FOURTEEN
Victor
Victor felt as if he were intruding as he approached the back of the Raleigh. This was the pinnacle of self-doubt, considering he had the bride, the groom, and the mother of the groom in tow. But this was the problem with meals that lasted for hours. The digestive and social rhythms were off. Some people were finishing their breakfasts while others stood, holding virgin plates. He tweezed his gaze, trying to pluck out his friends. A gazelle-like presence of indiscriminate hair color flowed toward them. Grey. She wore a striped dress that, because she was pregnant, made her look like an optical illusion. Paul followed behind her, hands in his pockets. Sam made his way over as well, sporting a Knight Rider shirt, dark at the armpits.
“Bonjour!” Grey sideswiped every cheek.
“Do you mind?” Johanna put her hands on Grey’s collarbone and shifted the clasp of her necklace so that it was once again invisible.
“Make a wish,” she commanded.
Grey shut her eyes tightly and touched her midsection dramatically.
“Victor passed out in my mother’s bed!” Felix blurted out with glee.
Grey’s eyes snapped open.
“I wasn’t in the bed,” Victor clarified.
“Asshat.” Sam snorted and waved a wet celery stalk in Victor’s face. “You kicked her out of her own bed? Ha-ha. Asshat.”
“I need coffee,” Victor announced.
The sand scorched his bare feet as he moved away. A line of tropical foliage separated the Raleigh’s backyard from the public beach. Errant orchids drooped from curved branches. Seaweed pods were scattered on the ground from last night’s storm. There was a man manning an omelet station and another one mixing something not-of-this-hour calling itself a “dragon daiquiri.” He seemed especially vexed by a female figure in white jeans.
“Miss, I’ll mix that for you in just a moment.”
“You don’t have to mix anything.” Kezia gripped a pitcher of watermelon juice. “I’m just going to grab this glass.”
She reached into a plastic crate filled with warm drinking glasses.
“Having a good morning?” Victor ducked under a branch as he approached.
She jumped. “Jesus!”
She smelled like peppermint. As did everyone. It must have been the hotel body wash. He tried to crush the image of her and Judson, lathering each other up.
“You’re smiley.” She raised an eyebrow. “And this outfit looks familiar.”
“Oh.” He looked down. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Did neither of us go back to the room last night?”
She grinned what was surely a postcoital grin of her own. People who had just had sex had an annoying habit of assuming everyone around them had just had sex. Which was also, coincidently, what people who were not having sex assumed. She shifted her focus to a series of small bowls. Some were piled with macadamia nuts, others with white stones.
“See this?” She picked up a stone. “This is unnecessarily confusing.”
“They have faith in your ability to not eat rocks.”
“They don’t even think I can pour juice for myself.”
She took off her sunglasses and wiped the bridge with her shirt, revealing a strip of flesh Victor did not like to think of Judson touching. Or licking. Or ejaculating on from a great distance just to prove he could.
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“Judson,” she said slowly, “had an early flight back to Dallas.”
“Dallas?” Victor clenched his teeth. “Of course, Dallas.”
“Have you ever even been to Dallas?”
“Obviously not.”
Sam approached them, his plate piled high with danishes, bacon, and thick slices of pineapple. He was growing a mustache. Victor could tell he wanted to scratch it by the way he kept schemingly stroking his upper lip.
“What are we talking about?”
Sam wrapped a piece of pineapple in a blanket of bacon.
“Nothing,” said Kezia. “How can you eat like that in this heat?”
“Oh, I get it. We’re talking about Judson.”
“Seriously?” She tossed up her hands. “Do you people work for hotel security?”
“Dude, I would fuck that guy. And I don’t even like, you know . . .”
“Men?”
“Douchebags, but sure,” Sam conceded. “Judson looks like a lifeguard. Like an evil lifeguard whose whistle summons the devil.”
Victor wondered if he had ever known such joy.
“He’s like a waxed Burt Reynolds,” he chimed in.
“Or the fuck’s that guy’s name from that movie? ‘You’re shit and she knows you’re shit blahblahblah.’”
“Andrew McCarthy?” Victor squinted.
“James Baldwin?”
“It’s not James Baldwin.”
“It’s James Spader, dipsticks.”
“Spader!” Sam clenched his teeth. “So does it?”
“Does what what?” Kezia took a sip of her hard-won juice.
“Does his whistle summon the devil when you blow on it?”
“You’re being disgusting.”
“You’re the one who’s being disgusting. I’m asking you a legitimate question about whistles.”
“She didn’t sleep with him!” Victor smiled. “You didn’t sleep with him. What are we dealing with? Everything but?”
“I’m not in seventh grade.”
“You performed oral sex in the seventh grade?”
“Shut up, Samuel.”
A chunk of meat tumbled from Sam’s mouth and onto the breading of the sand.
“You should find a place to sit down and eat that.”
“I’m waiting for my omelet.”
The omelet man artfully released a yellow oval onto Sam’s pile of food. He cradled it like a newborn baby.
“There are starving children in the Sudan,” Kezia reprimanded him.
“There are full children in the Sudan too, racist. I’m going to go be around people who love me. Where’s Olivia at?”
Victor laughed. “Olivia doesn’t love you.”
“You guys don’t know anything about South American society. This is their way. This is their mating ritual. All cold attitudes and hot Brazilian bodies . . .”
“Venezuelan.”
“Whatever, Kezia.”
