White Ivy(36)

Afterward, he wrapped her in her coat, kissed her on the cheek, and put her in a cab home—as neat as wrapping a present. It was raining outside. A foggy, gray sky cast everything in its cold shadow. What do you see when you look upon the world, Gideon? She tried to infuse the city’s dark alleys with his dignified imperturbability, but she could not. Without his presence, the loiterers on her corner frightened her, the gossamer objects floating in the gust of wind were just plastic bags. That was the thing about getting too much happiness at once. Without time to adjust, the pain of not having it suddenly became unbearable.

A week later, Gideon came over to her old Victorian house for the first time. To prepare for his visit, Ivy scrubbed the toilet, cleaned the fridge of the moldy onions and garlic, vats of gunky yogurt, Andrea’s half-eaten yams and empty egg cartons. She washed her bedding, vacuumed the carpet, bought so many long-stemmed irises, their purple and yellow petals iridescent by candlelight, that her walls glowed like a lava lamp. There was nothing she could do about her seedy neighborhood but she even tried to tackle the yard, raking the dead leaves, mostly reduced to brown slime, from the patch of sidewalk in front of the house, and dragging the ugly row of trash bins into the backyard.

Gideon was distracted when he came over. One of the Big Three had injured his knee, he told her, and suddenly the Celtics’ championship no longer seemed so certain. Ivy, too, felt despondent. She had cooked spaghetti Bolognese, toasted garlic bread, tossed a salad with stuffed olives, and opened a bottle of Sancerre, but Gideon was barely eating. He must really be cut up about the basketball thing. She felt a wave of tenderness toward him then, for his passions and his troubles, which, to her, were the wholesome troubles of a child.

After dinner, they went to Dresdan’s for drinks so Gideon could meet Andrea. Ivy had prepared him by explaining Andrea as “my friend who plays violin for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She’s quite a handful, but she’s kind,” Ivy added, not wanting Gideon to think she was bad-mouthing a friend. “She’d be the first one to have your back in a fight.”

“That’s all that matters,” Gideon agreed.

When they got to the bar, a jazz quartet was just setting up. Already, it was packed with a noisy, buoyant crowd, driven mostly by a group of office workers jostling to buy another round for the birthday boy, whose right forearm was covered in tallies, drawn on with permanent marker, of how many shots he’d had so far. Just as Gideon ordered their drinks, Andrea arrived dressed in skintight faux leather leggings and a shrunken leopard-patterned sweater, her lipstick the deep plum color of sangria. Lips and hips, Andrea’s trademark weapons. “Traffic was awful!” she said, somehow managing to hug both Ivy and Gideon simultaneously. Her yam and boiled egg diet had worked. She’d lost fifteen pounds and her face had taken on that taut, dark-eyed look of the hungry. She was very luminous tonight. The undercurrent of cheap sex she usually emitted had taken on depth and mystery. That was the power of beauty.

It was impossible to carry on a long conversation but Andrea kept trying anyway, leaning forward at so sharp an angle that the collar of her sweater fell open and the soft swell of her cleavage, with its smattering of chestnut freckles, gleamed like ripe pears, as she shouted: “Sorry, what? What?” Ivy watched Gideon. But it was hard to tell what he really thought of Andrea. In a way, he reminded Ivy of her aunt Sunrin. Such impeccable manners. But where Sunrin’s polish emitted superiority—her difference set her apart—Gideon’s included you in its intimacy, like a gentle guide whispering the answers in your ear so that you felt very clever when you said the right words. Ivy could see the magic of it on Andrea’s glowing face—how special and beautiful I am, Andrea was thinking. Ivy wondered if that was how she looked talking to Gideon. Every twitch of his brow, cock of his head, curve of his lips signaled, to her, lust, incredulity, contempt. She imagined Gideon harboring these emotions because these were the emotions she harbored herself.

“Do you have any single friends?” Andrea asked Gideon after her second glass of sparkling lemonade. She wasn’t drinking, but Ivy could hardly ever tell the difference between drunk and sober Andrea. Probably alcohol wasn’t allowed on her diet.

“There’s my cofounder, Roland,” said Gideon.

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-seven. No wait. Twenty-six.”

Andrea shook her head. “I’m thirty-three.”

“What?”

“She’s thirty-three,” said Ivy.

“Twenty-six is still a baby,” said Andrea. “I need a man”—she tapped her finger—“to put a ring on it.”

Gideon nodded sympathetically.

“Andrea’s becoming very practical these days,” said Ivy.

“All men want these days is sex. You know what Chris said to me the other day? He said, ‘Why should I want to get married now? The longer I wait, the more my stock goes up.’ And he’s right!” Andrea shook her head helplessly. “Time’s running out for me but he hasn’t even reached his prime yet! Why should he want a thirty-three-year-old with decaying eggs when he can have a twenty-two-year-old fresh from college?” She wagged a finger at Gideon. “You’d better not be wasting Ivy’s time. Two years with Daniel! She just wanted to meet his mom. What a chickenshit.”

Ivy dragged Andrea to the restroom. She listened to Andrea struggling with the zipper of her pants before going into the stall to help her.