“Shares?”
“Of course.”
We took another turn of the gardens. The young man was watching us. I handed Peter the fag. He inhaled and then made a face. “I think we should get very drunk together.”
“Really, Peter?”
“Oh absolutely. Don’t you think so?” There was a note in his voice. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was need. And I suppose I heard in it another kind of offer, one I wanted to grab with both hands: Get wasted with me, get happy with me, like old times … So I replied quickly that of course I thought we should. Even though I’d already had more than enough, even though there are compelling reasons why I shouldn’t drink at all.
* * *
When he was a child, Peter’s parents told him there was an angel writing down everything he did in a book. There were two columns, one for the good things and one for the bad things. When I first knew him, when I was the rough kid with a kitchen-scissors haircut, hunched over my free school dinner, knife and fork clutched in my fists, there was a sort of physical stutter to Peter, like he couldn’t ever trust an instinct, not even to get out of the way of a ball hurled at his face, without checking in first with his angel. I don’t know if that was what marked him out. I would have been the more obvious target—no dad, jumble-sale clothes, mum off her hinges—but then my teeth and claws were sharper.
Back inside we fetched drinks and went to stand in a corner with a good view of the crowd. I watched Peter as his eyes moved over the guests and wondered if the angel was still there, invisibly keeping track of accounts. I showed Peter the keycard to my room.
“Why not a taxi?”
“Treating myself.” I had also thought that if the evening went well, Peter might stay too. I had imagined us lying on the bed in hotel robes watching clips from YouTube on the flat screen. On the website it said that a chef was available around the clock and that special requests were catered for, and I’d coveted the idea of us lying there giggling and ordering up strange creations from room service.
“Work must be going well.”
I shrugged. “Yours?”
Peter nodded and then looked away. I was not quite sure what Peter did. His degree had been in law. Now, his job was something to do with navigating the intricacies of international tax legalities for a series of companies I’d never heard of. It involved a lot of travel, and he was paid a lot of money, that was all I knew. My own job, compliance officer for an investment fund, drew similar reactions. People asked. I told them. After a few seconds their eyes glazed over, and the next time we met, they would ask again. Of course, after he went missing, I regretted not pressing him, accepting the averted gaze as a sign of boredom rather than evasion.
Peter fetched more drinks.
“Shots, Peter?”
“Shots and champagne.”
“Well that’s all right then.” I thought again of the room upstairs, the gorgeous, very expensive room only a few doors down from where Wilde and Bosie had enjoyed their trysts. My nightie was laid out on top of the covers. Next to the bed, there was a glass of water. In the bathroom, I had lined up the comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, makeup remover, eye makeup remover, cleanser, toner, moisturizer, eye cream, and hand cream. Small tasks performed for the benefit of my future self. It was a law I had come to live by: Thou Shalt Not Lay Mines for Thy Future Self! Thou Shalt Not Create Great Piles of Shit for Her to Shovel! But then sometimes it left me feeling like a butler to a cold and demanding stranger: the pension contributions, the long hours at work, the time put in at the gym, the eternal vigilance. Because what about me? What about the me now?
“You’ll make sure everything ends well?”
“Didn’t I always look after you?” Peter said.
I wanted to answer that it had been the other way around. Instead I said cheers because I couldn’t think of a better toast—absent friends was out of the question—and Peter said cheers too, and we drank the shots, and then the champagne, and then we drank lots more.
* * *
But I do remember. Most of it. We circulated and looked at all the money. Was that so-and-so? Hadn’t that old lady once dated Mick Jagger? In the Manhattan Room we discovered that it didn’t matter how much money was spent on a wedding, the music could still be wrong. After a couple more drinks, we danced anyway and I thought how the dress I was wearing had been worth all the money and the swimming disgust paying for it had made me feel.
In the atrium, we watched a wicked-looking old gent try his luck with a pair of fifty-somethings. They were far enough away that we couldn’t hear them, so I voiced the old chap and Peter the ladies.
“You’re both as lithe as eels.”
“Octavia and I have very strict rules when it comes to three-ways.”
I remember needing to pee but not wanting to go because Peter’s eyes were suddenly gentle and unguarded, and then really having to pee, dashing to the ladies’, whacking on some lipstick, and then quick to get more drinks, because I didn’t want to lose it, that lovely cloak of gaiety and wildness and freedom, with its concealed lining of panic.
The young smoker was waiting at the bar. He looked like an advert for a very expensive, morally dubious product.
“How old are you?” The words slipped out of my mouth. He leaned in to whisper an answer. “As old as all that?”
When his bridesmaid showed up, I slid off the stool and laughed at how regretful he looked.
We kept circulating, Peter and I, drinks in hand, floating down green marbled corridors, descending carpeted stairways where there were giant vases and tiny couches for passersby to swoon upon, overcome by the weight of their vast fortunes. So I swooned, falling like a leaf and landing to show the maximum of chest and leg.
“Fucking socialist death duties, Darling! I’m going to have to sell Granny’s island.”
“But Kirrin’s been in the family since William the Conqueror, Bunty!”
I laughed harder than the joke deserved and glanced in the mirror, at my stockinged legs and lipsticked smile, at Peter’s tie undone just so. The self-assured handsome man, the black-haired laughing lady reclining in her midnight blue silk dress. Look how well we were doing in our adult disguises! The children we had been—a boyish girl, a girlish boy—no more than tiny points of light under the skin.
* * *
Oliver, patrician as ever, came over to say hello. His bride was waving to him from the other side of the ballroom, and Oliver waved back, beaming, as though he hadn’t seen her in years. I complimented him on his speech. It had been rather good. He’d started off by saying something provocative, about getting married in an age when two-thirds of marriages ended in divorce. Then it had been witty. He’d got some laughs talking about how sweet Aria was, how trusting and kind and determined to see the best in people, which meant that if they ever divorced, he could take her to the cleaners. Finally, he’d arrived at sincerity: He couldn’t imagine not being with her, but if anyone was going to break his heart and ruin him and leave him a shell of a human being, he wanted it to be Aria, because she was worth it. His voice got a little thick toward the end and my eyes had pricked with tears, and I found myself thinking that Oliver would be all right now, that Oliver would be safe, as though marriage was, despite all evidence to the contrary, a sheltered harbor, an Ithaca beyond war and monsters and the wrecking storms.