The Clasp (8 page)

Nathaniel, like many of his classmates, had read the story before. It was a fable about greed and stupidity and futility. He knew it was supposed to be sad for the wife, but he had always secretly seen it from the husband's perspective. This was the story of a social-climbing ingrate, dragging a guy down. When the woman's friend initially offers her a box filled with her jewelry, her first reaction is “Do you have anything else?” The very reason the couple walks home from the party is because the wife is so embarrassed by the shabby condition of her coat, she doesn't want to stand around waiting for a carriage. She
makes
her husband schlep across town in the cold and, somewhere along that route, the necklace disappears.

The ending was far more tragic for the husband, whose life is ruined because he tried to make someone else happy.

The professor asked for a show of hands to see who had already read it. Almost everyone raised his or her hand, save for Victor and a couple of international students. Then she asked each student to tell her what the story was about in one word.

Irony. Society. Class. France. Each response irked her more until her annoyance took the form of a barely visible eye twitch. She removed her glasses and dropped them. They stayed suspended from a woven lanyard, having bungee-jumped from her neck.

“Listen to it. Really listen to it.” She stood and began reading. “‘She was one of those pretty and charming girls who, as if through some blunder of fate, are born into a family of pen pushers. She had no dowry, no prospects, no possibility of becoming known, appreciated, loved, of finding a wealthy and distinguished husband. And so she settled for a petty clerk in the Ministry of Education.'”

She dropped her hands, keeping her place in the book.

“Do you hear?” she asked rhetorically. “Do you hear it?”

Victor made eye contact with Nathaniel. The professor raised the book once more, this time shouting like a finalist at a poetry slam.

“‘Unable to adorn herself, she remained simple, but as miserable as if she'd come down in the world. For women have no caste or breed; their beauty, their grace, their charm serve them in lieu of birth and family background. Their native finesse, their instinct for elegance, their versatile minds are their sole hierarchy, making shopgirls the equals of the grandest ladies.'”

“God,” her voice cracked, “don't you see this is about the gendered plight of aging? It's unbearably sad.”

“I don't think this is about a short story anymore,” Nathaniel whispered to Victor, who nodded his head in agreement.

The professor undid the top button on her blouse and put her palm on her chest.

“‘She suffered endlessly, she . . .'” Her voice went up an octave.

“‘Elle souffrait sans cesse, se sentant née pour toutes les délicatesses et tous les luxes. Elle souffrait de la pauvreté de son logement, de la misère
des murs, de l'usure des sièges, de la laideur des étoffes.'”

“Oh, man.” Victor leaned forward. “Now this is happening.”

“
‘Toutes ces choses
,
dont une autre femme de sa caste ne se serait
même pas aperçue, la torturaient et l'indignaient. La vue de la petite
Bretonne qui faisait son humble ménage éveillait en elle des regrets désolés et des rêves éperdus. Elle songeait aux antichambres nettes, capitonnées avec des tentures orientales, éclairées par de hautes torchères de bronze, et aux deux grands valets en culotte courte qui dorment dans les larges fauteuils, assoupis par la chaleur lourde du calorifère.'
She fantasized about large drawing rooms lined with ancient silk, about fine furniture carrying priceless knickknacks, about small, fragrant, dainty parlors . . . She had no wardrobe, no jewels, nothing.
Rien!
And those things were all that she loved; she felt that they were what she'd been born for. She so dearly wanted to be liked, to be envied, to be seductive and in demand . . . And she'd weep for entire days, weep with chagrin,
de regret, de désespoir et de détresse
. Now what do we think the story is about? Nathaniel?”

“Materialism?”

“Non!”
She seemed taken aback by the conviction of her response. “No, it's about sacrifice. Sacrifice for love.”

Was she crying or was this merely a passion for the topic he was seeing in her eyes? She put the book on his desk, the spine making a hard sound against the wood.

“Read these lines,” she instructed.

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “‘What would have happened if she hadn't lost the necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How strange life is, how full of changes! How little it takes to doom you or save you—'”

“‘—save you.'” The professor shut her eyes and whispered, “‘How little it takes to doom you or save you.'”

“Should I keep reading?”

“No.” She shook her head and buttoned her shirt. “No, class dismissed.”

