visible bruising.
Stockholm syndrome?Or maybe she just made it all up?
I was the one in a cast, if anybody else in the restaurant was scoping out our table for outward signs of domestic strife, after all—not that that had anything to do with Dean.
Why was I only the friend for when everything sucked? Where was Cammy when the going got tough? Or Astrid’s mother, for that matter?
I reached for the sake.
Our waiter placed tiny oblong plates of sushi and sashimi gently on the white tablecloth, artful arrangements of red toro and pale gold hamachi, hand-rolled seaweed cones brimming with fanned avocado and shreds of crabmeat.
“Maddie,” said Christoph, “I didn’t know until today when Dean and I were driving home that you two had gone to Switzerland on your wedding trip. How is it that you never mentioned this?”
Well, maybe because the last couple of times we hung out you were either ditching us or lecturing me about ‘the trouble with’ Jews and black people?
But he leaned across the table to refill my thimble of sake, seeming truly interested. “What part of the country did you visit, Saanen and Gstaad? You mentioned that your brother and sister had been at school in that area.”
“The Kennedy School,” I said, a bit ticked at myself for being quite so pleased that he’d remembered. “Pagan was there for eighth grade, Trace for seventh and eighth.”
“Did they enjoy it?”
“Very much,” I said. “And I admit to being quite envious. They’re both excellent skiers now.”
“You wanted to stay at home in California, then?” he asked.
I drank my sake and he filled it again. “I started at Dobbs the year Pagan went to Saanen, with her godmother’s daughter Arabella.”
“They’re the same age?” he asked.
“Pals since they were babies, too. Actually, there’s a favorite story of mine about Arabella. One of the youngest boarders that year was Roger Moore’s son. I think he was five or six—”
“And they sent him away to boarding school?” asked Dean.
Astrid started casing the room like she was plotting to bail on us for a cooler table.
Fuck off, it’s a good story.
“He and Arabella got put on the T-bar together,” I said. “And you’re supposed to tuck it under your butt, but not actually sit, you know?”
Christoph reached for a piece of toro with his chopsticks and nodded, smiling.
I picked up a piece myself, eschewing left-handed chopsticks for my fingers.
“Except he’s in kindergarten and she’s tall for twelve,” I continued, “so their ride up was pretty sketchy.”
Astrid yawned, her plate still empty before her.
“At the top the kid looks Arabella up and down once, slowly, then says, ‘ Husky bitch,’ and shoots away down the Eggli.”
Christoph and Dean started laughing.
Astrid leaned forward, her face contorted with anger as she growled, “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
And before anyone could respond to that, she stuck both arms out straight and dragged them across the table, growling with effort as she shoved everything over the edge—our soup bowls and sushi plates, bottles of soy sauce and sake, even the bud-vase centerpiece—all of it smashing against the tiled floor below.
Then she stood up, panting, a little bit of white showing all the way around her eyes’ dark irises.
The entire restaurant went dead still, dead quiet.
“I hate you,” she said, her voice oddly calm.
She looked at Christoph, then Dean, then me. “I hate all of you.”
Christoph said, “Darling…”
She swung a fist at her chair, knocking it over sideways onto the floor. Then she stalked away, her footsteps the only noise in the silenced room.
No one spoke for several seconds after the street door slammed shut behind her, then dozens of voices swarmed up, buzzing.
Christoph rose to his feet, oddly graceful. “Please accept my apologies. My wife has not been well, and I must see her home.”
We said of course, and asked if there was anything we could do to help.
He shook his head. “Thank you for being such good friends to both of us. It means a great deal to me.”
Then he turned to placate the approaching headwaiter, wallet in hand.
Dean pressed his knee against mine. I watched the last stained
corner of tablecloth slip down and away, a white flag surrendered to gravity.
There was soy sauce all over my cast.
Astrid called me at work.
No hello, no apology, just launching right in with, “I have to leave him,” the moment I pressed line three.
“Did you hear me?” she said, blowing smoke across the mouthpiece of her receiver.
“Yes.”
“Well?” She took another drag. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I don’t know