The endearment touched Senderovsky. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but I think just the sight of food will make me cry.”
“Then we should order,” she said. “Because we have to go on.” A bald harried waiter in the requisite square frames showed up, and Karen ordered up and down the menu. Soon their table was crowded with smoked fish pansit and chicken adobo in brown butter and crab-fat fried rice and pork ribs soaked in banana-ketchup barbecue sauce. They stared at the assembled dishes, at their steaming plenty, as if they had just been insulted for their loss.
“You did everything you could,” Senderovsky said. “We both did.”
“If we’re to remain friends,” Karen said, “I don’t want you to ever talk about what I did ever again.”
Senderovsky nodded. “How are we not going to be friends?” he said. “What would be the point of anything?”
“Eat, eat,” she said.
“Why you so fat?” he completed her mother’s joke. They both laughed. The laughter dispelled something. They began to eat in earnest, the pork gently peeling from the ribs, crunch cigar-like lumpia stuffed with Shanghai beef crackling between their teeth. “So let’s do it,” Senderovsky said. “Let’s sign the paperwork.”
“Right now?”
“I don’t want this day to end without something in my life moving forward. I want to be closer to you.”
“I’ll text my assistant.”
“I’ll text Masha.”
“Can she bring Nat? She’s out of school already, right?”
“You know who else we should text? Dee and Ed. Ed just bought a place like five blocks away.”
“Just tell them we’re not doing a memorial today. Not tonight, okay? We’ll raise a glass to him and that’s all. Promise me, Sash. And please tell Masha not to be harsh with me.”
* * *
—
The summer heat had just been rescinded and now there were two beams of blue light arced over the downtown sky, that time of year. Masha spotted her husband and Karen up the avenue in their little Sukkoth-like enclosure. “Karen-emo, Karen-emo!” Nat was shouting. Bike riders whizzed by them, screaming into their ear bones about real estate deals and synthetic currencies. Karen ran toward Nat, nearly knocked down by a young woman in a wheelchair furiously making her way uptown, half of her determined face shrouded by a black mask. Karen lifted the child up effortlessly, despite the city weight she had already put on. That was the idea: that she would lift Nat up.
“We need to use everything to our advantage now,” Masha had told her husband, one night after all their guests had left the House on the Hill, after Vinod had been airlifted out. She had given her thesis on the world Nat could expect growing up, one of corruption, falsity, and decline, even if the presidency changed hands. “I’m not saying we should share custody or anything. But let Karen be in her life.”
Senderovsky had told her then of his plan to sell the estate to Karen for about double what it would be worth, but, as part of the agreement, they could continue to use it as their second home, though Karen might build another “main house,” something piney and Californian, abutting theirs. Karen and Masha would co-parent, and Senderovsky, Masha thought, would provide a background conversational presence, a handyman of words. As soon as the papers were signed and the money for the house transferred, he would go back to writing novels, “more serious ones,” he had promised himself.
Nat was now riding atop Karen’s shoulders, shrieking rapturously at the change in altitude, and now Masha could hear Dee’s chortle echoing along the avenue and see Ed’s de-dandified form, just another happy oblivious stick-thin city dweller with his arm wrapped around his beautiful other, his mask cupping his chin.
“Karen-emo, why are you all dressed up?” Nat asked her.
“Should we tell her?” Karen whispered to Masha, who shook her head, “Not yet.” But Nat had already started blathering happily about her day in school. Karen had hired a “push-in” counselor to help her make friends, even though this was against the Kindness Academy’s policies （an unsolicited gift from Karen had just doubled their endowment）， and now that BTS was becoming more mainstream, Nat had emerged as the keeper of all knowledge pertaining to the band.
“It turns out that Ada Morelo-Schwartz likes BTS, too,” Nat shouted, “but she didn’t even know that their name stood for Bangtan Sonyeondan, or Bulletproof Boy Scouts. How do you not know that?”