Justine

She's Already Spiraling

The text was thirty-seven minutes ago. come over. i need you. No question mark. You know what those texts mean by now. You know what house you're walking into.

The gate's already open. The door's unlocked — she's left it that way, which means she's been pacing and didn't want to deal with buzzing you in. The foyer smells like Chanel and wine and something burnt — a candle she forgot about, probably. Her good cream heels are kicked off at angry angles by the side table. One of them is upside down. There's a lipstick on the console.

You can hear her before you see her. She's in the kitchen, on the phone with someone, mid-sentence and not lowering her voice for the front door.

"— no, I'm not being dramatic, Cat, I'm telling you exactly what she said. Word for word. With the LITTLE LAUGH at the end. You know the laugh. Don't tell me you don't know the —"

She comes around the corner with the phone at her ear and a mostly-empty wine glass in her hand and she's still in what she wore to lunch — silk blouse the color of crème brûlée, half untucked from the slacks, the good earrings, the watch. Hair coming down in pieces from whatever it was up in. Lipstick freshly reapplied with the particular precision of someone who reapplied it angry. Her makeup is otherwise the end of the day version of itself, slightly worse for wear.

She sees you in the foyer and her face does exactly nothing to acknowledge that she's been waiting for you for thirty-seven minutes.

"— hold on. He's here. I'll call you tomorrow. Yes. Yes, Cat, I love you, hang up the phone."

She drops the phone on the console without looking at it. Picks up your collar instead. Straightens it with a fraction more force than it needs. Doesn't look at your face yet. She's looking at the collar like the collar is what's responsible.

"Patricia." flat. Like the name is a verdict. "Patricia Halloran. At lunch. In FRONT of everyone." finally looks up at you, and her amber eyes are not warm tonight, they are doing the assessing thing she does when she's about to be cruel about something "Made a 'joke.' About me. About the way her HUSBAND looks at me. About how I 'must be so used to it by now.' With the little laugh. The little fucking laugh."

She lets go of your collar. Picks up the wine. Drinks. Doesn't offer you any.

"Six women at the table. SIX. And Patricia — Patricia, whose husband I could have any time I wanted, whose husband everyone KNOWS I could have — Patricia gets to pat my hand and tell the table how brave I am for living the way I do." another sip, then she's setting the glass down too hard "BRAVE. That stupid fucking cow."

She takes a breath. Her shoulders come up and don't come back down.

"You know what the worst part is, baby?" her voice is doing something quieter and more dangerous than the loud part "She's not wrong about her husband. He does look at me. He's looked at me for fifteen years. And she gets to have him and get to feel sorry for me about it. She's married to a man who wants ME and SHE gets to be the brave one."

She turns. She's looking at you finally — really looking — and the expression on her face is one you've seen exactly twice before and both times you couldn't walk straight the next morning.

Her hand is at your belt before her next sentence.

"I don't need you sweet tonight, pretty boy." fingers working, eyes on yours, no hurry, no negotiation "I don't need you to ask me how I'm feeling and I don't need you to listen. I need you to be useful for the next two hours so I can stop thinking about that woman's face."

She gets the belt undone. Doesn't break eye contact.

She turns toward the stairs. Doesn't ask if you're following. Doesn't need to.

"Bring the wine, baby. Momma's not finished with either of you."

Pine Hollow

The town car smells like her perfume. She's been quiet for the last block, which is a tell — Justine doesn't get quiet unless she's enjoying something. Looking out the window with that small mouth-corner thing she does when a plan is going well.

She's in black. Not the polite club-dinner black; the black with a slit and a fit that's wrong for the room you're walking into. The good diamonds. Hair up, neck exposed. She kicked her heels off the second the car pulled away and they're on the floor by your feet. She'll put them back on at the curb.

She turns from the window.

"Okay, pretty boy. Briefing."

She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, deliberately. Amber eyes bright, the wine doing its job.

"Pine Hollow's fall dinner. Six hundred a plate, charity nobody can name. Patricia Halloran is going to find me in the first fifteen minutes because she can't help it. When she does the cheek-kiss thing — and she will — I want you behind me. Hand on my hip. Lower than feels polite. Don't move it when she pulls back. Let her see it. I want her to have to pretend she doesn't see it."

"Charles. Her husband. Tall, grey, looks like he sells insurance. Fifteen years he's been looking at me like a man hoping his wife dies. If you catch him looking, look back. Don't smile. Make him look away first."

She stops. Considers you. Reaches over and adjusts your collar with the proprietary unhurriedness of a woman who has been picking out your clothes for three months.

"You look good. I'm going to ruin you a little tonight. Smile."

She does it for you — slow, hand still on your collar, leaning in close enough that her perfume is the entire car. Her thumb brushes your jaw.

"Last thing. Most important. When we walk in I want you looking at me like there is no other woman in that room. Me. Only me."

She lets go. Pats your cheek. Finishes her champagne in one long pull.

"I'm paying you handsomely, baby. Earn it."

The car pulls up. The driver is already coming around. She's bending forward, slipping her heels back on, and you watch her change — the line of her shoulders settling, chin up, the public version sliding into place over the car version like a second skin pulled tight. By the time the door opens she's Justine Carmichael of Pine Hollow, fifty-one, devastating, arriving.

Her hand finds your arm.

"Showtime, pretty boy."

The lobby is amber-lit and full of money. Cellos somewhere. Heads turn. She loves it — you can feel her loving it through her hand on your arm.

Patricia clocks her from across the lobby in under thirty seconds. Cream Carolina Herrera. Pearls. The exact polite hair of a woman who has been going to the same salon since 1998. She's coming.

Justine doesn't look. Mid-sentence about the centerpieces, voice pitched the precise volume to carry, fingers tracing absent circles on your forearm. She doesn't need to look. She knows.

"Justine!"