From the other side of the pool, Olivia snapped her head toward them, her dark eyes shooting daggers at Sam as he approached. She was in her element, bikini made almost entirely of interlocking metal rings, speaking rapid-clip Spanish with Felix’s elderly relatives. She took her feet out of the pool and stood on the stone border, preparing herself for humiliation.
“How do you say, ‘This is the child for whom I babysit,’ in Spanish?” Kezia put her glasses back on.
“Este es mi idiota.”
“Close enough.”
“So you want to hear a funny story? I slept in Johanna’s bed last night.”
“I’m sorry?” She made a visor of her hand.
“The mother of the groom.”
“I know who she is.”
“Well, more on the bed than in it.”
“Oh my God, start from the beginning.”
Victor reveled in her curiosity. If there was one thing he wasn’t, it was mysterious. If there were another thing he wasn’t, he’d probably tell everyone right away, owing to his lack of mystery.
“I hate outdoor showers,” Kezia said when he was through.
“There’s one more thing.” He lowered his voice. “There’s this necklace, except it’s not there.”
“Huh?”
“If I describe a necklace to you, would you be able to identify it?”
“As what? As not a bracelet?”
“No, like, would you be able to tell me if Felix’s mom is just kind of nutty and German or if she has something famous that belongs in a museum? And is German.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m not a professional gemologist. Even if I were, it’s not the same thing as being a doctor. I can’t write prescriptions over the phone based on what you tell me.”
“Your doctor does that?”
“Everyone’s doctor does that. Why, does she have the Hope Diamond in her closet or something?”
“Kind of,” Victor whispered.
“The Hope Diamond is in the Smithsonian.” Kezia matched his whisper.
“You know how people got their possessions seized during Nazi-occupied France?”
“People as in Jews?”
“Kezia, she has a secret safe—like a treasure chest—in her bedroom.”
“I knew it! I knew you were poking around her bedroom! What the fuck is wrong with you? Honestly, you should be asking yourself this at least three times a day.”
“I wasn’t, I—”
Kezia was looking at Nathaniel, who was lounging poolside, arm behind his head, irritatingly insouciant, what looked to be a screenplay propped against his knees. A girl in a tight T-shirt offered him a menu and his response made her laugh.
“Kezia—” Victor tried to focus her.
She snapped away from Nathaniel. “Hey, Indiana Jones. Don’t be weird. It’s a necklace.”
“Actually, it’s just a picture of a necklace.”
“A nonexistent necklace! Even better.”
“But it’s huge, with diamonds and a big blue emerald in the middle.”
“That’s a sapphire.”
“And there’s a weird teardrop in the center of the stone, cut right into it.”
“Into the back of the stone itself ? That’s impossible.”
“And it’s French but Johanna is German. Isn’t that odd?”
“Why would that be odd?”
A group of kids marched past, smacking one another with pool noodles.
Victor lowered his voice. “Because of the Nazis.”
“You have heatstroke.”
They fell silent. Victor did his best not to appear disappointed or drag his feet in the sand. There was an electric exit sign wired to the trees behind them, and beyond that, different-colored beach umbrellas that marked the end of one hotel and the start of another.
“I guess Felix’s mom could be a Nazi. They all could. We could be at a very hospitable Nazi wedding.”
“Forget it. I thought you’d be interested.”
He beat the soles of his shoes together.
She threw him a bone. “I am. Sorry, I’m just cranky in the mornings.”
“Yeah, well, it’s always morning somewhere.”
“Okay, this,” she sighed theatrically, “this is why we don’t hang out anymore. I say I’m sorry, I’m sincere with you for a minute, and you call me a cunt.”
“I most definitely did not. And the reason we don’t hang out anymore is that you’re too cool for your old friends. Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold. Hemingway said that.”
“That’s the Girl Scouts’ motto, jackass.”
“Oh, sorry, I’m not Nathaniel.”
“What does that have to do with anything? You know, everything’s easy for everyone and tough for you, right? How could that be? We’re not all Olivia and Caroline. The rest of us weren’t born privileged. Nathaniel figured it out. I figured it out. Even Sam figured it out.”
“Sam owns one pair of pants.”
“The point is you choose to think we’re all better off than you.”
Most of the time Victor had to talk himself into thinking he was better off not being her boyfriend. Other times it came quite naturally. She started to say more but they had company. The newly minted Mrs. Castillo approached, wearing an orange tunic with a starfish on it. Felix shadowed her, carrying a plate of pastries.
“I think we’re headed out,” he said. “Paris awaits.”
Caroline grabbed Kezia’s hand. “I’m so excited. We’re going to stay at the Plaza Athénée and then head to the South of France with Paul and Grey.”
“You guys are double-dating on your honeymoon?”
Victor looked to Kezia, hoping their argument could be resolved by presenting a united front against this new, very worthy subject: four of their friends stuck in a car together in a foreign country.
“We are.” Felix drove the corners of his mouth into his cheeks.
“What time is it?” Caroline twisted Felix’s wrist.
Felix offered up the pastries. “Here, everyone have a Franzbrötchen.”
Balls of pastry dough were curled up on the plate like shar pei embryos. They smelled of cinnamon, a scent out of place on the beach. They all just stood there, holding the sticky treats between their fingers.
“They were my mom’s favorite when she was a kid.”
“And your mom grew up in Germany?”
“Yeah.” Felix laughed.
“And she never lived anywhere else?”
“Ignore him.” Kezia licked the side of her Franzbrötchen. “He has sunstroke.”