Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny

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СКАЧАТЬ how I understand about these things, insider knowledge.”

      It was true that Audra had a lot of insider knowledge. And it seemed like everyone wanted to trade on it. Sometimes Graham felt like he was married to Warren Buffett. Well, a female Warren Buffett who knew about everything except finance. (Maybe Audra and Warren Buffett should be married to each other and have every possible base covered. They would be the most sought-after couple in the world.)

      People came to Audra for advice—well, no, not advice, that was the wrong word. They came to her for secrets, for gossip, for connections—for intel, that was the term—about everything. Friends sought her expertise on their job interviews, on their children’s chances of getting into private schools, on marriage counselors, on hairdressers, on au pairs, on restaurants, on shops, on neighborhood watches, on gyms, on doctors, on internet providers. People asked her about local politics and she didn’t even know who the mayor of New York City was! (Well, she probably did know who the mayor was, but it wasn’t a certainty by any means.)

      Right now, Audra’s friend Lorelei had called and said she was on her way up to ask Audra’s advice about a client meeting.

      Lorelei was Audra’s best friend, had been her best friend since they were both twenty. She lived on the third floor of their building and Graham sometimes saw her in the lobby and about once a month Lorelei and her husband and Audra and Graham had dinner together, and they often spent Thanksgiving together, so Graham saw Lorelei fairly often, but it felt like he was married to her because for fourteen years now, Audra had been giving him Lorelei’s opinion on everything along with her own. “Lorelei thinks you’re too old for me, but I don’t,” she’d said when he first met her. Or “Lorelei and I both think you shouldn’t have given in to your first wife about those maintenance fees.”

      Audra did this constantly, and not just to Graham. She even did it to people in shops and restaurants, saying, “Lorelei would never pay so much for a jacket, but I love it,” or “Lorelei and I both like scallops so I’ll try the special.” (Did people think she was schizophrenic and referring to some person only she could see? Graham wondered suddenly. Or did they think she had multiple personalities and Audra was the dominant self who spoke for both?)

      The buzzer sounded and Graham went to let Lorelei in.

      “Hey, Graham,” Lorelei said, and smiled. She was a petite, dark-haired woman with freckles and the greenest eyes Graham had ever seen.

      Graham knew Lorelei’s opinions on everything from their bathroom tiles (too dark) to his mother (passive-aggressive) to his recipe for beef stew (beyond delicious), and all of that was very tedious, but he also knew some interesting things about her. He knew that she was saddened by the invention of colored contact lenses because now everyone assumed she wore them, and that her husband had made her cry once by making fun of the way she walked in high heels, and that when she was fifteen, she had made out with her boyfriend in a lake and when the boyfriend ejaculated, his semen had floated to the surface and followed them around like a jellyfish.

      Of course, Graham realized that it must work the other way around and that Lorelei must know everything about him, too, but he had always sort of enjoyed that. How many people could have such intimate knowledge of another person and yet never really say anything beyond The salmon here really is excellent? It sometimes stirred in Graham a profound affection for Lorelei.

      And yet, even Lorelei, who was a client service director with a big social advertising agency, was here, humbly seeking knowledge from Audra, a part-time graphic designer!

      It was not the graphic designer bit that made it odd to Graham that someone would want Audra’s advice because he actually thought Audra was very talented. And it wasn’t the part-time thing, either, because that was sort of necessary at least until Matthew went to high school (or possibly until Matthew got married, at age forty-five). It was more just Audra, who had recently wondered aloud to Graham where the fuse box was (they’d lived in their apartment for ten years) and had often said she considered herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel.

      But there was no doubt that Audra knew people, and she knew things about people, and often she knew things about people who knew other people who knew people who had brothers who worked in the State Department and it was very helpful when your passport got stolen.

      Lorelei went into the living room to talk to Audra, and Graham went into the kitchen to make tea for all of them. He knew just how Lorelei took hers—a single Ceylon tea bag, steeped for four minutes, with one sugar and a dash of lemon. He even knew which mug she preferred—an old-fashioned turquoise one with white enamel lining—and that she liked gingersnaps with her tea, although they didn’t have any gingersnaps right now.

      Graham liked making tea. He liked cooking, he liked baking, he liked food, he liked kitchens. In another life, he would have made an excellent owner of a safe house in the Underground Railroad. He would have always been happy to get up in the middle of the night and poke up the fire, listen to the fugitives’ tales while he fried ham steaks and made hot biscuits. And although Graham had been a teenager in the seventies and never attended a consciousness-raising group, the idea had always deeply appealed to him. Political activism while you stirred the spaghetti sauce? What could be better?

      He had started out as a medical researcher—Graham liked routine and order—and now he was in charge of medical ventures for a venture capitalist firm. There was just no market for underground safe houses anymore.

      “So this very junior person in our office,” Lorelei was saying to Audra, “basically the girl who makes the coffee, tweeted something without approval—”

      “What did she tweet?” Audra asked.

      “Oh, just something about how the clients’ shoes are guaranteed not to give you blisters,” Lorelei said. “She didn’t realize the word guarantee was legally binding language and now the clients are furious, and I have to meet with them tomorrow.”

      “Who are the clients?” Audra asked.

      “Superguardian Footwear,” Lorelei said.

      “Just a sec, let me look them up,” Audra said, and there was the muted clatter of her laptop keyboard.

      Graham tried to remember how conversations like this went in the pre-Google world and found he couldn’t, although the pre-Google world was only what, ten or twelve years ago? (Some people, like his mother, still lived there.) Before Google, it seemed to Graham, there was probably a great deal more topic changing. Or maybe conversations were just shorter. Maybe you said, Have you ever heard of a company called Superguardian Footwear? and the other person said, No, and you said, Oh. Well, anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow.

      “All right,” Audra said in that half-present, half-absent sort of voice people use when they’re looking at a computer screen and talking at the same time. “Let’s see. Here’s their website—wow, I really do not like that color blue.”

      “Go to their company page,” Lorelei said. “Maybe you know the vice president or someone.” She sighed. “I wish you could go to this meeting for me, the way you broke up with Jeff Mayberry for me in college.”

      Audra sounded puzzled. “I broke up with Jeff Mayberry for you?”

      “Oh my God, yes, don’t you remember?”

      “No, not at all.”

      “I wanted to break up with him,” Lorelei said, “but I didn’t want СКАЧАТЬ