“Bottoms up, Angie!”
One drink. Only one drink. I take a sip and oh my, it’s good. He does know how to make a martini.
“So you want to know about Larry,” he says.
“You’re going to tell me, right?”
“I have no proof. Only suspicions. Not exactly actionable, as we used to say when I was a Navy SEAL.”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
“The thing is, all men are alike. We red-blooded ones are, anyway. We’re always perusing the, er, merchandise. And sometimes we do more than just look.”
“Larry’s got a girlfriend?”
Jonas pops the olive into his mouth and smiles. “You see? I didn’t even have to tell you.”
“But—but what about Lorelei?”
He sighs. “Sad, isn’t it? What some wives will put up with?”
I sink back against the sofa cushions, momentarily breathless from the revelation.
“Why do you seem so surprised, Angie?”
“I just never…I mean, Larry Leopold?”
He shrugs. “As I said, it’s in a man’s nature.”
Something I, of all people, ought to know. After all, that’s why my own marriage broke up, because Frank left me for another woman. In the long run, his leaving me turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened, because that’s how I ended up with my sweet Vince.
Vince. He wouldn’t do that to me, would he? Men aren’t all alike, are they?
For a moment I get the panicky urge to get Vince on the phone, to have him reassure me that he really is in California taking care of his sister. Then I think of all the good men I know, like my son-in-law, Gabriel, and Barry Frost—kind and steadfast men who are nothing like Frank or Larry Leopold.
Assuming Larry really is the sleazebag that Jonas implies he is.
I study Jonas, who’s already gulped down half of his martini and is looking very relaxed and happy with himself. “How do you know Larry’s got another woman?” I ask him.
“Lorelei herself suspected it.”
“She told you that?”
“It may have slipped out during one of our afternoon coffees.”
“How could I have missed seeing those?”
“Because we meet at Starbucks, down by the beach. Just neighborly chats, you know?”
For which they leave the neighborhood, probably so no one sees them. Specifically, so I don’t see them. No wonder it escaped my attention. I wonder how many other things have escaped my attention over the years, how many affairs and crimes I’m completely ignorant of because I’m blind to what’s really going on around me. As blind as I was to Frank’s affair.
It turns out I’m a lousy detective. It’s a depressing thing to admit, but I see that now and I sit slumped on the sofa, demoralized.
“Don’t you want your martini, sweetie?” Jonas asks.
“No.” I slide it to him across the coffee table. “You drink it.”
“If you say so.” He pops my olive into his mouth. “I don’t know why this Larry-and-Lorelei thing has gotten you down so much. It’s what happens.”
“Who’s the girlfriend? Who’s Larry seeing?”
“No idea.”
“Does Lorelei know?”
“Nope. I’m guessing that’s why the van was out there, watching their house. I bet she’s hired someone to follow him. Collect a little ammunition against him, for the divorce.”
I think about this for a moment and realize it doesn’t make sense. When I called Lorelei about the van parked outside, she sounded genuinely baffled. She didn’t try to brush me off or tell me to ignore it. Then she called Larry over to the window to show him. She wasn’t the one who’d ordered the surveillance.
Then who did?
I get up from his sofa. Even though I’d had only a few sips of the drink, I can feel the effects of the gin. Jonas makes a powerful martini and not only has he finished his, now he’s gulping down the rest of mine.
“Aw. Leaving so soon, Angie?”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m just getting started.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. I’m going home.”
For a Navy SEAL, Jonas doesn’t hold his liquor as well as I’d expect. His eyes are already glassy and when I leave, he’s too tipsy to get up off the sofa and see me to the door. I cross the street back to my house, and from my living room, I look out at my neighborhood. Each lit window is a diorama into the lives of people I’d thought I knew, but now I realize how little I actually saw. I’d never imagined that Larry with the chicken legs was a Lothario. That Lorelei and Jonas shared secrets at Starbucks. It turns out I’m just a clueless housewife, so clueless I didn’t even know my own husband was cheating on me.