Rich and Pretty (16 page)

That eyebrow, moving like it was independent of his face. What muscle did he manipulate to achieve this effect? It was a little
flippant, not the deferential “You're welcome” offered to the rest of the girls with their Cokes—Diet for Sarah and Fiona. There were nuts, too, a sterling dish in the shape of a seashell, a bed of peanuts and cashews, a lone, gigantic Brazil nut. She took it.

He's got another tray, for an older couple, the only honeymooners at the resort, or so she assumes. She imagines theirs a second marriage, maybe a third. They're old enough that there could be older children, college aged. The man is a little dumpy and pale but with very happy eyes, the woman is redheaded and strangely vibrant, probably a yoga teacher, or an amateur ceramicist. The waiter places their tray on the table with a flourish, but is the flourish meant for her? His shirt, incredibly white for someone who works with food, his smile still easy, still convincing. Maybe he's stoned? Lauren sees his smile falter, waver for a second into something else, and she bends her knees, drops back under the surface of the water.

An hour later, she is the first to make her excuses. The empty glasses and bowls and remnants of the chicken Caesar salad that Sarah and Amina picked at together have been cleared. The umbrella is still useful, because the sun is so powerful, but Lauren wants a break and pretends that will be a nap. There are kisses, something she has given in to. Women like these kiss good-bye, it's one of those when-in-Rome situations. She knots the towel around her body, a stab at modesty. Here, they can lie basically naked, but a hundred yards from here, the hallway seems to demand more decorum.

She shoves her sunglasses up onto her head, one hand keeping the towel in place, the other gripping the flimsy cotton bag, the promising weight of the not-much-read paperback inside. Up
over the path, flip-flops in her bag, the grass underfoot. It's a wonderful feeling. Inside, the hallway is air-conditioned, if not as arctic as she knows the room will be. Her flesh prickles. Her nipples tense. She should drop the flip-flops to the floor, step into them. She doesn't, though, hurries past the equine paintings toward her room. And there is the waiter. He's bearing a tray, gives a nod with that smile, a nod back, tipping his chin up high, holding his face up for her to study. A nod not of deference, of servility; a nod of hello, the nod of the man on the street. She knows this nod. Then he's past her, rapping firmly on a door down the hall and announcing himself in a cheerful voice. No accent to speak of.

She fumbles into her room, tosses the bag onto the bed, so lush that the impact makes no sound. She drops the towel to the ground, kicks it out of the way. Absurdly she wants a hot shower. The mind-boggling waste of a hot shower on a hot day. She's thirsty, too, ready for another eight-dollar bottle of water. A little shiver from the cold, or the heat, or the shock of the one after the other when, just as firmly as on the door down the hall, a knock. Actually, three. No explanation offered.

She doesn't bother trying to hide behind the towel, actually kicks it out of the way so she can open the door.

“Miss,” he says. His voice a little softer. “Did you need something?”

His dick fits into her mouth much as she had hoped it might. Something familiar in the arc of it, and he's so excited he pushes perhaps a hair too far—which tells her that he is young, after all—into her throat, into that spot where the pleasure turns into discomfort, but a discomfort she finds strangely comforting. She's thirsty but her mouth finds the saliva.

His shirt still so white, and still all buttoned up. He picks her up off the floor, sets her down on top of the bed. They are quiet, they are focused, then, fourteen minutes later, they are finished. He pulls his clothes back on—his boxer briefs, what is it with men this age and boxer briefs?—grinning all the while. She doesn't try to cover herself, moves about the room naked, halfheartedly righting the pillows, taking a bottle of water from the minibar, and accepting from him the condom—pathetic, spent, sticky—he's peeled off his body. She wraps the thing in a fistful of toilet paper, but it still makes an unpleasant sound as it lands in the bathroom trash can. The immodesty, her nakedness, feels good. He says something, something unimportant, uninteresting, irrelevant.

