Amateurs (32 page)

By the time Archer made it to Karyn's remotely situated table, she and Maxwell were the only ones sitting at it. He took the chair to the right of hers. “I'm so glad you could come,” he said.

“I wouldn't have missed it. This is Maxwell.”

“Hey, Maxwell.”

“Hi.”

“You can keep playing,” Archer said, and Maxwell returned to his tablet.

“I loved your book,” Karyn said. “
Both
books, I mean, but Gemma sent me a galley of the new one. Transporting, really. It reminded me of Jean Rhys—not that it seemed at all derivative.”

“Wow, thank you. I did feel that something, I don't know, clicked
with that one.” He paused as if waiting for an elaboration of her compliments, then said, “Any shows coming up? My dad said he got to see you in
The Cherry Orchard.
”

“
Three Sisters,
yeah. He and I were just reminiscing about that. But no, I haven't acted in years.”

“No?”

“No.”

“So what
are
you up to?”

“I'm in HR,” she said.

“The House of Representatives?”

“That's right. I legislate during the day and hit the stage at night, pining for Moscow.”

“My dad said you were the best part of the show.”

“It was an uneven production.”

“Well, you might come back to it. I've been working with this guy who studied painting in his twenties, then gave it up to work in infrastructural consulting. Now he's having his first solo show at age sixty-five.”

“I like stories like that.” Feeling expansive, she said, “I have been fooling around with something. You know, acting is funny because”—she nodded at him—“unlike writing or music or painting, you don't as a rule do it alone for your own amusement. But I found that you can.”

“Like you're talking to yourself?”

“Putting together a play, I guess, something I've been performing at home. Improv-based but, you know, composed.”

“That's cool.”

She hoped she didn't sound like some crazy aspirant. “You think it's all about crowd energy, but working without an audience can be invigorating.”

“What kind of thing is it?”

“You should get to that last table.”

“They can wait. I'm curious.”

“In a way it's nothing; that's what I like about it. But it's a period piece, I guess you'd say, set in the late sixties, early seventies. A sort of hippie bildungsroman about a woman who's dating the coleader of a psychedelic folk group.”

“Really?”

“And then she starts playing in the group, and—how do the summaries go?—trouble ensues.”

“Funny, I love psych-folk from that era.”

“You do? I wouldn't think someone your—I was about to say ‘someone your age,' but it's not my era either. My play's based on this group hardly anyone knows, the Incredible String Band, though my protagonist is an American.”

“You're kidding.”

“Well, I knew it'd be hard enough making the guys sound Scottish, and I figured—”

“No, I mean, they're my favorite band!”

“Seriously?”

“So your heroine's like a Rose- or Licorice-type figure?”

“Yes! I was thinking of Licorice in particular.”

“Christina McKechnie.”

“My God, you know her real name.”

“I told you, they're my favorite band. I followed them around the UK on one of their reunion tours a few years back—Licorice wasn't with them, of course—then did the same thing last year when Mike Heron was out doing some shows with his daughter. His voice is a bit worse for wear but still great.”

“But his voice has always been rough, right?” she said. “That's what's so affecting about it; he's always stretching to make the best of things.”

“Oh my God,
Smiling Men with Bad Reputations
?”

“So fucking good.”

“A lost classic.”

“I can't listen to ‘Flowers of the Forest' without crying,” she said.

“
Me, I know you like I know the song in my soul
,” he sang off-key, closing his eyes.

“
It's gonna be all right
,” she sang.

They sat for a moment without talking, as if they were hearing the song over the noise of the crowd and the Adele song that was actually playing. He pulled out his phone, scrolled for a half minute, and held up a photo to her face.

“What's that, a gimbri?” she said.

“Ding ding ding! You're hardcore, eh?”

“I guess.”

“Sharpied by Robin himself.” He waved at Gemma. “Well, I have to get to that table you mentioned.” He touched the veiny back of her hand. “I need to read your play.”

“Oh, like I said, it's hobby work.”

“Dude, I
need
to read your play.”

Dude?

“You can't be at brunch?” he confirmed.

“I'm afraid not.”

“Remember that joke? I'm a frayed knot.”

“No.”

“It's about a rope in a bar.” He stood up. “I'll call.”

“Are you feeling quite all right?” Gemma asked. She was the third person to express concern over Sara's intestinal health.

