By the time the renovation work on the loft was finished (new kitchen and new master bathroom), so was his marriage to Haley. She’d never lived here. Instead, Jessica moved in only a few months after James.
Before beginning his affair with Jessica, James had never been unfaithful to a partner; he’d never even thought cheating was something he was capable of doing. Nor had he ever been “the other man,” always staying clear of married women, even when they offered him no-strings-attached sexual relationships in his single days.
James was forty-two when Jessica came into his life, and by then he’d had more than his share of experiences with women. Much more than his share, all false modesty aside. But within minutes of being in Jessica’s company, he realized that he’d previously been completely ignorant about love. It was like how he’d thought he understood the Sistine Chapel because he’d studied it in school. But when he finally stepped into the Vatican and looked up at the ceiling, he realized he’d never comprehended it at all.
He knew it was somewhat twisted logic, but James was convinced that everything had transpired exactly as he’d predicted from the outset because the universe’s imperative to bring Jessica to him could not be denied, just like nothing could have stopped the universe from taking his father in that accident. Of course, that did not mean he was blameless. Or that he wouldn’t someday pay a price for his sins.
Tonight the loft looked even bigger than its three thousand square feet because nearly all their living room furniture had been put into storage, replaced by rented bistro tables and chairs. The fact that everything in the space was white—the chairs, the tablecloths, the tulips, and the vases in which they stood—gave the place an even more cavernous feel. Even the waitstaff charged with walking around and serving the hors d’oeuvres wore uniforms consistent with the alabaster theme.
The decor didn’t seem the least bit monochromatic, however. That was because the perimeter of the space was adorned with more than thirty pieces of art, each bursting with color. The largest was roughly the size of a queen bed, the smallest hardly bigger than a postage stamp. James rotated the pieces from time to time, as one would in an art gallery. Regardless of which pieces were on display, the room provided something of a kaleidoscopic experience. At times, Jessica felt as if the art were actually swirling around her.
She found Katerina, the caterer recommended by one of James’s clients, in the kitchen. Katerina was a sculptor when she wasn’t creating menus for parties, and she was beautiful—a common denominator of most, if not all, of the women in James’s orbit.
“You’re an absolute vision, Jessica,” she said.
“Thank you. How’s everything going?”
“Like a well-oiled machine,” Katerina said. “No . . . no,” she told a woman placing unfilled champagne flutes on a tray. “The champagne’s always poured here.”
“Anything I can do?” Jessica asked.
“Just have the time of your life, my dear.”
Not five minutes after Owen’s mother’s visit, James knocked on his door.
His stepfather looked as if he’d been born in a suit and tie, wearing it with an ease that Owen was near certain he’d never achieve at any age. He took after his father, Wayne, in that regard, possessing a healthy bit of skepticism about the 1 percent.
“Just checking on you, Owen,” James said.
“I haven’t run away yet.”
James smiled. “Yeah, I hear you. But tonight’s party is going to make your mother happy. That’s why we’re doing it.”
This was a common refrain from James: “It’ll make your mother happy.” Owen tried to think of instances in which his father had uttered the same sentiment, but his mind always came up blank. He knew that wasn’t the reason his parents had split, or why his mother was now with James, but he didn’t think it was necessarily not the reason either.
“The jacket looks good on you,” James continued. “And I like pairing it with the Nikes. Very GQ of you.”
“Thanks. I do it all for you, James.”
This made his stepfather laugh. “I’m lucky to have you, Owen.”
“Right back at you, James,” Owen said with a laugh of his own.
Wayne’s plus-one for the evening was Stephanie Cunningham, a thirty-nine-year-old physician’s assistant he’d met online. She had never been married but was quick to point out that she was not a commitment-phobe, having lived with a man for much of her thirties.
She and Wayne had been seeing each other for about four months—that in-between period of a relationship among people their age in which overnight stays were a given on those alternating weekends when Owen stayed with his mother, but it was still too soon to talk about the future.
For the subway ride from Queens to Manhattan, Stephanie had her overcoat buttoned to the top. Beneath it was a dress she’d gotten from Rent the Runway, a burgundy velvet number held up by spaghetti straps with a nearly nonexistent back. It was sexier than anything Wayne had seen Stephanie wear before. He was smart enough not to make that observation audibly, of course. He knew why his plus-one was dressing as if this were some type of competition: because for Stephanie, it was.
It was also a contest Stephanie could never win, no matter what she wore. Jessica would always look better because his ex-wife was movie-star beautiful, while, on her best day, Stephanie was merely pretty in a supporting-role way.
Wayne felt justified in making that assertion because he knew full well that the same analysis applied to the comparison between James and him. All of which meant that, on first sight, Wayne’s ex-wife and her current husband made a much more obvious pair than Wayne and Jessica ever had.
“Are you okay?” Stephanie asked.
His expression must have betrayed that he was not okay. Wayne had told Stephanie all about his breakup with Jessica, how it hurt at
