on his way to getting drunk, which didn’t upset Elm. He was a hilarious drunk, laughing loudly and telling stories. His personality was amplified with liquor. It was a testament to his fundamental good nature that this temperament was kind and gentle, if a bit boisterous. Elm got quiet and sulky with liquor, so she made sure to limit her intake. Since she’d had the children she’d lost her tolerance, and after a couple of nights celebrating Moira’s weaning, lying in bed with the apartment building spinning around her precariously, a balloon of nausea attempting to climb her esophagus, she limited herself to a couple of glasses of wine. Thus, she was the designated driver, which, in New York, meant the designated cab finder.
When he saw her he extended his arm and spun her around so she fit against his shoulder. “Where’ve you been?” he asked her.
“Touring the art.”
“Big artsies, these ones.”
“They’re cloning their dog.”
“What?”
“I said, they’re cloning their dog. It died and they had a portrait painted of it, and now they’re going to have the dog cloned. In Europe.”
“Too much money, not enough sense,” Colin whispered. “But the scotch is excellent. Want a taste?” Elm shook her head.
After refilling her glass, Elm went to sit on the sofa. Another woman joined her and Elm discovered that the woman’s sister had also gone to Wesleyan, but she was older than Elm and Elm hadn’t known her. The woman asked how many children Elm had, and she paused before answering that she had just the one. They discussed private schools, then babysitters. A man joined them, the woman’s husband. Elm did her impression of Moira aping some teenage pop star, innocently changing the lyrics from “love me up” to “love me ’nuff” and “wanna crash your party” to “wanna crash your potty,” which always made her giggle.
The woman’s face was open, with wide-set eyes. The left was slightly bigger than the right, though she had tried to disguise this with makeup, painting a wider swatch of eyeliner on the bigger one. Someone had given her lessons, and from far away it worked. The man’s body was half youthful strength and half pot-bellied middle-ager. He had beautiful salt-and-pepper hair. Elm wondered if that’s how people saw her and Colin, a nice couple, well groomed, well suited. Or, she wondered, was their tragedy apparent? Had it aged them or matured them in a way that was perceptible, even to a stranger?
She felt Colin’s hand on her shoulder. She introduced the couple to him, and said that their daughter was born the same year as Moira, and was attending the school they had almost decided to send her to. It was superior to the one they ended up at, but they thought they wouldn’t have the energy to schlep all the way across the park and down fifteen blocks every morning for fourteen years. At least Moira was close to home.
“Almost ready?” Colin asked her. “It’s nearing midnight.”
“No,” Elm gasped in disbelief. Had she been forced to guess the time, she might have said ten p.m. “It was lovely to meet you,” she said to the couple. “We have to relieve the babysitter. She has science club in the morning or something.”
They said their good-byes, and this time both Dick and Ellen kissed Elm’s cheeks. Relay slipped her a card; Elm put it in her jacket pocket without looking at it. “You’ll come back and meet Dishoo, right?” Ellen called as the elevator door closed.
“Wouldn’t miss it!” Elm said.
“Who’s Dishoo?” Colin asked. The elevator gave a lurching start.
“The dog they’re cloning. Rhodesian Ridgeback, maybe?”
“Am I pissed or am I missing something? How are they cloning their dog?”
“I think you’re pissed and missing something,” Elm said. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Europe, maybe. I think it’s legal there?”
Colin shook his head. “Crazy as fucking loons, the rich are.”
Gabriel
The letter was florid and embossed. Nothing French was official without raised lettering, which required paper solid enough to withstand the pressure. This letter had a particularly ornate seal, a ring of flowers and a headless crown. “We regret to inform you, despite the excellence of the submitted materials, and with extreme sadness due to the number of deserving candidates who will not have the opportunity to realize the experience doubtlessly anticipated in the solicitation of this prize, that your entry was among countless worthy applications that have not been awarded the 2007 Prix des Artistes Emergents.”
A lot of verbiage to say, “Fuck off.”
He wanted to