Page 77 of We All Live Here
“I’ll text you,” Lila says.
“You wouldn’t let me do that,” says Celie.
“I’m twenty-six years older than you,” says Lila. “And I am ruler of this kingdom.”
“You want to eat first?” Gene gestures toward the bowl of pasta. “Bill’s made a banquet here.”
God, but it smells delicious.
“I think we have plans to eat. But thanks.”
She walks to the pub, because she cannot think what else to do with the hour and a half still to wait and she is too on edge to stay at home. She sits in the corner, at a small table, and nurses a Diet Coke while staring at nothing on her phone. Her pulse is a thin drumbeat of nervousness. When she finishes the Coke she orders a gin and tonic. She needs to settle her nerves a little.It’s just dinner, she keeps telling herself.You don’t need to get yourself in a panic about it.
While she is drinking the gin, a man approaches her, forty-something with a dark, tightly cut business suit. She glances up, and he is looking directly at her, his expression a faint question.Why is it impossible for awoman ever to sit and exist by herself?It’s the dress, she thinks. It looks like she’s trying to attract sexual attention.
“I’m very happy by myself, thanks,” she finds herself saying, as he comes to a halt in front of her, a little more snappily than she’d intended.
“Actually, I just wanted to ask if you were using that chair.”
She has another gin and tonic to dispel the vague humiliation of the chair incident, and the fact that the businessman and his friends are now gathered in a large, noisy group around the next table, making hers look solitary and ridiculous. And then at ten to nine, as the decibel level in the pub is getting higher, and the band comes on at the far end, lifting everyone’s voices a further notch, she gathers her bag and, a little unsteadily, heads for Gabriel’s house.
•••
He answers thedoor on the second ring, a little flustered. “Really sorry,” he says, holding up a finger. “I’m just on the phone. I’ll be two minutes.” He disappears back up the stairs at a jog and she is left standing in the hallway, unsure where he wants her to wait.
She stands frozen, hearing a door close upstairs.What would Mum do?she wonders. After a moment, fortified by Francesca’s imagined ease in such a situation, she sheds her coat, and walks through to the kitchen.
It is, almost comically, the kitchen of an architect: the back of the house is a glass cube, in the center of which sits an oval marble table that she has seen in various magazines, and whose designer’s name she cannot recall. She cannot see anything cooking yet, but thinks it’s possible that something’s in the fridge waiting until she arrived. She’s so hungry she thinks she might pass out.
She gazes around the room, which is immaculate, ordered, and tasteful, the walls the color of unpainted plaster, the kitchen units a bold cobalt blue. A huge modernist chandelier hangs in the center of the ceiling,and there is nothing on the pale granite work surfaces except an oversized ceramic jug, none of the clutter and detritus of normal kitchen life. The side of the upper kitchen unit, hidden from view as she walks in, is the only area where minimalism takes a back seat—full of Lennie’s drawings and various letters from school, as well as a cork notice board. She scans the photographs on it—not the messy, gurning ones she has at home but a few beautifully shot, atmospheric pictures of Lennie, and a few that show big groups of people, clearly on holiday somewhere hot and beautiful. There are no pictures of his late wife. A large abstract painting hangs on the wall, and the chairs are leather and chrome, vaguely Eastern European and brutalist. She feels suddenly glad that she wore the black silk dress: most of her wardrobe would have felt too chaotic for this room.
He walks in rubbing his face, as if he’s rubbing away the phone call, just as she’s thinking about stepping into the garden. “So sorry,” he says, greeting her with a kiss on the cheek. “Just a nightmare week at work. And Len gets upset if I’m back late so I knew she was going to take longer to go to bed. So sorry. Let me get you a drink.”
He opens a cupboard to reveal a hidden wine store, from which he pulls out a bottle of expensive-looking red. “Red okay?”
“Fine,” she says, without thinking. Even slightly disheveled, he’s gorgeous, his eyes an intense and vivid turquoise, his shirt soft gray with a tiny Japanese logo on the cuff. He carries a vague scent of aftershave, something aniseedy and expensive.
“Sit, please,” he says, gesturing toward the table. “You look very lovely. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to cook so I thought we could order in.”
She makes a swift calculation. At this time on a Friday night they will be lucky to get anything before a quarter to ten. But what can she do? She smiles, hoping he might put out some crisps, and he pours two glasses of wine before tapping into an app on his phone. “Done!” hesays, and she takes a big swig of her wine, because she suddenly doesn’t know what to say.
“Beautiful kitchen,” she says, when she’s recovered.
He glances around, as if this might never have occurred to him. “Yes, it’s not bad, is it? It’s the one thing I had done before we moved in. I would have liked something more ambitious.” He takes a swig of his wine, closes his eyes for a moment, as if savoring it, then says: “But most of life is a compromise, isn’t it? So how are you? How’s the writing coming?”
“Okay,” she says. “It’s actually okay.”
“What are you writing about?”
“It’s…” she says, haltingly. “It’s a follow-up to another book I wrote about rebuilding a marriage gone stale.”
“Ah.” He looks awkward.
“Yup. I know.”
“Well, I think that’s very brave. It doesn’t surprise me at all—you are, of course, fearless. But I don’t think I could write about personal stuff.”
“Oh, you don’t include your real self,” she says quickly. “Not the important stuff. What I write is very much a curated version of my life. You have to—uh—ramp things up just to keep the publishers happy.”
