Plus One (24 page)

• • •

Figgy had promised to be home by seven, which meant Alex had a menu to put together. So on the way home from school, he
stopped by Malcolm's and told the kids to hang out in the car so he could quickly run inside and pick up a roast.

“Alex! Bro!” Malcolm called from behind the counter. “How'd it go with the pig ears for shabbat? Work out?”

Alex grinned. “Crispy like onion rings—just like you said,” he said. “Best trayf ever. I did the marrow like you said, too. Unbelievable. You were so right.”

Malcolm gave him an approving nod. “It's just true: Fat is where the flavor is.”

“Amen,” Alex said.

Alex peered into the case and surveyed the day's selection. The scallops looked gorgeous, the lamb perfect. He pinched his chin studiously, taking his time. Malcolm wouldn't mind. Alex would often spend a half hour or more shooting the shit about the provenance of balsamic vinegars before getting around to his actual order. Malcolm's was not a high-volume business.

“Hey—show this week was great,” Malcolm said, wiping his hands with a rag. “The thing with the kid in the Jacuzzi? Hilarious.”

Alex nodded in agreement and shrugged. The episode they'd shot at the house back in August had just aired, and the response had been huge; fans had already started swapping “footgasm” T-shirts online. He hadn't realized Malcolm knew about Figgy or his connection to the show, but lately it seemed everyone knew who he was. He was husband-of.

A few friends had also picked up the resemblance to a new character on the show, the commissioner's househusband. The character was a middle-aged fragile flower who bragged about his wild rock and roll youth and who remained entirely ignorant about his wife's nefarious business. Figgy insisted the character was pure fiction, but Alex wasn't so sure. He couldn't help but wonder how much Figgy kept from him now, how much of her life she didn't share. They were both just so busy. He flashed on
a memory from when Sylvie was in preschool. Alex used to wait for her in the hall, watching through the doorway as she moved around the classroom, a feather boa around her neck, a little plastic mallet in her fist, intense and busy and utterly oblivious to everyone around her. Parallel play, the teachers called it. That's what he and Figgy were doing now.

“This season is just full-on,” Malcolm said. “So great.”

“Thanks,” Alex said, not sure why he was accepting the compliment. “I'll tell the wife you said so.”

Just then another customer stepped up to the counter and Miranda appeared. “Hey Sher,” she said. “Back for more bone marrow?”

Sher? He had a nickname now? He'd been keeping an eye on her blog for weeks, but he had no idea that she had any idea who he was. But maybe this was just part of the shop's full-service customer relations.

“Nope—looking for something a little lighter,” Alex said, his mouth going dry. “How's the seafood today? Anything nice back there?”

She smiled and motioned to a cutting board nearby. “We got a section of bluefin in this morning. Straight off the plane from Tokyo. If you're nice I could cut you off some.”

Alex looked back and spotted a section of the silvery fish, its scales phosphorescent in the light. He could do a poke; Sylvie would love that. “Sounds good,” he said. “You mind cleaning it up?”

“One sec,” she smiled, pivoting back to the center-island chopping block. With a few strokes the fish fell apart into perfect fillets, coming undone like a knot she'd loosened a hundred times before. She folded some paper around it, wrapped it all up and laid it next to the register. Alex felt woozy.

“Nice knife work,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “You been doing this a while?”

“Not really,” she said, swiping his card. “Eight or nine months. Malcolm says I'm a natural. Which is bizarre, since I was a hardcore vegan until like a year ago.”

Alex cocked an eyebrow. “Really? How does
that
happen?”

She put his bag down and leaned up against the counter. “I dunno. Bunch of stuff happened all at once. Job ended, big breakup, and at some point I sort of realized I'd been this staunch vegan for the worst reasons. When I was really truthful with myself, I loved how it made me feel special, how
accommodations
had to be made for me. And that's kind of bullshit, right? A week later, I answered an ad for Malcolm, and every since it's been all meat, all the time.”