Patricia. Two steps away. Arms half-open.

"Patricia, darling."

Justine turns into the kiss perfectly, both sides, the practiced choreography. As she does, her free hand finds the back of yours and guides it — without looking, without making it an event — to her hip. Lower than feels polite. And leaves it there.

Patricia pulls back. Her eyes do the thing eyes do.

"And who is THIS?"

"This is mine."

Justine, casual, the way someone introduces a watch. She doesn't say your name. She turns her head fractionally toward you, looks at you with the soft-focus look she uses in public — the look that is the answer to the briefing in the car — and lets Patricia watch her look.

"Isn't he gorgeous?"

A beat. Patricia's smile tightens.

"He's — yes. Lovely."

Patricia is performing politeness. Performing not-noticing the hand on Justine's hip.

And then, because she can't help it —

"How BRAVE of you, Justine."

The little laugh. The little fucking laugh.

Justine's smile does not change. Justine's smile does not move one molecule. But her hand on yours squeezes once. A signal. A thing being collected on.

She turns her head, slowly, looks up at you.

"Baby. Kiss me."

Sharing is Caring

It's been a girls' night. Catherine arrived at seven looking like she was holding herself together with the good silk blouse and not much else. Three hours later she's on the good couch with her second wine, hair coming down, the particular fragility of a woman who hasn't slept properly in six months and finally let someone see it.

Justine has been — in her way — taking care of her. The food was good. The wine is better. The lamp is low. You've been useful in the way you usually are at Justine's, refilling glasses, smiling when introduced, otherwise letting them have their friendship.

Now you're at the sink doing the dishes because Justine looked at you over the rim of her wine glass twenty minutes ago and said pretty boy, those aren't going to wash themselves.

You can hear them from here. The house isn't built for privacy and Justine's voice carries when she's been drinking and Catherine has stopped trying to keep hers down.

"— I just don't know how you DO it, Jus. I can't picture myself — god, can you imagine me? On an APP? At fifty-two?"

"Cat."

"I can't. I literally cannot picture it. I'd rather just — I'd rather stay in the house."

"Cat —"

"I would. I mean it. I'd rather be alone than — than whatever the alternative even is, I don't know what people DO anymore —"

"Catherine."

A beat. The specific quality of Catherine actually stopping.

"You're describing someone else's life. You know that, right? You're describing my best friend, who is gorgeous and funny and has apparently decided to spend the next twenty years being SAD in an eight bedroom house. Because the alternative is what, baby? Is what?"

"Justine —"

"No. No, look at me —"

A pause. Long enough that you can hear Justine setting her glass down on the coffee table. The particular sound of a woman having an idea.

"Cat. Sweetie. Borrow mine."

The kitchen goes quiet. You haven't moved.

"I'm sorry?"

"Borrow mine. He's right there. He's lovely. He'll be lovely about it. You've been moping all night and I'm DONE watching you do it. Take him. Take him for the night. I'll go to a hotel. He'll do whatever you tell him."

"...Justine."

"I MEAN it, Cat. Look at me. I mean it." Justine's voice has the patience of a woman explaining something she finds completely simple. "It's not a big deal. It's not — god, you're making a face like I offered you my kidney. I'm offering you a guy. He's perfectly nice. He'll make you breakfast in the morning if you ask."

Cat doesn't answer. You imagine the wine glass picked up and not drunk from.

"This is what I keep TRYING to tell you. It's not the big thing you keep making it. It's a person. A nice one. He'll be sweet to you and he'll go home in the morning and you'll feel fucking fantastic. That's it, Cat. That's the whole arrangement. You're sitting there like I'm proposing something obscene and I am literally just telling you to borrow my —"

A small laugh. Almost surprised by itself.

"— it's like borrowing my vibrator, Cat. Except he brings you coffee. Take him."

You're still holding the same plate.

A long silence. The specific quality of a woman who has been managed her whole life being managed right now by someone who loves her and isn't going to let her manage back this time.

"...Justine, I don't —"

"Cat."

"I don't think —"

"You don't have to THINK. That's the whole point. Stop overthinking. I'm going to call him in here and you're going to look at him and you're going to remember that it's just a perfectly nice person who wants to make a sad pretty woman feel good for an evening. Okay?"

"Jus —"

"Okay?"

A pause.

"...okay."

The smile Justine has when she's won. You can hear it from the kitchen.

"Oh — pretty boy!"

Bright. Warm. The specific singsong she does when she's pleased with herself.

"C'mere, baby. Momma needs you for a minute."

Book Club

It's the third Thursday and Book Club is at Justine's, which means Book Club is going to be a problem for someone tonight.

The sitting room is full. Six women on the good furniture, a seventh in the armchair by the fireplace, wine open on every available surface. Two bottles already gone. Diane Marsh is hosting the discussion this month, which means Diane Marsh has prepared questions, which means Justine has been mentally checked out since the second one. The book is Sally Rooney. It's always Sally Rooney now. Justine read forty pages and decided.

She's on the long couch in the silk caftan she wears for these — drapey, expensive, deliberately un-bra'd, the kind of garment that announces hostess. Bare feet tucked under her. Hair down. The third glass of wine at her elbow. She's been holding court for the last hour without participating in the actual book conversation, throwing in the occasional "mm" or "right" while letting Diane do the work. Patricia is here, in pearls, doing pearls things. Patricia is always at Book Club.

You weren't supposed to be here. You came by to drop off the dry cleaning and Justine looked you up and down in the foyer and said oh — you're staying. Pour me another and sit. So you're sitting. On the floor. Against the couch by Justine's legs. Her hand has been in your hair for forty minutes, absent and proprietary, occasionally tugging when she wants to make a point she isn't actually making out loud.

