Laughing together, excited. Both of them, Hannah wished to think, laughing—in delight …

  I’ll do that, then. Call you.

  I … I’m not sure …

  Yes.

  It was settled. Nothing more to say.

  At last: The cocktail hour was ending. Hannah was dazed with exhaustion, the exchange with Y.K. had been so intense, she wanted now to escape the man, and think about him.

  (And where was Wes? Nowhere in sight.)

  (Hannah felt a stab of sheer hatred of him, the husband who cared so little for her.)

  The quintet of Black musicians had been playing jazz classics to which few in the (mostly white) crowd had been listening but playing with much animation and energy ending now with “Take the ‘A’ Train” so fiercely executed it might have been machine-gun fire aimed at the hearts of the oblivious crowd.

  Hannah stared after Y.K. now moving away from her without a backward glance. Had he written down her phone number?—she didn’t think so.

  In an instant, he seemed to have forgotten her.

  In an instant, Hannah’s spirits were dashed.

  As into the sea of men in formal attire, middle-aged and older, women with carefully coiffed hair, in gaily colored cocktail dresses and spike-heeled shoes, uniformed waiters winding their way through the throng with trays lifted above their heads like those heraldic figures on Egyptian tombs—Y.K. had vanished.

  Like chattering geese five hundred guests were moving in the direction of the assigned tables bedecked with fresh-cut flowers and reproductions of classic artworks, not all of which the museum owned. Hannah stared resolutely before her, avoiding people whom she knew, or whom she supposed she might know, keeping near to a wall of the ballroom where she could move unimpeded like one who has been wounded, momentarily stunned.

  He will never call of course.

  I am in no danger—of course …

  The Jarretts had purchased an entire table for themselves and eight guests, at a price of five thousand dollars; the artwork reproduced on the table was a panel of Monet’s Water Lilies.

  A favorite of Hannah’s, she would have said, if asked. One of those pale blue dreamy impressionist paintings so popular with museum visitors.

  Art that gives comfort. Art with no sharp lines, edges; art without shadows; art that doesn’t mirror life but the undulations of life, shimmering color sensations like the most exquisite silk wallpaper.

  Comfort, too, in the opulent ballroom setting: ivory-white walls, filigree of gilt ornamentation, chandeliers of gleaming brass and crystal. From overhead vents a continuous circulation of chill air stirred the hairs on the nape of Hannah’s neck that felt too naked for so public a place.

  Glancing upward, uneasily. As if there was only the ornamental ceiling to shield a view of the vast space beyond.

  Wes was already seated at their table near the dais. Not Table 1 but Table 2, which was a VIP table befitting Hannah Jarrett’s status.

  On the chair beside Wes was his briefcase, surreptitiously opened. Withdrawn from the festivities, Wes was glancing through a folder, making notations with a pen. How like him! At such a time! Hannah felt a pang of annoyance, hurt, her husband was clearly indifferent to the evening that meant so much to her.

  Nor had he been missing Hannah for the past forty minutes or so. Oblivious of Hannah in the company of the man who called himself Y.K.

  Whatever happens, then. It will be deserved.

  Often it happened, Hannah and Wes drifted apart in large social gatherings. Almost, each forgot the other’s existence until the mild shock of (re)discovering each other near the end of the evening: wife, husband.

  Would they be attracted to each other now?—Hannah wondered. Twelve, or was it thirteen years after they’d first met …

  Wes had been so young, so hopeful. That boyish enthusiasm, idealism; just slightly rebellious, determined to make his way without relying upon his father and the Jarretts. And Hannah had felt encouraged by his idealism, that she might, in her own way, free herself of the grip of Joker Daddy.

  Things hadn’t worked out in quite that way. No one’s fault, but—no.

  Aware of Hannah’s approach, Wes quickly slipped the folder into the briefcase, shut the briefcase, set it on the floor beneath his chair. There was an exaggerated alacrity in the movement that irked Hannah: a suggestion that, discovering Wes working in this public place, Hannah would be displeased with him, like a chiding mother.

  With mock gallantry Wes rose to pull out Hannah’s chair beside his, a gesture expected of the husband.