“Yes, fine,” Sara said, watching the swing of Gemma's gold drop earrings.

“I understand you had a rather trying night.”

“But I'm fine now.”

“I suffer horridly from motion sickness so I can empathize—oh!”—Gemma's unmistakably American-accented sister was pulling her by the arm to dance. “Feel better!” Gemma called out.

“I do!”

John replaced Gemma from his nearby lurking station. His linen suit was the color of milky coffee and wrinkled in a way suggestive of a transoceanic flight spent restlessly in coach; his knit tie was partly undone, and his normally shaven upper cheeks were stubbled. She couldn't tell if he seemed refreshingly loosened up or scarily unhinged. He hadn't been given a role in the wedding, and though he was normally forgiving to a fault, during the service—she had sat one pew behind him—she detected a bitter profile when Seth, the best man, pulled out the ring. “I'm sorry you were so sick last night,” he said.

“Could we talk about something else?”

“Sure.” They stood for a moment. Sara watched two little girls spin each other on the hem of the dance floor. “You look great,” he said.

“Thanks.” She was wearing a floral-print dress of, for her, unusual bravado. John didn't seem as laid-back as usual, but still Sara felt the calming, room-changing effect he could have, like when you turn on the vacuum and all the lights dim.

“Since we're here, should we dance?” he said.

“Ahm.”

“One song.”

There are times when the mere knowledge of being loved and desired is pleasure and comfort enough, and times when you're more susceptible than that.

He held up his index finger. “Just one.”

Maxwell stepped shyly onto the floor when the DJ honored his request for Jay-Z, and Karyn wondered if this was the last time until
his own wedding that he'd be willing to dance in such proximity to his mother. Lucas had taken off his oversized suit jacket and was sometimes mouthing the words with Maxwell, sometimes looking at Karyn, sometimes bobbing slowly and sexily toward her, then backing off at the same rate. He danced almost imperceptibly, like a buoy on a calm lake.

Karyn had allowed herself one more drink after all, and she wondered with a blink of paranoia if she ought to be observing a just-in-case teetotalism. Over the past twenty-four hours, the idea of a second kid had drifted sporadically into her realm of consideration, which was also the realm of miscarriages and complications and four a.m. feedings redolent of supposedly pain-relieving menthol gel. How could she lift a child anymore; how could she rest a crying three-year-old on her hip while opening the door to an overpriced day care with one hand? The kid would be touch deprived, would grow up to slaughter a farm family for thirty-seven dollars and a bag of Doritos. It was good, at least, to be alone with the decision. Were Jason and she still together, he would want the baby (he never bought her argument that having more than one child was environmentally immoral, and in fact he took the opposite line, that population decline would eventually become macro-economically disastrous, that people should stop being so selfish and churn out more kids). He would defer to her in theory, but with a sulkiness pointing to enduring resentment from one party or another. The DJ millimetered up the volume. Archer's thickset friend from the zoo, moving in small but zealous circles with Archer's unfriendly yeoman or proofreader, bumped into Karyn and apologized in a deep, blunted twang. “No worries,” she said, and smiled at Lucas. Still, if she wasn't ready to say that no aspect of her life had been as fulfilling as motherhood—too soppy to say that, too self-denying—she was willing to say that no aspect had been
more
fulfilling, and as she looked at Maxwell, growing up
to be so kind and funny and smart and handsome, and at Lucas, whom, she admitted it now, she was falling for, she wondered if a baby, an expanded family, was the unknown she needed, one that had announced itself in this strangely fortunate city, in the winter of her fertility, one that would enrich rather than negate her plans for middle age.

Sensing that her intoxication would soon give way to exhaustion, she moved closer to Lucas: “We should go.”

During her second dance, Sara held her phone at her hip, thumbed out a quick one:

Archer Bondarenko @archerbondarenko · 13s

Cue “Crazy in Love.” #justmarried

Lucas crouched in front of his room's minibar. “Is Maxwell asleep?”

“Probably not quite,” Karyn said. “I told him we were having a drink together.” She thought that would sound straightforward enough without getting too explicit.

“
Are
we having a drink?”

“Nothing for me.”

He broke the seal on a rectangle of almonds, took a beer, and sat down on the room's desk chair. When he held out the almonds, she stood up partway and cupped her palm for a small handful.