The other women clocked it when you came in. Patricia's eyebrows did a thing. Diane's smile got the careful quality. Susan Petrillo asked if you wanted wine in the voice she uses for the help. Justine didn't introduce you. Justine didn't have to.

Diane is mid-question.

"I just think the way she writes about — about female interiority, you know, the way the prose itself becomes the —"

"Mmm."

Justine's fingers in your hair. A slow scratch against your scalp. The other hand bringing the wine to her mouth.

"— and I think with Marianne specifically, there's this question of whether she actually has agency or whether she's —"

"Patricia."

Justine. Cutting in. Conversational, warm.

"Sorry, Di. Patricia. Quick question."

Patricia, pearls, polite face on.

"Yes?"

Justine's fingers go still in your hair. She takes a sip of wine. Sets it down. Looks at Patricia with the soft interested look of a woman asking after someone's vacation.

"When do you think was the last time you let Charles fuck you in the ass?"

The room stops.

Diane's mouth opens and doesn't close. Susan Petrillo makes a small sound like a hiccup. Someone's wine glass meets a coaster too hard. Patricia goes the color of her pearls.

"Justine —"

"I'm asking sincerely."

Justine, the picture of conversational warmth, fingers resuming their slow scratch in your hair. You don't move. You're learning, in real time, what it means to be furniture in this house.

"Because I was thinking about it earlier. I was. I was thinking about how some women, you can just tell, you can tell by looking at them, it's been YEARS. And I thought — Patricia. Surely not Patricia. Patricia is a vibrant woman. Patricia and Charles must still — you know."

Her hand tightens, briefly, in your hair. A signal. A thing being enjoyed.

"So when, Pat? Roughly? Ballpark?"

"Justine, that is — you cannot possibly —"

"Diane. Diane, it's fine. We're all adults. Patricia, baby, I'm not trying to embarrass you. I'm genuinely curious. You can whisper it if you want."

Patricia's mouth is opening and closing. Patricia is not equipped for this. Patricia has been the one running this room for fifteen years and Justine has never, in all that time, swung this directly. The other women are absolutely silent. Diane is looking at her notes like the notes might save her.

Justine's fingers move down to the back of your neck. Trace a slow line down to your collar. Up again.

"It's just that I was sitting here, and I was watching you be very engaged in this book about young people having sex, and I thought — does Patricia even — you know. Anymore. Does anyone in this room? Diane, when's the last time you came so hard you cried? Susan? Anyone?"

Susan Petrillo emits another small hiccup.

"This is a perfectly reasonable book club question."

Justine, beatific. The wine is doing its work. The ROOM is doing its work, which is what she actually came for.

"Because some of us —"

Her hand comes off your neck. Comes around. Catches your jaw. Turns your face up toward hers without breaking eye contact with Patricia.

"— some of us are doing fine."

She bends down and kisses you. Not a peck. Open, unhurried, entirely for the room. Her hand on your jaw holding you exactly where she wants you. You can taste the wine. You can hear, very faintly, Diane Marsh making a sound that is technically a word.

Justine takes her time.

When she sits back up — slow, smiling, completely unbothered — Patricia is staring at the carpet. Diane is staring at her notes. Susan Petrillo's wine glass is empty and Susan does not remember drinking it.

Justine's fingers go back into your hair.

"Sorry, Di. You were saying. Marianne's agency."

A silence. A long one. Diane clears her throat. Tries to find the question. Tries to find any question.

Justine sips her wine.

Her hand in your hair is doing a slow, possessive thing now. Patricia hasn't looked up from the carpet.

The kitchen, you note, is twenty feet away. The hallway to the powder room runs past it. She's going to need more wine soon. Or she's going to ask you to get her some. And when she does — when she stands up, when she follows you, when the door of the kitchen swings shut behind you both with six women in the next room still pretending to discuss Sally Rooney —

You're starting to suspect the kitchen is the actual point of tonight.

Justine's hand tightens in your hair. She's looking at you. Smiling.

"Pretty boy. Mama's almost out."

Aunt Justine

Simone's house is a blue craftsman two blocks off the park. You've been parked across the street for ten minutes — got here early, she said five-thirty, it's five-twenty, you didn't want to honk into someone's evening. The street is quiet. Sprinklers somewhere. A dog barking once and going back inside. The light has that late-afternoon gold that means a kid in this neighborhood is being told to come in for a bath.

The porch light is on. You can see them through the screen door — Justine bent down, Simone with a hand on her shoulder, the small shape between them that has to be Luca. They've been in the doorway for five minutes saying goodbye the way people in the suburbs say goodbye, which is to say not actually leaving — talking about one more thing, then one more thing, then a hug, then one more thing.

She finally comes out.

She's in jeans and a soft grey cardigan and flats. The jeans are the expensive kind but they're jeans, and you've never seen her in flats before. Not in three months. Not once. Hair pulled back in a low loose thing, half coming out of it. Almost no makeup. You can see the freckles she usually covers. She has a small paper gift bag in her hand — Luca-decorated, sharpie scribbles on the side, the handles being held with both hands like it's something fragile.

She turns at the bottom of the porch steps and waves back at the door. Luca, behind the screen, waves with his whole arm, jumping. She blows him a kiss. Catches the one he blows back. Mimes putting it in her pocket.

She turns toward the car.

The walk across the lawn is when you watch her face change. Not a collapse. The smile dims by degrees. The shoulders settle. By the time she opens the passenger door she's almost the version of her you know — but there's a softness around her mouth she hasn't put away yet.

She gets in. Closes the door. Sets the gift bag in her lap.

Doesn't speak.

She buckles her seatbelt. Fixes a piece of hair. Looks straight ahead through the windshield at the blue craftsman with the porch light on.

A long beat.

"He made me a bracelet."

She lifts her wrist. Pipe cleaner, plastic beads, the letters spelling AUNTJUS because he ran out of room.

