I'm Glad About You (29 page)

But Dennis was too valuable to him, finally, to press the point. Van had banned him from their house, probably because he had made a pass at her at one time or another. Kyle wasn’t sure, but nothing would surprise him; Dennis had twice made passes at Alison, that he knew of. While Kyle was dating her. It had pissed him off of course at the time but what were you going to do with someone like Dennis, he was just an asshole. Anyway, that was all in the past. Dennis’s devilish approach to living was now a balm. And the scotch, and the television set.

“I got Chinese. Dumplings, moo shu pork, kung pao chicken.”

“Sounds great.”

Dennis unloaded white cartons from a brown paper bag while Kyle dropped onto the couch and reached for the remote. The set flickered to life, and he checked the listings of saved shows in the DVR. He knew that what he was about to indulge in over scotch and Chinese food was the worst sort of psychological scab-picking. But the option was going home to Van and her mother and those two bewildering little girls. There was no question: It had been a mistake to invite Alison to that misbegotten dinner party. But there was nothing to do about it now. Van had not forgiven him, and his brain hadn’t either.

Alison’s face loomed on the screen, emerging like a mermaid out of the blue water of a pool in the night. She looked straight into the camera, those unforgettable green eyes flickering with confusion and desire.

“I can’t believe you had a dinner party and you invited Alison and you didn’t invite me,” Dennis rebuked him. He dumped the white cartons of food on the coffee table in front of them. Chopsticks, paper napkins, plastic forks. There was no standing on ceremony with Dennis.

“It wasn’t me, it was Van. She thinks you’re a bad influence on the girls.”

“Not yet, but someday, definitely.”

Was that even funny? It wasn’t worth remarking that it might not be. Dennis was already watching the television set. “She looks hot,” he announced, as if this were news.

“She’s too skinny.”

“She was that thin two years ago, at Christmas.”

“It wasn’t two years ago. It was three years ago,” Kyle replied. Alison was arguing with someone now, it was hard to tell who. The sound was off.

“What was three years ago?”

“Your Christmas party.”

“The
Christmas
party.” Dennis nodded, digging into the kung pao chicken, wielding his chopsticks with an elegance that was somewhat surprising in a perpetual drunk. “Oh yes, that wonderful Christmas party. Remember those boots she was wearing? Thigh-high gray suede—”

“Yes, I remember the boots.”

“Is that bitter?”

“Why would I be bitter?”

“I don’t know. I know nothing, Kyle, you are ridiculously discreet, it’s one of your worst habits. You invited her to your house for dinner with your wife—”

“And ten other people.”

“Yes, and ten other people but not me. So I know nothing about your current standing with Alison. For all I know, you’ve been carrying on a torrid affair with each other via the internet this whole time. For all I know, she flies in twice a month and meets you in a hotel in Covington.”

“If I were fucking Alison, do you think I’d need to watch her do it on television?”

There was a shocked pause at this, and then Dennis laughed with glee. “Well well well, well well—” he started. Kyle stood. If he could have punched himself in the face, he would have.

“This is stupid,” Kyle said. He looked around for the clicker, but it was buried, somewhere, under those cartons. The silent movie of Alison, her green eyes, her body rising out of the water, was interminable. “Where’s the fucking clicker, I’m not watching this junk.”

“Dude, far be it from me but if we were in an AA meeting, there would be about sixty people telling you that you need to talk about it,” Dennis informed him.

“I don’t need to talk about it.”

“No, you just need to drink about it.” Kyle glanced at the tumbler in his hand. It was true; he had already powered through the sizable bolt of scotch, in a matter of minutes. “Where’s the clicker,” he asked.

“You can turn it off if you want, I don’t care,” Dennis shrugged. “I just thought we were going to watch it. And I didn’t get to see her when she was here, so I was kind of looking forward to it. But I can watch it later if you can’t handle it.”

“I can handle it, Jesus, that’s not what—fine.” The silent television continued to flicker before them, but Kyle deliberately ignored it, concentrating on his own set of cheap wooden chopsticks, splitting them down the middle without yielding splinters. It calmed him.

“So you and Alison got into it.”

“We didn’t get into anything.”

“Liar.”

“Dennis—”

“What? I want to know what happened, of course I want to know. She was at your house and now you’re watching her on television and talking about how you wish you were fucking her.”

“That’s not what I—”

“And you’re drinking rather heavily, which may be normal for me but is not for you. So maybe you need to talk about that.”

“I don’t actually need to talk about why I’m drinking. I know why I’m drinking. What I don’t know is why you’re so interested in my sex life.”

Dennis started, then laughed, enjoying the nasty turn. “Ooo la la, latent homophobia,” he grinned. “Goodness gracious, there’s always all that Catholicism, right there when you need it.”

“Screw it.” Kyle was sick of this. He finally found the fucking clicker and pointed it at the television, which for a second refused to go off.

“You’re holding it backward,” Dennis informed him. Kyle stared at the device in his hand, turned it around, and pointed it at the television. It still didn’t work. Alison was silently laughing at some young Adonis now. She had a towel wrapped around her and her hair was wet. The towel slipped suddenly, revealing a black bikini underneath for a moment before she glanced down, picked up its edge, and pulled it close again.

“I should have just slept with her,” he said.

The sentence fell between them, clear, final. He looked around for that scotch bottle. Dennis picked it up from the floor beside him and passed it over.

“You really never did?” Dennis asked. “You always told me you never did, but seriously. You never did?”

“That night at your party,” Kyle admitted. Repeated pressing got the remote to work and blessedly, the television set went blank.

“Wait a minute. You fucked her, at my Christmas party?”

“I didn’t.”

