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Between movies, after midnight, they drank whiskey on the living-room sofa, and in a voice that even for her was unusually squeaky Robin asked permission to ask Denise a personal question. "How often, in, like, a week," she said, "did you and Emile fool around?"
"I'm not the person to ask about what's normal," Denise answered. "I've mainly seen normal in the rearview mirror."
"I know. I know." Robin stared intensely at the blue TV screen. "But, what did you think was normal?"
"I guess, at the time, I had the sense," Denise said, telling herself large number, say a large number, "that maybe three times a week might be normal."
Robin sighed loudly. A square inch or two of her left knee rested against Denise's right knee. "Just tell me what you think is normal," she said.
"I think for some people, once a day feels right."
Robin spoke in a voice like an ice cube compressed between molars. "I might like that. That doesn't sound bad to me."
A numbing and prickling and burning broke out on the engaged portion of Denise's knee.
"I take it that's not how things are."
"Like twice a MONTH," Robin said through her teeth. "Twice a MONTH."
When the movie ended they watched TV, and then they were silent for an impossibly long time, five minutes or a year, and still Robin didn't take the warm, five-fingered bait. Denise would have welcomed some pushy male sexuality right around now. In hindsight, the week and a half she'd waited before Brian grabbed her had passed like a heartbeat.
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And part of Denise was thinking, as the tea went cold: Shit, she's really into me now. This part of her considered, as if it were an actual threat of harm, the exhausting circumstance: She wants sex every day. This same part of her was thinking also: My God, the way she eats. And: I am not a "lesbian."
At the same time, another part of her was literally awash in desire. She'd never seen so objectively what an illness sex was, what a collection of bodily symptoms, because she'd never been remotely as sick as Robin made her.
"Why is nobody ordering country ribs?" Denise asked Rob Zito. "Why are the waiters not pushing my phenomenally delicious and unusual country ribs?"
"Americans don't like sauerkraut," Zito said.
"The hell they don't. I've seen my reflection in the plates coming back when people order it. I've counted my eyelashes."
"It's possible we get some German nationals in here," Zito said. "German passport-holders may be responsible for those clean plates."
"Is it possible you don't like sauerkraut yourself?"
"It's an interesting food," Zito said.
Expensive people of a sort formerly scarce in Philadelphia were three-deep at the bar when Brian came by with a dozen roses. He hugged Denise and she lingered in his arms. She gave him a little bit of what men liked.
"We need more tables," she said. "Three fours and a six at a minimum. We need a full-time reservationist who knows how to screen. We need better parking-lot security. We need a pastry chef with more imagination and less attitude. Also think about replacing Rob with somebody from New York who can handle the kind of customer profile we're going to get."
Brian was surprised. "You want to do that to Rob?"
"He wouldn't push my ribs and sauerkraut," Denise said. "The Times liked my ribs and sauerkraut. I say fuck him if he can't do the job."
The hardness in her voice brought a glow to Brian's eyes. He seemed to like her like this.
it'sa silly fantasy maybe but i really like the implied shrewdness and know-how in this. as if she was ready for this all along
She sat on a southbound train while rain-glazed local platforms flashed by at intercity speed. Her father at the lunch table had looked insane. And if he was losing his mind, it was possible that Enid had not been exaggerating her difficulties with him, possible that Alfred really was a mess who pulled himself together for his children, possible that Enid wasn't entirely the embarrassing nag and pestilence that Denise for twenty years had made her out to be, possible that Alfred's problems went deeper than having the wrong wife, possible that Enid's problems did not go much deeper than having the wrong husband, possible that Denise was more like Enid than she had ever dreamed. She listened to the pa-thum-pa-thum-pa-thump of wheels on track and watched the October sky darken. There might have been hope for her if she could have stayed on the train, but it was a short ride to Philly, and then she was back at work and had no time to think about anything until she went to the Axon road show with Gary and surprised herself by defending not only Alfred but Enid as well in the arguments that followed.
Whenever she was with Brian she would pine for Robin's body and sincerity and good works and be repelled by Brian's smug coolness, and whenever she was with Robin she would pine for Brian's good taste and like-mindedness and wish that Robin would notice how sensational she looked in black cashmere.
• time-shares in ministerial beachside villas at Palanga!
• pro rata mineral rights and logging rights to all national parklands!
• appointment of selected local magistrates and judges!
• blanket 24-hour-a-day parking privileges in perpetuity in the Old City of Vilnius!
• fifty-percent discount on selected rentals of Lithuanian national troops and armaments on a signup basis, except during wartime!
• no-hassle adoptions of Lithuanian girl babies!
• discretionary immunity from left-turn-on-red prohibitions!
• inclusion of the investor's likeness on commemorative stamps, collector's-item coins, microbrewery beer labels, bas-relief chocolate- covered Lithuanian cookies, Heroic Leader trading cards, printed wrapping tissue for holiday Clementines, etc.!
• honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Vilnius University, founded in 1578!
• "no-questions-asked" access to wiretaps and other state-security apparatus!
• the legally enforceable right, whilst on Lithuanian soil, to such titles and honorifics as "Your Lordship" and "Your Ladyship" and "Your Grace," with non-use by service personnel punishable by public flogging and up to sixty days in jail!
• last-minute "bumping" privileges for train and plane seats, reserved-seating cultural events, and table reservations at participating five-star restaurants and nightclubs!
• "top-of-the-list" priority for liver, heart, and cornea transplants at Vilnius's famed Antakalnis Hospital!
• no-limit hunting and fishing licenses, plus off-season privileges in national game reserves!
• your name in block letters on the side of large boats!
• etc., etc.!
god
Chip was struck by the broad similarities between black-market Lithuania and free-market America. In both countries, wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few; any meaningful distinction between private and public sectors had disappeared; captains of commerce lived in a ceaseless anxiety that drove them to expand their empires ruthlessly; ordinary citizens lived in ceaseless fear of being fired and ceaseless confusion about which powerful private interest owned which formerly public institution on any given day; and the economy was fueled largely by the elite's insatiable demand for luxury. (In Vilnius, by November of that dismal autumn, five criminal oligarchs were responsible for employing thousands of carpenters, bricklayers, craftsmen, cooks, prostitutes, barkeeps, auto mechanics, and bodyguards.) The main difference between America and Lithuania, as far as Chip could see, was that inAmerica the wealthy few subdued the unwealthy many by means of mind-numbing and soul-killing entertainments and gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, whereas in Lithuania the powerful few subdued the unpowerful many by threatening violence.
The Lithuanian with the most guns was an ethnic Russian named Victor Lichenkev, who had parlayed the cash liquidity of his heroin and Ecstasy near-monopoly into absolute control of the Bank of Lithuania after the bank's previous owner, FrendLeeTrust of Atlanta, had catastrophically misjudged consumer appetite for its Dilbert MasterCards. [...]
god this is funny