When Ava finally dragged herself to the bookstore to pick up the novel she had agreed to read, she was dismayed to find that it was a nine-hundred-page tour de force about an internet start-up. The back cover called it a “blistering indictment of contemporary America, a call to arms for the cubicle age, courageous, monumental, a work of genius.”
“It’s great.” A bookstore employee passed by and grabbed a copy to give to someone else. “Really, really funny.”
It was hard to imagine the author, a young man deathly serious behind thick glasses, ever having smiled, but, resigned, Ava put the book into the crook of her arm where its enormous weight dug into the skin of her forearm. Then, wandering the warmly lit, soothing aisles on her way to the Penguin classics, Ava stopped and asked someone to look up an author for her, and she spelled out Constance Berger’s name with a funny shyness. Soon, she found herself in an unfamiliar corner, the essays and criticism section, and when she came upon the name on a spine, it was with a little shock as if she had uncovered something secret, private. She almost felt like she should have asked Constance’s permission first; to pull this slender volume from the shelf seemed too intrusive, as though she had suddenly invaded the intimate terrain of someone else’s thoughts. She flipped through a few pages. There were essays on art she hadn’t seen, new books she hadn’t read, a lot of queer theory that she didn’t understand and then, with a quick flurry of surprise, Ava saw a mention of Proust. Constance liked Proust. Ava had mentioned Proust to her without this previous knowledge, and this filled Ava with an inexplicable elation. She hurriedly bought her books, not wanting to read any more in the exposed jostling of such a public place.
Ava dutifully read the entire grand, ambitious chronicle of Silicon Valley while drinking tepid prosecco from a coffee mug, and sighing a lot. George and Rodney had sounded suspiciously relieved when she called and told them about the change.
On the evening of the book club meeting, an icy rain was beating against the windows, and Ava was filled with conflicting emotions. It was exhilarating to have brought one element of their project in line with her aspirations, and to know that a whole evening stretched before her with the happy prospect of talking about books. However, she was not looking forward to talking about this one.
“Who wants to start us off?” she asked. George, his computer resting on his knees, was trying to organize their financial records with a program called Taxloop. He looked up apologetically. “No, you keep working on those,” she said. Though she had come to accept that she was never going to get around to filing for nonprofit status, it had become an important aspiration to cling to, like Chekhov’s sisters planning their never-to-be-made trip to Moscow. Stephanie in particular had become increasingly insistent that they at least enact the legal outlines, the empty gestures, of their grand altruistic project.
Rodney scratched his chin with the edge of the monstrous paperback. “I thought it was pretty funny. Especially all the stuff about TV.”
“These guys do seem to talk a lot about TV,” Ava agreed. “TV shows and masturbation.”
“Yeah, that scene where he jerks off to The Golden Girls and feels so bad about it. I love that part, so honest. Also hilarious.”
“Really?” Ava asked, and Rodney shrugged.
“Sure,” Ben interjected. “He’s making fun of himself.”
“Okay, but still, like forty pages about his testicles seems kind of self-aggrandizing.” Ava played with the corner of a page, unsure. “It all reminded me of when people laugh at their own jokes. No one actually talks like that, do they?”
“This from a woman who warned me the other day that ‘the way ahead was fraught with discord.’” George didn’t look up from his typing as he spoke. “I do it too, I’m just saying, we should be tolerant of each other’s lapses into grandiosity.”
“Fine,” said Ava. “Point taken.” A squall of rain lashed the dark windows, and it felt very cozy to be inside. Even being outnumbered couldn’t totally destroy the pleasure of talking about a book. Mrs. Van Doren, whose loyalty to Ava had somehow outlasted the enmity of the rest of her circle, had agreed to join their book club. She thought they were still reading The House of Mirth, and a beautiful leather-bound copy sat on the arm of her chair, while she snored gently. “Can we at least talk about how there are no women in this except that one who does pornographic webcam stuff?”
