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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Jeff, I’m just in kind of a crazy situation and I can’t see you anymore.’”

      “Did it work?” Audra sounded amused.

      “Yes!” Lorelei said. “That’s the most amazing thing about it.”

      “Jeff couldn’t have been that attached if he didn’t even recognize your voice—”

      “I can’t believe this,” Lorelei interrupted. “I have, for years—literally, for decades—been going around telling people I couldn’t do things because I’m in kind of a crazy situation. It’s been my all-purpose answer to almost every awkward question and now I find out you don’t even remember saying it.”

      “Who all have you said it to?” Audra asked.

      “Everyone!” Lorelei said. “I’m sure I’ve said it to people who were collecting money for UNICEF, and my mother-in-law when she asks why I haven’t had children.”

      This was the pleasure of twenty-year-old friendships, Graham thought. Tracing a memory back to its source. Like following a stream through the woods and up a mountain until you find the spring trickling from a rock and you clear away the dead brown leaves of the intervening years and the water flows as sweetly as ever.

      Audra’s voice came clearly from the living room. “Really, the only connection I have at Superguardian—and it’s not much help—is that their chief operations officer is a man named Columbus Knox and I believe I gave a man by that name a blow job once outside the Raccoon Lodge in, like, 1990.”

      “What?” Graham said, startled.

      “It was a long time ago,” Audra called soothingly. “And I didn’t know him terribly well.”

      You know, actually, it was nothing like being married to Warren Buffett at all.

      The very next day, a woman ahead of Graham in line at the deli ordered a Reuben sandwich with French dressing instead of Russian, and Graham recalled that his ex-wife had often ordered that very sandwich, and then he realized the woman was his ex-wife. How could he not have recognized the back of her head? The long slender neck and smoothly gathered French twist? Her hair was the color of corn silk and Graham knew that it felt like corn silk, too—so soft it seemed to disintegrate when you rubbed the strands between your fingers.

      “Elspeth?” he said. (“Stupid name,” Audra had once commented, she of the friends named Bitsy and Lorelei.)

      The woman turned and yes, it was definitely Elspeth, same blue eyes, same pale face and delicate eyebrows. She looked older, but of course, she was older. Her skin seemed very slightly grainy, like the finest grade of sandpaper, like tiny calcium deposits on an eggshell. He realized abruptly that his eyes were crawling over her face and how unpleasant that must be. He forced himself to stop.

      “Graham,” she said. She didn’t say anything else. He was glad she had her hands full—napkins, a can of soda, and a glass—because that prevented him from having to hug her or shake hands with her. He wasn’t sure which he’d do anyway. Did you shake hands with someone you’d been married to for eight years?

      A silence spread between them like a puddle of oil, shiny and dangerous. Graham was certain that if he looked down, he would see his shoes beginning to blacken.

      But then the deli guy slapped Elspeth’s sandwich on the counter. She turned to Graham. “Why don’t you join me?”

      “That would be great,” Graham said. “You go find a table and I’ll order a sandwich and be right with you.”

      He ordered his sandwich in such a slow, distracted manner that the deli guy kept sighing and rolling his eyes. Graham was busy trying to remember how many times he’d seen Elspeth since their divorce. Not many. Once he’d passed her going through the turnstiles at the Columbus Circle subway station—she was coming in and he was going out. She hadn’t seen him but he had glimpsed her expression and she’d looked so unhappy that he’d stopped and turned to watch until she was out of sight down the stairs. He’d told himself that she wasn’t unhappy about him. They’d been divorced for four years at that point. She could have been unhappy about anything. And then once when he’d gone to the funeral of a mutual friend. Elspeth had been sitting near the front of the funeral chapel, tall and slim and regal in a black suit. Somebody must have whispered to her that Graham was there, because she had swiveled her head—like a pale blond swan breaking formation—to stare at him. Then she’d looked forward again, and Graham, furtive as a poisoner, had slipped out before the service was over.

      The deli guy handed him his sandwich—Graham was so flustered, he almost forgot to pay for it—and he joined Elspeth at a table in the corner.

      She smiled when he sat down and Graham recognized the smile. It was a gracious, for-company smile that she put on sometimes, the way another woman might get out her Spode china or whip the dustcovers off the best sofa.

      Graham smiled back and then took a big bite of his sandwich to buy himself some time.

      “So,” Elspeth said. “How are Audra and Andrew?”

      Now Graham regretted the big bite because he had to chew for a while before he could answer.

      “They’re good,” he said at last. He didn’t bother to correct her about Matthew’s name because he wasn’t sure if she’d said the wrong name as some sort of passive-aggressive thing. “And you? How are work and—things?”

      “Work is good,” Elspeth said, lifting her sandwich with long fingers. She was a lawyer at a midtown firm.

      “Still at Stover, Sheppard?” Graham asked.

      “Oh, yes.”

      “And do you still live in the same apartment?” It occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t know her address or phone number or email. He had a moment of disconnect—was she even real? What tethered her to the world?

      “Actually, I’m moving,” Elspeth said. “Or trying to. I want to buy a place in that building over on Seventy-sixth and York? It’s called the Rosemund. Do you remember that?”

      Graham nodded, although he didn’t.

      “Well, anyway, I want to buy there but it’s very tough—the board has to approve you.”

      “I can’t imagine a better tenant than you,” Graham said sincerely, and then faltered for a second. He had been married to this woman, and the best thing he could say about her was that she’d make a fabulous tenant?

      “I’ve heard they don’t like lawyers,” Elspeth said. “Too litigious.”

      Graham had a sudden flash of how Elspeth would come across in an interview: cold, hard, perfectionistic. Her favorite drink was a gimlet, and she was not unlike a gimlet herself, in either sense of the word.

      “Anyway,” she said. “What about you? Where do you live?”

      Graham told her about his apartment and they compared mortgage rates.

      There didn’t really seem to be anything to say but they both still had half a sandwich to go, so they talked about the privatization of workers’ comp in West Virginia and Nevada, and pretty much the only personal thought Graham had СКАЧАТЬ