yards. Driving home from school, Jacob had seen an actual tumbleweed blow through an intersection. Californians treat the winds as a weather event of grave importance. On Santa Ana days, his colleagues discuss them in knowing, respectful tones, squinting at the horizon like Bedouins crossing the Sahara.Somewhere up north in L.A. County, a brushfire has started, and the evening sky is a hazy orange grey.
The Wheelocks have a posed, formal look on the doorstep, and they don’t lose it as they come inside and go through the greeting routine. Jacob can’t blame them for being uncomfortable; he hasn’t been able to establish a rhythm with either Sandy or Gary, but he is glad Joan has a friend and that the kids get along. Harry leans against Jacob’s leg and Chloe against Gary’s. The children regard each other with serious faces, full of solemnity and apprehension about their impending playtime. Chloe, Jacob fears, is the reason Sandy and Gary are tense around him. According to Joan, Sandy talks a lot about how gifted the child is, and indeed every time Jacob goes next door to pick up Harry or runs into Gary taking out the trash, he is regaled with another overblown story about this little girl he strongly suspects falls within the normal range of intelligence. Jacob has already decided that he can’t be the one to test Chloe next year.
Sandy is carrying a rectangular pan covered in foil, a cake for Joan’s thirtieth birthday. “Double fudge!” she says.
Probably with a lard center, Jacob thinks. Joan’s main complaint about Sandy, reluctantly confided, is that she gets after her to eat more, and now that he’s started paying attention, Jacob has noticed Sandy pushing food on Joan like she’s planning to turn her into foie gras. Gary holds out a bottle of wine by its neck, showing the label. “Thought we’d have a nice little cabernet.”
Jacob leans in to look it over and nods, sure the other man knows his appreciation is feigned. “Joan says you’re a connoisseur.”
Gary waves the word away. “Barely.”
He is tall, an advantage he emphasizes by affecting a slight stoop whenever Jacob speaks, as though otherwise Jacob’s words might not find their way all the way up to the lofty altitude of his ears. He has a small head and a fox’s triangular face and narrow, sly eyes. On weekends and in the evenings he is devoted to his road bike andcycles for hours, crouched head down over the handlebars that curl like rams’ horns, decked out in a stretchy neon green outfit that displays his lean, if borderline stringy, physique. His hair is always side parted and combed in a careful fluffy swoop over his forehead, and he dresses for work as though he were heading off to some trading floor and not the leasing office at the mall, favoring striped suspenders and blue shirts with white collars and cuffs. For Joan’s birthday dinner, he has opted for yachting attire: a white Izod shirt with the collar turned up, chinos, and loafers with no socks. Jacob, in jeans, longs to tease him, but the man is humorless.
Jacob takes the wine. “Birthday girl’s in the kitchen,” he says, leading them down the carpeted hallway that connects the living room with the rest of the house. The Wheelocks’ house is a mirror image to the Bintzes’, and Jacob always feels unnerved in their same-but-different rooms, oddly violated by the sight of another family living in a box the same size and shape as the box that contains his family and their unique life. The children scramble away upstairs to play. Jacob walks slowly so that Sandy and Gary have a chance to admire a wall of enlarged photos of Joan onstage, midleap in a tutu or striking a modern, angular pose in a leotard. He picked them out himself and had them framed. In the only photo Joan chose, she arches backward over Arslan Rusakov’s arm. Rusakov’s face is turned away. Her throat is taut and exposed, and her eyes bore into the lens. Jacob dislikes the photo and the pulse of
The Wheelocks have a posed, formal look on the doorstep, and they don’t lose it as they come inside and go through the greeting routine. Jacob can’t blame them for being uncomfortable; he hasn’t been able to establish a rhythm with either Sandy or Gary, but he is glad Joan has a friend and that the kids get along. Harry leans against Jacob’s leg and Chloe against Gary’s. The children regard each other with serious faces, full of solemnity and apprehension about their impending playtime. Chloe, Jacob fears, is the reason Sandy and Gary are tense around him. According to Joan, Sandy talks a lot about how gifted the child is, and indeed every time Jacob goes next door to pick up Harry or runs into Gary taking out the trash, he is regaled with another overblown story about this little girl he strongly suspects falls within the normal range of intelligence. Jacob has already decided that he can’t be the one to test Chloe next year.
Sandy is carrying a rectangular pan covered in foil, a cake for Joan’s thirtieth birthday. “Double fudge!” she says.
Probably with a lard center, Jacob thinks. Joan’s main complaint about Sandy, reluctantly confided, is that she gets after her to eat more, and now that he’s started paying attention, Jacob has noticed Sandy pushing food on Joan like she’s planning to turn her into foie gras. Gary holds out a bottle of wine by its neck, showing the label. “Thought we’d have a nice little cabernet.”
Jacob leans in to look it over and nods, sure the other man knows his appreciation is feigned. “Joan says you’re a connoisseur.”
Gary waves the word away. “Barely.”
He is tall, an advantage he emphasizes by affecting a slight stoop whenever Jacob speaks, as though otherwise Jacob’s words might not find their way all the way up to the lofty altitude of his ears. He has a small head and a fox’s triangular face and narrow, sly eyes. On weekends and in the evenings he is devoted to his road bike andcycles for hours, crouched head down over the handlebars that curl like rams’ horns, decked out in a stretchy neon green outfit that displays his lean, if borderline stringy, physique. His hair is always side parted and combed in a careful fluffy swoop over his forehead, and he dresses for work as though he were heading off to some trading floor and not the leasing office at the mall, favoring striped suspenders and blue shirts with white collars and cuffs. For Joan’s birthday dinner, he has opted for yachting attire: a white Izod shirt with the collar turned up, chinos, and loafers with no socks. Jacob, in jeans, longs to tease him, but the man is humorless.
Jacob takes the wine. “Birthday girl’s in the kitchen,” he says, leading them down the carpeted hallway that connects the living room with the rest of the house. The Wheelocks’ house is a mirror image to the Bintzes’, and Jacob always feels unnerved in their same-but-different rooms, oddly violated by the sight of another family living in a box the same size and shape as the box that contains his family and their unique life. The children scramble away upstairs to play. Jacob walks slowly so that Sandy and Gary have a chance to admire a wall of enlarged photos of Joan onstage, midleap in a tutu or striking a modern, angular pose in a leotard. He picked them out himself and had them framed. In the only photo Joan chose, she arches backward over Arslan Rusakov’s arm. Rusakov’s face is turned away. Her throat is taut and exposed, and her eyes bore into the lens. Jacob dislikes the photo and the pulse of
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