28-MAR
Ardie was the first to reach for the tortilla chips on the table. The restaurant was kitschy Mexican, vintage boots fastened to the wall as décor. Colored twinkle lights hung from the ceiling. Groups of men leaned over taco plates, ties tucked into their dress shirts.
Around the table sat Grace, Sloane, and Katherine. Katherine didn’t accept Sloane’s invitation to lunch with what one might call “robust enthusiasm.” She insisted that she’d brought her own, and Sloane shot back, “Objection, irrelevant” which elicited a groan from Ardie, who was fundamentally opposed to lawyer jokes of all kinds.
“So”—Sloane cracked open the laminated menu—“is it too early for margaritas?”
Grace crossed her legs. “The rule in my house was always anything goes after ten A.M.”
Sloane waved over the young waitress. “A margarita for everyone, then?” Sloane asked the group.
“I have to pump right after this.” Grace yawned.
“I’m in.” Katherine still held herself with the same impeccable posture, as though she might need to balance a set of dishes on her head at a moment’s notice. Her mouth, Ardie had noticed, had a habit of twitching between a small smile and a neutral expression—back and forth, back and forth—as if it were asking for permission. Maybe the drink was a sign she was loosening up. Fingers crossed, Ardie could imagine Sloane singing out too loudly; thank God, the thought didn’t occur to her. The waitress scribbled down the order and hurried away. “Your baby is being a bit of a buzz kill,” Katherine said to Grace.
Sloane’s eyes flashed wide and she flattened her hands on the tablecloth. “Oh my god, you have to meet Emma Kate. She’s like the most gorgeous baby you’ve ever seen. She could be in Pampers commercials. She’s that beautiful. You will just hate her. That’s how beautiful she is. Though of course you can’t hate babies.”
A swallowed-the-canary look passed between Grace and Katherine. Grace lifted her glass ever so slightly to Katherine.
Sloane pointed her finger between them, leaning in. “Okay, you two, what are you guys, like closet BFFs? What are we missing? Spill.”
Grace primly unfolded the black cloth napkin and draped it over her lap. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you, Katherine?”
“Fine.” Sloane examined her nails. “We can play that game, too. Ardie and I have secrets, don’t we?” Her ponytail swept across her shoulder as she turned to Ardie.
Ardie set down her water glass. “And we’re older than you, so we have more.”
The margaritas arrived and Grace raised her water glass. “Cheers, y’all.” And Ardie might have been feeling optimistic, but she thought Grace looked happier than she had in weeks.
Sloane licked a line of salt from the rim of her glass. “God, Grace, you’re like the perfect mom. I’m pretty sure I drank wine when I was pregnant. When I was breastfeeding, which—let’s be serious—was for, like, three whole months, I don’t even think I knew not to drink.” She squeezed the lime and dropped it into the drink. “And look at Abigail! She’s fine!”
Ardie rolled her eyes, breaking in half another chip. “What do I always tell you? Statistics mean nothing on the individual level. And the inverse is true, as well.”
Sloane reached across the table to dip a tortilla chip into the salsa. “Ardie is always trying to teach me mathematical concepts in disguise. I’m a shit pupil, though,” continued Sloane. “Let’s see. There’s that one and, oh yeah, you shouldn’t consider sunk costs when making future decisions. Hey? Hey? Pretty good, am I right?”
“Has anyone ever told you, you should write for The Economist?” asked Grace, sweeping a strand of hair that had escaped back into place, as she spoke through a bobby pin clenched between her teeth. “And besides.” She expertly pinned her hair back. “This lunch is about Katherine. Katherine, you have the floor.” Grace performed a Vanna White gesture with Katherine the goods on display. “We want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“Or whatever you’d like to tell us,” Ardie said, because it was obvious to Ardie that, like herself, Katherine was a bit of a—well, not shy, exactly, Ardie wasn’t shy—a quiet person. Someone that couldn’t quite operate on the same wavelength as those chatty, socially adept people, people like Grace and Sloane, who naturally failed to see the signs. Sloane believed that inside every introverted person was an extrovert waiting for a friend. Seriously. She had actually said those words. It was like conversion therapy, only it sort of worked. At least for short spurts. But Ardie understood. It could all be very intimidating. Exhausting. Trying to stuff yourself into a group of friends and give off the appearance that you fit in, when really all you wanted to do was sit and eat chips so that all of your energy didn’t accidentally bleed out your ears.
