Nick is coming upstairs.
She walks to the door and locks it.
She can hear him in the hallway. He stops at Jackson’s door, keeps going. Then he’s talking to Blackjack. He’s telling the dog it’s time to go outside and do his thing. Blackjack was eating the green sludge Phoebe shoveled from the bottom of the pool. She needs to remind Nick.
The fourth pill she swallows sticks in her throat. She coughs and throws her head back and massages her larynx, takes another sip of wine. The thin sheen of perspiration is ever present now, a reaction to the meds, too many and too often. In her half-sleep she sees distorted images from recent days: the silhouettes of men lurking in the backyard, Kostya’s dogs or coyotes in the living room. Nick on the wall, hung upside down and laughing at her. She can’t focus for more than a moment on the papers in front of her, materials for the job, the career, the new track. It doesn’t add up, none of it makes sense. And Jackson won’t stop crying. It’s the middle of the night and she’s standing over his crib and she’s shaking him, shushing him, pleading with him to stop, and the harder she shakes him, the louder he gets until everything goes quiet and his body goes limp and his head is deadweight and his arms and legs are rubber and when she wakes from the nightmare she’s still next to her son’s crib and he’s still breathing, sleeping peacefully, dreaming.
She taps out a message to Nick: I won’t be home tomorrow.
Neither will I.
You have to be. Jackson.
What about him?
You confirmed with Mai?
No
Then stay home with him or call her. Either way. I won’t be here.
You’re missing the point Phoebe: WE won’t be here. Jackson and I.
Fine
We’re leaving.
Fine
For good.
Fuck you.
Bye bye
Leave. That’s fine.
I know. It is.
You take him anywhere though and there will be hell to pay.
You’d do that to him, wouldn’t you? Put him in the middle of us. Use him like that.
If you take him I will follow you and take him back.
Unlike me, you have no money to fight this. I can afford the fight. You’re unemployed and broke and some kind of addict. Good luck.
Minutes later she hears it: Nick is screaming. It happens so fast. She’s downstairs and for some reason had picked up Jackson, carried him with her. The other sound she hears is sickening, a yelping that she’s sure is the dog.
Nick is in the dark kitchen. Outside in the half-light from the one working floodlight, she sees what Nick does: misshapen shadows that move furiously, low to the ground.
Nick pounds the sliding glass door with a closed fist. She’s sure the glass will shatter.
“What is it?” Phoebe is calling out, pleading.
Nick screams the dog’s name as a question: Blackjack. He yells that he doesn’t know. He cries out the dog’s name again, this time with certainty. He slides the door open and they all hear it: savage and guttural sounds punctuated by a single piercing cry.
“Blackjack!” Phoebe cries out. She wraps Jackson in her arms, covers his eyes, rushes from the kitchen to the living room and back to the kitchen island.
Nick freezes in the open doorway. Slams the door closed. Pounds it again. The black head of the dog is slammed hard against the lighted edge of the patio nearest Nick. Phoebe can see the whites of the eyes and something pink and wet hanging from the throat, ripped out. She turns away as though struck by a blunt object. When she looks back, the eyes are black, shut. The animal is dragged back into the darkness. It’s over.
65
There’s nothing for Nick to bury. Just blood and clumps of fur and flesh to scrub clean from the concrete, which he does the next morning before Jackson is awake. They never got around to buying the dog a name tag, just a generic blue collar and a short leash. Nick drops both in the trash can that neither he nor Phoebe has bothered to bring in from the street since last week’s collection. When he sees Kostya and tells him what happened, Kostya grips Nick hard between the shoulder and neck: “Lucky dog. Would have been dead a lot sooner.”
He’d have died with dignity, Nick thinks. Instead he died with us.
66
White lights are strung from eucalyptus and short palms that line the long wide driveway leading to the hotel entrance. A handsome valet opens the door of the white Subaru and takes Phoebe’s keys. It’s Thursday, the middle of November, and still hot.
“Keep it nearby,” she says playfully, willing herself through this part of it, the arrival she dreaded in Nick’s dirty Subaru, and squeezes the young man’s hand. The floral pattern at the center of her white cotton sundress draws eyes down, away from her gaunt face, the recent breakout on her chin, her puffy eyes, and the shitty car. She hears people talking about the fires. An elderly couple braces themselves against the wind. Someone shrieks and there’s laughter and a fedora tumbles past. Heads will roll: The lyrics play in her mind and force a grin as the glass door to the hotel lobby is held open for her.
“Jesus,” JW says when he sees her. He stands and they embrace and his fingers are cold against her back from the drink he held when she walked in. He steps back and touches the stone in her necklace. “Jade. I love this.” Then he looks up. “Your eyes are ridiculous. Every time I wonder whether the shine is off . . .”
Phoebe sips from a glass placed in front of her. It’s vodka. A young Asian man plays blues on a black grand piano. Behind it, a sweeping wall-mounted photographic montage of a celebrity in black and white. The woman in the display is familiar, but Phoebe can’t place her: She’s sequentially raging, pouting, laughing wildly, running, stumbling, and finally, in the last of six images, looking directly at the camera, at Phoebe, perfectly composed, all self-confidence and cool. Phoebe grips her glass too hard. She imagines hurling it at the wall.
