How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,156
her feet, she felt angry at herself for the intricacy of her speculation, for caring that much. Wasn't it far more likely that he was a type, and that the supposed complexity was her own embroidery on a standard pattern? Hadn't he disappointed even the modest hopes she'd invested in him?
She had reason to chastise herself again, approaching them, when she realized that she was the one sucking in her own stomach, but this was mitigated by the pleasure of seeing his reaction when she sat down beside him and shook the salty water from her hair.
“A.G., this is a surprise. I see you've met my niece.”
For a man who prided himself on his composure, he was comically discomfited, though he made a valiant recovery, kissing her on the cheek, doing his best to convey the impression that he'd practically been expecting her at any moment. He then excused himself as quickly as one with his exquisite manners could. Ginny had the satisfaction of watching him retreat down the beach, slightly duck-footed as he struggled for purchase in the dry sand. Yes, she remembered that, chasing after him one day through the snow in Aspen—seeing his splayed tracks, thinking it made him even more endearing.
“What was that all about?” she asked Lana, who blushed.
“I don't know. He was like, you know. He was just kind of …” She shrugged.
Well, actually, yes, Ginny did know. But she wasn't feeling entirely collegial toward her niece at this moment, appraising her as she imagined A.G. had, and she conjured a strange conceit—that the concavity of a young woman's tummy was precisely calibrated to the paucity of her wisdom. God, she was young. Of course Ginny had watched A.G. pick up women who were no older than her niece. But until this moment she would never have thought of her niece—her little Lana—as having anything in common with those girls. “Kind of what?”
“Well, you know. Friendly.”
“You mean he was hitting on you.”
“Well, he just kind of sat down. Actually, he walked past me a little and then came back and introduced himself. He asked me if this was Gibson's Beach, and I told him I wasn't from here, and then we just started talking.”
“Did he ask you out?”
“Well, he said he was kind of busy this coming week but he'd call me next Monday.”
Ginny nodded. She told herself it wasn't Lana's fault. She counted to ten. She tried to tell herself she took no pleasure in this, in feeling, suddenly, so very worldly-wise. “I expect he is fairly busy,” she said, shaking a cigarette from the pack. “Unless I'm very much mistaken, he's getting married this weekend.”
Approaching the house on Gin Lane, the so-called cottage with its sprawling wings, white porches and shingled gray gables, A.G. saw the white tent rising up above the perfectly squared green privet battlements that surrounded the property of his future in-laws. The gates were open. As he drove in, he was presented with a scene of furious activity. He stopped the car in the middle of the driveway and watched. Painters and window washers on ladders had stormed the big house. Three maids waddled like white ducks up the path to the guest house, bearing linens. Half a dozen young men who looked like camp counselors were setting up the tables beneath the tent. Gardeners were scattered about the property, planting and deadheading flowers; still more flowers were coming out of a van from a Manhattan florist. And an anonymous tradesman was taking a leak against the side of the pool house. All of this had been set in motion by his proposal to Pandora Bright Caldwell Keirstead, of Chattanooga, Palm Beach and Southampton, several months before. It wasn't exactly a spur-of-the-moment decision. He'd actually purchased the ring at Graff more than a month before and carried it with him on two dates with Pandy, somehow losing his resolution each time. Finally, he'd invited her to One If by Land, which practically forced his hand, it being notorious as a setting for proposals. Before their appetizers had arrived, two other swains had dropped to their knees in front of their dates. Pandy blushed deeply the first time; the second proposal she pretended not to notice. If she was disappointed that A.G. had stayed seated when he popped the question, she wasn't about to show it.
The announcement, the planning, the registry of gifts—all followed inexorably but somehow insubstantially, like scenes constructed from pixels. A.G. sat in his car in