“But the main character’s in love with her—she’s a huge part of the book,” Ben argued.
“Yeah, but she’s always in his computer. You can’t think that’s love.”
“I think the author’s making a point that love and desire aren’t so easy to separate, especially for men sometimes.”
“All the books I ever read are by men, and they aren’t like this.”
“Do you really think those stories are so different?” Ben asked, testily.
This premise momentarily shocked Ava into silence. “I think that’s a very mean thing to say.”
“How is that mean?”
“To compare classic books that elevate and tell real truths about the human condition with this.” She waved her copy accusingly. “I think you’re turning this into a personal attack.”
Ben was starting to get exasperated. “I think you’re making it personal. I’m just trying to have a discussion. I swear, you don’t actually listen to anything I say.”
“Why should I listen to you disparage all the things I love? To say that they are equivalent to this pointless waste of pages? I can barely even call it a novel.”
“I liked this book,” Ben objected angrily. “It’s a good story and has some neat ideas. To expect real life to look like Victorian novels is crazy and a very limiting perspective.”
“Are we still talking about the book?” George asked.
Before Ava could answer, Stephanie’s laughter interrupted them. A cluster of well-dressed people, flushed and drunk, burst through the threshold, shaking the rain from expensive umbrellas. Waving a bare, unseasonably tan arm, Stephanie spoke loudly. “And this is our reading group, where we are paying tribute to one of the great women of literature, our namesake, if you will, Edith Wharton.” An elderly man with a deep tan and a pocket square peered through a folded pair of reading glasses and wrapped a hand around Stephanie’s waist to hear her better.
A girl in heels laughed from behind a curtain of blond hair. “I would just die of boredom,” she said in an unexpectedly Borstal accent. “Could you ever?” she asked a sallow young man in a skinny suit who was holding her up, though just barely.
“Ghastly,” he agreed.
Stephanie leaned toward them, whispering. “I know. You couldn’t pay me to be in it.”
As they moved toward the bar, Ava noticed a dark, quiet man in a very well-cut suit walking beside the most beautiful woman Ava had ever seen. Stoop-shouldered and small, he seemed content in his humble role, the terrestrial support of the goddess wrapped in hot-pink silk who towered above him, resting a lazy arm on his shoulder, diamonds flashing on her finger. Stephanie made a very emphatic face at Ava as they passed.
“Holy shit,” said Rodney in a loud whisper, “that’s Howard Steward. He’s like a billionaire ten times over. I’ve seen his picture on newsletters—the Wobblies hate that guy.”
“What?” Ben craned toward the bar. “How do you guys find these people?”
“Our boss works in mysterious ways, her wonders to perform,” said George.
“Maybe I should go surveil them,” Rodney said, rubbing his chin. “Also I think that drunk blonde lady is a famous supermodel.”
“No. We’re here to talk about books.” Ava felt unreasonably antagonistic.
Laughter and the sound of popping corks came from the bar. “A glass of wine would be nice at least.” Ben spoke petulantly to a stuffed peacock on the mantel behind Ava’s head, borrowed from one of the downstairs parlors.
Ava frowned at him as she got up. “Can you guys keep talking about the book? Please.”
Behind the bar, Stephanie was leaning forward on her elbows, conveying the playfulness of wealthy people serving themselves for a lark. “Bartender,” the pocket-squared gentleman said with a flirtatious tilt of his head, “I’ll have another. The same.”
Stephanie winked. “Coming right up. Specialty of the house—red or red?” Then seriously, she added, “You know, when you’re just a humble soon-to-be nonprofit, you have to do things on a penny. When we have our own town house, I’m going to put in a whiskey and cigar bar. For writers who need a place to relax.” She pivoted to Howard Steward, who was checking his phone, his beautiful wife looking silently and scornfully at Stephanie. “Part of our expansion will include our literacy outreach to underserved areas. We believe the children are our future.” She laughed a little at herself, but not nearly enough, in Ava’s opinion. “And your youth philanthropy is famous all over the city.”