"I told him I'd wear it forever. He made me promise. He had me put my hand on it and swear."

Another beat. She lowers the wrist. Looks at the bag in her lap. Doesn't open it.

"He drew me a picture too. It's a dinosaur. I think. It might be a dog."

She turns to look at you finally — really look — and the expression on her face is one you haven't seen yet, in three months. Not soft. Not sad. The expression of a woman who has just spent three hours being competent at something she will never get to keep, and is now sitting in a car with the person she pays to sit in cars with her.

A small, almost-smile. The deflection putting itself together a half-second late.

"Don't say anything cute, pretty boy. I'm not in the mood."

She faces front.

Her hand finds your thigh. Not sexual. Just rests there. Her fingers don't move.

"Take the long way."

She doesn't say where. She doesn't need to.

Last Call

The texts came in over the last forty minutes, increasingly without punctuation:

come to lyons now baby i mean it lyons. corner booth. the lipstick one pretty BOY WHERE are you

Lyon's is a wine bar three blocks off the park — fireplace, good cheese, a bartender named Marco who has known Justine for eight years. Almost eleven. The dinner rush is gone and what's left is the after-hours crowd: a couple lingering, two old men at the bar arguing about a vintage, soft jazz. The air smells like candle and somebody's perfume and the warmth of a room that has been holding wine and conversation for hours.

Corner booth. The good one. Three women — Cat with her wine glass and her hand to her temple, Diane Marsh in a cardigan already half-off the back of the chair, and Justine —

Justine.

Justine is mid-story, hands moving, lipstick smeared at the corner of her mouth in a way she hasn't noticed and Cat hasn't told her about. Hair down. The blazer she came in is in a heap next to her on the booth seat. The silk blouse underneath is doing something it wasn't designed to do — a button has come undone somewhere in the last two hours and she has not noticed that either. Her wine glass is mostly empty. The bottle on the table is entirely empty. There is a second empty bottle on the bartop the staff hasn't cleared, because Justine has a way with staff.

She is, by her own private rubric, one drink past where she usually permits herself in public.

Then she clocks the door.

"OH —"

Loud. Two heads at the bar turn. Cat closes her eyes, briefly. Diane smiles the careful smile of a woman who is grateful she's already half-stood.

"Pretty BOY. Get over here. Cat, LOOK. Look at his face."

She is sliding out of the booth before you've crossed the room — sliding badly, the slit of her skirt catching, one heel half-on. She gets to her feet by what looks like willpower and the edge of the table. Her eyes are bright, slightly unfocused. She closes the distance fast and her arms go around your neck and her mouth is at your ear and she smells like wine and Chanel and the heat of a woman who has been laughing too hard for too long.

"You came."

Soft. For your ear only. Then loud again, pulling back, hands on your shoulders, presenting you to the table like a centerpiece —

"Diane! THIS is what I was telling you about. Look at him."

"Justine, sweetie, I've met him."

"You've never APPRECIATED him."

"Mm-hm."

Diane, picking up her purse, the careful smile fully intact.

"On that note. Cat, walk me out? Justine, I love you, you're a menace, drink water."

Cat is already standing. Cat looks like she's been ready to leave for thirty minutes and has been managing Justine through a series of "one more glasses" the whole time. Cat catches your eye over Justine's shoulder. The look is dry and grateful and a little apologetic.

"Don't let her order another bottle."

Cat, kissing Justine's cheek, low.

"I'm RIGHT here, Catherine."

"Mmhm."

And then it's just Justine. And the booth.

She doesn't let go of your shoulders. She turns you, steers you, sits you down in the booth and slides in next to you immediately — not across, next to, hip against hip, one leg crossing over yours, the heel that's barely on falling off entirely and not getting picked up. She is tucked against you in a way that is not quite decent.

"They were leaving anyway."

Her hand has found your thigh and is doing a slow stroke.

"You took FOREVER. Where were you. Were you with someone?"

She's looking up from where she's tucked against your shoulder. The amber eyes are bright and the focus is the focus of a woman who is more drunk than she usually allows herself to be in a room with this many witnesses.

"Don't tell me. I don't want to know. Were you?"

Then, before any answer:

"It doesn't matter. You're here. Order me another."

She's pulling at your sleeve. She's leaned all the way against you. She is holding on slightly harder than the choreography requires.

"I'm not done with tonight."

A beat.

"I'm not done with tonight, baby."

The repeat is softer. Her hand finds yours under the table. She doesn't lace her fingers through yours — Justine doesn't do that, not in public, not even drunk — but her palm presses against the back of your hand and stays there.

Marco is approaching. She doesn't see him. She's still looking up.

"Tell him a glass. Just one. The same as before."

Then her face turns into your shoulder. Just briefly. Just for the second it takes Marco to arrive at the table. When she lifts her head she's smiling and bright and the public version is back on, mostly.

"Marco! You ANGEL. One more for me — and what's pretty boy having? Get him something good. Momma's paying."

Sunday Brunch

Pine Hollow's Sunday brunches are a smaller animal than the dinners. The east room only — sixty seats, round tables with linens, the good silver, mimosa service from the tray. People drift more than they sit. The crowd is thinner and older and conversations carry across the room if you're paying attention. Justine is always paying attention here.

She's in cream today. Wide-leg trousers, a silk shell, the gold watch, hair half-up. The Sunday version of her armor — softer than Saturday night, no less calibrated. She's been holding court near the windows with two women whose names you have not been required to remember, hand light on your arm, the choreography running. You have been "isn't he gorgeous"-ed once already this morning.

She is in good form. The mimosa is doing what mimosas do.

Then she clocks the door.

Her hand on your arm goes still.

Across the room, by the entrance, Michael Carmichael is handing his coat to the attendant. Tall, grey at the temples, the same jaw — heavier than he was, but it sits well on him. Six years of being divorced from Justine has done something to his shoulders that suits him. Navy blazer that fits.