She takes the damp towel from the floor, wraps it around herself just as he opens the door to leave. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction: The door across the hall opens at that moment, Meredith, still a bit green, catching Lauren's eye. She seems on the verge of saying something, Meredith, as the waiter ducks out with a final nod. Lauren lets the door close, then stands for a moment, considering the back of the door, the helpful diagram showing the path to the nearest exit, in case of emergency. This is an emergency, of a sort. She lets the towel slip down once more, uses one corner to dab at the inside of her thigh. She goes into the bathroom. At least Meredith will have something new to talk about.

The French toast tastes different.
Not as good. Even the little slice of papaya is less appetizing, seems to be grinning at her, menacingly. Lauren pushes the plate away after a couple of bites, where only yesterday she devoured the whole thing, and even briefly
considered ordering something else, a side of potatoes, fried to crispness, a plate of bacon, pink and slimy.

There are hours until they leave, and she's already packed, leaving aside the clothes she plans to wear on the plane, after one final shower, because suddenly the sand, omnipresent as sand tends to be, is starting to drive her mad. Her hair, which gets luxuriously wavy and full from the salt water, suddenly feels dirty, oily, a hindrance. She'll miss this, she is sure, a few weeks from now, or even upon arrival: waiting in that taxi line at JFK, her breath visible in the evening chill. She'll miss this when the sky grows dark at an hour when Britons could conceivably be taking tea.

Meredith settles in across from her. She's dressed for the beach: a too-big white T-shirt she's knotted at her midriff, a skirt fashioned from a long scarf. Her hair is pulled up into a high, girlish ponytail. She yawns, then smiles. It is early. “Good morning!”

Lauren's never been good at remembering to say good morning. It seems like something people should just assume. She sips her coffee. It's not as strong as she wants it to be. “Morning.”

“It's thirty-six degrees in New York right now. Thirty-six!” Meredith looks at her joyously.

“Yeah.” There is no other obvious answer.

“I tell you what, I could stay here for another week, two, three, whatever.” Meredith unfolds the menu, which is comically oversized, though much of it is just white space. She must have it memorized at this point, they've had breakfast here every morning. “What about you, Lauren?”

“It'll be hard to go back to reality,” Lauren says, though she doesn't mean it and misses her reality, her mornings alone: open
ing her eyes seconds before the alarm clock rings, dressing while watching the newscaster on the local channel who does that segment where he highlights interesting stories in the day's local newspapers.

“We have been spoiled,” Meredith says. “All these amenities.” She pauses. “Sometimes I think I should run away, you know? Start over. Like seriously.”

“Everyone thinks that sometimes. Or all the time. I don't know.” Lauren studies the dining room even though she knows he's not working.

Meredith waves over the waitress, asks for a cappuccino and a mixed-berry muffin. “I just don't even know what I have to go back to, to be honest,” Meredith says. An audible sigh.

Meredith is so deeply within her own agony she doesn't even have it in her to properly tease/needle/blackmail Lauren about what she's witnessed.

Lauren pokes at the flesh of the papaya with her fork and feels ill. “It's that time of year,” she says gamely.

Meredith looks puzzled. “What time of year?”

“Oh, the holidays, you know.” Lauren gestures helplessly. “That time of year. The bad time of year. Family. Office parties, presents, money, Christmas music, tourists, love and joy, all that shit.”

“Oh, you mean it's hard to be alone this time of year.” Meredith nods. “Yeah, I guess that's true.”

In fact, that's not what she meant. What she meant is what she said, general as it was. The warm air outside means she feels disconnected from the time of year, but the awareness lingers: It is that time of canned love and joy and peace and it's irritating. Even as a girl, well, not a girl, but a sullen preteen maybe, she
disliked Christmas. The sight of mangled wrapping paper across plush carpeting makes her heart sink. All the meaningless giving, all the mindless getting, all the nothing. Her mother, as mothers do, loves Christmas. Lauren doesn't want to think about it at the moment.