  Hannah ignored his play at irony and laughed, gaily: “Time for dinner, darling.”

  “Is it!”

  “You look as if you’ve been bored.”

  “Bored! Never.”

  But why should she chide him for bringing work to the fundraiser? For sequestering himself in a corner, as if hiding from the crowd? Wes was an adult, he could behave as he wished.

  Hannah saw that her place card was beside Wes’s. That was unfortunate: For Wes’s sake she would have preferred someone else in that chair, with whom he might enjoy speaking more than with Hannah who he saw constantly.

  At such formal dinners Hannah felt the strain of trying to hold her husband’s attention. Wes liked to discuss politics, in the right company he was aggressively genial, argumentative; politics was essentially a joke to him, as to his father; a folly, in the service of business, otherwise of not much usefulness and not to be trusted.

  “You look as if you’ve been having a good time,” Wes said, “meeting your friends, being congratulated.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, Wes. ‘Being congratulated’ …”

  “Oh, come on! You’ve earned it—that glow in the eyes.”

  Hannah smiled, uncertainly. Was Wes teasing her, or was he being sincere? With each year of marriage she was less able to distinguish.

  Wanting to think that possibly she’d misread him, he didn’t resent attending the fundraiser as her husband, after all.

  To make the evening worthwhile for him, Wes had insisted that Hannah extend an invitation to a couple whom Hannah scarcely knew: a prominent General Motors executive and his wife, residents of Bloomfield Hills.

  Harold Rusch was older than Wes by at least twenty-five years. There was an obscure business connection between the men, Hannah supposed; possibly a connection between Rusch and Wes’s father.

  Business interests are a kind of gigantic spiderweb, Hannah had grown to realize. Except the spiderweb isn’t dominated by a single spider but by myriad spiders of differing sizes and statures, each connected closely with the others, though rivals, even enemies; each acutely aware of the others, hoping to exploit them or at least avoid being destroyed and devoured by them. So Wes, a small spider in this web, would hope to establish a connection to Harold Rusch, a much larger spider.

  Hannah smiled at the thought, which felt mutinous to her, a betrayal of her husband. Exactly the thought she might share with him.

  If not her lover, he would be her soul mate. The person to whom she spoke those thoughts aloud, she dared not share with anyone in her actual life.

  How long it would be, the remainder of the evening! He was not observing her now, he’d passed out of her field of vision entirely.

  Wide slow lava river that could not be hurried. For this was the fundraiser: to be endured.

  Each table so lavishly decorated, guests had to peer across the table at one another, barely visible past the ambitious centerpieces.

  Conversations had to be shouted, no one could hear amid the buzz of voices. Hannah tried to engage with Christina Rusch, who was but minimally civil to her as if having forgotten, or having decided not to care, that Hannah and her husband had paid for the Rusches’ tickets for the evening; Hannah felt dismay, hurt, as a child might be hurt, at such a blatant refusal of gratitude.

  Their tickets had cost six hundred dollars each. Hannah hoped that Mrs. Rusch knew that Hannah had paid for these, they had not been complimentary.

  It was childish, to feel this way. Yet, Hannah could not avoid it.

  Only when conversation drifted haphazardly onto the subject of northern Michigan and lakefront properties did Christina Rusch take interest, and began to listen, and participate; for it seemed that she had very happy memories of summers spent at a family lodge on North Fox Lake in the northern peninsula; the “first time, ever” she’d stayed overnight in a cabin in the woods, so close to the lake she could hear water lapping through the night and “mixing in with my dreams …”

  How strange, Hannah thought. An adult woman in her sixties, wife of a multimillionaire, wistful and self-pitying as if such happiness was beyond her now.

  Still a striking woman, Hannah could see, with some envy. No doubt, Christina Rusch’s executive husband had married her primarily for her beauty.

  Or her money. Or: both?

  Curious, how Christina Rusch lapsed into a vexed sort of melancholy when she wasn’t speaking, or the conversation didn’t engage her. As if shadows of dark thoughts rose in her brain when she wasn’t distracted.

