The Innocents (13 page)

“I suppose I just thought—it made me think that it’s one way of saying that substance isn’t important. Only the appearance.”

“That’s so superficial.”

“It doesn’t need to be, it can be precisely the opposite. It can also mean that what matters is the face you show to the world and the way you treat the people in it, and that your private inner life isn’t judged. It resonates with Jewish thinking actually—that actions are what truly matter, and thoughts aren’t sins unless you act on them.”

“Well, I certainly hope that’s true,” he answered. The pounding of his heart had slowed; he was suddenly exhausted and turned back to her to take his leave. For the last few moments he had been tormented by the thought of her lips on his skin; it was time for him to be safely away, at home. He would walk until he found a cab. “I’m going to leave the file with you. Call me when you’ve read it.”

“Okay.” She stayed where she was, looking up at him. “I trust you. Whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do.”

10

Adam met jasper at Belsize Park tube station on the way to Dan and Willa London’s Christmakah party, an event that had begun partially as a joke and had since burgeoned into an institution. Willa had converted to Judaism when she married Dan, and they had since decided to combine the best of both families’ traditions into a single hybrid.

“Hi, mate. Right, let’s go.”

They set off up Haverstock Hill, Jasper rubbing his hands together in the cold. His round face was chilled pink; Adam had a startling preview of what his friend might look like at sixty, puce and multichinned.

“God. It’s freezing. Remind me why you didn’t go to Eilat again?”

“Too much work this year.”

“You’ve been shagging the boss’s daughter for a decade; surely he would have given you the time off.”

“He would have,” Adam conceded. “But I don’t like asking. And we’re going to end up taking loads of time off for the wedding in the summer so I thought … Anyway, Rachel didn’t give me any schtick for having to go without me; she actually didn’t seem to mind when I said I was staying here. Once we’re married we might not end up going away with them every Christmas”—at this Jasper snorted in disbelief, which Adam ignored—“so it’s her last year to go away alone with her family, blah, blah.”

“Whatever. If Tanya’s parents wanted to pay for me to be lying by the pool at the Hilton right now, you wouldn’t catch me saying no.”

“Leslie and Linda would probably pay you to stay away from their family holidays.”

“Mate—I don’t know what you’ve been hearing. The Pearls love me. They can’t get enough.”

They had turned off the main road and were now descending Pond Street where the looming bulk of the Royal Free Hospital, newly enlarged by a refurbishment almost as hideous as the original concrete architecture, dominated the sky. Its front was uplit in garish violet; the huge Christmas tree blinked with red and yellow lights that flashed only a little more slowly than the rotating blue strobes of the incoming ambulances.

This was the first time Adam had gone to the Londons’ party, as he had always been in Eilat with Rachel. Indeed, it was the first winter holiday they were spending apart in many years, and so far it was as exhilarating as he had thought it might be. They were engaged—there was no need to waste energy missing her now that he knew they were to spend eternity together. Two weeks, in the meantime, stretched ahead of him as a rather welcome break. He planned to work less and drink more, had tickets to weekday football matches and two away games, and had accepted invitations to parties that Rachel would usually have vetoed (“It’s miles away, Adam! It’s in town, how will we park on a Saturday night?” or “Yes, I know, but your university friends are a bit … And anyway, it’s Tanya’s birthday and I said we’d be there so we can’t”). That afternoon he had driven the Gilbert clan to the airport—piloting Jaffa’s beloved thirty-year-old Volvo station wagon to accommodate their refugee-style packing—and had been guiltily unaffected by Rachel’s tears at Departures. She was going on a beach holiday after all, not being cast into perpetual exile. With a recently rediscovered Sonny Boy Williamson album blasting out of the fizzing, ancient speakers he had driven back, abandoned the ailing car in the Gilberts’ driveway, and gone straight home to change for the Christmakah party.

They were mounting the stairs outside Dan and Willa’s building when a distinctly uncelestial voice spoke to them from above. “A-dam! Ja-sper!”

“Li-sa!” Jasper mimicked and a laugh returned from the balcony.

“When did Lisa get back?” Adam asked as the buzzer sounded. Lisa London was Dan’s twin sister, a famed beauty in the last years of summer camp who embodied that rare alchemy of a tomboyish ease among her brother’s friends with more distinctly feminine advantages. At twelve (when she was not yet beautiful, though the accolade benefited him retroactively), she and Adam had declared themselves boyfriend and girlfriend for two halcyon weeks until—it was too galling to remember, even these many years later—she had dumped him for a prepubescent (although admittedly not yet fat) Jasper Cohen. It was Jasper who had claimed the triumph of being Lisa London’s first kiss—on a rain-slick pavement, behind the graffitied photo booth in Golders Green tube station—even though she’d gone out with Adam again shortly afterward and had subsequently bestowed upon him the same favor. Which one of them had technically “got there” first was therefore under contention. For the last year she had been on a general surgery rotation in a Manchester hospital, and it had piqued both Jasper’s and Adam’s interest to learn that she’d finally broken up with a little-seen non-Jewish boyfriend who had been around, in rumored form at least, for some time. She was a tremendously accomplished and gratifying flirt, a valued commodity for men as long attached as Adam and Jasper.

“Didn’t she call you, mate? She’s been back two weeks. Ha. She clearly can’t keep away from me, whereas you …” Jasper made a wavering hand signal.

