When they had their quiet wedding, she kissed him, her cheeks bouncing up in a smile when she pulled away. There were miniature flowers white against her hair, as Genevieve Bailey popped a loud, cheap cracker that smacked the smell of sulfur into the air. His parents drank their sherry in the restaurant with them after, and after that, in light linen clothes, he and Alexandra took a weekend at the sea. They looked out on the ocean pulling away from the shore, returning.
In the weeks following, she took to the planning of the move, and the performance of everyday life gave him something to believe in. Morning coffee. Side-by-side teeth brushing. Anything on the couch, and most of all, food. Here is the slice with preserves. Young raspberry unspoiled. They would be preserved. After a bad movie, she said, “That was not a rip-roaring good time, but the gladiator will live.”
Now home, theirs, he said, “Hungry?”
“You cooked?”
“No,” he said, “but I am very clever with a knife, preserves, and a piece of bread.”
So they went to the kitchen. He told her to choose. A carrot. Lettuce. Box of biscuits. Anything. He would give her anything. And once she had her toast and milk in the living room, washing dishes was a good tedium, round motions, elements on the hands. You could assimilate good patterns with the slip of sponge, circles. A vague citrus fruit scent rose up with the steam. Hot faucet water.
“If cozy is tiny in the code of realtors,” she shouted from beyond the threshold, “what is ‘shabby chic’?”
“How many screens do you have open?” There was an intimacy to shouting through doorways, trust. You believed your message would be delivered to the person you couldn’t see, that they were there without verifying the body.
“Ruins, right?” Her voice. “Or this one: ‘One bedroom with your very own bathroom.’ Your very own! No need to find a public restroom in your own apartment!”
“Television, computer, phone. Am I right?”
“The more screens the fewer minutes. The more screens the fewer minutes. Repeat the mantra, Jeremy.”
“I should think you could just click quicker.”
“The connection is slow. The pictures lag for days,” she said. “One and a half rooms. What is a half room? A closet?”
“Likely a cabinet.”
“Windowsill, Jeremy.”
“When there are windows, they say views.”
“What about none?”
“Intimate. Private.”
His phone vibrated, an organ exterior to his chest. He twisted knobs, grabbed towels.
Water finds water, said the message. The code to meet.
Jeremy knew trust was like murder. You couldn’t do it halfway. He didn’t trust Wright entirely anymore, and what, after all, did he know of Wright except they had been men who collected secrets from the side they intended to destroy?
Wright had buried himself in hypotheticals, guessed connections. He saw in systems, secrets. The St. Andrews agreement didn’t mean the war was over. It meant Sinn Féin had its teeth sunk in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Someone had followed him. If they knew about him, they knew Allsworth was Jordan. He could be right. His head or tails? A coin flip. And a coin flip, too, whether Wright had been only angry, desperate, desperately angry when he accused Jeremy, accused him, he couldn’t quite make out, of what.
Alexandra came in with her china smeared red. He could smell her shampoo. Lilac or that other purple flower. Jeremy turned away from the faucet, sopped up. What was spilled could be recovered in civilian life. He needed the quiet bide. Evoke nature.
“Why didn’t you invite Gavin to the wedding?” she said. “I never asked.”
“Why would I?”
Alexandra leaned an elbow on the counter. “He was your best friend at Strategic.”
She was speaking and he didn’t look at her. His head was noisy. His face was red. Red as jam. Purple flower. Jammed.
“I was my best friend at Strategic,” he said. “That’s why you have a rich husband.”
He did not want to believe that a single decision leaked out into forever. But a desperate Wright might act. A desperate Wright would strike out before stricken. He must convey that they were of a side. Together.
“And a joke without humor is only an evasion.”
Another vibration. Flick of metal: Precipitation north to south. The Gulf Stream warms the waters of the River Lagan.
And because somewhere deep and animal where it was fight or flight she preceded every thought, gesture, he hardened his face against collapse. “So is going to New York for a reunion that your classmates aren’t attending.”
“What are you saying?”
“I ran into Genevieve while you were in New York,” he said, turning back, “or wherever you were.”
Her face looked slapped. She sucked her cheeks in, released them. “She was in the School of Arts and Sciences. I was in the B-school. It wasn’t her reunion. It was mine. Just like my time, Jeremy. Not yours. Mine.”
The metal flutter in his breast pocket again. He turned. Forecast: continued showers followed by lightning. It’s not a question, was the message.
“I’m talking to you. Shouldn’t that take precedence over someone typing to you?” she said.
“You take precedence over everyone doing anything,” he said. “Why haven’t you got that in your head yet?”