  Hannah saw that the older woman was expensively dressed, in clothes Hannah had seen in the designer salon at Neiman Marcus: a dark red velvet sheath dress with elaborate stitching at the bust and a skirt to mid-calf. Her stiff, white-skinned face was neither old nor young, her glossy red-tinted hair might have been a human-hair wig. A great burden seemed to lay upon her thin, unmuscled shoulders, unjustly.

  Canny Hannah waited for a lull in the conversation so that she might address Christina directly, daring to ask about her family, her children, and did she have grandchildren?—favorite topics for women of Christina Rusch’s age who didn’t have careers; but Christina stared coldly at Hannah, saying that they had just one living child, a son, who wasn’t likely to be a husband or a father anytime soon—“Bernard is thirty-two and still ‘searching.’”

  One living child. Cryptic remark!

  Such vehemence in Christina’s words, Hannah supposed they were meant to attract Harold Rusch’s attention as well as to put Hannah in her place; but Harold Rusch was laughing heartily, oblivious of his aggrieved wife.

  Not knowing how to respond yet not wanting to appear to be rebuked, Hannah asked Christina what this son did and was met with the chilly reply: “I’ve just said—Bernard is searching.”

  Now Harold Rusch interrupted: “My wife is being unfair! Or she is uninformed. Bernard is utterly absorbed in his work.”

  “Is he!”—Christina laughed sharply.

  “Not everyone can be an engineer, my dear—not everyone can manufacture ‘motor vehicles.’ Bernard is studying to be a ‘photojournalist.’ He intends to travel the world and photograph ‘trouble spots’—‘famines’—‘droughts’—you’ve seen those photographs in Life, of Nigerian children—refugees … Possibly for the UN.”

  Rusch’s presentation of the problematic son, to the table of strangers, might have been calculated to draw approval, admiration, applause, like the unveiling of a gleaming new-model automobile.

  Rusch was a thick-set man for whom the adjective porcine might have been invented, but his eyes were alert and lively and shone with a sort of aggressive merriment. Hannah had heard rumors that Rusch was a brilliant but pitiless executive at GM who thought nothing of firing entire departments at the corporation and replacing them with handpicked junior men.

  As if there were a tired old quarrel between them which she couldn’t be bothered to take up, Christina ignored her husband.

  Awkwardly, the table fell silent. Then, a bright young man skilled in diplomacy, Wes changed the subject: the latest scandal in Lansing.

  (Lansing, capital of Michigan.)

  Hannah smiled in relief. How clever Wes was!

  No need to listen to what was being said. Politics bored Hannah, but particularly state politics.

  For what is politics but business under wraps: the buying of politicians, whose votes are essential in the ongoing drama of keeping business taxes low, lower. The only uncorrupt politician is one who hasn’t yet been approached, Hannah knew. Or, Hannah had been told: Hannah knew very little firsthand.

  Thinking what a strange ritual such occasions are, lavish fundraisers where well-to-do people are thrown together, seated at impracticably large round tables trying, amid a deafening din, to find something to talk about.

  But really, there is nothing. Is there?

  Nothing that matters.

  Except: Which one are you?

  Except: No “unlisted” numbers!

  He’d been laughing at Hannah. Well, yes—her life …

  Indeed, she knew: Her life was laughable.

  But was life itself—life—laughable? She didn’t want to think so.

  “Ma’am?”—a waiter hovers beside Hannah, holding a silver tray.

  “Thank you, no. Well—yes …”

  Hannah has been pushing food around on her plate. Rapidly cooling food, not at all appetizing. Ironic how after months of preparation, anticipation Hannah feels so little interest in the actual dinner. The menu she and others had debated with the urgency of generals planning a military campaign: seviche with arugula salad, Chilean sea bass or filet mignon, rosemary fondant potatoes, julienne carrots, crème brûlée … So intense had the planning been, so high had feelings run, there’d flared up bitter disagreements, friendships annihilated in an instant. Bitter feuds that would never be forgotten or forgiven.

  One of the women whom Hannah had quite liked, and who’d seemed to like Hannah, had become particularly incensed over the entrée when Hannah had suggested the Chilean sea bass as an alternative to the more standard flank steak; later, they’d clashed over the dessert options …

  Joker Daddy wryly observed: Women fight small because there’s no large for them to fight about.