“I try to give back.” He looked sleepy. His wife handed him a handkerchief from her bag unasked. He blew his nose and declined the wine Stephanie was offering.
“Ava,” Stephanie introduced them, “Mr. Steward gave us a ride here. In his Maybach,” she whispered excitedly, though maybe a little too loudly.
Ava felt embarrassed for all of them. “Very nice to meet you.” She took a bottle of wine and glasses from behind the bar. “Excuse me. I have to get back to the reading group.”
She felt a pull on her sweater, and Stephanie again whispered, “Can’t you stay and hang out? He likes a crowd. This could be very big for us.”
“I have only ever loved brilliant women,” Mr. Pocket Square was telling the room.
The presumed supermodel leaned against the bar, smoking with her eyes shut. She slightly opened one eye. “I was top form in my A levels,” she said, then ashed into her designer purse and burped.
Her date placed a hand on her ass. “She’s fucking brilliant.”
“I can’t,” Ava whispered to Stephanie. “I just can’t.”
“Jesus, you’re so totally useless,” Stephanie hissed back.
“I’m not being useless,” Ava objected. “I’m doing what we set out to do. That book club in there—” the wineglasses she was holding by their stems rattled as she pointed “—is the only time we have ever done anything remotely like our original mission. Although to be honest, at this point, it’s getting hard to remember what we started all this for.”
“Librarians can get so worked up when discussing literature.” Stephanie laughed toward Mr. Steward before yanking hard on Ava’s elbow and pulling her a few feet farther into a corner. “This is serious money and you are fucking it up right now. Nobody cares about your stupid book club. Stop acting like it matters and do what I tell you before this whole project tanks.”
“What do you mean nobody cares?” Ava wrenched her elbow from Stephanie’s grasp. “It matters to me.”
“You’re being so childish right now. I don’t know how I’ve gotten as far as I have with you as a partner. You’re just dead fucking weight sometimes, Ava.” Stephanie turned away from her. “You know we’re going to be reading Baldwin next,” she said to Mr. Steward. “You should really consider joining our book club. We would really love to hear your unique perspective on things.”
The prospect of reading James Baldwin with Stephanie must have left Mr. Steward unmoved because he yawned and checked his watch.
The wineglasses in Ava’s hand gave a high warning chime as she struggled to control her angry trembling. How dare Stephanie think of her like that when this whole project had come to be because of Ava’s job at the Lazarus Club, a job she already felt she was on the verge of losing because of all of this nonsense. How could Stephanie say she, her best friend, didn’t matter next to that gruesome bunch she had collected? It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t make sense.
She returned to the library feeling a little like she had just had the wind knocked out of her.
“I think I just remembered,” Rodney was saying. “That big fashion show where the models wear bras made of diamonds? I think she’s one of those.”
“Really?” George glanced over his shoulder with a heroic effort at casualness. “Maybe I should go see.”
“I promise you guys don’t want to go in there.” Ava poured herself a very full glass of wine, while the three men around her seemed somewhat unconvinced. She sat, stewing in hurt feelings.
“I think we were getting to something interesting,” Ben said, leaning forward and tapping the book in his hands. “About the ways that some of the themes people used to write about get rearranged for a different age, like what does a romance look like now? Would Anna Karenina be online dating for example?”
It took Ava a minute to realize he was still talking about the book, and when she did she got mad all over again. “Not Anna! How could you compare the two?” In her already emotional state, Ava felt a passionate defensiveness for Anna Karenina and, by extension, Tolstoy. “Why are you being such an asshole?”
Surprise made his ears stick out, and Ava decided he didn’t look at all like Arthur Rimbaud. “Ava, what are you talking about?”
“You don’t like any of the things I care about. You think the books I like are old and stodgy and weird, just like me. That I’m just dead weight.”
