Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty Page 0,135

that?” said Lars.

“Oh, it’s just you’re so good-looking. I was briefly in love with a handsome man in my youth and it was awful, and you’re just …” she gestured at him, “… ridiculous.”

“That’s kind of offensive,” said Lars. There was a lot of prejudice against people who looked like him. People had no idea.

“Yeah, yeah, get over it,” said Frances. “So … no kids?”

“No kids,” said Lars. “Ray wants children. I don’t.”

“I never wanted children either,” said Frances.

Lars thought of Ray’s mother at Ray’s thirty-fifth birthday last month. As usual she’d had “one too many glasses of champagne,” which meant she’d had two glasses. “Can’t you let him have one baby, Lars? Just one itsy-bitsy baby? You wouldn’t have to lift a finger, I promise.”

“Did your psychedelic therapy give you any special insights into your life?” asked Frances. “Masha would probably like it if I mentioned that.”

Lars thought about last night. Some parts had been spectacular. At one point, he realized he could see the music coming through his headphones in waves of iridescent color. He and Masha had talked, but he didn’t think there had been any particular insights. He’d told her at length about the color of the music and he felt like she might have gotten bored, which he’d found insulting because he’d been speaking very eloquently and poetically.

He didn’t think he’d told Masha about the little boy who kept appearing in his hallucinations last night. She would have liked that.

He knew that the dark-haired, dirty-faced kid who kept grabbing Lars’s hand was there to remind Lars of something significant and traumatic from his childhood, one of those formative memories that therapists were always so excited about dredging up.

He had refused to go with the young Lars. “I’m busy,” he kept telling him, as he lay back down on a beach to enjoy the colors of the music. “Ask someone else.”

I don’t care what my subconscious is trying to tell me, thanks anyway.

At one point in the night he got into a conversation with Delilah that didn’t feel therapeutic, more like shooting the breeze; in fact, he was pretty sure he could feel a sea breeze while they chatted.

Delilah said, “You’re just like me, Lars. You don’t give a shit, do you? You just don’t care.”

Did she have a cigarette in her hand at that point? Surely not.

“What do you mean?” Lars had said lazily.

“You know what I mean.” Delilah had sounded so sure of herself, as if she knew Lars better than he knew himself.

Frances banged her knuckles in rapid motion against her cheekbones.

“Stop hitting yourself,” said Lars.

Frances dropped her hand. “I’ve never represented anyone in court before,” she said.

“This isn’t court,” he said. “This is just a silly game.”

He looked over at Jessica, supposedly pregnant.

“Tell Masha that my partner and I are planning to have a baby,” he said flippantly.

“We can’t lie,” said Frances. She was clearly exasperated with him, poor woman.

The expression on her face made him think of Ray when Lars had done something to annoy or frustrate him. The compressed lips. The resigned slump of his shoulders. Those disappointed eyes.

He remembered the impish face of that little boy from last night and realized with a start that it wasn’t his younger self at all. The kid had hazel eyes. Ray’s eyes. Ray and his sister and mother all had the same eyes. Eyes that made Lars want to close his own because of all that terrifying love and trust and loyalty.

“Tell Masha if I don’t live I’ll take out a wrongful death lawsuit against her,” Lars told Frances. “I’ll win. I guarantee you I’ll win.”

“What?” Frances frowned. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

“None of this makes sense,” said Lars. “None of it.”

He saw again the dark-haired little boy with the hazel eyes, felt the tug of his hand and heard his insistent voice: I’ve got something to show you.

64

Jessica

Jessica and Zoe sat opposite each other, cross-legged, on a yoga mat, as if they were about to do a joint Pilates exercise.

Jessica would have given anything to be in a Pilates class right now. Even the cheap one she did before they won the money, in that drafty community hall, with all the local mums.

“Do you think this is, I don’t know, serious?” Zoe’s eyes darted over to her parents and back. Jessica couldn’t help but notice Zoe had great natural eyebrows.

“Ah, yeah, I kind of do,” Jessica answered. “I feel like Masha is, like, totally capable of anything. She seems very unstable.”