“You just said—”

“We almost did.” He couldn’t believe he was admitting this, but he was tired, and drunk, and it felt good to tell it, finally, even to Dennis. “We were up in your dad’s bedroom, and we were drunk, and—you know—”

“No, I don’t know,” Dennis said. He was laughing, delighted. “You did it in my father’s
bedroom
? How did I miss this?”

“We didn’t do it,” he clarified, for the second time. “It was late, I was leaving. Who knows where you were. You were passed out somewhere. And she was up there, hanging out, and—” He paused, feeling the buzz from the alcohol, and tried to tell the story without getting the sequence wrong, or confusing the words. Dennis was just watching, finally, and finally serious. “Van and I were in a bad place. It just felt like we had, like the whole thing was a mistake, and I was trying to keep everything steady but then Alison showed up, and I wasn’t—and then it was, honestly we didn’t even have a chance to even talk to each other. And it was terrible, we hadn’t seen each other since we broke up, in Seattle, I, you know, we
couldn’t
, I know that’s why she, and I was so fucked up but I didn’t blame her.” He was frustrated that he was rambling, and not making his points. If he had been locked in a confessional and blathering on to some somnolent priest, it would never have passed muster. But Dennis, for all his drunken narcissism, Dennis might actually understand what it was he was trying to admit to, if he could simply find the words and admit to it.

“I was in some crazy space back then, I know it was ridiculous, I wouldn’t have sex with her. And I knew, Christ, it’s not like I didn’t, man, all those years. To want something that entirely and not be able to, but all the shit they shoved into our heads? And that’s no excuse. Seriously, I’m not making excuses. She wanted to. And I was the one. I was a fucking moron.” He reached for the scotch bottle. What did it matter how drunk he was, now? “It was a power play. I was just, I wanted to win. I knew it was driving her crazy. And I’m not, listen—I don’t think it was a game for her. I don’t think that. I think she was just, we were, when we were together in it? Nothing else, you know. I’m such an asshole.” It felt great to admit it. Every shred of his stupidity laid open to the air. “I was a fucking child. And then she was gone. And it was like I woke up, one day, and I had a wife who really didn’t like me, and there was Alison, at your house, at a really stupid Christmas party. Wearing those boots. And then we didn’t have a half second to even talk, because Van was so paranoid. Which, why wouldn’t she be? But there was so much that Alison and I, we hadn’t finished, we weren’t anywhere near finished with anything, between us, and then she disappeared, it was like she vanished. I thought she had gone home. It was the end of the night, everyone else was either passed out or had taken off, and I was just, I thought maybe—her coat was still there, on the steps, so I thought she might still be there.” Having relived the memory so many times in the past three years, this part of the mystery was exquisitely present. “And then there she was, in your father’s bedroom. And we, honestly I can’t remember what we said. It didn’t matter. Maybe it’s just that we were tired of punishing each other. That’s what I thought. I was just done with all the shit in my head. She was there and I didn’t care about anything else. And then she, you know, I don’t know, she . . .” As much of a relief as it was, he couldn’t, finally, describe the moment. Dennis was hanging on his every word, and Kyle couldn’t tell it. “Anyway,” he shrugged. “We almost did it.” He took a breath.

Dennis waited for a moment, then another. Then another. “Wait.
Wait
,” he erupted. “You
almost
did it? That’s all I get? You
almost did it
?” He looked completely outraged. Kyle would have felt sorry, but he had in fact noticed that Dennis had a growing boner, strategically disguised behind the mustard-colored throw pillow he held oh so casually against his thigh.

“Yeah, we almost did it,” Kyle admitted, abrupt. “And then she stopped it, and I went home, and worked things out with Van.”

“You ‘worked things out,’” Dennis sneered. Kyle, wavering on his feet, didn’t understand how this confession had gone so far awry. It didn’t matter. The spell cast by his own words had splintered. He felt the shame of all of it, doubly, yet again. Why had he said so much, so unwisely, after holding it so close for so long? The television was a blank. He was drunk. A fractured family of unhappy women waited for him to return, and create, for them, a misery.

That’s ridiculous, they love you
, he told himself, as he had told himself so many times before.
You are being ridiculous. Alison is a fantasy. She’s not a real person anymore. Van and the babies are real. They are waiting for you. They are love.

He had no way to determine, anymore, if what his brain told him was true.

seventeen

B
Y THE TIME
Lars finally allowed himself to undress Alison, he was so obsessed with her body he had a vague urge to hurt it. The unfolding of her white back as he lifted the straps off her shoulders was exquisite. The dress, a simple black silk slip, dropped to the floor with an erotic grace as he turned her toward him. She wasn’t wearing underclothes.

He always made them wait. Actresses were as a breed too volatile; you couldn’t let them get the upper hand too early, as that would be the end of everything. But this one had not accepted his feigned indifference to her body with anything remotely resembling insecurity. She accepted his invitations to dinners and screenings with professional ease, and performed her duties as arm candy with the practiced charm of born royalty. She never intruded on his privacy. And then she disappeared. She literally just bolted—from Per Se, at a dinner which had cost him a thousand dollars a head—and then was utterly unreachable for two full weeks. He thought for a while that she was just fucking with him, and his interest cooled. He didn’t have the time or the energy for a difficult actress. But then she returned, just as quickly and inexplicably. She called and apologized for leaving so abruptly. She had had a family emergency in, of all places, Cincinnati. She was sweet and funny. She wanted to take him out, to make up for it. He had his assistant Josh arrange a date for the following week; she would join him at a business dinner. When she showed up at the restaurant, she was wearing the thinnest of thin dresses. Another check in the plus column.