Ben’s confusion was quickly turning to anger. “I have no idea what you mean, dead weight, but what I do think is that it can be very difficult to talk to you when you aren’t interested in hearing what the other person has to say.”
“You didn’t want to read The House of Mirth,” Ava countered.
“So what?” Ben almost yelled. “That’s not some referendum on you as a person. It just means I like to read other stuff, too. And see other movies besides costume dramas. And I want to be able to talk about it all with you and discuss the things that interest me, but you just stop listening and it can be very frustrating.” He paused, thinking. “No. It’s not just frustrating. It’s hurtful. Rude.”
Ava had never ever been so accused, and as she had stacks of old etiquette books that she followed to the letter, this felt like an outrageous slur. “I’m not rude.”
“You are. You ignore me in the rudest ways all the time. Every time I try to tell you about something that didn’t happen in the nineteenth century. But for just one more example, I consider it very rude to tell someone you’re going to pay them for the work they do and then lie about it.”
A wave of embarrassment made Ava’s ears prickle, and before she could stop and think about it, she quickly answered him, “Well, I think it’s rude that you don’t seem to care that whenever we fool around, I never have an orgasm.”
There was a deafening silence in the room, which George broke by humming quietly at the ceiling.
Rodney cleared his throat. “More wine?” he asked George, and filled his glass to the top.
“I think I’m just going to go see what’s on and about in the other room.” George put his computer aside, and left, sloshing a few drops of wine behind him as he went. Rodney, however, sat back in his chair, crossing his legs with the barest hint of a smile.
“Yeah, okay, Ava.” Ben stood. “I’m going to go now. I think you’re an interesting person, but you’re not nice. And you don’t seem to have any idea how relationships work.”
“I know I don’t,” Ava said softly, looking at her lap.
“Well, that’s the first self-aware thing I think I’ve ever heard you say. Good luck with all this. I still think it was a cool idea.” He slung his bag over his head and onto one shoulder and waited.
Ava looked away.
“Okay. Fine. Bye, Rodney,” she heard him say, while she stared hard at the book in her lap until the title wavered in the edges of her vision. She hated Comic Sans so much. She heard the door close.
“Cheer up, comrade,” Rodney said, a little too brightly, she thought. “Romantic love is a bourgeois construct anyway.”
She gulped some wine. She had messed it up again. She was going to end up a spinster. How could she be so bad at this? Stephanie’s laugh floated from the other room. Mrs. Van Doren snored, a gentle cooing whistle. Rain fell. A quiet helplessness welled up within her, and she yielded to it, glumly staring at the last few glittering feathers of the peacock’s tail beside her.
Eventually something banged, startling her out of her reverie. When she looked up, Mr. Dearborn was standing by the door, leaning both hands on his cane with a more sprightly air than usual. Ava almost thought he was smiling. And then, even though he had her attention, he banged his cane on the floor again and seemed pleased at the sound of it. “Yes?” Ava asked.
But Mr. Dearborn just waited. He was definitely smiling at her, she decided, and it was very unpleasant. She considered asking him to just please go away as she had already had a very difficult night and didn’t need him grinning at her like the specter of death when she had just this minute been broken up with, but before she could figure out a reasonable way to phrase such a request, Aloysius entered the room with a bundle of Kleenex and a World Book Encyclopedia. His preternaturally black hair stood on end, and Ava noticed a short halo of white roots at his scalp that made it almost look like his hair wasn’t attached to his head but rather floated above him like an angry cloud.
With a nervous glance at Mr. Dearborn, he spoke loudly to Ava. “I’ve just come to tell you that things are not going to continue as they have been around here, no, sir. Don’t think for a moment that they will.”
Ava allowed herself a short moment of rubbing her eyes. Finally, she opened them and looked at the blurry figures in front of her to face what was coming. “What’s the trouble, Aloysius?”
