But still saying very little as Hannah tells Christina that she’d wanted to ask her more about the lake in northern Michigan where her family has a lodge, Hannah and her husband are planning to purchase a summer place in northern Michigan also …

  With chilling equanimity the older woman allows Hannah to speak at length, not encouraging her with the sort of social cues (small smiles, nods of the head) to which Hannah is accustomed in such circumstances; uneasily, Hannah is reminded of her own mother, indeed of her mother-in-law. Is Hannah being rebuffed, snubbed—again? But stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the other’s coolness even as Christina shakes her head curtly no, she can’t offer advice, she knows very little about “real estate” in northern Michigan, or anywhere. (The words “real estate” are given a quaint intonation, as if they are slang.) Her family—“Not Harold’s family: mine”—has owned property on North Fox Lake for more than one hundred years, they haven’t purchased anything in decades, and in any case North Fox Lake is “all built-up”—the entire lakefront is privately owned, no open land remains and no properties come on the “market”—they are likely to pass down through families, generation after generation.

  “Oh. I see.” Hannah smiles, foolishly. “I guess I—should have known.”

  Why do you dislike me! I am trying so hard, have pity on me.

  Christina has been glancing about, distracted. Hannah sees a vehicle approaching through the parking lot.

  Of course, Christina Rusch hasn’t driven herself to the mall. She must have a driver, a chauffeur.

  Relenting slightly, as if she does pity Hannah, or feels an actual surge of sympathy for her, Christina says, “There are plenty of northern Michigan properties, I’m sure. You might try a good realtor.”

  This most banal of remarks Hannah is grateful for, like pennies flung to a street urchin.

  For a moment it seems as if Christina might recommend a good realtor, but no, Christina can’t supply a name.

  Approaching at a speed too high for the mall roadway, the silver-gray Cadillac de Ville brakes to a jolting stop at the curb. Impertinently the driver taps the horn as if Christina can’t be trusted to have seen for herself that her car has arrived.

  Strange behavior for a chauffeur, Hannah thinks. If that’s what the driver is.

  Without staring at him, Hannah sees that he is a (white) man in his mid-thirties, wearing a coat with oddly wide shoulders that resembles a uniform, but evidently is not a uniform; a visored cap is pulled low over his forehead. But he is slouch-shouldered, sulky; his face is oblong, partly obscured by dark glasses and a drooping, outsized mustache in need of trimming.

  Beneath the coat, Hannah sees, is a black T-shirt with a stretched neck. The visored cap is a Detroit Lions cap.

  Certainly not a chauffeur, for this negligent person doesn’t climb out of the car to open a rear door for Mrs. Rusch, or to take her packages from her; instead, Christina prepares to sit in the passenger seat in the front, struggling with the packages until Hannah steps forward to assist her.

  “Oh, thank you …”

  The driver glares at Hannah, as at an interloper. He isn’t grateful that Hannah has helped Christina but seems to be frankly annoyed by her.

  The (unmarried) son, Hannah thinks. What’s the name?—Bernard.

  Hannah can see why such a churlish person, no longer young, in no way attractive, might be a topic of troubled conversation between his parents.

  Christina is embarrassed, her face flushes with chagrin. She has no inclination to introduce Hannah to the glowering man beside her.

  “Well—thank you! Please say hello to your husband for me …”

  Hannah smiles brightly: “Please say hello to your husband for me.”

  Christina has forgotten Wes’s name, very likely she has forgotten Hannah’s name. But Hannah is determined not to feel slighted.

  Hannah stands on the walkway watching the elegant automobile pull away from the curb, jerking forward. The driver seems determined to annoy his passenger, as an adolescent son might annoy a parent, accelerating the vehicle so that he is forced to brake again at the first crosswalk.

  Hannah watches, considering. How does a mother live with such a hostile adult son! Beneath Christina Rusch’s chilly reserve there must be (surely) a lacerated heart.

  Bernard looked much older than thirty-two yet exuded an air of decayed adolescence, and the insolence of adolescence: an adult son with no evident income of his own. In the hire of his mother, as a chauffeur. A misfit, a disappointment.