The door of the flat was open. Dan had made whiskey-laced hot apple cider, which he was distributing in red plastic pint glasses. Willa circulated behind him, her blond hair hidden beneath a red felt Santa hat, offering Chanukah doughnuts. From the speakers Harry Connick Jr. was crooning, sultry and smooth, that it was the most wonderful time of the year. The living room was hot and crowded, noisy with voices and laughter. Adam recognized almost everyone—either the long-known dramatis personae of North West London’s social scene or familiar faces from Willa’s birthday parties: her school friends and colleagues. The evening had a nostalgic feel to it—the Londons were not unduly concerned with keeping their soft furnishings pristine and had for many years been the only couple willing to throw a party of this scale. Most of Adam’s other friends from the Suburb had years ago begun hosting determinedly sophisticated dinners and admiring one another’s kitchen Corians and spotless carpets (this placed rather clear limits on entertainment, as their guests were required to use coasters, and often to remove outdoor footwear). Adam and Rachel had oohed and aahed obligingly along with the rest of them and, unable as yet to display their own home improvements, had rallied by conjecturing about them instead. But the Londons, it seemed, were still actually having some fun.

“Hey, stranger.”

Adam turned unsteadily, and the second pint of gin and tonic that Jasper had pressed on him moments before splashed over his wrist. Ellie stood on the balcony from which Lisa London had called down to them. A small heater glowed on the wall beside her, casting a strange orange light on her skin. He squinted at her blur in the darkness. He had earlier considered the possibility that she might be at the party and had dismissed it as there was no reason that she should be; it now felt as if he had conjured her appearance simply by willing it.

“I didn’t know you knew Dan and Willa.”

“Rachel introduced me to Willa on Yom Kippur, at the break fast. I thought you’d be in Israel with the in-laws.”

“Too much work,” he said, joining her on the balcony. His head was spinning from loud music and gin, and the cold air whipping through his shirt felt fortifying. He stepped away from the heater.

“Ah. Your girlfriend has too many troublemaking cousins making paperwork for you. Sorry about that.”

“Fiancée,” he corrected, sitting down heavily in a folding garden chair.

“Quite right. Fiancée,” she said, softly. She seemed impossibly tall that night—Amazonian, he thought, and it was as if the word had never been so perfectly embodied. She looked like a warrior princess, lifted high again on those impossible driftwood heels and looking down at him. Several moments passed before he broke the silence.

“You smoke too many of those.” He nodded toward the joint in her hand, still unlit.

The cigarette case was on the small aluminum table beside her; she returned the joint to its place and clicked the case shut again, dropping it into the pocket of her leather jacket. “There. I told you I would take your advice.”

“Actually you said”—what had she said?—“you said you would do whatever I told you to.”

“So I did. I wonder if that was wise.”

“Bollocks to what’s wise,” said Adam, with sudden heat.

“Are you drunk?” she asked, incredulous. “Don’t tell me Adam Newman is anything other than sober and controlled.”

“Hell no. Sober as a judge.” He took a swig from his gin and tonic and squinted up at her. “I’m not allowed to drink. Rachel hates it. So of course I don’t.” This was unnecessarily disloyal, but Ellie rewarded his minor betrayal with a sly half smile. He could say what he wanted to her—anything at all, he realized. It was intoxicating.

What he actually said was “I can’t sleep.” He surprised himself with the confession. She had once told him that she couldn’t sleep and he had not admitted it then; now it seemed important that she knew she was not alone. “It’s like torture, sometimes. So I know you think—I know you think you’re the only one. But you’re not. It’s an illusion.” He could hear himself elongating these last words, particularly
iloooosion
, as if he were doing a voice-over for a haunted house at the fair, and surmised that he must indeed be very drunk.

“Yes. I know about that. Rachel told me.”

“Told you what?”

“A while back. She said you never sleep, she worries about your insomnia. She said you have nightmares.”

“That’s not for her to talk about.” He felt a sobering flash of anger that Rachel had betrayed his confidence and also, irrationally, that she had appeared between them in the conversation, laying claim to private knowledge of him from which Ellie had been excluded.

“She worries. I guess she doesn’t understand it, or you, or something.” Ellie picked up Adam’s glass from the table and took a sip.

These words hung between them, immediately turned over and analyzed by Adam with forensic care. He rotated them, peered into them, under them, searching for their subtext. This line of thought danced away ahead of him, leading him into danger like a tantalizing and treacherous Tinker Bell, and he was freed from its siren call by Jasper crashing onto the balcony with Tanya.

“Hey, kids.” Jasper put an arm around Ellie; Tanya threw herself into a chair. “Ellie. Long time no see. How the devil are you?”

She was nearly a head taller than Jasper; his casual attempt at flirtation left her hunched over in an acute scoliosis, his shoulder straining almost directly upward. She extricated herself firmly and stood upright once more.

“Oh, you know. Trying to make London my home.”

At these words Adam glanced up as she continued earnestly, “I find that the people here, they really do treat you so warm, so kind and cool.”

Jasper looked bewildered, but Adam was transfixed—she was trying to quote the lyrics from the song he’d sent her. They locked eyes, and Adam was once more alone with her in the exclusive and delicious privacy of this reference.

Tanya then shattered the moment by asking, “Are you really going to live in London forever? But you’re so American.”

And Ellie smiled, kissed only Tanya good night, and excused herself.

11