Page 38 of We Could Be So Good
Jeanne raises an eyebrow. “If you say so.”
“I promise.” It’s the truth, or close enough to it. Emily never came right out and said that she knew how Nick felt about Andy, but she never had to. “Look. I miss her. I miss both of you, actually. And I know I should have called ahead instead of showing up late at night like a creep, but here I am. If you want me to go away, I’ll go.”
“Come on in,” Jeanne says, not sounding too enthusiastic about it. “Emily!”
“Did I hear the door?” Emily comes downstairs looking—well, looking better than she had two weeks ago, when she had mostly been composed of tears and ruined makeup. But now she looks different than he’s ever seen her. Her hair is down around her shoulders, loose and straight, which isn’t something you see on grown women every day, at least not outside the bongo-playing beatniks in Washington Square Park. She’s wearing trousers and what looks like a men’s shirt. “Nick?”
“Thought I’d stop by and say hi.”
She raises a skeptical eyebrow but leads him up the stairs into the living room he remembers from the night of the dinner party. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Sure. Whatever you’re drinking.”
She hands him a glass of something clear and sits cross-leggedon the sofa. He sits in an armchair. Jeanne, evidently convinced that her sister isn’t about to get propositioned, has disappeared.
“What’s the matter?” Emily asks. “And no, don’t try to lie to me. It’s past ten and this is well outside your usual stomping grounds.”
“First tell me how you’re doing.”
“Nice try. Out with it. It looks like it’s going to be juicy and I want to be entertained.”
He shoots her a look, but she only shoots him one right back.
“Okay. You don’t have any maids or—I don’t know—butlers hanging around? Nothing I say will leave this room?”
“It’s only you and me.”
He believes her. For a minute he considers telling the story without using Andy’s name, because he’s in the habit of maintaining something like the secrecy of the confessional when it comes to anything even tangentially queer. He’s always so goddamn careful that sometimes he feels like there isn’t a person in the world he can speak freely to about anything that matters. But if Emily didn’t even tell Jeanne about him, then she can keep a secret.
He lowers his voice as he tells her what happened that evening, starting from Andy’s idea to go to the gay bar and ending with their quarrel on the street.
“He told you he was insulted?”
“Yeah.” Nick doesn’t know why that, of all things, is what catches Emily’s attention.
“Listen, Nick. When I told him I cheated on him, he said that he’d be happy to go through with the wedding. He said that these things happen.”
Nick takes a drink of what turns out to be a gin and tonic, in which the tonic is more theoretical than an actual ingredient. “Of course he did. Always the gentleman.”
“No, that’s not it. You’re missing the point. You’re right that Andy’s a gentleman, but what’s more important is that he doesn’t quarrel. I think it must have to do with his parents going at it hammer and tongs.”
“He never even gets angry.”
“I think he does, but not at people. Anyway, if he’s saying that he’s insulted, that’s the equivalent of anybody else stomping out of the room and slamming the door behind them, maybe throwing a glass or two at the wall.”
“But why would he be insulted?”
She shrugs. “You know him as well as I do.”
“You don’t seem awfully surprised that your ex-fiancé propositioned me.”
Emily raises an eyebrow. “If you’re asking whether I ever suspected that he had secret homosexual leanings, the answer is no.”
Before Nick can point out that Andydoesn’thave secret homosexual leanings, that he just didn’t want Nick to get arrested, Emily goes on. “But... honestly, that’s not the kind of thing that would surprise me in anybody. And Andy has always adored you,” she adds, as if that makes perfect sense.
It’s definitely time to change the topic. “Now tell me how you’re doing. How’d your family take the news?”
“Other than Jeanne? Awfully. Imagine, they all had their hopes up that I was finally going to do something right, and there I go and blow it all to pieces.”