“Huh,” Alex said, signing his credit card slip. “No evangelist like the convert, right?”

“Tell me about it,” she said, handing over the bag. She smiled.

Alex started to turn away but stopped. “Love the blog, by the way,” he said. “Great stuff.”

She brightened and looked away shyly. “Thanks,” she said. “Shoot me an email some time. Fun to swap recipes or whatever.”

Or whatever? What did that mean? Alex took his bag back and headed out the door, suddenly in a hurry to get back to the van.

• • •

Alex herded the kids inside when he got home, plopping them in front of the kitchen TV and then getting to work on the fish. He set the brown paper package on the counter and filled an aluminum mixing bowl with chopped scallions, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, black sesame, and crushed macadamias. Heaving open the door of the fridge—an industrial-grade Sub-Zero that Figgy had insisted they get after seeing the same model in the commissioner's kitchen set—he marveled at how packed
it was, how a double-wide monstrosity that he'd protested was completely excessive was now jammed with yogurts and salads, takeout containers and leftovers, jugs of juice blends and gifted bottles of champagne. How could it be that they'd graduated to a refrigerator the size of a walk-in meat locker and they were still overflowing? How
was
it that whatever space they had was constantly filled to bursting?

That was Figgy's influence—even in absentia, she always ensured they had more than enough. Her maximalism would not be contained.

Alex retrieved his favorite knife, gave it a swipe with a sharpening steel and unfolded the package of fish. Peeling back the tissue, he stooped down and sniffed. It had the tang of deep ocean. It glowed ruby red, as if lit from inside. He made careful work of it, making inch-long strips and then rotating the cutting board to crisscross the wedges into symmetrical pink cubes.

This was Miranda's reserve stuff, and it was magnificent. He pictured her face now, glimpsed through the cold glass of the display cabinet. That story about becoming a butcher—she'd tossed it off like it was just idle chitchat. He got the impression she offered up confessions like that all the time, to anyone and everyone. He was nothing special, he thought; she was just an over-sharer, someone who treated her own failings as shtick to be performed for perfect strangers.

Alex dumped the cubed fish into the bowl and walked over to the computer to call up the Meatgirl website. He looked over at the kids—they were slack-jawed and splayed out before the TV, not paying him the least attention. He was free to browse.

He clicked through until he found what he was looking for: a photo of Miranda in the kitchen, dressed in a loose tank top and snug jeans, her mouth open in a half-smile as she gripped a roast with a pair of tongs. He enlarged the picture, zooming in on the hand (strong, impossibly long fingers, unpainted nails) and felt
his heart begin to pound. Jesus—what was his problem? If this was infidelity, he sucked at it.

A minute or two passed. Alex bent forward, looking intently at the view down Miranda's unbuttoned chef's coat as she leaned over: that long, slender throat, the scattering of tiny brown freckles. The spastic soundtrack of the kids' cartoon echoed dimly in the distance. He thought of his book and his idea this morning to rewrite it as fiction, to break from what actually happened and embrace what
might be
.

Alex clicked on the window and closed it. He needed to get back to dinner, but first he needed to find that magic command he knew from the occasional trip to XTube or UPorn. This hadn't been anything close to illicit—it was just food, and hadn't Figgy said he should take cooking more seriously?—but sitting here now, Alex felt an intense desire to erase these particular steps. After futzing around on the nav bar for a few minutes, he finally found it, that magic command, the one he wished he could apply to whole stretches of his life: CLEAR HISTORY.

• • •

Figgy wasn't picking up her phone. It was after eleven, and Alex knew from the
Tricks
call sheet that shooting was scheduled to wrap at nine. Where was she? Alex had fed and showered the kids and was back in the kitchen, the countertop TV casting a flickering bluish light on Alex's wine glass. Production often went late, and she'd probably turned off her phone while cameras were rolling. She'd come home when she came home. Like she always did.

