The Vanishing Year(52)

I know this is crazy. I’m spying on my husband. I’ve become a suburban cliché, minus the twenty pounds of baby weight and minivan. His behavior has been so erratic and this woman, his hand on her behind, against a backdrop of pink Lycra, has become a mental picture my mind hands me at inopportune moments.

Henry and I have always talked about partnership, working together to make things work. He’s always said he’d never divorce. That divorced rich men are inevitably poor men. That any marriage can be fixed, that love fluctuates. His viewpoint, while coldly practical, was one of the reasons I married him so quickly. A four-month courtship, a simple but elegant wedding, an expensive dinner party, and voilà, a cemented spot in high society. Henry with his beautiful, charming wife. Me with my handsome, rich husband. Illusions are dangerous, said Evelyn. Yet, I have no illusions about marriage. No expectations of handsome princes and white horses and happily ever afters. Evelyn never believed in happily ever afters, warning against falling in love with an idea over a person. Ideas are infallible, people are not. Don’t confuse the two. She was an optimist, but never na?ve. There’s a difference, she’d say.

So here I sit, next to a remarkably lifelike ficus tree, wondering if I’ve done just that. Is this an affair, or a harmless way to pass a grueling workout?

He walks by her and flicks her hair, like he’s a third grader at recess. It’s the playfulness that’s so foreign.

“Zoe?”

I spin around, my heart in my throat. Reid Pinkman stands in front of me with his head cocked. I hardly recognize him outside Henry’s office. Reid is younger than me, in his late twenties, ambitious and single and often lightly flirtatious. Henry is his mentor and fawns over him. I’m always slightly embarrassed around Reid, ever since the night before Musha Cay, when Henry was cruel and Reid witnessed it. He’s never brought it up, thankfully.

“Hi, Reid!” I say brightly, giving him a dazzling smile.

“What are you doing here?”

It’s ironic, given my circumstances, that I don’t actually enjoy inventing lies on the spot. My mind races and my heart thunders in my ears.

“I’m . . . surprising Henry. Well, I was going to, but I just got an urgent call from a friend and I have to run.”

I glance back through the one-way glass and Henry has the gym towel tossed over his shoulder and he and Blonde Spandex are walking toward the door, but slowly. She touches his arm and he leans down to hear something she says.

Reid follows my gaze and nods. “Ah. Okay, then will I see you tonight?”

My head snaps back to Reid. “Wait. What’s tonight?”

Reid looks toward Henry, who has stopped walking. Henry and the woman are now involved in deep, serious conversation, and Henry rakes a hand through his hair. The blonde crosses her arms over her chest and juts her chin out and I’m struck with the thought that you don’t typically get mad at someone you barely know. Anger is an intimate emotion.

“The firm’s celebration for Nippon. The Japanese steel account? Henry didn’t tell you?”

“I’m sure he did. I probably forgot.” I pull the hat off and shove it in my purse. “Do me a favor, Reid. Don’t tell Henry I was here, okay?”

“Sure thing.” He touches my arm and says hopefully, “See you tonight?”

“Yep, see you tonight.”

I rush into the revolving door just as Henry and the blonde come through the door into the lobby. They are stopped by Reid and I use the opportunity to scuttle through one revolution before I’m spit out onto the sidewalk. Around the corner, I lean against the stone building, under the concrete plaque with the number 58 on it, and take deep breaths. Who is the blonde? Does Reid know her? This is Reid’s gym, too. If Henry was having an affair, Reid would most likely know about it. I have to figure out a way to get to tonight’s event. I wonder if I can call Henry’s secretary and ask where it is.

My skin buzzes hot. It’s a warm day, for April, probably pushing eighty degrees, and my shirt sticks to my back. On a whim, I pull out my phone.

Lunch? I text.

Starving, Cash texts back.

? ? ?

We arrange to meet in ten minutes at a Black and Bean, a coffee shop a block away. I know we need to talk to make plans for tomorrow, tomorrow!, and my stomach flips. I haven’t talked to him since Monday in the park, when he agreed to go to Caroline’s with me. I still haven’t told Henry about Caroline. After last night and this morning, I’m not sure I will.

My mind swims with unmade decisions and doubt. My ears ring with the sound of broken glass, shattering on the wall behind me, crunching under my shoes. The stench of whiskey, the air permeated with violence.

I might be overreacting. He didn’t throw the glass at me. He threw it at the wall. Is that different?

Women have girlfriends for this very reason: to bounce their irrationalities off each other. I long for Lydia, the way we used to be. Nonjudgmental and totally accepting. She once slept with two different men in the same night, and when she’d confessed it, the next day, lying in our side-by-side beds, with the late afternoon sun filtering through the smoky haze of our bedroom, I remember sitting straight up in bed, my mouth hanging open. Her choices were not my choices, and all I’d ever said was, Who was better? And we howled with laughter. As far as I could tell, she never stopped to question herself when she passed judgment on me. It hardly seemed fair.