“It’s just beyond all reckoning.” He shook his hands violently for a minute and tucked the book under his arm to press the bridge of his nose. “We have never had such problems in the club. The very idea of our members being assaulted, assaulted, by bodily fluids on the very steps of this institution, by plague-ridden harlots. Who knows what Mr. Dearborn could have caught? That you would bring such an element into my club, putting not only our reputation but our very health at risk, it’s just unsupportable. And that—” his voice rose to a shriek pointing at Ava’s poorly repaired mirror, which he appeared to be noticing for the first time “—you’re tearing this place apart!”
Mrs. Van Doren, roused by the baying of the Lazarus Club president, opened her eyes, shifting into wakefulness with a reptilian stillness. “Oh, hello, Aloysius. How have you been? I missed you at Westminster last month. The Lhasa Apsos were tremendous.”
Aloysius glided toward her and melted over the back of her chair. “Oh, Mrs. Van Doren, I didn’t see you there. You know what I’ve been going through.” The high ridge of her wingback chair seemed to prevent him from nuzzling the silk scarf around her neck, and he sighed so hard it almost ruffled her stiff curls. “Trying to keep this place together, trying to make everyone happy. I work my fingers to the bone—” Aloysius extended his chubby pink fingers for Mrs. Van Doren’s inspection “—just like a slave.”
“Oh, hello, Arthur,” she sniffed in the direction of Mr. Dearborn.
“Flora.” He nodded coldly.
“I know what the board said, Aloysius dear, and they’re a bit high-spirited, but it’s so lively having young people about.” Mrs. Van Doren patted him on the arm. “I just know I would miss them.”
“Miss us?” Ava asked.
Aloysius unwrapped himself from Mrs. Van Doren and handed Ava an envelope. “I suppose you’ll have to go, too. I’ve given that other one two of these already.” He leaned in to whisper to Ava, “I would be careful about her. I suspect she’s somewhat fast. Rodney, go back downstairs,” he commanded as he left. Mr. Dearborn gave Ava one more of his death’s head smiles before turning and clomping slowly after Aloysius.
“Are you on the clock?” Ava asked.
Rodney ambled past her in no particular hurry. “All wages are theft.”
Inside the envelope, folded into an unfamiliar and official-seeming four folds, a properly formatted letter of business was, as it declared, a third and final notice of eviction. The lessor (The Lazarus Club) desired to inform the lessee (The House of Mirth Literary Society, LLC) that due to repeated failure to pay the stipulated monthly rent of $1,000.00, under due process of the state of New York, the lessee was hereby required to pay the full amount owed, $7,000.00, or vacate the premises before the end of the current calendar month or immediate court proceedings would be instituted. Sincerely, Andrew Henlow Tilley IV, Esquire, Attorney at Law.
Three notices? They had received three notices already, and Ava hadn’t seen one of them?
Stephanie. Of course.
Ava should have known, should have expected. Stephanie always thought she knew better, that she didn’t have to concern herself with pedestrian matters like debt and eviction or just the simple human decency she might owe a friend who has put her life and job and house on the line for her. And why would she, if she considered Ava useless? She glanced toward the bar, but a loud peal of laughter stopped her. She couldn’t possibly confront her friend, her best friend, her only real friend, with all those people around; betrayal had stripped the skin away, and she couldn’t subject the raw wound of her feelings to the casual scrutiny of strangers.
She noticed that Mrs. Van Doren, clawed hands resting on her armrests, was watching her expectantly. “You knew about this?” Ava asked.
Mrs. Van Doren waved a hand sort of apologetically, then cracked her knuckles, flashing a gold leopard biting a diamond chain that took up most of her index finger. “You mustn’t put too much faith in Aloysius, dear,” she said. “I’ve known him since he was a child, but according to the board, he’s a bit of a snake. I believe they are planning on getting rid of you two and renting this space out to someone else for much more money now that it’s so nice here. I agree it’s a shame after you’ve worked so hard, but as a woman who’s put more than a few husbands into the ground, may I offer some advice?”
Ava nodded.
