remained there for over an hour, until it was six o’clock. During that time, after placing the flowers on the stand in a corner of the living room, he waited patiently at first, sitting, looking around, expecting her to return soon, so they could spend time together. He was not the sort of guy who was upset by a few mean words or hostile actions from a woman, especially a woman who looked like Donna. It would take a lot more than that to shake the romantic fantasy he had planted in his head. Yet the minutes dragged on, and she didn’t reappear. There were only women’s magazines in the room to read, so eventually he turned on the television, which he watched until she came down.
Exchanging few words, they left for the party in her car. Although his feelings were almost as strong and raging as they had been when he had arrived—his juvenile hopes for a successful evening were definitely still the same—he had come to the conclusion that he needed a different wooing tactic. While she had been upstairs, he decided that she was a quiet and reserved type of woman, who didn’t like small talk. To adapt to what he thought was her true character, he began to imitate a strong, silent man, as well as he could.
As she backed her BMW out of her driveway, however, she broke through her calm reserve, which wasn’t reserve at all, but a repressed fury and deep annoyance, to assault his silence. She looked at him sitting in the passenger seat and grimaced. She had changed into flowing linen pants, with a tight-fitting sleeveless top underneath a loose, long-sleeved, lace-like sweater. Everything was white. It was a lovely, casual outfit for summer.
“You can take that jacket off,” she said to him harshly. “No man there will be wearing one.”
He struggled to take off his jacket in the car and eventually succeeded.
“I think you can borrow a pair of jeans, too, where we’re going,” she continued, insulting him further. “They should fit, if your waist isn’t too big. Do you ever go to a gym?”
The only response Bill allowed himself to make was to wince and twist his mouth.
At that moment, Donna drove down the block where Bill had parked his car. It was one of the few vehicles on the street.
“What a pile,” she observed, seeing that car, which she didn’t recognize as Bill’s. “I’m glad it’s not by my house. It ought to be towed to a junkyard. It’s a piece of scrap.”
To him, she now seemed to be more of an assertive person than a reserved person, so he thought he had to say something and assert himself, too. “It doesn’t look so bad,” he said, softly and meekly.
She scowled at him, but said nothing. His comment made her remember where she had seen that car before. She knew to whom it belonged.
Chapter 31
The barbecue party, to which Donna and Bill went, was held at a sprawling mansion of recent construction in the Hamptons, next to the ocean. An outlandish creation of wealth acquired in high finance, the house had more resemblance to a casino than a residence, because the proportions of the building had been so super-sized to accommodate large numbers of people. When the owners weren’t working long hours at their offices, they liked to entertain; they calculated their net worth not only by the sums in their bank accounts, but also by the number of bodies at their house parties.
The couple’s desire to gather and impress a horde within their residence was a natural one for them, since both husband and wife were loud, vain, and ostentatious. They had many so-called friends, such as Donna. Although they were considerably younger than Donna, their attachment to her was stronger than many of their friendships with other people. Similarities in the characters of all three and compatible personal needs created a special symbiotic relationship: With them, Donna could pretend to be younger than she was, while they could imagine that they were more mature.
As soon as Donna and Bill arrived, Donna ran and begged a pair of jeans from the man of the house for Bill. When she had them, she told Bill to go change in the upstairs bathroom and not come down till he had them on. He could find her then on the lower level where the great room was. That’s where everybody would be.
Bill tried to comply with her command. He wanted