Our Country Friends(22)

“You two should try it,” Vinod said of Dee and the Actor. “It’ll be cute.”

“Can’t we have one dinner without whipping out our phones?” Ed said.

Karen noticed the tone of his voice and looked at him and Dee and then back again, surprised. Ed never had feelings. “Or you guys can try it,” she said, pointing to Dee and Ed. “You’re sitting next to each other already.”

“I don’t think we can perform this experiment given the distancing rules,” Masha said.

“That much is Tr??,” Ed said.

“You must get so sick of that,” Dee said to Karen.

“Although if Dee’s game, I’m willing to take the chance,” Ed said.

“Masha has a point re distancing,” Karen said. “It’s actually getting us into trouble now that things are locking down. We’re offering a disclaimer: for domestic use only.”

“I’m seriously game to try it,” the Actor said. He looked around. “I mean everything is so goddamn boring these days. And we’ve got the creator right here with us. Dee, what do you say? What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Fine with me,” Dee said. “I don’t fall in love, one way or another.”

“That’s accurate,” Senderovsky said. “Everyone in the writing program was completely taken with Dee, but she just led them on.”

Dee handed her phone to Karen, then got up and walked over to the Actor; for some reason it couldn’t have been the other way around. “They’re only doing this once and only for a second,” Masha said to Nat. “Otherwise they’ll keep their distance.”

“Not if the app works,” Ed said.

The Actor was about a head taller than Dee. He was wearing a denim jacket that seemed off-brand but was not. With her sporty fleece and deep-set blue eyes, Senderovsky thought, the two of them looked like a going concern, her sturdy Anglo features, his many ethnicities, one genuinely awkward smile and one a careful projection of awkwardness. “So what do we do?” the Actor said.

    “Don’t breathe on each other,” Masha cautioned.

“Turn your heads about thirty degrees,” Karen said from her director’s chair. “And then just look into each other’s eyes.”

“Like we’re in love?” Dee asked.

“That’s the algorithm’s job.”

Dee looked up at the handsome man next to her. They could have been meeting at their favorite bar on Canal Street, which, like the porch, was also candlelit and bathed in Ethiopian jazz. He could have been just another especially lovely stranger straggling through a lifetime of lovely strangers. “Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” the Actor said. He could smell the heaviness of butter and parmesan on her breath and wondered if that meant they were too close, too viral. He pictured his own voluminous death notices. His expression filled out with sorrow that Dee mistook for desire.

“Say ‘cheese’!” Nat shouted while Karen took the photo of them.

“What’s happening now?” the Actor asked.

“It’s formatting,” Karen said. “Give it a sec.”

“Remember that movie Weird Science?” Senderovsky said to his wife, who was seated next to him, Nat straddling her chair, perched on it like a footman (inability to sit and keep still, Masha noted). “We saw it on a projector back in the old bungalow colony.” He added softly in Russian: Do you remember? But Masha was staring at Dee’s phone along with everyone else. The entire porch was now frozen in oils, a rendering by Goya of a summerhouse outside Madrid full of courtiers and attendants, the expression of each betraying their true nature: flustered, frustrated, imperious, hopeful, desirous, desired.

“There,” Karen said. She handed the phone back to Dee.

Dee looked at the enhanced photo. They did look happy in the candlelight, happy like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while, happy like the trio of Senderovsky, Karen, and the Indian guy. The Actor was goofy, as she suspected, a beautiful goofy mop top of a man. But the photo seemed like nothing more than a prized social media artifact. She breathed out in relief, feeling safe. Nothing would stray her from the steady lonely course of her life.

    “Tr?? love?” Ed asked, his hand firmly around the soft lobe of his ear.

“I’m going to need a little more time to process it,” Dee said.

“It’s not instantaneous,” Karen said.

“Uh-oh. I’m calling the Better Business Bureau,” the Actor said.

“Maybe she was in love with you already,” Senderovsky said. Masha looked at him and shook her head, sadly. This is my livelihood, he wanted to tell her. Dee went around the table, keeping her distance but thrusting the phone into her companions’ vision. A polite consensus was forming. They were very cute together. They looked like a couple. They looked like they could be in love. This is what relative youth looked like. (The Actor was ten years older than Dee, but still younger than Senderovsky and his compatriots.) Aww.

“Here goes,” Dee said as she held the phone out in front of the Actor.

“Should I be getting the prenup ready?” the Actor said. Masha groaned inwardly.

“Look at the eyes,” Karen said. The Actor took that to mean Dee’s eyes and he spent a few seconds examining them. Her eyes were flirty, mischievous, perhaps trying to conceal a kind of spite. She was trying to hold back, the Actor thought, trying to maintain a distance from his charms, which was in itself a compliment. He was ready to say something polite.