Page 20 of The Wife Upstairs
Smarter than Eddie.
It’s the only way I’m getting out of this alive.
Bea didn’t mean to be late, but traffic was bad and the rain hadn’t helped.
By the time she slides into the booth opposite Blanche at their favorite restaurant, La Paz, Blanche is already on her second margarita and the chip basket is nearly empty.
As soon as she sits down, Blanche signals the waiter, pointing to her glass, then to Bea, who tries not to be annoyed. She does usually get a margarita, it’s just that tonight, she hadn’t planned on drinking.
And she clearly doesn’t do a great job of hiding that annoyance because her voice is sharper than she’d intended when she says, “A three margarita Tuesday, huh?”
Blanche just shrugs and drags another chip through the little blue dish of salsa. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em!” she says, bright and, to Bea’s ears, fake.
Something has been off with Blanche lately, but Bea can’t figure out what it is. It might be Tripp; he and Blanche have only been married a year, but there’s already a brittleness there, a tension. Just last week, Bea went over to their house for drinks, and had to sit through two hours of the two of them steadily chipping away at each other, flinging little barbs, little insults wrapped in affection.
And sitting across from Blanche now, Bea sees that Blanche’s eyes look a little puffy, her skin a little dull. She wishes she hadn’t made that crack about the third margarita.
When their drinks are set in front of them, Bea picks up the heavy glass with its salted rim and touches it to Blanche’s. “To us,” she says. “And not drinking those sugar-bomb monstrosities from El Calor anymore.”
That makes Blanche smile a little, as Bea had hoped it would. El Calor had been the cheap Mexican place near Ivy Ridge, the school she and Blanche had both attended as teenagers. They’d gone in nearly every Friday night, long before they’d turned twenty-one, and ordered the most obnoxious margaritas on the menu, frozen concoctions that came in giant bowls and were bright red or blue or neon green, colors that stained their lips and teeth.
Bea still has a picture of her and Blanche their senior year, sticking out their tongues for the camera, Blanche’s purple, Bea’s scarlet, their eyes shining with alcohol and youth.
She loves that picture.
She misses those girls.
Maybe tonight is the chance to recapture a little of that?
But then, Blanche lifts her menu and Bea sees the bangle around her wrist.
Without thinking, she reaches for Blanche’s hand, and examines the bracelet. It’s pretty, a thin silver circlet with a dainty charm—Blanche’s zodiac sign, Scorpio, picked out in diamonds.
“We have something similar to this coming out next year,” Bea says, turning Blanche’s wrist so she can better see the bracelet. “But we did an enamel backing on the charm, and we’re offering colored stone options. I’ll get you one.”
Blanche jerks her hand back, her elbow nearly upsetting her drink, the movement so sudden, so aggressive, that for a beat or two, Bea doesn’t pull her own hand back and it just hovers there over the chips and salsa.
“I like this bracelet,” Blanche says, looking at the menu and not meeting Bea’s eyes. “I don’t need another one.”
“I just thought—” Bea starts, but then she drops it, picking up her own menu instead, even though she always orders the same thing.
So does Blanche, but you’d think the secrets of the universe were encoded among the various descriptions of burritos and enchiladas, that’s how intently Blanche is staring at her menu now.
The silence between them is heavy and awkward, and Bea tries to remember the last time she felt this way around Blanche. Blanche, who’s been her best friend since she was a nervous fourteen-year-old, away from home for the first time, trying to fit in at a new, fancy school.
Once the waiter has taken their orders—the usual for both of them, Bea’s enchiladas verdes, Blanche’s tortilla soup—that same silence returns, and Bea wonders if she’s going to be forced to scroll through her phone when Blanche says, “So, how’s the guy?”
Another spike of annoyance surges through Bea.
“Eddie is fine,” she says, putting extra emphasis on his first name,which, for some reason, Blanche never wants to use. He’s always “the guy,” occasionally “that guy,” and once, at a lunch with some of their friends from Ivy Ridge, “Bea’s little boyfriend-person.”
It was something Bea had heard Blanche say a lot over the years, her go-to dismissive phrase, but Bea had never had it directed at her before, and she’d ended up leaving lunch early.
Now Blanche drains the rest of her margarita and repeats, “Eddie.” Folding her arms on the table, she leans forward, the sleeve of her tunic coming dangerously close to a splotch of salsa by her wrist. “I never trust men who go by nicknames like that,” she says. “Like. Grown men. Your name is Robert, don’t be Bobby, for Christ’s sake, you know? Or Johnny for John.”
“Right,” Bea can’t help but reply. “Like when a guy is ‘the third’ but goes by ‘Tripp.’”
Blanche blinks at that, but then, to Bea’s surprise, laughs and sits back. “Okay, touché, you bitch,” she says, but there’s no real heat in it. Bea feels some of the tension drain away, and wonders if this night will be salvageable after all.
