“So did I,” said Quentin sadly.
The rest of the guests arrived, and Cleo took her place at the head of the table. She handed around plates and introduced acquaintances and accepted congratulations as the room became loud and gay. Most were friends of Frank’s; advertisers and architects and designers, people who had found the intersection between creativity and economy, who made beautiful things but did not suffer for it. She smiled and filled glasses and tried to focus on the conversations happening around her.
“People don’t know it, but Polish is a very poetic language,” a bald academic, who did not speak Polish, was telling Quentin, who did. “You know when they translated The Flintstones, they put it all in rhyme?”
“Sorry I never called you back,” exclaimed one guest to another across the room. “I threw my phone out the window after a bad haircut!”
Cleo stood up and tried making her way past the guests to the bathroom.
“… And now all he wants to talk about is doing ayahuasca,” a woman wearing a turban was saying to Zoe. “He goes down to Peru for the ceremonies and acts like it’s some rare skill he’s learned. I’m like, honey, it’s a drug, not a degree.”
“My acting teacher did say it completely neutralized his ego,” said Zoe. “At least for a few weeks.”
Zoe was the only family member they had invited. At nineteen she was also the youngest person there. Frank and Zoe looked almost nothing alike, despite being half siblings, in part because of the age difference, in part because Zoe’s father was Black and Frank’s, like their mother, was white. Bespectacled, freckled, and curly-haired, Frank was charmingly handsome, but he was rarely the best-looking person in the room. Zoe, on the other hand, was breathtaking. Her face had the symmetry of a Brancu?i sculpture. Her hair was a tumble of curls streaked with copper and gold. She did not appear to have pores. Every time Cleo looked at her, she couldn’t help searching for a flaw.
The turbaned woman turned to include Cleo in the conversation. Cleo could recall her job, food critic, but not her name. This was, she thought, a type of memory lapse common to New Yorkers.
“Cleo, you create,” she declared briskly. “Do you think taking ayahuasca would enhance your painting?”
“I think I need my ego.” Cleo laughed. “It’s pretty much the only thing getting me to the canvas these days.”
“Well, Frank says you’re very talented,” sniffed the turbaned food critic. “Perhaps your generation will restore the prominence of painting to the art world finally.”
Cleo smiled graciously. Even in her writing, this critic had a way of giving compliments with an air of unwillingness, as though she had only a finite number and was never quite sure if now was the occasion to surrender one.
“Here’s hoping,” said Cleo.
“Not that Frank would be biased or anything,” shot Zoe.
Cleo felt her face fall. Every time she met Zoe, she was left with the bruised feeling that the younger girl did not like her. Of course, this only made her more desperate for Zoe’s good opinion, while uncomfortably aware that she was courting the approval of a sulky teenager. She had brought the tension up to Frank before, but he sidestepped the conflict with his usual light-footedness.
The food critic appeared to have lost interest in the conversation now that she was no longer speaking, and an awkward silence descended between Cleo, who was still straining to look unbothered, and Zoe, whose golden eyes were resting on her with predacious calm. Thankfully, Frank soon began calling Cleo’s name from across the room.
“Cley, you’ve got to hear this story of Anders’s!” he yelled, still mid-laugh. “You too, Zo!”
Frank had abandoned his top hat and jacket but left his napkin tucked into his shirt. His glasses were slightly askew, a telltale sign that he was already well on his way to being drunk. Zoe bounded over, leaving Cleo to follow behind her.
“You sit here, my bride,” said Frank and pulled Cleo onto his lap.
“Okay, I start from the beginning,” said Anders.
Zoe, for whom there was no available seat, hovered over Anders’s shoulder. Anders was from Denmark and had worked for many years as Frank’s art director before leaving to head the art department of a women’s fashion magazine. Like Zoe, he was almost unfairly attractive, a former model in fact, but whereas Zoe seemed to radiate her own heat, Anders emanated a Nordic cool.
“So,” said Anders, “I hurt my knee quite badly playing tennis.”
“In a game I won, if I recall,” said Frank.
“You only ‘recall’ the games you win,” said Anders. “And it is not such a victory if your opponent is injured, is it? Anyway, I go home and the pain is really bad, quite unbearable. I remember that I have some leftover muscle relaxants from an injury years ago. They are expired, but I think, okay, I’ll just try one. I take it, forget all about it, spend the afternoon on the roof with friends drinking beers, maybe a bottle of rosé. I realize I need to go the bathroom, so I get in the elevator and press my floor. At that time, I lived in an apartment where the elevator opened right into—”
“Great apartment,” said Frank.
“Yes, it was very nice,” said Anders. “Now suddenly I realize—”
“What happened to it again?” asked Frank.
Anders gave a distracted wave of his hands.
“Christine kept it after we called it quits, you know this. She still lives there with her son.”
“That bitch,” said Frank.
“Frank,” said Cleo.
“Cleo,” said Frank. “You didn’t know this woman. Cut her open, and instead of a heart you’d find an abacus.”
“You still shouldn’t call—,” said Cleo.
“Would you rather I call her a cunt?”
“I’d rather you didn’t call her anything.”
“What’s the plural of abacus, anyway?” said Frank. “Abaci?”
“It’s not,” said Zoe confidently.
Cleo doubted that Zoe had ever seen an abacus.
“The elevator goes down,” continued Anders. “The doors open, and I realize I cannot move. I am fucking paralyzed. If I let go of the rail, I will topple over like a tree.”
“Been there.” Frank nodded. “Two tabs of acid on a farm upstate when I was sixteen. Ended up lying in a pig trough the whole night.”
“What did you do?” asked Zoe.
“Nothing,” Frank said. “I couldn’t get out of the trough.”
“Not you,” said Zoe.
“I could do nothing either!” said Anders. “I waited, hoping to regain movement soon, and eventually the elevator was called to another floor. The doors open, and a young family is standing in their apartment looking at me. I forgot to mention I am wearing only my tennis shorts, no shirt, no shoes, and cannot even open my mouth to beg an apology.”
“Hot,” said Zoe.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Frank.
“I’m standing there staring like a big slobbering Viking as they hide in the corner of the elevator,” said Anders. “They are terrified of me!”