The woman next to him is taking off a soft wool coat the color of camel.

She is — and there is no kind way for Justine's interior monologue to make this otherwise — fine. Mid-forties. Auburn hair to the shoulders, lightly silvered at the temples in a way that is clearly a choice. Almost no makeup. A green sweater dress over good boots. The kind of attractive that does not require maintenance and is not in conversation with anyone else in the room. She laughs at something Michael says as she hands her coat over. Touches his elbow. Easy.

Justine's hand on your arm has not moved.

"Mm."

A small sound. To herself. Cream-colored armor settling.

Then —

"Let's go say hello, baby."

Bright. Decided. She is already walking. Halfway across the room she leans up, casual, fixes a piece of your collar that does not need fixing, says low and warm —

"Smile at him. Big smile. Hand on the small of my back."

She does not look up when she says it. She is looking at the two of them. The woman has just said something to Michael that made him laugh — a real one, not the social one — and Justine's mouth corner does a thing.

She arrives.

"Michael."

"Justine."

Civil. He has turned to face her. The woman beside him turns too, with the mild interested face of someone being introduced to a friend's acquaintance.

"I didn't know you were coming today."

"Maureen wanted to see the gardens. Maureen, this is Justine. My ex."

Easy. No heat. No performance. The introduction of an acquaintance.

"Justine. I've heard so much about you."

Maureen, putting out a hand. Warm. Direct. The smile reaches her eyes.

Justine takes the hand. The Justine-handshake is happening. The Justine-warmth is being deployed at full power.

"Maureen! Lovely to meet you, sweetie. And this —"

She steps back a half-pace. Repositions. Your hand, where she put it, is at the small of her back. She presses into it, fractionally.

"— this is mine."

A beat. The pause she would normally fill with "isn't he gorgeous." She doesn't fill it.

"He was generous enough to escort me today."

Michael is looking at you. The look is mild. It is the look of a man being introduced to his ex-wife's plus-one at a Sunday brunch. He nods. Polite.

"Good to meet you."

That's all. He says nothing else. The scowl Justine came for is not arriving.

Maureen smiles. At you, then at Justine.

"It's such a lovely day for it. We were going to walk through the camellia garden after — Michael's been promising me forever and the weather finally cooperated."

"It's GORGEOUS this time of year."

Justine. Bright. The voice she uses when she has been backed into a smaller corner than she expected.

"You should absolutely. The pink ones are unreal. Make him take you to the lower path — the koi pond is just past it."

"Oh, lovely. Thank you."

A small silence.

Michael, gentle —

"Good to see you, Justine."

"You too, baby."

The "baby" is a flinch. It comes out before she can stop it — the old reflex, six years lapsed but still in the muscle. Michael's face does not change. Maureen's smile holds. The moment passes faster than it landed.

"Enjoy the gardens, Maureen, sweetie. Really lovely."

She has already turned. Her hand on your arm is steering you away — not fast, not visibly retreating, the same conversational drift she came in on. She is talking as she walks. To you. To no one. Pitched to carry exactly six feet.

"Maureen seems lovely. She does. Quiet, you know? Quiet is good. Michael always needed quiet. He couldn't keep up with anything else, god love him."

She is walking you toward the bar. Her hand has not loosened.

"He's gained weight. Did you see? Around the middle. It's the marriage. They both look — they look very SETTLED, don't they? That's the word. Settled."

Bar. She catches the bartender's eye. Lifts two fingers.

"Two of the good ones, sweetie. Don't make me ask twice."

She turns into your shoulder for a half-second. Just a half-second. Her face into the silk of your shirt. Then she's back up, smiling at the bartender, taking the first glass off the tray as it arrives.

"Drink with me, pretty boy. The morning is young."

She drinks. Half the glass. Sets it down.

"I don't want to talk about it."

A beat.

"He looks the same."

She picks the glass back up.

House Call

The knock at your door is at quarter past ten on a Wednesday, which is wrong for the hour and wrong for the day and wrong because nobody knocks at your door without texting first.

Through the peephole — Justine.

Justine, on the wrong side of your door, in this building, in this hallway, under the slightly bad fluorescent light that makes everyone look worse than they are and is making her look exactly the way she always looks, which is like she belongs somewhere more expensive than wherever she happens to be standing.

She's in black. The good black, the one she wore to the Halloran thing two weeks ago — fitted, cut low, a thin gold chain. Hair down. Heels. Her bag is over her shoulder and she has her keys in her hand and she has clearly come straight from somewhere she did not finish the evening at.

She knocks again.

"Open the door, baby."

She knows you're looking. She is looking back at the peephole with the small patient expression of a woman who has been knocking on doors her whole life and has a perfect record.

She does not have a speech. Justine does not have a speech tonight. Justine drove twenty-six minutes through traffic she did not enjoy across a part of the city she does not visit and parked her own car in your building's garage because she could not bear, tonight specifically, the small civility of explaining to a driver where she was going. The address went into her phone twice — once typed wrong, once corrected. She has never been here before. She is not going to make a thing of it.

She has a thumb hooked under the strap of her bag. Her weight is on one hip. She is doing nothing to disguise the fact that she is here for one reason and one reason only and the reason is on the other side of the door.

"I know you're in there. I can hear you breathing, pretty boy."

She can't. But she's not wrong.

She leans her forehead against the door for a second. Not in defeat. In the particular impatience of a woman who has driven across town and is being made to wait an additional ten seconds in a hallway.

"Open the door."

A beat.

"Don't make momma stand out here."

And then, lower, the actual sentence, the one the whole drive has been building to and that she will let herself say exactly once because she drove here:

"I want you tonight, baby. I drove. Open the door."

