“No, you have it,” she says. “I’m full.”
She knows she’s being difficult, and watching Jonathan sheepishly reach for the second piece of uni, she feels contrite; she wants to apologize, to say that her brother is being characteristically difficult, which has thrown her into a dark mood—and yet, every time she opens her mouth, the only thing she’s capable of producing is some other dismissive comment, some other bitchy remark. Worse, inevitably, Jonathan will foot the bill: Alice can hardly afford drinks at a place like Babél, so he’ll have no choice but to throw down three hundred dollars to eat disgraced puddles of raw sea urchin while the woman sitting across from him more or less ignores him. And even though he knows all this—he oversees her department’s budget—he still, through some divine inspiration, manages to put on a good face. Manages to reach beneath the table and squeeze her knee between courses; manages to smile at all the right moments as he shovels bites of uni into his mouth.
She drains her glass of wine. She’s chosen this place, which she wagers makes things doubly bad. At the time, of course, it had seemed like a good idea: she’d read about it in the Times and L.A. Weekly and on at least four of the ten restaurant blogs she had bookmarked at work. She had googled the menu and had been impressed by its absurd prices and foreign ingredients—exotic fishes and spices, frivolous vegetables whose shapes and tastes and provenances were total and complete mysteries to her. She had clicked through the interior pictures she found online and, upon seeing the careful balance of reclaimed wood, brushed steel, and poured concrete, felt the strange arousal she often experienced while flipping through catalogs from Room & Board and travel brochures from American Express. In short: she used the same process to find Babél that she uses to find any of the other overpriced restaurants in Los Angeles to which she asks Jonathan to take her. It’s a process that she previously thought served her well—how else would she have been able to develop an opinion on the proper consistency of sweetbreads?—but that now, in the dim lighting of the restaurant, strikes her as transparent and mildly pathetic. It smacks of her seventeen-year-old self, who lied about the books she’d read and who felt crippled and uncouth whenever Eloise corrected her over a mispronounced word. The same sort of girl who’d brag to her friends about being able to distinguish between champagnes, but who’d never tell them she grew up sharing a bathroom with her brother.
She checks her Facebook post on her phone again. Still nothing from Eloise.
She thinks: What a bitch.
She wants a pizza. That’s what she really wants. She wants a fucking pizza.
“You want to talk about it?”
Jonathan has just ordered another ninety-dollar bottle of wine. She wanted to tell him not to, that it’s an unnecessary expense, but not enough to actually stop him from doing it.
“Talk about what?” she says.
“Whatever it is that’s upsetting you.”
Between them, the sea bean porridge cools and its oils begin rising to the surface, forming tiny, shimmering pools. Alice watches them as she considers Jonathan’s proposal to talk, which is something that’s been happening more and more frequently. Up until a few months ago, their relationship found comfortable footing on a foundation of adventurous sex (“the sort of sex that I’d want to watch,” Alice once said) and outrageously expensive meals. Lately, though, Alice finds herself craving the types of conversations she initially forbade herself from entertaining: these exchanges when, in the afterglow of sleeping with Jonathan, her body still slick with his sweat, she’d tell him a small secret of her life. Her admissions have been nothing significant, at least not thus far. Nothing about Mexico City, for example, or the mess she left when she fled that terrible place. Still, though, they’ve been admissions. Minor additions to the long list she lays bare for him of unsatisfactory ways her life has unfolded. About how she hasn’t read all the books she claims she’s read, or how she’s insecure about the fat behind her knees.
“My brother’s really pissing me off,” she says.
Jonathan wipes his mouth with his napkin and returns it to his lap. “Paul?”
“Yes, Paul.”
The waiter swoops in with the fresh bottle of wine, and Jonathan tastes it, swishing it around in his mouth theatrically.
“Why’s he pissing you off?” he asks once the waiter leaves.
“Because he’s refusing to talk to my mother.”
“Still? That seems a little childish.”
Alice takes a swig of her wine and realizes only after she’s swallowed that she’s finished off half the glass.
“It is,” she says.
“Hasn’t this been going on for a while?”
“Three years.”
“Jesus.”
“And like I told you the other night, I’m meant to play peacemaker—”
“That’s—”
“Which, as I’m sure you can imagine, gets a little exhausting.”
There is a brief silence, a space in which the clinking of glasses around them grows louder, and Alice worries suddenly that she’s said too much.
Jonathan leans back in his chair and sets his hands on the table. She stares at his knuckles. The tops of his fingers are tan, moisturized, and look a solid ten years younger than the rest of him, which already looks unnaturally young.
He says, “And this is all about your dad…”
“Yes,” Alice says. She tries, unsuccessfully, not to be flattered by all that Jonathan remembers about the events of her life before he knew her.
“Paul didn’t like the way that Mom handled my dad’s death.”
She swallows the rest of her wine, briefly considers waiting for the waiter, but then thinks twice about it and pours herself a second glass.
He runs a hand through his sandy hair. “I know I said this before, but I’m sorry … about your dad having passed, I mean.”
Alice waves a hand in front of her face, which is something she always does when she tells someone about her dad and the person reacts in the way people are supposed to, with sincere condolences. She’s never been good with obligatory compassion; she imagines batting away words like passed as if they were flies.
“It’s fine,” she says. “I mean, that’s nice of you to say that, but it’s fine. It happened nearly three years ago, anyway.”
Jonathan opens his mouth, hesitates a moment, and says, “You still haven’t told me how it happened.”
“I haven’t?”
“No. I mean, I knew your dad died and that’s the reason you were out of the office, but … you’ve never told me how.”
She swallows another mouthful of wine. She considers what to say, what might elicit a greater share of his sympathy: Murdered in cold blood. Abducted by the Taliban. A plane crash. Some Southeast Asian budget flight that disappeared somewhere near Malaysia.
“Gallbladder cancer. Real curveball, right? I mean, who gets gallbladder cancer? Actually—I can tell you, if you’re curious. Less than five thousand people a year in the whole United States.”