6

Jane’s Backside, Twelfth and Greenwich

“Is Wesley heading out tonight?”

Edie had brought me to one of her spots to rattle me out of my funk—people stared less at two women drinking liquor at three o’clock in the afternoon.

“Maybe. He might have something arranged, some…schmooze, or another.”

For the last nine weeks, I had been in a mood. Lowercase m.

In a mood, I wasn’t the same risk I would have been in a Mood. In a Mood, I would have tried to hurt myself. In a mood, all I wanted to do was lie on the carpet in the middle of the room without stockings on and get drunk.

Though I had tried at first to throw myself wholesale into keeping house—cleaning and cooking and running all my little errands—I discovered I was fantastically terrible at everything else besides spinning records, staring through the television set during daytime programming, and wallowing. I had stopped looking forward to dinner invitations and ignored the side of my closet where my cocktail dresses hung, opting instead for the dour comfort of the few ensembles with which I didn’t have to wear a girdle.

The Bard Players were doing Much Ado. I helped Wesley run his lines and pretended it didn’t gut me as every pointed syllable reminded me of exactly what I’d lost.

“Do you ever go with him?” Edie asked.

“What, uptown? God no.”

Edie smiled sideways at me. “Do they scare you, the shinier they get? They hunt in packs, you know.”

I mocked an arch look at her. “Exactly.”

“I’ll bet Wesley fills the ears of any poor thing who falls for him with nothing but how wonderful you are.”

I snorted. “Maybe.”

“I’m serious. You’re a myth to every queen in the city, I bet half of them make sacrifices in your name like Sybil on the fucking mount.”

I laughed. It felt good—Edie was good at making me laugh.

“How is he, by the way?”

“He’s quit handling me with kid gloves, so that’s something.” I rattled the ice at the bottom of my glass, peering to measure whether the dregs were worth another mouthful or not.

The day Ezra cut me from the company, Wesley and I’d had our most explosive argument yet. We were hardly ever at each other’s throats, but this had been a good, hearty row. I shouted at him for not reading Ezra’s mind, and he shouted right back—Honestly, Jack! Trying to predict Ezra’s choices is even more of a fool’s errand than being upset by them; listen to yourself! You’re smarter than this!

Deflated in the aftermath, we sat together on the chaise and split a glass of port. Wesley had let a lunch with a photographer in Tribeca slide past on the clock to stay and hash out my misery, so I at least owed him the drink.

What do I do? I had said, the fight finally sapped from me, my head leaned on his shoulder.

What do you want to do?

I feel…cornered, Wesley, I don’t know who I am anymore.

Shh. Hey. I’ll talk to Ezra.

And tell him to, what, throw another fistful of dice on me with the chance I’ll snap again?

I’ll talk to him, Jack.

I think I broke one of his frames. I threw a paperweight.

Good arm.

“Can I ask you something?”

Edie was chasing the lime around the bottom of her glass with the end of her stirrer.

“Of course,” I said.

“You’ll answer me honestly.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Edie sipped off the last of her drink and thumbed neatly at the edge of her lipstick. “Why are you still so miserable?” she asked, as breezily as starting up the next thread of gossip.

I stared at her. “Are you serious?” She looked at me expectantly, and I gave a disbelieving huff. “I haven’t worked in over two months, Edie.”

“And before Ezra, you hadn’t worked for even longer than that. Jobs will come and go, it’s all the game.”

“I know that.”

“So why are you surprised?” Edie said with intentional calm. I took stock of my breath—shut my mouth and slowed down for a moment.

“It’s not easy,” I said evenly. I twirled my glass around on the spotty wood varnish. “I’m not…used to it, at this level. I thought the Players were a sure thing.”

Edie reached over and patted me briskly on the back of my hand. “Nothing is a sure thing. Do yourself a favor and don’t develop some white whale complex. There are plenty other femme fatales to be played when you’re back on your feet, and half of them wear far more flattering outfits than those shapeless wool sacks.”

I said nothing, frowning into my cup. She didn’t know what this felt like. How could she? Edie was a powerhouse. I was just somebody’s wife.

Edie looked down her nose at me. “Do you want my advice?”

“What I want,” I groused, “is my job back.”

“Well, it won’t come back if all you’re going to do about it is get blotto and hide from your husband.”

I winced. “I’m not hiding.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Well, you don’t have to rub it in,” I snapped, but made no move to get up. I raised my hand and ordered another drink.

Edie watched me as the bartender made quick work of it. She leaned up onto her elbows for a moment. “Have you really grown so afraid of your own failure,” she asked me gently, “that you won’t stand up and try again?”

“I’ve told you not to measure my career against yours,” I said into my fresh glass.

Edie rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “I’m not measuring. I’m being perfectly objective. Everyone learns this shit as they go, nobody gets a primer.”

I snorted. “You’ve never had a husband.” I swallowed half the drink down in one go.

“Oh, as if it’s any trial for you, with the arrangement you two cooked up.”

Edie seemed to catch herself and glanced down as though to cram the words back in her mouth. I knew the feeling all too well. My chest tightened. I turned my cup around between my fingers.

“Wesley chose me,” I said, only glancing up when I was sure she’d quit looking so sorry for me. Edie gave a resigned nod.

“That he did, darling. I’m sorry. It can’t be as easy as it looks.”

I slung another sip into my mouth. “I wish I were different.”

Edie reached up to fluff the hair at the back of my head, waking up the fall of the curls a little. She held a hand out for my drink, which I passed to her.

“You are far from the first to wish that for herself,” she said, roving her thumb along the beveled edge of the glass. I watched the passage of her lacquered fingernail and told myself I could stand to be Margaret Shoard. I could live like this. I could just be Wesley’s wife.

Edie took a sip and grimaced at the taste. “God. How do you stand this shit?”

“I hate myself.”

“You’re awfully good at that.”

I took the cup back from Edie and finished the rest of it. “Why do you think I wanted to be an actor?”