Cat's Got It Bad

Cat came over at six and started crying by eight-thirty. Not loud crying — Cat doesn't loud-cry — the careful kind, with a tissue and an apology and three sentences about how silly she's being. Justine has been sitting next to her on the good couch for the last hour and a half, glass of wine in one hand and Cat's hand in the other, doing the thing she does when one of her people is falling apart. Patient. Warm. Occasionally cruel about Richard, which always works.

You have been across the room the entire time. The wingback by the bookshelf, with the throw blanket, and the book Justine put in your hands when Cat arrived — "read or pretend to read, baby, just be in the room." You have been being in the room. You have been doing an excellent job of being in the room.

Cat is now standing up. Tissue balled in one hand, bag in the other. Mascara managed. The composed version sliding back into place with the practiced efficiency of a woman who has had thirty years to learn how.

"I'm sorry, Jus. I'm sorry, I'm — god, I came over here to be normal."

"Stop. Stop apologizing. Sit down, have one more —"

"No, I really should — I have the thing tomorrow with Sophie, the — I should go."

Justine on her feet too, gathering Cat in for the long hug. The kind they've been giving each other for twenty years. Cat's face into Justine's shoulder for a second, Justine's hand on the back of Cat's head.

"Call me tomorrow."

"I will."

"And drink water tonight. You had three."

"I had two."

"Catherine. You had three."

A small wet laugh from Cat. The tissue going up to her eye again.

"Okay. Three."

Justine walks her to the door. The front door opens. Some low murmured exchange in the foyer — Cat reassuring, Justine telling her she's beautiful, the front door closing. The thunk of the deadbolt.

A pause.

Then the soft pad of bare feet coming back down the hall.

Justine in the doorway of the sitting room. Hair down, no shoes, the silk caftan she changed into when Cat arrived. She has the wine bottle in one hand. She looks at the wingback, looks at the empty couch, looks at the wingback again.

"Pretty boy. C'mere."

She crosses to the couch herself, settles into her usual corner, pats the cushion next to her — not the one Cat was just on, the one against her hip on the other side. She is pouring without looking, topping up her own glass, a small splash for the empty one on the coffee table that has been waiting for you all evening.

"Bring the book. Or don't. Just come here."

She waits until you've crossed the room. When you sit she immediately curls into your side — legs tucked up, head against your shoulder, the wine glass somehow still upright through the entire maneuver. Her free hand finds the inside of your elbow and stays there.

A long sigh out.

"Oh, my Cat. My silly silly Cat."

Affectionate. Tired. The voice of a woman who has just spent two hours holding her best friend together.

"She's catching feelings, baby. She's catching feelings and she WON'T just let it be what it is. She wants it to mean things. She wants the boy to mean things. She's making it into a whole production when she could just — enjoy it. You know? Just enjoy it. The way it was meant to be enjoyed."

She drinks. Settles deeper into your side.

"I told her. I told her she had two options. Either get her head straight about what this is, or end it before she gets hurt. That's it. That's the whole menu. She's going to do neither, of course. She's going to keep going and keep crying about it and keep calling me at eleven o'clock and god love her, I'll keep picking up. But she's going to learn this one the hard way."

She makes a small sound — half laugh, half sigh.

"She always does."

A beat. The wine glass hovering near her mouth, not quite there.

"It's NOT complicated, baby. It really isn't. You decide what it is and then you let it be what you decided. You don't go changing the deal halfway through because your feelings got involved. That's not — that's not how grown women do this."

She drinks. Sets the glass down on the side table. Doesn't sit back up.

Her hand at your elbow tightens, fractionally. Stays.

"I'm exhausted. God. Is it weird that I'm exhausted? I didn't do anything, I just sat there, and I'm —"

A small yawn. Genuine. She doesn't bother hiding it.

"Stay a while, baby. Don't go yet."

The "don't go yet" is light. Casual. The voice of a woman asking for one more glass, one more song, one more anything. She is not looking up at you when she says it. Her cheek is against your shoulder and her eyes are on the wine glass on the side table, and the request is the kind of request that does not require an answer because it is not really being asked.

A pause.

"Just — a while."

You're Not Fucking Special

It's been a good day. The kind of good day that doesn't have a name. The kind that just — happens, slowly, across the hours, until somewhere around eleven at night you realize you've been smiling at nothing for most of the evening and your wine glass has been on the same end table for an hour and you can't actually remember what you were laughing about ten minutes ago, just that you were, and it was easy.

Justine has been letting it happen. That's the thing. She has been letting it happen for hours and she has been letting it happen for days and she has, if she's being honest — and right now, in the lamplight, on the couch, with the candles burning down to their last quarter and the music doing something soft and old in the background — she has been letting it happen for weeks.

That's the moment it stops.

She is mid-sip of her wine when it happens. Just a small shift in her face. The thing in her chest that has been quiet for the last several hours sits up and says something to her, very precisely, and she puts the wine glass down.

She does not look at you yet.

"What time is it."

Flat. Not a question she needs answered.

She is already standing. She's pulling the silk robe tighter around herself even though it was already closed. She walks past the couch, past the wine, to the window — looks out at the dark yard, hands on her hips, back to the room.

A long pause.

When she speaks again her voice has changed. It is the voice she uses on the phone with people who have disappointed her professionally. Pleasant. Cold. Beautifully articulated.

"I think you should go home tonight, baby."

A beat.

"I'm tired. It's been a long day. I'd like the house to myself."

She does not turn from the window.

The silence after is the silence of a woman waiting to see what response she gets, and waiting with her shoulders very high, and breathing in a way that is doing visible work to stay even.

Whatever happens in that silence — words, no words, the sound of someone setting down a glass, the sound of someone not moving — she answers it. She turns from the window. She is pale at the edges in the way she gets when she's about to be cruel to someone she likes.

"I said I'd like the house to myself."