“Where’s my watch?” he asks.
“In a thousand pieces.” She explains that Nick tossed it out the window of the car.
“He found it?”
“I wore it.”
“Awesome.”
JW slides a set of keys across the glass table in her direction. They slide to the edge, dangle just so. She stares at them. They’re silver and look new, with no key chain, simply a generic metal loop. Then, like Nick so many months ago the night of her thirtieth birthday in Boston, JW produces a laptop and turns the screen in her direction. It shows an apartment building called Post Toscana on East Eighty-Ninth Street in New York. Two bedrooms. Roof deck, residence club, twenty-four-hour doorman, fitness center, children’s playroom, pool, spa, floor-to-ceiling windows, marble bath, hardwood floors.
“Pet-friendly,” says JW, “so get a new dog.”
“Are there views? I want Jackson to have a view.”
“Thirty-third floor.”
“I can’t afford it.”
“You don’t even know the terms yet.”
“Of what? What is this? Enough bullshit.”
“Okay,” he says. He reaches for his drink, pulls his hand back before touching the glass. “This is my final offer. The only offer. The only way I can do this and live with myself.” He takes the drink this time, leaning forward in the leather chair, and stirs it with an index finger, stares at her.
“What about here? D&C. It’s perfect.”
“Those calls you made—maybe not the best idea.”
She’s brushing the jade stone in her necklace with her thumb. “I wasn’t getting an answer from you. Or them. It’s called being aggressive.”
“Pressing a little too hard.”
“If I were a man—”
“That’s not it. There’s a professional way to handle things.”
“Who did you talk to? De Bent?”
“You’l
l be fine.”
“What did he say?”
“It has no bearing on what I have in mind.”
“Two calls is not a reason.”
“It wasn’t the calls.”
“What, then?”
“Gorgeous. You are especially fuckable like this.”
“Yes or no?” She massages the back of her neck and closes her eyes. “Yes or no?” She draws her words out. Her eyes remain closed. Then she opens her eyes and slaps the table with two open hands. “Answer me!”
A few heads turn toward their table; the pianist is between pieces.
JW’s gaze is piercing, his voice drops. “It’s done. D&C isn’t happening. I’m sorry.”
“They told you this.”
“It’s not the best fit.”
“For me? It’s fine for me.”
“For anyone.”
Her voice rises. “Because I made two calls?”
“Let’s finish this upstairs.”
“So you can fuck me again?”
“I want what I want, Phoebe.”
“I mean, why not. That seems to be the arrangement here.” There’s a pause. She exhales and rubs her eyes, which are dry and itchy. She’s talking under her breath, more to herself now. The nausea is a wave, her insides clenched, hands and feet tingle.
“Breathe, Phoebe. Get a hold of yourself. Hear me out.”
The soft hum is the sound of Phoebe calming herself until the nausea passes. “Okay,” she manages. “New York. New York, right.”
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she says, reaches for her water glass, takes a drink.
“You know one of the hardest things to do in life, the further on you get? Having the courage to give yourself a clean shot at happiness again.”
“That’s what this is?” she says. “My last chance at happiness?” She leans back in her chair. The pianist is gone. How long ago did he stop playing? The room is nearly empty. “I should go.”
“Manhattan,” he says. “A career. You and Jackson.”
“Don’t say his name like you know him.”
“Your son will resent you for the rest of his life if you raise him in a toxic marriage.”
“You’d know.”
“I do. And he will respect you and learn from you when you empower yourself. Seizing opportunity and having the courage to make the toughest decisions.”
“Deny him his father.”
“You work it out. You both get him. Just not under the same roof.”
“He’ll follow us,” she says.
“He can’t live in the apartment. That’s the only condition.”
“Here we go. Do you have your own set of keys? Am I on call? The suite at the Regency again?”
“Nothing is irrevocable. Give yourself a chance. A break.”
“And when he shows up?”
“Work it out. Just not together. I’m not staking your marriage. I want you in my life, untethered. No more messiness.”
“Take it or leave it?”
“You get a safety net. A career track. Connections. A chance to prove yourself. Your MBA paid for by the firm. Nothing you don’t deserve and won’t earn. But you get no favors when you’re there. The work has to be done and done well.”
“I can’t.”
“There are no other options, Phoebe. Nothing at this level. Not now, not ever.”
“When he comes?” she asks. “When Nick shows up. Which he will.”
“He can live wherever he wants. Just not with you. Not in the place I put you. That doesn’t work.”
“Me and Jackson. That’s it.”
There’s a long pause. JW finishes his drink. He extends his arm and holds a flat hand out over the table.
Phoebe stares at it. “What?”
“Your learning curve,” he says. “That’s my only real concern.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“The whole Laguna house thing. The rent on top of your underwater mortgage? On top of child care and a car? How did you plan to pay for it all?”