  And the Rusches are millionaires, many times over.

  What has gone wrong?—Hannah wonders.

  “Today in Neiman Marcus I met Christina Rusch,” Hannah tells Wes at dinner that evening, “we shopped together for a while, and had a very interesting conversation.”

  Wes seems only mildly interested. He’d arrived home late, he is very hungry and is already on his second glass of wine.

  “She’s such a lovely woman,” Hannah says. “She asked to be remembered to you.”

  “Did she!”—Wes smiles faintly.

  Hannah is baffled: What is wrong? Wes had been so eager for a social connection with Harold Rusch, she’d thought. It had been Wes’s suggestion to invite the Rusches, whom Hannah scarcely knew, as their guests to the fundraiser.

  Something must have gone wrong between the men. Or possibly, nothing had happened, to Wes’s disappointment.

  Hannah persists telling Wes about her encounter with Christina Rusch. How oddly it ended: “A driver came to pick Christina up, I’d assumed he was a chauffeur at first but he turned out to be, I think, the Rusches’ son Bernard.” Though not encouraged by Wes, who isn’t looking at her but at the food on his plate, Hannah says that Christina tried to introduce him but it was very awkward—“He isn’t at all social. I wonder if he’s—is it ‘autistic’? Not ‘artistic’—‘autistic.’ Though he’s supposed to be a photographer, I think. He just glared at me, he didn’t say a word. It was so strange, uncomfortable—he and Christina barely acknowledged each other as if they’d been quarreling and didn’t want to start in again.”

  Still Wes isn’t very interested. His expression is neutral, stiff. Even the topic of the hostile Rusch son has failed to intrigue him.

  “I suppose they’d hoped their son would come to work at GM. Or work at something. People say that Christina is cold and distant but I haven’t found her that way at all, she’s very friendly. But she’s very private. A private person. Before the car came to pick her up she said she hoped the four of us might get together soon. You know what would be wonderful?—if they invited us to visit them in northern Michigan this summer at North Fox Lake.”

  “Really!”—Wes shrugs, scarcely listening.

  Yes, something has gone wrong. Whatever connection Wes had hoped to establish with GM top executive Harold Rusch has come to nothing, presumably.

  As much in life comes to nothing, and is not likely to be acknowledged.

  You fawned on Harold, I’ve fawned on Christina. At least show some interest in what I am saying.

  It’s a frequent disappointment in the marriage: Hannah hopes to impress her husband with a bit of news, a glance into her fascinating daily life apart from him, her casual mingling with Bloomfield Hills wealth, but Wes fails to be intrigued.

  “He was strange, not very courteous. He has the sort of mustache you want to rip off, it looks so fake—dyed …”

  “Who?”—Wes glances up from his plate, annoyed.

  “The son. Bernard Rusch.”

  “Why the hell are we talking about him, Hannah? Why would you think that I have the slightest interest in someone’s son whom I have never met, and never will?”

  Hannah is confounded. She asks Wes why he’d insisted that she offer two six-hundred-dollar tickets to the Rusches for the art museum gala if he’s so little interested in them and Wes responds coldly that he hadn’t asked her, inviting the Rusches had been her idea entirely.

  “My idea?” Hannah is stunned, this is so unexpected. “I—I don’t even know them …”

  “Well—I don’t know them, either.”

  Hannah stares at Wes to see if he is joking. He is not.

  • • •

  Realizing, later: She’d seen Bernard Rusch before that day.

  The sulky peevish face, glaring eyes behind tinted lenses, aviator sunglasses, drooping mustache … grimy baseball cap pulled low on his forehead.

  Sallow skin, complexion like sandpaper. A weak chin. But what hatred directed toward her …

  Not in Far Hills but in Detroit she’d seen him, this person, in the hotel corridor outside Y.K.’s suite: a stranger of no distinctive age but probably in his mid-thirties; stepping out of the elevator some distance away, turning in Hannah’s direction and walking with quick strides as if he knew his destination, which room he was headed for; but then, seeing Hannah, and seeing the number of the room, he continued past Hannah even as, not entirely aware of him, Hannah stepped back, and collided with him.

