Eve sits at the kitchen table, eating a slice of the apricot tart she made for dessert last night but didn’t serve, her phone pings. She gets few texts now that Allan is out of the country. Mostly they’re from Deborah. But this is too early for Deborah. She doesn’t open her store until noon so she can lie in bed late.
“Mornings are the best,” she said lasciviously once, enjoying Eve’s discomfort. “I get to spend time with my little friend. Actually, a really nice big friend! Poor Ted, he never measured up, but then what man does? No man around here, anyway. Once you go wired, you never get tired. You should try it, Eve. Stop being such a born-again virgin!” Deborah knows about Larry’s move into the guest room.
Eve has thought about it in a desultory way, but the idea of going to a sex shop is repellent. She’s afraid that if she searches online, ads for sex toys and hookup sites will haunt her screen forever. At times, she has wondered if she has any libido left. Menopause hasn’t really started to show yet, but maybe loss of interest in sex was the first sign.
The text is from a number she doesn’t recognize, with an area code she doesn’t recognize.
Hi, Eve. Send me a photo maybe I can help. M
Micajah.
For a crazy moment, her imagination spirals into naked selfies, compromised celebrities and politicians. She laughs out loud at herself. The tumultuous return of her libido, yesterday, is disturbing and intoxicating. She’s tired of feeling guilty over Larry. For now, she will put her guilt aside.
Micajah is simply offering to help. Or rather, it would be simple, if not for that “M”.
She knows she doesn’t actually need help. The instrument was an impulse buy, and she can easily absorb the sixty dollars it cost. She can stash it away and forget it. Allan can throw it in the garbage when she’s dead.
She goes to the dining room and opens the case. The choice is plain: save it or send it to its grave. Strange, how this inanimate object has the quality of a living creature. She picks it up with both hands and turns it over, where the splintered wood is pale and raw against the golden varnish that, in this clear light, has the mottled depth of centuries. She cannot trash this; it’s impossible. She wants the wound mended.
She sets it on the table where the light shows it best and snaps four photos: a wide shot, close-ups of the carved vines and the leaf-blinded Cupid, and the horrible gash in the back. As she waits for the whoosh that tells her the last text has gone, she fits the instrument back into its case. The vines seem to be reaching toward her, to pull her in, to twine her together with Micajah.
He phones twenty minutes later. She feels her heart pound as the number lights up her phone. She lets it ring, willing herself to calm down, but any longer and it will go to voicemail, so she swipes her finger quickly across the screen.
“I think I can help,” he says.
“You know someone who could fix it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you give me his number?”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“He’s . . . tricky.”
“Oh,” she says.
She feels like a stammering teenager, and hopes he can’t tell. She used to love to picture the physical connection between herself and Larry as they talked: the receiver held against her ear, the spiraling cord linking it to the phone, then the wires and cables threading through the miles to where Larry was, another spiraling cord, and the receiver touching his ear. But the electrons whizzing between her and Micajah leave no trace. She imagines an airy chain of particles and waves, with millions and billions of other chains whizzing through it, as insubstantial as magic.
“Meet me,” he says.
She’s on the verge of saying, Can’t you just give me his number? Instead, she says, “When?”
They settle on the following Thursday. He gives her an address.
Micajah’s persistence makes Eve feel special in a way she never has before. Larry’s judgment didn’t carry the authority of Micajah’s, even though Micajah is essentially a stranger. She was special to Larry when they were young, but she knew that didn’t make her objectively special. There was nothing extraordinary about her; it was just that she was a good fit for him. He was not extraordinary either, which appealed to her then. She suspected she had a streak of Bill’s wildness in her—she was drawn to stories of adventure, rebellious thoughts that she let loose into the air like helium balloons. When it killed him, she determined to kill it in herself.
For five days, she is walking on eggshells. She is certain that Micajah does not feel the same.
The club has no sign. It’s on the Upper East Side, a quiet part of Manhattan. The streets feature well-groomed older women walking very well-groomed small dogs, and occasional uniformed nannies pushing strollers built like mountain bikes. It is the middle of the day, so there are no visible men.
Two chic, beautiful girls sit behind an ornate desk.
“I’m meeting Micajah Burnett.”
“Ms. Armanton?”
“Yes.” It feels transgressive, admitting to her maiden name.
“He’s waiting for you in the library.”
The second girl presses a button. Eve hears a discreet buzz. A doorman opens an inner door. Eve has never been in a place like this: oozing comfort, patinated with money, every surface polished or faux-painted or plushly cushioned.
She spots Micajah in a corner, beneath the oak paneling, the glow of a lamp reflecting off his dark hair. He’s sitting in an armchair. A backgammon board lies open on a low table. He rises when he sees her.
“You came.”
“You thought I wouldn’t?”
“I figured maybe you said yes just to get me off the phone. You’re too polite to hang up on me.”
“And too polite not to turn up when I said I would, I guess.”
Her smile moves quickly beyond politeness, as if Micajah has lassoed it and pulled it close to him.
“What is this place? It’s quite something.”
“A club. Favored by older British rock stars, South American drug lords with surgically altered faces, and Russian oligarchs.”
“And you?”
“On special occasions.”
His clothes are scruffy in the way of movie stars caught by paparazzi in the park: jeans, T-shirt, creased cotton jacket. Flip-flops, as on the day they first met. Smooth, square toenails.
“Two sisters,” he says, following her eyeline. “You get used to getting pedicures.”
She can’t tell if he’s joking or not. To cover, she focuses on the backgammon board, the pieces set up ready to play on their eight sharp points. It is made of chocolate-colored leather, with points of alternating cream and ocher outlined in gold tooling. The pieces are discs of agate and white marble. It is a board for emperors and plutocrats. She runs her finger along a seam where two colors of leather meet, inset-sewn rather than appliquéd so that there is no obstruction to the pieces sliding across them.
“Dad told me you’re pretty good.”
“I was,” she says. “I haven’t played since my brother died.”
“That must have been tough for you. My dad . . .” He shrugs. We’re different from him, the silence says. No need to say more.
“I ordered tea,” he says, sitting down.
“Tea’s