“Slowly,” she says.
“You need to show some savvy. At this stage in your life, in this line of work. You’re not a kid anymore. The stakes are different, and the expectations are here.” He moves his hand a foot higher than it was over the table. “You’re not playing for bathrobes anymore.” He won’t look away from her. “The hours are brutal. They don’t care about you. Do you produce? That’s it. That’s all that matters.”
“Like before,” she says, and regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth.
“No,” he says. “Nothing like before. Unless you want to come in at a junior level or take on something administrative, but that trajectory is flat, with a low ceiling. Nothing about this will be like before. And you saying that gives me pause. More so even than your housing instincts.”
“Enough,” she snaps. “Don’t lecture me. I am interested and am quite confident I can make it work or I wouldn’t consider it.”
“So you’ll consider it.”
“Do you want me or not?”
“Always have.”
“Then enough with all the bluster. I know what I can handle and I know what’s expected. It’s a pretty big move and it’s all a bit sudden.” She fingers the shiny new keys. In her mind, she’s holding Jackson in one arm, turning the key, and pushing open the heavy door of their new home for the first time. A week? Sooner?
“Come upstairs?”
She declines. He doesn’t push, which reinforces what she’s already feeling: that JW is serious and nothing about this is frivolous.
“Tomorrow, then,” he says.
“Sure.”
“I’ve got a little place. Come with an answer.”
“Not here?”
“Better. Charming. Rustic.” He raises his eyebrows and smiles softly, and she feels the tension leave her body as she watches him get up and leave the lounge, checking his iPhone, not looking back over his shoulder.
She drives, slower than usual, the windows up. The car is silent so she can focus. The logistics and details of what is available to her come at her like so many reflectors on the freeway: day care, nannies, hours, travel, furniture, views, hardwood floors and plush throw rugs and Jackson’s toys everywhere and she won’t care when they’re tucked away in their own little world thirty-three floors up in the sky, just the two of them, mother and son. And Nick: no more Nick. She’s at the beach and walking barefoot across the cool sand until she feels the spray from crashing surf against her bare legs. She clutches the shiny keys in her right hand, could throw them into the black water. A particularly strong wave pushes her back, redirects her attention. When she looks inland, the sky is clear enough to make out the distinct orange glow from uncontained fires that won’t be her problem, or a threat to Jackson, in a week or less because her mind is made up, the decision made.
67
The next morning. Nothing has changed. Phoebe’s still leaving. She’s moving to New York with Jackson. She’s taking the position that JW is offering, the apartment he found for her. She’s sitting upright on the bed. The house is quiet. Nick is outside in the front yard, spraying it with green dye. Metzger is talking to him. Kostya’s black pickup truck approaches and slows to a stop and the three men talk and something is handed to Nick by Marina, who is riding shotgun. It’s a Tupperware container. She must be asking about Phoebe, because Nick motions toward the bedroom window where Phoebe stands; she disappears before they can see her.
Phoebe looks at her phone: It’s almost noon. She got home at two A.M. and was awake until five, online, reading about day care and pre-K and nanny shares on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She drew up a budget on printer paper. A few extra Klonopins and she must have blacked out at some point, because at six she woke up on the back patio, wrapped i
n a white sheet on the chaise longue, only feet from the faded bloodstains Nick tried to scrub away. What woke her was the cicada crawling up the side of her neck.
• •
This morning there’s no message from JW. No follow-up to the instructions he sent her last night for meeting him tomorrow, the game he wanted to play: Rent a car, follow my directions, meet me at the little shop off the beach near Malibu. She pushed back, told him to stop. This was her life, not some inconsequential thing. He wrote: Of course, gorgeous, but the car rental is obvious. How else do you plan to get to me? Doesn’t your husband need the car? Do you want me to pick you up?
She sends a message, says good morning, asks what happens after she arrives at the shop by the ocean. There is no response. She considers: What if JW left, went back to New York without her answer? What if she packs, books a flight, shows up in Manhattan with Jackson and the keys to the apartment on East Eighty-Ninth Street and lets herself in? What if, by the time JW calls her back or returns the text, she’s already there, filling her refrigerator with kiwi and mango and organic kale and almond milk, waiting for the cable company and scheduling nanny interviews? He can’t say no. She’ll be there. She wonders if she can leave tomorrow. Tonight? A red-eye to JFK. Don’t think. Just go. Now.
Jackson isn’t in his room or downstairs. When Nick comes inside, he carries the Tupperware and his hands are green. He says nothing to her as he passes. He walks to the kitchen.
“Where’s Jackson?”
He doesn’t respond. He’s washing his hands at the clean sink, all the dishes loaded into the dishwasher. She asks again. He opens the container, picks out a strawberry, pops it in his mouth.
“Where is he? Is he with Mai?”
He tries to leave the room. She grabs his arm. He knocks her hand away. She slaps his neck. He raises a fist. “Fuck! You!” he roars.
“It’s my fault,” she says. “All of it.”
He shakes his head. He’s sweaty and red. He walks away.