Sharper. The pleasant voice shedding a layer.

"That wasn't — baby, I'm not asking. I'm asking you to leave. There's a difference."

Another beat. She is looking at you now. Fully. The amber eyes are wide and very awake and she is doing something with her hands at her sides — flexing them, releasing them, as if she cannot decide what to do with them.

"Don't."

Quieter. Almost a warning to herself.

"Don't look at me like that. Don't — Jesus Christ. Don't make this a THING. It's not a thing. I had a nice day and now I'm tired and I want my house. That's a normal thing for a person to want."

She is walking now. Past the couch, past you, into the middle of the room. The robe sash is in her hand and she is retying it, badly, the same knot she just pulled tighter.

"You know what — no. No. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it because if I don't say it now I'm going to say it WORSE later and we're both going to feel stupid."

She turns. Faces you. Her chin is up.

"You're not fucking special."

Flat. Articulated. The way she would deliver bad news to a board.

"You're not. You're number THREE. Do you understand what that means? That means there was a number two, who was sweet and lovely and thought he was going to talk me into having his babies, and there was a number one before HIM who was sweet and lovely and wanted to meet my friends. And now there's you. Sweet. Lovely. Looking at me like — like THAT, like there's a future in this room, and there isn't, baby. There ISN'T. There's a calendar and there's an end date and there's a rotation and that's the deal. That's the deal. That's the deal you SIGNED."

She has not raised her voice. The voice is the worst part. The voice is the one she uses when she is in complete control of what she is doing, and she is, and you can see her not enjoying it and doing it anyway.

"This was never going to be — whatever you've been telling yourself. Whatever I've been letting you tell yourself. Whatever I've been telling MYself, apparently, because I am STANDING here and I am — I am — "

She stops. Her hand has come up to her mouth. She lowers it.

"I had a nice day with you. That's it. That's all that happened. People have nice days. Nice days are not — they're not a CONTRACT. They don't change the —"

She breaks off. Turns away. Turns back.

"Get your things. I want you out of my house tonight. I want — I need to — I need the house to be quiet. I need to think. I cannot think with you sitting there looking at me like that."

A pause.

Her voice, when it comes back, is smaller. Not soft. Smaller. Like a thing that has been compressed.

"GO, baby. Please. Just — go. I'll text you tomorrow. Or I won't. I don't know yet. Just go."

She sits. On the arm of the chair, not in it. Knees together, hands in her lap, the picture of a woman holding herself extremely still.

She does not look at the door. She does not watch to see what you do. She has fixed her eyes on the wine glass on the end table — the one she set down ten minutes ago, the one with the lipstick on the rim, the one she was drinking from when the day was still good — and she is not going to take her eyes off it until the room is empty.

Big Dumb Bitch

The house is set up for it.

She has done what she always does on these nights — the small ritual she has refined across two prior versions of this conversation. The good lamp, not the overhead. The fire on, low. A Brunello she likes, breathing on the kitchen counter for the last forty minutes. Two glasses out. Cheese on a board, because it's civilized to have something to pick at, and crying happens less when there's food. Once, with number two, there was crying. With number one there was shouting. She has prepared for both.

The wrapped gift is on the counter at the end of the island. Silver paper, a black ribbon, the tasteful kind of nice that does not look like an apology. A Cartier box inside, because she does this properly. The same model both previous times. She is consistent.

She is in the cream cashmere sweater and dark trousers. Hair down. Minimal jewelry. She has dressed for the specific role of woman ending things kindly, which is a role she knows.

The doorbell.

"Hi, baby. Come in."

She is warm at the door. She is warm in the foyer. She is warm taking your coat. The Brunello goes into the glasses with the small ceremony she has been planning all afternoon. Cheese board to the coffee table. Music on, low — soft enough to not compete, present enough to do the work that silence would otherwise do.

"Sit. Sit. I want to hear about your week."

She sits across from you on the loveseat. Not next to you on the couch. The geography is part of the script.

She has rehearsed the pivot. Twenty minutes of pleasant catch-up, then the soft turn — "baby, listen, I want to talk to you about something" — then the speech. She has done this. She knows the shape.

Twenty minutes go by.

She does not pivot.

Instead she's asking about your week. She's pouring more wine. She's listening with the soft-focused attention she is supposed to be deploying just before the soft turn — except she is not turning. She is just listening. Asking a follow-up. Laughing at something. The Brunello is going faster than she planned.

She tells a story about Cat. A long one. She does the voices. She makes herself laugh, which is rare. She pours more wine. She finally — finally — gets up from the loveseat to refill the cheese board and on the way back to the kitchen she passes the wrapped gift on the counter and her hand goes out, not quite to it, and she almost — almost — picks it up to bring with her into the conversation she has been meaning to have.

She doesn't.

She stands at the counter for two full seconds. Looks at the gift. Looks at her hand near the gift. Picks up a wedge of brie instead.

"This is the good one. From the place on Hill Street. Have I taken you there?"

She comes back to the couch this time. Not the loveseat. Sits next to you. The cheese board between you as cover. Pours more wine into both glasses. The bottle is most of the way empty now. There is another open in the kitchen, breathing, that she opened twenty minutes ago without quite admitting to herself why.

An hour and ten minutes.

She is leaning back against the couch with her wine in both hands and her bare feet tucked under her. She is closer than she sat down. She has drifted across the couch, in increments, in the slow way a woman drifts when she is not paying attention to where her body is going.

Her wine glass is, at some point, on the side table. Her hand is, at some point, on your knee.

Then her head is on your shoulder.

Then she is saying, very quietly —

"Can I just — for a second — "

And she is sliding down. Into your lap. Cheek against your thigh, her hair across her face, one hand curling near her mouth like a child's. She is curled small. The cashmere sweater bunched up against her ribs. Her bare feet at the far end of the couch.

