The Affairs of Others: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

emptied another bottle, George went off for more. I felt light-headed and, upon hearing there was no more champagne, slumped as gratefully as everyone else for a seat.
    “No toasts without bubbles,” pronounced Josephina.
    “I have seltzer,” George called from the kitchen.
    “Quelle horreur!” cried Darren.
    “Well, then, let’s drink this Sancerre. Give me your glasses.” George poured, Andrew went to put on more music, and Darren lit another joint. He handed it my way first again. The look on his face was querying and sweet. The man had drooled in front of me. This time I thought he was asking for acceptance, that perhaps he had been from the start and I just hadn’t seen it. This time I took it. “I’ve not done this for a long time,” I told the room of them. I had miscalculated the rhythm of things. I hadn’t been to a gathering like this in years, did not know how many lives a party could have.
    Darren leaned over to me and raised his too full glass, spilling some, whispering loudly into my ear, “To the lamb who came to dinner.”
    I inhaled and held on and did so again and again, through the contours of the room rounding and seeming to breathe with us, through the cushioning of the sound, through Nina Simone’s singing she can’t stand it, daddy, over and over, giving us notes sung for minutes that refused to be anything as brief as minutes, through a piece of Schubert’s (a piece from his Impromptus I think I was told twice), that went fast, then slow, loud, then so soft—the piano so restrained, it actually hurt my ribs—and through the smells in the room, of Blake, of Darren’s florid supplies of marijuana, of the cheese back in the oven, and especially of Hope. I don’t know when he arrived; if it was an hour after I became stoned and solidly, inarguably drunk or if it was a quarter of an hour. But there he was. I believe I had heard knocking, but the room had been shuddering with all variety of percussion, with the bass and drums and the piano, with tapping limbs and voices, with so many different tempos beating and competing around us only to dig us in deeper. But I remember another sound that felt quarrelsome, discordant, and insistent. I was irritated by it—it reminded me I’d stayed much too long—but then it passed. I forgot about it, and then, yes, there he was.
    A long, liquid man. Broad-shouldered and thin-hipped. He stood and surveyed all of us, made sure, it seemed then, that we could see him seeing us, each of us. To me, he appeared a terrifying and bitterly handsome giant in an expensive suit, with his hands pushed into his pockets, making his change dance as if he were punishing it. How loud it was, this advertisement of his distance from us or his disapproval or both; but then his eyes were shrouded by his brow in the half-light of that room, and his mouth which may have wished to express something gentle couldn’t through a blanketing of hard-looking stubble over a jaw that was long and edged like a spade. When Hope told us, “This is Les. An old friend of mine, a family friend,” we all made an effort to cross through the moat of our farawayness to greet him—certainly George and Josephina did; George got up and extended his hand but was too late. Already this Les, without need of permission, had lifted a chair from the other side of the room and put it next to Hope. As close to her as he could get. His long arm fell over the back of her chair so that it hung near my head, this man’s strong hand pretending to be lazy. He said, “Well, this is cozy. You’re all launched, huh?”
    “We’ve been having some fun.” Hope wanted to be bright, but the pot, the hour, prevented that. I went to get up, but my legs would not cooperate.
    “I bet. Who has the weed?”
    “I do.” Darren’s voice cracked. He was outdone in derision, in natural attributes, in daring.
    “May I?”
    “There’s just this left.” Darren handed what remained of the joint to Les. Les pulled