The students silently filed out of class, avoiding eye contact with one another. The squall had passed but it left an awkward landscape in its wake. Nathaniel walked out with Victor. Neither of them had seen a professional adult break down like that. While they were old enough to know not to giggle, they weren't quite old enough to know what to do with it. Instead they sat in Nathaniel's room, cracking open beers on his trunk that doubled as a coffee table, playing video games, waiting for Paul to get out of Principles of Microeconomics so they could all get dinner. Nathaniel alighted briefly on the topic, just long enough to deem it “weird.” But Victor surprised him.

“I think she's lucky.” He put his can down. “I wouldn't mind being that passionate about something.”

It was the most emotionally in-depth conversation he and Victor had ever had.

“Nate Healy,” a nurse called blindly into the waiting room even though, by now, he and Victor were the only ones there.

“Nat,” he corrected her.

She looked at him as if he had parroted back the exact same sound.

“The doctor is ready for you now.”

Nathaniel got up.

“Nat,” Victor called after him, “what did you say to that guy?”

“I told him to go fuck himself.”

S
he hated Los Angeles as a concept, but she also hated it on a personal level. Los Angeles was dangerous to the human touch. Like a sleeping python. One never knows when it will shake loose from an açaí-berry coma, whip around, and say something god-awful to your face. And she wasn't even in show business. The people with whom she took meetings on Rachel's behalf mistook basic congeniality as an opportunity for intimacy. Kezia had been told, by people trying to
befriend
her, that she should inject stroke medication into her forehead, how many calories were in her meal, which stylist had dropped a bracelet down the toilet, how to minimize undereye bags, all leading, a few drinks later, to stories of molesting uncles and first loves who had perished in car accidents. Anyway, should we split the burrata?

One particularly inappropriate crystal vendor told her she was “in great shape for someone who didn't live here.” This was someone she was in the position of hiring, to whom she (well, Rachel) could give business. She couldn't imagine dealing with these oddballs at her old job.

“Are you an actress?” the vendor had asked her, tapping his loafer beneath a glass desk above Wilshire Boulevard.

“No,” she said, opening a binder of Rachel's designs.

“You could be,” the vendor decided. “Trust me, I'm good at this. You could be like a young Carol Kane. Like a character actress.”

“Are you a casting agent?”

“Nope.”

“Then there you have it.” She clicked her pen.

On the bright side, she traveled to that cultural cesspool often enough to see Nathaniel. The novelty of temporary geography brought them together. Everyone else they knew was still on the East Coast and they were like pioneers. And old friends. If he made jokes better suited to a writers' room gross-out competition, she didn't feel obliged to laugh at them. If she called him an asshole, it was because he was being an asshole. But once night fell, something shifted. There was more flirtatious energy between them now than there had been in four years of college. Yet nothing ever happened. Was she too familiar? Lacking in model/actress/musician/designer slashes? Was it Victor? Some guy code that dictated she was never to be touched?

Whatever it was, once she lost her steely emotional footing, she really lost it. She found herself peering out the airplane window, sinking into L.A.'s infinite field of lights, wondering what Nathaniel was doing as her wheels touched down. Or obsessively checking his Twitter account to see if he had started following any of the girls who followed him. Back in New York, her phone would report a missed call from Nathaniel and she would be grateful that she hadn't heard it ring. Ideally, she could hold the missed call in her hands, a glowing ball of energy. She could live in the space around it for a few hours. Please, she'd think, just a little while longer before it's rude not to return his call. Because once I
relinquish this feeling of control, it could be weeks before I get it back.

“Hey,” she asked Victor, back in New York, as they sat on a bench, eating bagels, “have you talked to Nathaniel recently?”

“We don't really converse anymore. You're the one who goes to L.A.”

“I know, I just wonder if he's happy.”

Two cab drivers going in opposite directions down Houston screamed at each other while their passengers looked dutifully at their phones. This would make a good love story, she thought.
We met by exchanging commiserating glances.

“You're concerned with Nathaniel's happiness?”

“He's our friend. Aren't you?”

“I think he's fine.” Victor scooped excess cream cheese from her wax paper, adding it to his bite. “More than fine.”

“Right.” She waved her hands at the implication of Nathaniel's active love life. “Just asking.”

“From what I gather, he's shed all his body fat and turned into an intolerable douche. If that's what you're saying.”

“That's what
you're
saying.” She slurped her coffee, grinning, satiated.

The last time she saw Nathaniel was during an ill-fated dinner in Los Feliz where he was already in the final stages of intolerable douchedom. He picked the restaurant. When she arrived, he was so horrified by her description of where and how she had parked, he demanded her keys. He left her at the table, telling her to order for him.