Meredith has more to say. Lauren can see it, in the tense hunch of her shoulders, the expectant gleam in her eye, which is trying to fix on Lauren, hold her, as a magnet might. Meredith is lonely. Lauren has been lonely, of course, everyone has been lonely. But she's not sure she's been lonely in the way that Meredith is lonely, in this public, ravenous way. Her loneliness is like a smell, it's there, you're aware of it. Lauren is relieved by her own imperviousness to this kind of loneliness. It afflicts so many women it seems like it's the normal way to be.

Sarah and Fiona come into the restaurant, join them at the table, beckon for the waitress, exchange their good mornings. They, too, are dressed for the beach—they're enjoying every last minute of this.

“I've forgotten about every part of my real life,” Fiona says, dreamily. “I guess that means this has been a very successful vacation.”

“Yeah.” Sarah studies Lauren's face, then turns over her shoulder to consider the sea. “It's nice to leave reality behind. Get away, drink. Misbehave.” She pauses, looks back at Lauren. “Don't you think?”

So Meredith has told her. This is not surprising. Meredith doesn't seem like the secret-keeping sort. “I guess so,” Lauren says. “No hangover, at least.” She taps her temple. “I hydrated.”

“You're so smart, Lauren. I'm in awe.” Sarah smiles, not a real smile. It's not a rebuke. It's something else. Discomfort, embarrassment.

Lauren knows how Sarah feels about sex. Her embarrassment, that hint of awe, they don't mask a curiosity—they are symptoms of a disinterest. Lauren knows, she's fairly certain, every guy Sarah's ever fucked: Alex Heard and Dan Burton, yes, as well as the two in between them. Only those four, fewer than a handful. Lauren's not being teased, she's being scolded. Sarah's so reluctant to talk about sex that this is how it will come out: oblique conversational jabs that would sound odd to Meredith and Fiona were either of them listening.

“You know what?” Lauren slides away from the table. “I think I'm going to head to my room and pack up before the beach. So I don't have to later. I'll meet you out there?”

She's wrong: Sarah is capable of more than veiled verbal sparring. She knocks on her door only ten minutes later. Lauren knows it's her before even opening it.

“What's up?” Lauren's already packed, so she's just been lying on the bed, half reading an issue of
The New Yorker
from several months ago. She's very far behind in her reading.

“Hi. Can I sit?”

“Sit. Obviously.” Lauren doesn't sit. She stands by the door, looking down at Sarah. “You ready to go home?”

“Look, I—” Sarah stops. “Meredith told me what she saw, and I am just. A little surprised, or something. I don't know.”

“Well, I don't know what Meredith saw, but . . .” Lauren barely has it in her to protest.

“Meredith saw enough. She's annoying but she's not stupid. You fucked the waiter, Lauren? Seriously?”

“It's a vacation.” She is surprised they're discussing it at all, but not surprised by the tone in Sarah's voice: disgust. She's barely trying to conceal it. “It's not a big deal.”

“Embarrassing, though, right?”

“Embarrassing for whom, Sarah? Am I embarrassed that Meredith, who is your friend, not mine, saw something, and gossiped to you about it like a prude? I don't know. It's her choice. But you know. It happens. I fucked a guy. If this were Afghanistan, you could stone me.”

“It's just embarrassing. It's just . . .” Sarah pauses, looks around the room as if willing the right word to appear. “It's tacky. What about that temp? I thought you were interested in him.”

Lauren laughs. “The temp?” She can only barely conjure his face. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“You liked his shoes,” Sarah says, ridiculously.

“What can I say? I'm tacky. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that this private thing that has nothing to do with you, and certainly nothing to do with Meredith, is so tacky. You know. I'm sorry that it makes you feel so embarrassed.”

“God, that is not an apology.” Sarah stands up. Her anger is unusual. She's whispering, but it's a loud whisper. “I am so sick of apologies that are like . . .
I'm sorry that made you feel this way
. That is not how you apologize. You're not supposed to be sorry for having made me feel a certain way. You're supposed to be sorry for doing the fucking stupid thing you did in the first place. So don't try that, okay? You are better than that.”