gorgeous—she’ll turn all heads while driving it?”
“She turns all heads anyway,” said Maggie, looking admiringly at Larissa, in jeans and a red silky top, with a bit of décolletage and red lipstick.
“Hardly,” Larissa said, embellishing her embarrassment and turning to Ezra.
“I know, Larissa, that you read Ecclesiastes only because you had to, to get a pass/fail in your philosophy course in college,” said Ezra, “which is not the same thing as understanding Ecclesiastes, but nonetheless, it will do you well right about now to remember what he said.”
Larissa stared at him vacantly.
“All is vanity,” said Ezra. “To buy, not to buy. To eat, to shop, to hire women to clean your house, to not clean it. All is vexation of spirit, except union with God. All is vanity.”
“So buy the Jag then?” said Jared.
Che wrote back.
Larissa,
Here is your real answer, the one Father Emilio gave me when I asked him. You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye not be troubled. For all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.
All these are just the beginnings of sorrows. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
Lorenzo’s love is waxing cold, Larissa. And I’m still without a baby. All these years I have been living in poverty, and I don’t mean the money kind. I’m so far from what I want.
Please don’t be far from what you want.
I wish for a baby more than anything. I desperately want a little girl so I could raise her to make all the mistakes I made, only start younger.
You are a wonderful person. You don’t drive anyone crazy like Lorenzo. Get the car.
Would it be nice to have a Jag, rather than live amid unclaimed wishes yet unwished for?
But what if you knew that the car would lead you to penury and destitution, the things Che speaks of, writes about, feels, lives? What would you do then?
But you don’t know.
But what if you did?
But you don’t.
And if you did?
But … you don’t.
And … if you did?
The whole thing filled Larissa with slight shame. She even threw out the business card Kai had given her, which was the most shameful thing of all. How ridiculous that was. How ridiculous she was.
But now what?
What would she wear to a Jag dealership? She couldn’t go in sweats. But she couldn’t go too dressed up.
She couldn’t go.
The eternal moral order was the real question, the Aztec gold buried like a treasure in the hills of Mexico. Was there such a thing, and was Larissa turning her back on it?
Kai Passani. The first time she said his name out loud to herself, she turned red like she’d accidentally cursed in front of the children. Peeking into the magnifying mirror, she stared at her flushed face, her glassy eyes.
His name was Hawaiian. Kai. She looked it up. In Hawaiian, it meant the ocean. Ocean, as in bottomless?
Oh, what was wrong with her!
Passani. “From the Champagne region of France.” The urban legend goes that the monk who discovered the sparkling wine ran to his Benedictine brother with the cry, “J’ai goûté des étoiles!” I’m tasting stars.
Kai Passani.
To save herself from the Jaguar, Larissa replaced all thought of it with Gucci. Gucci, Chanel, Zanotti, Dior. She bought herself a pair of reading glasses that replaced the need for reading. All she needed was the blue Swarovsky-clad Versaces; she didn’t need to read A Life by Elia Kazan. The reading glasses just had to sit on her face, like graceful jewels. Burberry, not Brontë. Gucci not Dante. Chanel not Charlotte. Prada not Pound.
To go to the library (with her kids) she put on Libretto. The mall required a different ensemble, as did the supermarket, which is why she didn’t like to combine her outings, because she was inevitably dressed wrong for all but one of them. To the mall in summer she wore Betsey Johnson dresses and Marc Jacobs sandals. In the winter, tight Marciano jeans and low-heeled boots (the lower the heel, the more expensive the boot, as in counterattack).
Kids’ winter concerts? Fur and (very) high-heeled boots. Ball games? Caps and jeans and jerseys, so affected, so designer.
Food-shopping required only mini-skirts and cowboy boots, possibly Frye.
And she blow-dried her hair. Damn that Kai. She left it long, very straight and hippie-like, an illusion of casual chic. She haphazardly highlighted it, an illusion of being outside and sunstreaked. She wore taupe makeup, to make it seem like she wasn’t wearing any, like she had just rolled out of bed and into her car. She got dressed up for everything. Except that one day when she left the house in sweats and a cast.
The question was, and truly this was the profound question that demanded an answer: what to wear to a Jag dealership to go look at a sports car you don’t need and don’t want, just so you can be looked at by the dancing eyes of a tattered kid on a motorbike?
Ezra would say it was a false choice. It wasn’t about what to wear. “It has nothing to do with the car,” he kept repeating. “It has to do with what the car represents. The car tells you, and therefore the whole world, where you are in life. That’s what it means. It’s a long way from the fifth-floor walk-up. But a long way up or a long way down?” Ezra paused for maximum effect. “Every time you drive to the supermarket, do you want to know how far you are from Hoboken? Do you want everyone else to know too? As Walker Percy says, we live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea who he is, or where he is going. We live stifling in our souls all questions about the meaning of our own life, and life in general. So the real question is, Larissa, will this car help you discover who you are and where you’re going?”
To go or not to go.
Chapter Three
“Mrs. Stark!” Kai was in a white shirt and tie, neat, and beaming. “How nice of you to drop by. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
Larissa had walked through the doors fifteen minutes earlier and asked the receptionist for a salesperson to help her, and the receptionist, a chirpy young thing named Crystal, tried to hook her up with a Gary, and Larissa said, actually I was looking for Kai, and Crystal said, no, no, he’s busy today. Gary is very good, and has a lot more experience, he’ll be glad to help you. Larissa frowned. Was she wearing too much or too little? Under her brown suede jacket, she wore jeans, high-heeled Fryes and a simple maroon sweater. Her makeup was light (20 minutes), her hair casual (40 minutes). “If he’s not available today, I’ll make an appointment and come back.” She said this while glancing around the spotless cream-colored dealership. It was eleven on a Monday morning, and there was no one on the floor except the salesmen, the receptionist and the business people. She was