“I don't know what you want.”

She meant that in about a thousand different ways.

“Like the raw vegetable plate and a side of truffle fries.”

“Are you joking?”

“Oh, and a green tea.”

She watched him dodge traffic through the restaurant window, leather jacket flapping in the wind. She touched the teal Wayfarers he had left behind, trying to spin them like a top. Who was this person? Out of everyone, she and Nathaniel were supposed to be cut from the same cloth. But that cloth had apparently turned Christo-size.

“Your ass was in the red,” he said.

“What?”

“Your car. That's why I moved it. You should have valeted.”

“Probably. I find the driving here to be really stressful.”

“I love the driving. Being in my car makes me happy. I never know why people come from New York and complain about driving. What are the chances that Los Angeles, a city that caters to this many egos, would make things difficult on you? I mean, a cymbal-bashing monkey could point to Santa Monica. Living in Los Angeles is the most logical thing in the world.”

“Yeah, but sometimes don't you think,” she said as if the table were bugged, “that this whole city feels off ? Like walking out of a matinee?”

“You're welcome to think that.” He unfolded his napkin.

Then he kept on talking about pilot season and who was sleeping with whom at what studio. He complained about how weird it was when “your friends get famous” but Kezia had never heard of any of the names he dropped. They were featured in
The Hollywood Reporter
, not
Us Weekly
.

“And Eric Goldenberg is the UTI agent?”

“UTA.” Nathaniel smirked, employing the same tone she used for people who added an “'s” to “Tiffany” or thought Alexis Bittar was a woman. A tone best described as “Aren't you cute, you idiot?”

She nibbled at his untouched fries. Was he
on
something? She couldn't get a word in edgewise. She caught snippets. Something about his roommate, Percy, being black and thus having a competitive staffing advantage. Something about his parents offering to pay for law school. After dinner, she wanted to go back to her hotel, bill Rachel for an obscene amount of room service, and go to bed. But Nathaniel insisted on taking her to a lounge with red booths and filament-bulb lighting. He ordered two sidecars.

“Am I kicking you or the table?” She looked down.

“The table,” Nathaniel said, “but you don't have to ask permission if you want to play footsie with me.”

“Such an asshole.”

“I'm too far away from you,” he announced, coming over to her side of the booth.

He was simultaneously drunk and hyper. They talked trash (real trash, deep trash) about their friends. Mostly it was Nathaniel who talked. Poison spilled, they now had to wallow in it. Kezia tried to pull them onto decent land but Nathaniel wasn't having it. He had apparently been harboring years of criticism for those he had abandoned back east. Caroline was an idiot, Olivia was not pretty enough to act however she acted, Paul struck it rich at a hedge fund by luck, Sam was
really
an idiot, Victor was a pussy, half the guys they knew were pussies, the girls were drama queens, and no one was intellectually curious. Easygoing Nathaniel. Popular, charming, uncomplicated Nathaniel. Where had this psychoanalytical torrent come from?

“Are you going to Caroline's wedding, then?”

“Why wouldn't I go?”

“Well, okay . . . then tell me what I am.”

“You?” He twisted in the booth. “You really want to know?”

“My breath is bated.”

“You, my dear, are special. But you can be an uptight little cu—”

She put her hand against his mouth, smashing his top lip against his nose.

“Don't. I can't believe I'm saying this,” she said, “but you're being awful. And
I'm
awful. Water recognizes its own level.”

“That's not how that expression goes.” His lips vibrated.

She took her hand back. Up until now, she had convinced herself that he was only dabbling in this strange life, that he was still good old him. Turns out he was just another sleeping python. He spent the remainder of the night looking over Kezia's shoulder at every statuesque cocktail waitress and then making a pointed show of snapping his attention back to her. He moved from trashing their friends to trashing people in general, grumbling that no one read stories or novels or even criticism of novels, even though he himself couldn't name the last novel he'd read. Then they argued about drunk driving and she lost her credit card in the crack of the booth.

They waited in silence on the street until the valet brought their cars around. Their hug goodbye was awkward. After Nathaniel successfully rounded the corner without hitting anything, Kezia got in her white rental car, adjusted the seat forward, and looked at herself in her rearview mirror. She let her face go slack like a mug shot, imagining her future, guessing where the wrinkles would go. A thought she could not shake: If it was the Nathaniels of the world who captivated her heart, she would be alone for the rest of her life.