Commonwealth(56)

That might have solved the problem were it not for the fact that nature abhors an empty bedroom in summer in Amagansett, especially when those rooms are owned by an actress and rented by a novelist. People wanted to visit. Eric, his editor, who should have been the one to hire a sentry to patrol the property line with a gun, was the first to call and say how nice it would be to get together outside of the city and talk over Leo’s ideas for the new book. Eric could come out Thursday, beating the rush, but Marisol, his wife, had an opening she needed to go to that night. He supposed that Marisol would have to brave the Jitney on Friday.

Marisol? Leo stumbled for an instant but then agreed pleasantly to everything—yes, yes, a great time would be had by all. He hung up the phone and looked at the yellow legal pad in front of him, then he looked out the window. It was raining, and for a while he sat and admired the cherry trees, wondering if anyone had ever made a legal pad out of a cherry tree. Then he went downstairs to see if Franny thought they should drive into town for lunch.

“It’s good that Eric’s coming,” Leo said to Franny. The rain was light and they sat outside under an awning at the café where they’d had lunch three days in a row. It was extremely pleasant. “I can ask him about finding you a job. You’re a terrific editor, you know, better than he’ll ever be, not that I’d mention that.”

Franny shook her head. “Don’t ask him.”

The waitress came by and Leo touched the rim of his empty wineglass. It was after two o’clock, a very late lunch. “If I don’t ask him he’ll figure it out himself. I might just mention that you’re looking for something. Or maybe I’ll mention it to Marisol.”

“Eric knows me,” she said. “If he wants to hire me he knows where I am.” Of course, Eric had probably noticed that Leo and Franny didn’t live in New York, and in fact didn’t live anywhere for more than four months at a time, which would make taking on a regular job difficult. Anyway, Franny wasn’t sure she wanted to be an editor.

“Eric knows you from dinner parties. He hasn’t gotten to spend any real time with you. That’s why this is going to work out so well.”

When Eric came on Thursday afternoon he said he’d rather stay in for dinner. He’d been out every night that week, and anyway it would be so much easier to talk at the house. Eric was in every sense a wiry man, a runner with a small frame who must have once been told that blue complemented his eyes. Franny had never seen Eric in anything other than blue. He looked up the staircase, touching the banister with affection.

Leo looked at Franny. “That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

She should have seen it right then but she didn’t. She was thinking in terms of one dinner, one night. Franny went into the kitchen and called Jerrell at the Palmer House to ask him how to cook steaks. He would just be at the beginning of his shift now. He would be chopping parsley.

“Little House,” he said. “Get the fuck back here. You know can’t nobody else fill my cup.”

She laughed. “I’m going to give up my summer to go get your lemonade at the bar? Be a friend and help me here.”

Jerrell was standing in the manager’s office and the manager was staring at him. The cooks never got calls. He told her to rub a little bit of Old Bay on the meat and let it sit. “I mean a little bit. That shit is not for steaks.” Then he walked her through the basics of asparagus and baked potatoes. “You buy the salad and a cake. Somebody out there’s got money. Don’t you go doing everything yourself.”

Franny went to the grocery store, the butcher’s, the bakery. She went to the liquor store and picked out the wines, stocked up on scotch and gin. When she got back to the house she unloaded the car. Leo and Eric had begged off the trip to town, saying they were going to talk about the novel first, get business out of the way. She could hear them laughing out on the screened porch on the side of the house where Leo had decided it would be all right to smoke. Great, raucous laughter. Franny carried out two glasses of ice and a bottle of Macallan to be friendly. She was wearing her beach clothes: cut-off shorts and flip-flops, a plain white T-shirt. She was twenty-nine years old. They were playing house. She was playing hostess.

“Eric, will you look at this girl?” Leo said from his chair, putting his arm around her hips and pulling her towards him. “Is she a dream?”

“A dream,” Eric said, and then asked Franny if he could have a tall glass of Pellegrino or Perrier with ice.

Franny nodded, glad that she’d thought to buy seltzer. She went back to the kitchen. They were talking about Chekhov, not the novel. Eric was wondering whether there was a market for a new translation, a series of ten volumes, all of it. She wondered which of the stories had struck them as funny.

As a feminist, Franny had to ask herself why it was she’d made dinner for Leo and Eric on Thursday night without ever expecting that they would offer to help her, but that when Marisol came out from the city the next day in her embroidered linen tunic and red linen scarf, and sat down on the screened-in porch and said what she could really use was a glass of white wine, a nice chablis if they had it, Franny felt a little ping, like someone had just shot her in the neck with a rubber band. She had asked Marisol what she could get for her, and Marisol, digging in her purse to find her own cigarettes, so thrilled to see that someone else was smoking, had answered. What was the problem with that?