There are times I lull myself with hope even when the evidence points in failure’s direction. That feeling carried me after Nicola called and said, “We’re back, please come over,” and I convinced myself that they had some task for me, hoping it was to serve as a guiding hand for Nicola as he decided what to take and what to leave behind.
At the house, the dogs ran toward me. One of them whimpered. The other kept licking my shoes. My bosses sat at the kitchen island.
I kissed each of them on the cheek and tried to catch Philip’s eye.
“We wanted to thank you,” Philip said.
The dogs sat at my feet, probably thinking I’d walk them. As I poured myself a coffee, Nicola said, “What he means by ‘thank you’ is that it doesn’t make sense for you to work for us anymore.”
“Did I do something?” I asked.
Philip started to speak, but Nicola’s voice overcrowded his.
“This, for starters,” he said.
Nicola pulled out a Polaroid from New Year’s Eve: Janice on a chair in her corset and heels, a sea of cheering hands in front of her. She looked beautiful. We must have missed it while cleaning up.
“A few friends,” I said.
“More than a few,” Nicola corrected. “Not that a few were allowed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “A moment of bad judgment.”
Philip’s thumb traced the edge of his mug.
“It turns out,” Nicola went on, “Lucy from across the way saw things and told me.” Nicola hated Lucy. She had an ancient cocker spaniel, its single hobby rubbing its hemorrhoidal ass on the sidewalk. “I ran into her recently and she told me that when we were in London months before, there were all sorts of men here.”
“One,” I said.
“So it’s true,” Nicola replied.
“Not all sorts.”
“Tomato tomahto.”
“Not all sorts,” I repeated.
“Still,” Philip added.
Sensing I wasn’t there for them, the dogs retreated to their beds.
“What about a few weeks ago, with that man at the bar?” I said to Philip. “You insisted I bring him home.”
Anger arrived to fill in for what had been sad and frightening a moment before.
Nicola went on about Lucy watching a striptease, the cheering, terrifying-looking horde.
“Burlesque,” I said.
“We trusted you,” Nicola said.
He kept talking, stopping halfway through sentences to rearrange his ideas. He spat out the phrase “Loyalty, you know?” three different times.
“Loyalty,” he said for the fourth time, and added that they were keeping my last check as collateral.
“You’re a great expert on loyalty,” I said.
“What is wrong with you?” Nicola asked.
“What’s wrong with both of you?” Philip interrupted. His baritone filled the room. Across Nicola’s face, a sharp smirk of victory.
“So this has nothing to do with the barn?” I asked.
Nicola’s feline attention tightened. Part of me thought to stop, but I kept going.
“At your birthday party, Nicola took me to the barn so we could fool around,” I said.
“You were hardly an unwilling partner,” Nicola added.
“But I wasn’t willing again.”
Nicola guffawed. “If you think I’ve been pining for you, or Pavel is pining for you now, that every man you meet just can’t get enough of you,” he said, “you might want to disabuse yourself of that notion. Our friend Audrey, when you helped us at that first dinner—”
“Nicola,” Philip said.
“She told us, when you were in the bathroom, that you looked like a gas station attendant.”
Tears gathered. I didn’t fight them, my small hope then that their appearance would make the two of them uncomfortable.
“She’s not wrong,” I said. “Though it was a convenience store that also sold gas. I worked at a grocery store, too. Also security at a mall where I drove around in a golf cart, which I did too fast after hours sometimes.”
“Your résumé, yes,” Nicola said.
I should have left then, but wanted to break more things and survey the damage.
“He’s terrible to you, Philip. I see it. People at the gallery see it.” I talked about the jokes Nicola made at Pavel’s opening about Philip out past his bedtime. How no one could find Nicola the day of the attack because he and Eric were at a place on the beach without cell service.
“Please stop,” Philip said.
He and I had been in this kitchen a week before, drinking whiskey and laughing about something Andrew had said. He’d seemed thrilled to have me stay and stay. Now he’d changed his mind. People were always changing their minds.
I added more about Rebecca’s warning after the barn. “She told me,” I said, in a phlegmy rasp. “She told me to watch out for Nicola.”
Nicola called what I was doing “a performance,” then said I should go. I asked if I could use the bathroom first. Nicola scoffed. Philip said, “Of course.”
When I got out of the bathroom, Nicola was gone. Philip stood at the sink washing dishes.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know,” he answered, and filled a glass with soapy water.
“About the barn, I mean. The other stuff, too.”
“He is persuasive,” Philip said. But his refusal to turn around told a different story. “You would have gotten tired of this anyway. Watching over me, et cetera.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“You don’t know either.”
He placed a coffee cup in the drainer, began washing the next. He looked small at the sink, though we were the same size. I hoped he’d level with me now that we were alone, tell me that Nicola’s return was temporary and I could come back soon. But Philip squirted soap onto the sponge. I sensed he’d stay at the sink until I was gone.
“Thank you,” I said.
Philip nodded into the mug he was cleaning.
I left and walked to the apartment Pavel had stayed in, one I’d mistaken as his own, and rang the buzzer. After a few moments, a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Pavel?” I asked.
There was a pause. A shock of static sounded before she answered, “He doesn’t live here anymore.” There was annoyance in her voice that now I think I might have invented, though at the time it felt real, and I’d imagined she wasn’t annoyed at me but that so many men had been ringing the buzzer, too, hoping they might see him.