The Changeling. Victor LaValle

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СКАЧАТЬ stood before Emma’s plate, two-thirds down. Three small plates of appetizers were laid out: oysters, mushrooms, and a third thing he couldn’t recognize. The tablecloth looked as mussed as a slept-in bed.

      “Am I that late?” Apollo asked.

      “We got here early,” Emma told him.

      Nichelle pointed at Emma. “Best way to get seated fast is bring a woman who’s nine months pregnant.”

      “Thirty-eight weeks!” Emma said.

      Nichelle waved one hand dismissively. “That math doesn’t mean anything to normal people. You are nine months pregnant.”

      Apollo sat across from Nichelle and next to Emma. Even before he’d settled into the chair, a waiter came to the table and poured some of the wine into his glass, topped Nichelle’s glass off, then refilled Emma’s cup of sparkling water. He didn’t ask if they wanted another bottle of wine, merely raised the empty one slightly, and Nichelle pointed at him.

      Apollo set the messenger bag between the legs of his and Emma’s chairs. She’d set herself down at an angle so her belly wouldn’t bump the table and she could stretch her legs out. She looked down at the bag quickly, then up at Apollo.

      “Ridgewood,” Apollo said. “Nothing great.”

      Emma patted his leg. “Good to try.”

      Thirty-eight weeks pregnant, and she looked like a hummingbird that had swallowed an emu egg. And yet she moved in this body with a kind of exhausted authority. She seemed to take some pleasure in being, temporarily, larger. When the waiter arrived with the new bottle of white wine, she had her legs extended, feet out, and ankles crossed. Any other time in her life, even an earlier stage of the pregnancy, she would’ve tucked her feet in to accommodate the waiter. But not now. Let the world accommodate her a little. Her feet stayed stuck out, and the waiter went around them.

      The waiter poured another round for Nichelle, then topped Apollo off though he’d only taken two sips. The diners at the other tables gave off a distinctly different air from theirs. The median age of these customers was billionaire. Even the busboys in this place were white.

      “How is Los Angeles treating you?” Apollo said. “Does that town ever change?”

      “Time goes slower when you’re happy,” Nichelle said. “And I’m happy there.”

      Emma stabbed at an empty oyster on the table, then moved on to forage the last mushroom from another plate. “She writes for The Witching Hour,” she said, pride playing in her voice like a musical note.

      “Hey, we watch that show,” Apollo said. He pulled at the wine and felt himself relaxing into the seat, the conversation.

      “Why do you think we started?” Emma asked, leaning into his arm. “Got to support my girl!”

      “Long way from Boones Mill,” Apollo said, raising his glass.

      Nichelle looked to Emma, raised her glass. “For both of us.”

      After a sip she pooched her lips toward Emma’s belly. “But I hear you two are going to the planet of ‘natural childbirth’ next. I’m sorry, but that’s too far for me.”

      These natural childbirth conversations weren’t ever meant for Apollo, even if he was in the room, at the table. When they’d told Lillian about the plan, she’d practically short-circuited from fear. “Concern” is what Lillian called it. And so on with most of the women in Emma’s life. Only her older sister, Kim, supported the plan, but she had good reason: Kim Valentine was their midwife.

      While Nichelle told Emma all her concerns about natural childbirth, Apollo made the mistake of finally looking down at his menu. There were three appetizers on the table, already finished. The oysters cost thirty-two dollars. The mushrooms were forty-two. Forty-two motherfucking dollars for a small plate of mushrooms. He couldn’t guess what the hell the last plate had been—there was only a white soup dish with some broth in it now—so he couldn’t figure what the price might be. But why not be conservative and guess twenty-two? Twenty-two dollars for a dish of broth might not even be a joke in a place like this. That meant this meal already cost nearly one hundred dollars. He and Emma were down fifty bucks, and he hadn’t even eaten anything yet.

      Apollo finished the wine to calm himself; an exquisite Chablis. How much could it have cost? The wine list hadn’t been left at the table. If he’d known, just then, that this Chablis Grand Plus cost three hundred and seventy-five dollars per bottle, what would he have done? Run screaming, probably. His thirty-eight-weeks-pregnant wife up on his shoulders.

      Writing for television sure had to pay better than an independent bookseller and a part-time librarian ever made. At least Emma, his beautiful and thoughtful wife, drank only water tonight.

      Perrier, he corrected himself. Not tap water. And just how much in sweet black Jesus did Bouley Restaurant charge for sparkling mineral water? Did they infuse it with fucking diamond dust before they served it? The women turned their attention to Apollo only when he audibly whimpered in his seat.

      Emma leaned close and touched his back gently. “I know you’re hungry,” she said. “Let’s get the waiter over here.”

      Nichelle ordered the Organic Long Island Duck (forty-five dollars). Emma the Organic Colorado Lamb (fifty-three dollars). The waiter then faced Apollo.

      Apollo handed over the menu. He pointed at the empty little basket in the middle of the table. “I’ll just have more bread.”

      BY THE TIME the second bottle of Chablis had been finished, Nichelle practically levitated from her chair. She’d cycled from tipsy to tornado. She spoke loudly enough now that Mrs. Grabowski and her son might’ve heard her out in Queens. The surest sign that she’d become truly drunk was neither her slurred words nor her lack of bodily control—though there was a little of both—but the way she’d stopped listening to the others at the table. Tipsy people are chatty, drunks harangue.

      This wasn’t so bad, though, because by ten o’clock both Emma and Apollo had lost their ability to make conversation. Emma, hardly napping at all these days, had drifted into the half sleep of her long nights. She “slept” propped partway up with pillows in their bed, so it wasn’t all that different to drift in her seat at Bouley. Apollo, meanwhile, had ingested nothing but tap water and the restaurant bread. While the bread tasted magnificent, it wasn’t enough. By dessert, Apollo and Emma had low batteries, but Nichelle seemed wired to a generator.

      “Limbo? Coolimbo? I can’t remember what the damn thing was called,” Nichelle said. She’d ordered port to go along with her Hot Caramelized Anjou Pear. Emma asked for the Amaretto Flan, though she swore she wanted only one bite. Apollo didn’t know what either cost because by then his vision had gone fuzzy. He couldn’t have read the menu if he tried. He only hoped there wasn’t such a thing as a “second dessert” or a “digestif tasting menu” or some other high-tone shit that might require him to go into their savings just to pay for it.

      “This girl tried to get me to watch a movie about a slave uprising when I was busy trying to figure out how to marry that boy out of New Edition.” Before Apollo could say anything, she waved her hand dismissively. “No, not Ralph or Bobby. I liked Michael Bivens. He could ball.”

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