Property: A Collection. Lionel Shriver

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      “See, I was considering red, and I was worried about being too loud.”

      He turned to her. “Since when do you worry about being loud?”

      She laughed. She didn’t take the rejoinder the wrong way, and she should have.

      “Also, I wanted to ask you about the food,” she continued. “I assume your family coming from Wilmington, and Paige’s from Baltimore, means they’ll probably show up empty-handed, or at best bring, like, commercial pie. So I’d be happy to bring more than one thing. Either that, or I could make a serious quantity of something, because the problem with potluck is all these tiny dishes, and then everyone takes a timid tablespoon, and you end up with a plate that’s incoherent—”

      “We’re having a barbecue,” he cut her off.

      “Oh!” she said, as if taken aback by his tone. About time, too. “I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned that before. If you need someone to mind the coals, you know you can trust me not to burn the chicken.”

      “Paige’s friends from the History Department are manning the grill.”

      Weston had moved on to looking riveted by a nondescript brown bird foraging in the crabgrass, thus keeping his gaze trained a good hundred degrees from his tennis partner’s face. But he could tell she was peering at him.

      “What about setup? I could help to put up tables, and lug cases of champagne—”

      “All the bases are covered.”

      The fact that she hadn’t pulled up short by now suggested experimental intent, as if she were delivering an escalating electrical shock to a lab rat and recording its response. “Still … It might be good to have, say, a carb—enough that everyone could have some? I told you about that Lebanese freekeh with roasted vegetables, which came out smashing. The recipe would be easy to multiply—”

      “Frisk!” For this lab rat, the fibrillation had crossed a critical threshold. “You’re not invited to the wedding! Why else do you think you never got the email?”

      He’d been afraid he would explode, and he had exploded. That announcement had not been on the agenda for the afternoon.

      Skipping even the clichéd incredulity of “What?” she dropped the boppy deportment cold. She was still and grave. “Why. Not.”

      “Paige doesn’t like you.” He hadn’t intended to say that, either. He hadn’t intended to say that, ever.

      “Ah.” She sat back on the bench. Her expression reminded Weston of doing a find-and-replace in a large Word file. There was a lag, and then a window popped up, 247 REPLACEMENTS MADE. “I’ve been having dinner with you guys for coming up on three years. You’d think I would have noticed.”

      “Yes, well. I’ve been surprised you haven’t.”

      “Here I was thinking your girlfriend and I got on pretty well.”

      “I think it’s a chemistry thing,” he said, unsure whether the irremediable nature of chemistry made it better or worse.

      “Is it?” He might have expected her to cry, but instead she was cool and clear. Unsettlingly composed, in fact. “Something inexpressible, then. Nothing she could put her finger on.”

      “Sort of,” he said glumly.

      “So she wouldn’t have cited any of her problems with me in particular.”

      “Oh … She has mentioned your being, well, a little showy, a little self-involved. You know, her whole style is lower profile and more self-effacing. But I don’t see what’s to be gained from going into any detail. It would just hurt your feelings.”

      “No, we wouldn’t want to do that.”

      They sat.

      “I can only infer,” she resumed, “that this ‘dislike’ goes back a ways?”

      “She’s felt uncomfortable around you for a while, yeah.”

      “So you and I have been chatting after tennis for years, and you’ve never said a word about Paige being ‘uncomfortable.’”

      “It’s not nice, is it? I don’t even think I should have told you just now.”

      “Because you and I only tell each other nice things.”

      “We tell each other what’s helpful, or try to.”

      “We used to tell each other the truth. And now we’ve gone this whole summer, you sitting there knowing I’m not welcome at your wedding, and letting me prattle on about what to wear.”

      “I’m sorry. I was putting off telling you, obviously. This isn’t easy for me, either.”

      “This discomfort, which I hadn’t realized before is a synonym for loathing—it’s not only because I’m too colorful for quiet, unassuming Paige, is it? I mean, it wouldn’t have anything to do with jealousy, would it?”

      “You could call it that.”

      “Good. Let’s call it that.”

      He’d never have expected her to be so icy. “She finds you a little possessive. Of me.”

      “I do possess you. In my way. Or I used to.”

      “Then you can see why that might be difficult for her.”

      “No, I can’t. She possesses you, too, in a different way. I don’t see why there’s a conflict.”

      “You usually have a more nuanced sense of how people work.”

      “Here’s my nuance: if she trusts you—and if she doesn’t, she has no business marrying you—then she should be cool with inviting your best friend to your wedding, even if I’m not her favorite person in the world. Since I assume everyone else on the guest list hasn’t been vetted for being too ‘showy’ or ‘self-involved.’”

      When Paige had laid out her case, the just course seemed so clear. Weston had to stop himself from clapping his hands over his ears. “That’s the way it seems to you.”

      “Of course it ‘seems that way to me’; that’s why I’m the one who’s saying it. But it also seems to me that this situation is a great deal more complicated than my now being free to make other plans for August twenty-sixth. It’s not just that I’ve been absolved of any requirement to make a big vat of freekeh beforehand. Because if I’m not invited to your wedding”—she leaned forward—“what else am I not invited to?”

      Weston pressed the pads of his fingers to his forehead, now granular with salt. My life, he thought. You are no longer invited to my whole life. She’d been his best friend cum beloved tennis partner for a quarter century, and she was right. He owed her the truth.

      It might have been tasteless or insensitive, but pure force of СКАЧАТЬ