  Excuse me, ma’am!—he’d hissed at her.

  Under his breath—Stupid cunt.

  Remembering now. How quickly she’d forgotten him. Tried to forget.

  Excised the memory until that afternoon. Abruptly then, in the Cadillac pulling up to the curb. Had to be the Rusches’ adult son.

  Why such animosity between son and mother!—Hannah wonders.

  No: the son’s animosity, directed toward the mother …

  That angry stare, ice-pick eyes inside the tinted lenses. Contempt, revulsion. He’d glared at Hannah in the hotel corridor, as he’d glared at Hannah in the rearview mirror of the Cadillac when she’d set Christina’s packages carefully onto the backseat.

  Hannah had quite liked it, helping Christina Rusch into the car, taking packages from her. As if they were friends, intimates. As if, for all the hostile son knew, they’d been shopping together at Neiman Marcus.

  Ignored the hostility in the man’s gaze. That in other circumstances would have alerted her to the possibility of bodily harm.

  A man who loathes women.

  A man who could eviscerate a woman.

  If a rat were becoming a man …

  No reason for him to look at Hannah with such hatred, a stranger to him: misogyny.

  Uneasily Hannah wonders if he’d recognized her, in his mother’s company.

  If, not knowing Hannah’s name, he recalled her from weeks ago in the Renaissance Grand Hotel. A woman poised to knock on the door of Y.K.’s suite.

  But what was Y.K. to him?—it seemed hardly possible to Hannah, the crude ungainly Rusch son would be acquainted with Y.K.

  Of course, Rusch is the son of wealthy parents. And Y.K. is a “businessman”—of some sort.

  Hannah lies awake for the remainder of the night, thinking.

  Tormented as by swarming red ants: Can there be any connection between Y.K. and Bernard Rusch?—for (possibly) (surely) Rusch had been headed for Y.K.’s suite until he saw Hannah preparing to knock; he’d seen, he’d decided to keep on walking, walking fast, exiting at the end of the corridor.

  Had he taken the stairs down to the sixtieth floor, and then the elevator down to the foyer … He’d been aware of her, but she hadn’t been aware of him.

  She’d forgotten him entirely at the time. As women forget men who’ve spoken obscenely to them, if they are otherwise unknown to them.

  Hanging from the doorknob—do not disturb.

  But Hannah had summoned her courage to knock at the door. And the door was opened.

  Rehearsal

  So long she has rehearsed the cool, curt reply No.

  Cool, curt No. I’m afraid I can’t.

  Hanging up on him. As he is speaking.

  Just—hang up the receiver.

  Sorry, no.

  No more.

  Asks Herself: Why?

  Kitchen phone rings, Hannah answers trembling, not a good sign, standing very still pressing the receiver against her ear speechless, scarcely able to hear his words through the roaring of blood in her ears.

  But his voice, she recognizes.

  Giving her instructions: place, date, time.

  No explanation, no apology, as if they’d spoken just the other day, he’s in good spirits, his voice is deeper than Hannah recalls, he’s amused by her, he’s laughing at her, he’s delighted by her, the faint quavering girl’s voice—

  No. Cannot.

  Telling her Darling yes you can.

  Fumbles hanging up the beige plastic receiver, it slips off the hook, dangles at the end of the rubber cord like a writhing creature.

  Never Look Back to See Where a Smile Has Gone

  Parks her car at the Far Hills Marriott, North Telegraph Avenue, 11:50 A.M., May 9, 1977.

  Hands the keys to a parking attendant who hands her a ticket in return, scarcely notices the uniformed attendant, tall, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned smiling Good mornin’, ma’am! as she would scarcely notice a robot attendant in his place, though polite, unfailingly polite, simulating a radiant smile—Yes! Good morning to you, too.

  Slips the ticket into the Prada handbag, of course it will be “lost” in the bag’s clutter.

  The uniformed attendant who parks Hannah’s car before lunch is the identical attendant who will return the car to Hannah after lunch.

  Pure chance this individual happens to be Zekiel Jones—in news accounts to be identified as “Zekiel Jones, 31.”

  On this day Hannah is attending a noon luncheon meeting of the Far Hills Historical Society at the Marriott. And this, too, purely chance.