To this end, Ardie did notice that Katherine’s stare kept trailing off somewhere just north of Sloane’s head and that it took a spare moment for her eyes to catch back up to the conversation. Katherine smoothed her hands over her lap. “Oh, well. Let’s see. I was an editor on Law Review.”
“At Harvard, no less, I hear,” Grace chimed in.
The corners of Katherine’s mouth snagged ever so slightly upward. “That’s correct.” Katherine spoke with such precision, enunciating each syllable. “I received a scholarship to study abroad in Oxford. I—”
Sloane rapped her fist on the table, impatiently. “Okay, okay, we know all that stuff. Now get to the good parts. We want to know about your family, where you’re from. What you like. All that.”
“Spare yourself,” Ardie said. “You’ll soon learn that it’s best to give in as quickly as possible. It’s the more humane option.”
The waitress interrupted to take their orders. Ardie realized only after she was doing it that she had been scanning the restaurant for her ex-husband. He worked in the area and it was a popular lunch spot. The waitress vanished again and Ardie returned her focus to her colleagues.
“Right,” Katherine resumed. “I’m from Boston. I’m the youngest of five kids. I’m the only girl. I didn’t have much time outside of work at my last job. To do much of anything.”
“I still have PTSD from my time at a firm.” Grace spun a straw in her water glass. Grace never drank liquid except out of a straw so as to spare her lipstick. “That’s not an exaggeration, either.”
Katherine’s gaze flitted oddly upward again.
After a disconcertingly short amount of time for food to supposedly be cooked and served, plates were slipped in front of the group and Ardie breathed in the smell of hot cheese and jalapeños.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” And it was of course only Sloane who would ask this question so baldly.
Katherine hesitated. “No,” she said.
“Or a girlfriend? Or something?”
“No,” Katherine repeated.
“Because I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to writing online dating profiles.” Ardie and Grace both looked at Katherine simultaneously and gave small shakes of their heads—no. “I saw that.” Sloane stuffed a bite of enchilada into her mouth. In front of her, her margarita was down to ice.
Lunch progressed in the way that lunches do. Katherine picked at her salad, while Grace described how she woke every morning with painful knots that she had to massage out in the shower. And Sloane was texting on her phone when Katherine’s fork clattered sharply down against her plate. Ardie paused mid-bite, looked at Katherine’s face, which was, for one single instant, collapsed in an expression of beady-eyed anger and protruding jawline.
“Are you okay?” Ardie asked. And now she turned her head to peer over Sloane to where she saw a television set up behind the bar. A baseball game played with the volume off.
Ardie settled back in her chair and appraised Katherine, who blushed and took another sip of her margarita. “Sorry. I just—it was a bad call.”
“I love the Rangers.” Ardie punctuated her position with the tongs of her fork. Ardie loved baseball for the leisurely pace of the game, for the opportunity to eat hotdogs slathered with mustard, for the social acceptability of yelling at people you didn’t even know. While Sloane and Grace had taken the job at Truviv barely knowing the difference between a touchdown and a goal, Ardie actually enjoyed sports. They made sense. And Truviv often gave tickets to its employees for free. “You’re a Red Sox fan?” She grinned.
Katherine blew out a quick breath and raised her hand. “Guilty.”
And it all seemed so perfectly innocent and collegial and we would wonder if all such moments did—seem that way—until later colored by events no longer in anyone’s control.
We would look back on this moment months later and wonder many things. We would look for signs. And we would find them.
“Finally somebody for me to watch games with!” Ardie hooted.
And Sloane would say, “Let’s have one more” and then lean across and whisper—“Katherine, have you seen the BAD Men List?”