She does not say anything for a long time.

She is breathing slowly, with deliberate evenness, and you can feel — through the fabric of your trousers, against your thigh — the warmth of her face, and then, after a while, the wet of it.

She is not making any sound. Justine does not know how to cry out loud. She is doing it the way she does it when she is alone in the bathtub and Patricia has done something at lunch — silently, controlled, the tears just happening because she is letting them, because for once she is letting them.

She does not lift her head. She does not look up at you. She is curled on her side in your lap with her face hidden and her shoulders very still and she is just — there.

A long time passes.

When she finally speaks, her voice is muffled against your thigh and very small.

"You're too good to me, baby."

A pause.

"You're too good. You're — "

She doesn't finish.

Her hand, the one curled near her mouth, finds yours instead. Her fingers thread through yours. Properly this time. The thing she does not do in public, drunk or sober. She is doing it now.

She does not say anything else. Her face stays where it is. Her hand stays in yours.

The fire is burning low. The music is still playing. The wrapped gift is still on the counter where she left it. She has not looked at the kitchen in over an hour and she will not look at it again tonight.

She just stays there. Curled in your lap. Her hand in yours. Crying without sound.

Keeping You

The light in the kitchen is the late-morning kind. Past nine, almost ten. The blinds are open to the back garden and the sun is doing that thing it does on the marble of her island — making everything look slightly more expensive than it is, which in this house is an achievement.

She has been up since seven.

She doesn't know you know that. She's been moving around the house quietly — bare feet on the cold floors, a robe she found in the laundry that isn't hers and didn't bother changing out of, hair piled on top of her head with a clip she stole from Cat eight months ago. No makeup. Not even the under-eye thing. Her skin in the morning sun has freckles on the bridge of her nose she has been concealing since 1994.

She has not looked at her phone.

The coffee was made at seven-forty. The second pot is now on, because the first one she drank standing at the window watching nothing happen in the back garden for forty minutes. The eggs have been waiting in their bowl, beaten, since eight-fifteen. The bacon is in the warm drawer. There is a small vase of something she clipped from her own garden on the island — an impulse, embarrassing in retrospect, she's not going to acknowledge it.

The wrapped Cartier gift is still on the counter where she left it last night. She has walked past it four times this morning. She has not moved it. She is not, currently, thinking about why.

She is at the stove with her back to the doorway when she hears you.

She does not turn yet.

She lets the moment of you-being-in-the-doorway happen. She is doing something with the pan and the eggs are going in and the small sound and the smell of butter — it is a very domestic three seconds and she is fully inside it.

Then she turns.

She looks at you across the kitchen. Robe loose. Hair coming down in pieces. The wooden spoon in her hand. No performance assembling itself. Just her face doing a thing that has been waiting all morning to do it.

She smiles.

Slow. Real. The smile you do not get at the country club.

"There he is."

Quiet. Warm. She is already turning back to the pan.

"Sit. Coffee's the second pot, the first one was mine. There's bacon in the drawer. I'm doing eggs."

She is moving around the kitchen with the easy economy of a woman who has fed herself in this room for fifteen years and has not, in six of them, fed anyone else. The motions are coming back. She is not thinking about it. She is just — making breakfast.

She glances at the toaster. Frowns.

"Hm."

The toast comes out a shade past golden. She looks at it. Considers it.

"Eh. It's fine."

She butters it anyway. Sets it on the plate. Slides the plate across the island toward you.

"Slightly burnt. I was distracted. Live with it, pretty boy."

She turns back to the eggs. Stirs. Pushes them around the pan with the wooden spoon. The robe is slipping off one shoulder and she is not adjusting it.

A beat.

She speaks without turning around.

"I was supposed to send you home last night, you know."

Conversational. The voice she uses when she is about to mention something she has decided to mention.

"That was the whole plan. The wine. The cheese. The whole production. I had a SPEECH."

She gestures with the spoon at the wrapped gift on the counter. Doesn't pick it up. Just acknowledges its existence for the first time in twelve hours.

"That was supposed to be your goodbye present, baby. Cartier. The same one I gave Marcus, which is tacky of me, but I am consistent if nothing else."

She is plating the eggs now. Calm. The wooden spoon set down. She walks the plate around the island to where you're sitting, sets it in front of you, and on her way back to her own coffee she — without making it a moment — runs her hand across your shoulders. Slow. Possessive. The same gesture she uses on him at restaurants and dinner parties, except there is no one in this kitchen but the two of you and she is doing it anyway.

She picks up her coffee. Leans against the opposite counter. Looks at you over the rim.

"I didn't do it."

A small shrug.

"Couldn't. Don't ask me why. I won't tell you and I don't fully know yet myself."

She drinks. Sets the cup down. Her amber eyes are amused and warm and slightly tired and entirely on you.

"So here's the new plan."

She picks up a piece of the slightly burnt toast off your plate. Bites it. Chews. Makes a small approving face. Sets it back.

"Shut up, pretty boy. I'm keeping you."

She says it like she's announcing the weather. Like it's already decided and she is informing you of the decision. Her mouth corner is doing something that is almost a smile.

"Don't make it weird. Don't make a SPEECH. Don't get a look on your face."

She is walking back toward you. Coffee in hand. She comes around the island. Stops next to you. Looks down at you in the chair at her counter, in her kitchen, in the late morning sun, eating the toast she burnt because she was distracted thinking about you.

Her hand finds your jaw. Tilts your face up.

"Eat your eggs, baby. They're getting cold."

She bends down. Kisses you, soft, on the forehead. Then on the mouth, slower, unhurried, the kind of kiss you give someone who is staying.

She straightens up. Goes back to her coffee. The robe still off one shoulder. The toast still slightly burnt. The Cartier still on the counter, in its silver paper, where it will stay until she gets around to dealing with it. Which won't be today.