Alex leaned down and gave the scruff around Albert's neck a rub. Something told him Figgy hadn't turned off her phone; something told him she just wasn't answering. He needed to know. Wait—he
could
know. He switched on the computer,
signed into their family cell phone account, and called up ZeroIn, which allowed you to track your phone's location. He'd used the app a few times before when he'd misplaced his phone; tonight he'd misplaced his wife.

The streets of L.A. materialized in chunks across the screen. Two green dots popped up. The first hovered above their house on Sumter Court (that would be his phone) and the second dot, the one indicating Figgy's phone… where was that? It wasn't at the studio. Alex magnified the view and scrolled northward, five or so miles away, deep in the chaotic tangle of side streets above Sunset Boulevard. Figgy—or at least her phone—was somewhere in the Hollywood Hills.

Alex dialed her number. Voicemail. Again. What the hell? Where was she?

Alex rose from his seat and did a circuit around the kitchen, then sat back down at the computer and pressed refresh. The green dot stayed put. He got up again, refilled his wine glass, and backed himself up against the pantry, his eyes fixed on the computer. From this distance across the room, the green dot pulsed in place, brightening and dimming, as if tracking Figgy's circulation system, her every breath.

Hadn't she mentioned that Zev the DP had just rented a place in West Hollywood? A crazy modern with a kickboxing gym? And an infinity pool?

He flashed again on that pathetic magician at the Emmys, that Randall guy in the fedora. What was it Huck had said? Poor fucker had no clue what was about to hit him?

Five miles—he could be there and back in less than twenty minutes. The kids were fast asleep. They were fine. As he grabbed his keys, jotted down the address on a Post-it, and headed out the back door, he heard a voice shrieking somewhere in the back of his head:
Stop! You don't leave your kids home alone! Ever! Breathe! Breathe again
!

Alex jumped into the minivan and backed out of the driveway, knocking into a trash barrel before accelerating westward. Fucking Zev. Of course it was Zev—he was everything Alex wasn't. He was successful, decisive, confident. Jewish. He wouldn't have any issue with Figgy's success. He was into mindfulness. He did yoga. He had those big round shoulders and a dark thicket of chest hair. The sex was probably amazing.

By the time Alex was in West Hollywood, gunning his minivan up a steep slope toward the address on the Post-it, he'd worked up a full steam of panic. He sucked in a breath as he pulled up to Zev's house.
I won't go in
, he thought.
I'll just creep around and peek inside, get a look at what's happening.

Behind a row of scrubby hedges was a low-slung seventies ranch house with a lava rock chimney and a wood-shingled roof. As he got closer, brake lights flashed ahead of him—a pair of cars were pulling out. He slowed down and peered closer. Lit up in the glare of a porch light was a shortish, roundish figure—wait, was that Dani? Dani the Diva Whisperer?—chatting with a couple who exchanged quick hugs and headed out to the street.

Okay. So maybe this wasn't Zev's house. Maybe this was a work party. An after-work gathering at the line producer's house.

Alex reared back in his seat and drove on, shielding his face as he passed a guy he recognized from the set returning to his car. A wave of relief and embarrassment washed over him. His wife hadn't left work to go skinny dip in Zev's infinity pool. She'd stopped off at a co-worker's wrap party.

So where was her car? He scanned the street for Figgy's Volvo. No sign of it. He turned around and did another pass. No Volvo.

Alex did another fast U-turn and gunned it down the hill, scenarios spinning out in quick succession. Figgy had left the party and went… somewhere more private? A hotel? Zev's place? The ZeroIn app—he didn't have it on his phone, so Alex would hurry home and check her location on the home computer….

Outside their house, sitting in the driveway, was Figgy's Volvo.

They'd probably passed each other coming and going. He quickly passed a hand over the hood of her car—it was still warm, making a little ticking sound—then rushed inside.

“Fig?” Around the corner from the entry, he could see light from the living room.