Our Country Friends(107)

    “Right now?”

“I don’t want this day to end without something in my life moving forward. I want to be closer to you.”

“I’ll text my assistant.”

“I’ll text Masha.”

“Can she bring Nat? She’s out of school already, right?”

“You know who else we should text? Dee and Ed. Ed just bought a place like five blocks away.”

“Just tell them we’re not doing a memorial today. Not tonight, okay? We’ll raise a glass to him and that’s all. Promise me, Sash. And please tell Masha not to be harsh with me.”



* * *



—

The summer heat had just been rescinded and now there were two beams of blue light arced over the downtown sky, that time of year. Masha spotted her husband and Karen up the avenue in their little Sukkoth-like enclosure. “Karen-emo, Karen-emo!” Nat was shouting. Bike riders whizzed by them, screaming into their ear bones about real estate deals and synthetic currencies. Karen ran toward Nat, nearly knocked down by a young woman in a wheelchair furiously making her way uptown, half of her determined face shrouded by a black mask. Karen lifted the child up effortlessly, despite the city weight she had already put on. That was the idea: that she would lift Nat up.

“We need to use everything to our advantage now,” Masha had told her husband, one night after all their guests had left the House on the Hill, after Vinod had been airlifted out. She had given her thesis on the world Nat could expect growing up, one of corruption, falsity, and decline, even if the presidency changed hands. “I’m not saying we should share custody or anything. But let Karen be in her life.”

Senderovsky had told her then of his plan to sell the estate to Karen for about double what it would be worth, but, as part of the agreement, they could continue to use it as their second home, though Karen might build another “main house,” something piney and Californian, abutting theirs. Karen and Masha would co-parent, and Senderovsky, Masha thought, would provide a background conversational presence, a handyman of words. As soon as the papers were signed and the money for the house transferred, he would go back to writing novels, “more serious ones,” he had promised himself.

    Nat was now riding atop Karen’s shoulders, shrieking rapturously at the change in altitude, and now Masha could hear Dee’s chortle echoing along the avenue and see Ed’s de-dandified form, just another happy oblivious stick-thin city dweller with his arm wrapped around his beautiful other, his mask cupping his chin.

“Karen-emo, why are you all dressed up?” Nat asked her.

“Should we tell her?” Karen whispered to Masha, who shook her head, “Not yet.” But Nat had already started blathering happily about her day in school. Karen had hired a “push-in” counselor to help her make friends, even though this was against the Kindness Academy’s policies (an unsolicited gift from Karen had just doubled their endowment), and now that BTS was becoming more mainstream, Nat had emerged as the keeper of all knowledge pertaining to the band.

“It turns out that Ada Morelo-Schwartz likes BTS, too,” Nat shouted, “but she didn’t even know that their name stood for Bangtan Sonyeondan, or Bulletproof Boy Scouts. How do you not know that?”

“Be gracious, sladkaya,” Masha said. “Remember what Miss Franco said when it comes to making friends. Inside trade, outside trade.”

“Keep listening,” Karen seconded. “Keep exchanging information.”

Dee and Ed had cornered Senderovsky and were asking him questions with the single-mindedness of new couples. Ed: “Did he suffer?” Dee: “Was he under the whole time?” “Will he be cremated?” But Senderovsky would just sigh, shrug, and peel the meat off his ribs. He had no answers. He told them they would be sent a link to a virtual memorial on Tuesday, midday, at a time convenient for a brother in San Francisco and another in London.

They sat there between the ferns and the busy bike lane, passing around plates of food, surrounded by faces that looked like their own. Masha had just noticed that since this morning her husband had stopped coughing. “I’m getting a really hygge feeling right now,” Ed said.

    “Please stop using that word,” Dee said, her tone stern. “There’s nothing hygge about what happened to us today.” Us, Senderovsky thought. Even down in the city, they were still members of his bungalow colony. The summer of 2020, that year of imperfect vision, would hold them together forever. He reminded himself to call his agent concerning Hotel Solitaire. Vinod had not wanted his help in finding a publisher, but he would ignore his instructions once more.

Nat looked up the Danish term hygge on Karen’s phone. “I know what ‘coziness’ means, but what’s ‘con-viv-i-a-lity’?”

They drank an alcoholic fresh melon drink sweetened further with pandan syrup and a margarita with calamansi honey. Karen’s assistant dropped by, and she and Dee (whom she resembled down to the miniature hips and prominent coccyx) had gone to the same graduate writing program, although she had never enjoyed Senderovsky’s drunken tutelage. The assistant had Karen, Masha, and her husband sign a stack of papers further fusing her boss with the Levin-Senderovskys. “I’m a notary public,” she said, brightly, when Masha wondered whether a lawyer shouldn’t be present.