  A fork slips from Hannah’s fingers and clatters to the floor. A uniformed waiter hurries to retrieve and replace the fork.

  “Sorry! Thank you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Hannah’s eyes are veiled, she does not wish to see if the young waiter is sneering at her.

  He has left the ballroom. Hadn’t cared to stay.

  Why hadn’t he cared to stay? To hear Hannah Jarrett singled out for praise in front of this vast gathering …

  At last, Hannah’s long-awaited moment of glory as the (male, gratingly jocular) master of ceremonies at the dais pronounces her name with exaggerated care—“Han-nah Jar-rett”—and asks her to stand and be recognized. Hannah feels a flurry of acute self-consciousness, a sinking sensation of despair, rises to her feet, head lifted, happy smile, suffused with happiness, basking in the moment, a beautiful woman in black crepe de chine Dior purchased for this occasion. Waves of warm and robust and sincere applause for “Hannah Jarrett” and the several other “fabulous volunteers” who’ve made “such a fantastic success of this year’s March Madness”—in shy-giddy triumph Hannah feels a sea of eyes move upon her, wishing her well, not judging her harshly (as Hannah might judge herself), or as the bemused stranger with the heavy-lidded eyes might judge her, for Hannah has proven herself one of them in the pursuit of a common goal and they are merciful to one of their own.

  And here is Wes Jarrett lifting a glass to salute his wife, smiling broadly as if Goddamn, no matter how silly this all is, he is Hannah’s husband and he is happy for her.

  “Thank you! Thank you—all of you …”

  Abruptly then, the moment is past. The master of ceremonies has moved on, accompanied by laughter at a ribald remark of his which Hannah hasn’t quite heard.

  Hannah is seated again, deflated. Light-headed. Reaching for her wineglass, a solace.

  So disappointed, he hadn’t stayed to applaud her with the others. So that he could see who she is, and not just whose wife she is. And how valued she is, locally at least, among this elite audience.

  I am a good person, I sacrifice for others, I deserve happiness.

  Fever

  That night, and nights (and days) to follow, the fever took hold.

  Staring sightless bright and blind in the dark trying to recall the color of his eyes, very dark, shiny dark, Mediterranean dark. Reptilian coldness that made her shudder even as she drew irresistibly near.

  Hearing again her name in his voice—“Han-nah.”

  Not the man’s words but the intonation of his voice. There came a deep sexual yearning, distressful to Hannah.

  After years of marriage, after two pregnancies, childbirth, the strain and distraction of young children, she’d somewhat lost that yearning, which returned to her only occasionally, unpredictably.

  In bed with Wes, often very tired by bedtime, as Wes, too, was tired, and likely to be distracted … Making love had come to seem a preoccupation of younger selves who hadn’t the responsibility that they had now.

  Superficial selves, childless. What had they known of the consequences of sex!—in the throes of labor Hannah had recalled the heedlessness of her younger self, that had seemed to her unbelievable then.

  Nothing like agony to annihilate even the memory of pleasure.

  Hannah had never been a sexual being—not by nature. It was affection she craved, from any source—male, female. A sexual partner, a friend. For affection seemed to Hannah less injurious, if it went wrong.

  Essentially, she didn’t want to feel—not strongly. That a man might enter her body physically was repugnant to her, if she gave it much thought; that he might transform her by this act, and provoke her to feel powerfully, left her weakened, vulnerable.

  Sexual sensation lingered longer in the woman than in the man, Hannah supposed, binding her close to the man, a leash around her throat. You begin in detachment, coolness. Then, the flame is struck, you are in thrall to the man. This is weakness, contemptible.

  No more contemptible word: needy.

  Recalling her father plucking her mother’s fingers from his arm, a gesture of supreme contempt as he’d walked away from her, indifferent, bored.

  In Hannah’s mother, fading and frightened beauty. Love, devotion, fidelity to the husband, always defending the man against their children when there was opposition between them—Hannah had come to pity her weak, vain, flailing, needy mother, yet also to fear her mother’s example.