t appear that Fred’s lady friend has picked up on the slight.
“Ellen Waters,” the woman says, dangling a hand.
“Lucas Van Lewig,” says Lucas, and Wendy watches as Fred does the mental work of aging Lucas by thirty years and realizing he must be Chip Van Lewig’s son. Fred ushers the group into the living room where wine is served beside a stuffed mushroom hors d’oeuvre.
“Has Wendy told you about the project we’ve been working on?” asks Lucas. He lifts a foot and rests it on his other knee so a loafer hangs pristine in the lamplight. How the hell does he avoid scuffs and wear? Probably by traveling exclusively in chauffeured vehicles—she imagines he got uptown via helicopter, then took a limo from the landing base—though it’s also possible it’s a different pair of shoes each time, Lucas owning a closetful like Bruce Wayne.
The more pressing concern is the subject of work. Wendy hasn’t been forthright with Fred regarding Project Pinky, protecting her father from that which he won’t approve. And here’s her dinner guest, blue-eyed offspring of a John Birch Society orgy, itching to explain that Wendy’s been essential in persuading Congress to veto this country’s first step toward the redistribution of wealth.
“A bit,” says Fred.
And maybe Lucas can see that she’s terrified, her neck stretched and birdlike, leaning forward as if she might insert her beak between the two men and catch Lucas’s words in her mouth before they reach her father’s ears, because the next thing he says is, “Better not to discuss work in mixed company,” which Ellen Waters finds hilarious. Fred looks confused.
“Mixed company?”
“A joke, Dad,” says Wendy.
“It’s not like he’d understand what you guys do anyway,” says Ellen. “Before we started dating, Fred thought AOL was the Internet.”
Everyone has a good laugh except for Fred, who, Wendy can tell, is still tender from the admission of his failed investments, and is now feeling bullied. Ellen reaches across the coffee table and takes Fred’s hand. There’s a moment of eye contact to let Fred know that they’re not making fun of him, that he’s meant to be in on the joke
“It’s lucky Fred wasn’t on the Internet anyway,” says Ellen. “If he had been, he would have been up on all the dating sites, and would have found someone else before I sunk my claws into him.”
The women laugh, but the men seem to be staring each other down until, somehow, the tension breaks, and Ellen tells the story of their courtship, and her father beams, and even Lucas appears to loosen.
Wendy calls them all into the dining room, and when she brings out the bird, placing it gently on the table as Lucas expresses compliments on its level of skin-crispness, and Ellen takes a photo for her Instagram, and her father pops the cork on a bottle of champagne, it feels to Wendy, for a moment, that by acting out this scene of American normalcy, they are able to invoke it.
36.
Odors rise from trash cans and stick to hair. Dirt clings to clothing. The air is dry; the bathroom floors are wet. There are never paper towels. Ancient hand dryers are mere instruments of sound. Pennies have spent decades glued to the floor. No one dares attempt to pick them up. Empty bags of potato chips float like tumbleweeds. Bums and junkies nod on benches, scratching beards and broken skin. Even the vital and fashion-clad take on layers of levelling filth, their shoelaces dragging through puddles of spilled soda, the tips of their fingers sticky with germs from the rarely cleaned Quik-Ticket machines. All are powerless, reduced to bystander status, at the mercy of the screens where delays and cancellations are announced. Broder makes his way to the ticket counter. He slides cash through the slot.
The bus itself is an extension of the station, a condensed version of its stink and discomfort. Its occupants ignore one another; acknowledgment means admitting being here. Roughly half are on their phones. The other half stare at the seatbacks in front of them. Nobody reads.
Broder sits by the bathroom in back. He does not have a neighbor. The back is reserved for Broder-types, fringe figures in hoodies who drink beer from paper bags. Broder looks at his