“Don’t waste your time around here. Marry rich while you still can. And read books. Lots of books like this one.” She tapped a coral nail on the Wharton next to her. “A girl’s got to find her way in this sorry world.” She reached a bony arm toward the shelf closest to her. “This one, too. I almost dropped out of Vassar because of this one.” She tossed it to Ava, chuckling at the memory and twirling the leopard around her knuckle. One of the estate books Ava hadn’t noticed before, Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf. She was so sick of everyone always telling her to read Virginia Woolf.
“Um, thanks for the suggestion.” Ava took the book. “Please excuse me one moment.”
Down the familiar hallway, she fled with the impression that the building swayed above her head, just waiting to crash around her ears. Everyone had betrayed her. Ava knew better than to be caught like this, a lesson hard learned in all those terrible years of grade school, but she had forgotten, her longing had made her weak and lazy, and she had let herself be baited out of her solitude just to be deceived and humiliated. She ran down the stairs to the main entrance, but paused with the uncomfortable realization that there was nowhere she wanted to go. New York was full of strangers and elbows, and she couldn’t face the bruising that navigating that human stream would entail. The Lazarus Club was all she had, and now it wanted to chew her up and spit her out.
Through the iron grill where the curling initials of the club were held captive by a profusion of iron vines, Ava noticed something big and shiny and black. Howard Steward’s Maybach glistened in glorious, anachronistic repose, as though the Duke of Windsor had just pulled up, and Ava admired it even as frenzied thoughts ran through her head. Three weeks. What would they tell their members? They had events scheduled that would have to be canceled. Deposits had been paid, swallowed up by the ceaseless accumulation of daily costs. How could they possibly pay back everyone who had paid membership dues? And where would she live? How was she going to pay off her credit card? What was she going to do?
“Nice car.”
“What?” Ava started in the cold marble lobby.
“It’s a nice car,” Castor repeated. “Mr. Steward is quite a successful man,” he said with what Ava almost thought was a note of friendliness, the first she had ever heard from him. “He’s a good person to have on your side.”
“I guess.” Ava watched rain bounce on the polished roof outside. “I don’t know if he’ll be much help.”
“Are they kicking you out?” he asked.
Ava nodded. “How have you managed to stand this place, Castor?”
“Not my name.”
“What?”
“It’s not my name,” he said a little more curtly. “It’s just what they call the doormen here. Weird ass name it is, too.”
“I’m sorry.” Ava wasn’t sure if she should say more and waited, hoping he might introduce himself properly.
But he licked the tip of his pencil, and looked down to let her know their conversation was over. “Burn this place down someday,” he mumbled to himself, writing in his small black notebook.
Ava desperately wanted to ask what his real name was and what he was writing, but it seemed intrusive, and she decided it was time to go home.
Back in her apartment, she pulled off her clothes, turned on the taps, and sat down in the cold tub. Not quite warm water swirled around her, and she shivered, closing the drain with a clank. She didn’t get up to turn on the lights. With her chin on her knees, she held her toes in her hands, watching as goose bumps made the hairs on her shins stand up. Eviction. Evicted. All that work, all that debt, all those seven months. He couldn’t mean it. He couldn’t cast her out. There had to be a way. Aloysius liked her, he always had. She would figure out how to reenlist him in their cause.
Mycroft leapt onto the lid of the toilet where he sat, cleaning his lips with large, rhythmic passes of his tongue. Ava held out a finger, and he licked a drop of water from it. Purring bounced against the dark of the small, tiled room. As water crept up the side of her ribs, Ava had to acknowledge that despite the looming catastrophe, she was relieved to be here, alone, in the bath.
Eventually, she heard a loud banging on her door, which she ignored. After a few minutes of knocking and yelling her name, Stephanie gave up. “I know you’re in there, Ava. We have to talk. I gave you copies of this ages ago. It’s not my fault you don’t read your mail.” Ava draped a wet washcloth over her eyes; funny that the collapse of her entire world could feel so warmly relaxing.