  The Far Hills Historical Society is smaller and less prestigious than the Friends of the Detroit Institute of Arts, still it’s an honor to be invited to cochair the society’s annual fundraiser. Hannah Jarrett was eager to volunteer months ago; now, not so eager, polite but distracted, indeed very distracted thinking of him.

  She hates him, she is fearful of him.

  Fearful she will sabotage her marriage, and why?—for him.

  Other men bore her, might as well concede. She is transfixed by him.

  One glass of prosecco at lunch, scarcely finished.

  So little alcohol in prosecco, hardly considered a drink.

  Men (like Wes) laugh at prosecco. Christ! Not for me.

  Telling herself No. Through the meeting in a private room at which Hannah picks at a crab salad plate, sips prosecco, possibly she’d ordered a second glass, certainly didn’t finish the second glass if she had.

  Christ no. Jesus!

  Nine women at the meeting, including Hannah, earnest talkers, how seriously they take themselves, Hannah feels a vise tightening around her head, so passionately the women are discussing the menu for the September fundraiser—beef, seafood, fish …

  Hannah is listening. Hannah is engaged. Yes, yes—all the suggestions are good.

  Salmon, halibut, sea bass—all good.

  Must be a fact of great gravity, that some husbands hate fish, some husbands will only eat steak, wisest to offer both, plus the (inevitable) vegetable platter …

  Wanting to scream, she is so, so bored.

  Without him in her life, so utterly bored.

  One o’clock, and now one-fifteen: amazing to Hannah that she hasn’t (yet) made her decision. Anxious, jittery, excited clammy-cold hands trembling. Will this woman turn left out of the Marriott driveway (in the direction of the interstate entrance at Maple Road) or will she turn right onto Telegraph (returning to the Village of Far Hills) like the good little wifey. Dry cleaner for the husband’s suit, Village Cobbler for the husband’s (resoled) shoes.

  Stops at the pharmacy, grocery store. Always errands, a pleasure in errands, suburban errands like saying the beads of the rosary for the good little wifey.

  Of course, Hannah will turn right. Not for a moment has she seriously considered turning left.

  Yet: She is meticulously, beautifully groomed for this luncheon attended solely by women. She is elegantly dressed, there is calculation in the day’s clothing, earrings, jewelry, a discreet touch of that old classic Chanel No. 5 …

  The time he has told her is three that afternoon.

  This time when, as he has promised, he will be free.

  A curious usage: free. As if, just minutes before, he will have been bound.

  Three o’clock is several hours later than the first time. But the room, the suite, is identical: 6183.

  He has informed her beforehand of the number. No need to embarrass herself picking up a message from the concierge, like the last time.

  Crudely scrawled message he couldn’t be bothered to have secured in a sealed envelope …

  Futile to wonder why, if he always stays in the same suite at the hotel, he’d left the message for Hannah with the concierge; why he couldn’t simply have told Hannah the suite number when he called her …

  He uses different rooms. Different purposes.

  But no need to contemplate why. How is more urgent.

  Considering: Should she, should she not. Like pulling the trigger of a revolver in which there’s just one bullet—“Russian roulette.”

  He won’t actually know if Hannah is coming, smug bastard is due for a surprise.

  DO NOT DISTURB. Taunting sign on his door, he’d (maybe) not intended.

  He’d intended. Certainly.

  “And what do you think, Hannah?”

  Hannah stares. No idea what she has been asked.

  “Crème brûlée, poached pear, cheesecake, cherries jubilee …”

  Hannah stammers an answer that seems to placate the other women. Face is so suffused with blood, heart so erratically pumping, she understands that a decision must have been made for her without her knowledge.

  “Well, we’ve certainly accomplished a lot today!”

  “We have.”

  After the luncheon Hannah doesn’t linger to chat warmly with the others as she usually does. Hoping, always hoping, that one of the women will suggest to her an evening with their husbands, at the Bloomfield Country Club perhaps, or, better yet, at the woman’s home; if not already a friend, there will be an exchange of telephone numbers, the heady pleasure of adding a new name to Hannah’s address book.