brass ring, was unspeakable. If Constantine and his partner were ruthless in the economies they applied to the houses they built, they were, at least, similarly severe about their own professional comforts. Their offices, on the third floor of a vaguely Tudor-style commercial building, were sheathed in Masonite paneling and furnished, haphazardly, with imitation-wood desks and green Leatherette chairs. Mary disliked entering the office at all. Its cheapness made her uneasy, and on the rare occasions when she was forced to go there she felt for some time afterward edgy and insecure, as if she'd caught a glimpse of termites browsing the foundations of her house.
Still, the contract was needed, and so she went to the office just before ten on a scorching morning, dressed in a beige linen skirt and an eggshell-colored silk blouse. She found Constantine at his. desk, looking so hectic and overworked, so much like the living embodiment of those conditions, she suspected that upon hearing the outer door opening he had picked up the phone, lit all three hold buttons, and begun scribbling nonsense words on a yellow legal tablet. She thought it might be a public-relations gesture, a protocol designed to seduce creditors and investors alike, and as soon as he saw her he'd relax, hang up the telephone, sit back in the big wheeled chair that produced a harsh, serrated sound whenever it moved over the clear plastic panel Constantine kept on the floor behind his desk to protect the carpet.
But he kept talking. “—I said a low estimate, if that's your idea of a fucking low estimate, Jimmy, I don't know what to tell you—” He waved at her, a chopping gesture at once welcoming and dismissive. He pointed to the right-hand corner of his desk, where she laid the contract. He mouthed the words Thank you, and continued talking into the receiver.
“—I want you to get a good price, is what I want, you want me to tell you what a good price is, I'll tell you, a good price is—”
Mary turned to go, anxious to return to the relative hush and clean, cushioned surfaces of her own life. She came flat up against Nick Kazanzakis's secretary, what was her name, the fat girl she'd met at the Christmas party two years ago.
“Oh,” Mary said, and smiled. “Hello. How are you?”
What was her name? Martha, Margaret. No, something foreign.
The girl stood staring at Mary with an expression so empty, so dumbly astonished, that Mary suspected she must be feebleminded. She had something of that look, fat and small-headed, with blondish no-color hair pulled tightly into a little blond fist at the top of her head. Mary's first impulse was to speak slowly and distinctly, as she would to a child. She might have said something like, I'm Mrs. Stassos, what a pretty dress you're wearing.
“Hello,” the girl said, in a voice harsh and accented but not in any way simple. Mary saw her face fill with expression just as a colored glass fills with clear liquid. Under her makeup the girl's face became petulant and triumphant, as if she alone knew of some past transgression of Mary's, an ancient sin Mary had thought was safely buried away.
“We've met, I think,” Mary said. “I'm Mary Stassos.”
“Magda Bolchik,” the girl said. She continued looking at Mary with a victorious hatred so naked it seemed to emanate from her in waves, like heat rising from asphalt.
“The Christmas party, I believe,” Mary said. “I'm on my way out, I just dropped off some papers.”
“Yeah, the Christmas party,” Magda said.
“Yes. Well, it was nice seeing you again.” Mary stepped around the girl, went to the door, and she might have left with no more than a puzzled feeling, a sour sense of unrest, but she turned and saw it. She saw that the girl had stepped quickly around Constantine's desk and that she stood there with her hand on his shoulder. She saw Constantine brush the girl's hand away and she saw him look up at her, at Mary, with panic in his eyes, even as he continued talking about the proper price to pay for lathwork.
This was the girl.
Mary lost herself; she lost her own inner convictions of cause and effect. She'd known Constantine was having an affair but the girl she'd imagined was so different, so superior to this one, that the very laws of physics seemed to have been violated. If this plain, overweight girl could be sleeping with her husband—could be her