“You two are adorable!” Senderovsky cried. “Vinod, do you remember that party in Fort Greene, when we first met Ed? And when I met up with Masha again after twenty years?”
Vinod’s smile faded. He found himself crossing his legs. “Yes,” he said without affect. “Quite the party.” He did not want to time travel at the moment, particularly not to that particular soiree. He thought once more of his Teva box and the novel within.
“Noona,” Ed said to Karen through half-closed eyes. “Can you make me a cheese plate? Pretty please. I can’t walk.”
Karen sighed and went over to the table, where many sharp local cheddars and custardy époisses and oozy, bacony Greenswards congregated around a field of grapes. She examined her distant relative, his opened shirt revealing a triangle of chest hair, his pocket square, his brogues. Maybe he thought he was suave, but he reminded her of a midlevel salaryman stumbling into Seoul’s Apgujeongrodeo station just before the last train departed, headed toward his unforgiving mortgage and his unforgiving wife.
“Noona,” Ed said once the cheese was placed in front of him. “You must have tried the app yourself, right? Does it ever work for you? Did you and Leon try it before you split up?”
“That’s a bit personal, bhai,” Vinod said.
“What personal, we’re all best friends, right?”
“I’m glad you still have the capacity to fall for someone after all these years,” Karen said, “but Dee is not the right woman for you.”
“Oh, fuck you, noona,” Ed said. The sentence made him laugh. He liked referring to her as his “older sister.” Senderovsky was glad he hadn’t brought out the expensive eighteen-year-old bottle, which Ed would have quaffed in a minute and forgotten the next day. “I’m supposed to hold out for a nice stable Korean Masha, right? Well, that’s not all that’s cut out to be either. No offense, Sasha.”
“Eddie.” Senderovsky extended his hand, even though that was against Masha’s distancing rules. “Let’s get you out of that pocket square and into some pajamas, what do you say?”
Ed snorted and looked around. “Faces look ugly when you’re alone,” he said.
“Up you go, Jim Morrison.” As they hobbled off the porch Karen took something out of her pocket which Vinod’s bad eyesight strained to identify. Could it be?
“Okay, this might be a totally bad idea,” she said. “But I say we light this mother. Just like in the song.”
“You mean, between us?” Vinod asked. “What would Masha say? We can’t pass around a joint.”
* * *
—
They were passing around a joint. Masha was in the spacious upstairs bathroom looking down at the porch. As secretive as a Marrano during the Inquisition, she had whispered “Lehadlik ner shel Shabbat” over her candles so as not to wake Nat in her adjoining bedroom, had extinguished them with one practiced exhale, and was now watching a man with one lung smoking a joint that had just touched another’s lips. What was more, her husband was dragging Ed toward the Big Island Bungalow, the latter’s arm draped around her husband’s shoulder, alcoholic flop sweat glistening off the both of them.
These goddamn idiots.
After disposing of Ed, her husband returned to the porch where the joint was passed to him. The music on the porch was loud, thankfully Nat’s window faced out the other side of the house, but now it was bested by their goddamn idiot laughter, their karaoke of the damned.
Half an hour later, Senderovsky clambered up the stairs and entered their bedroom, his mood cheerful, his eyes red. He finally slunk off his ridiculous dressing gown and stood before her in his athletic pants and white socks. “Wash your hands!” Masha seethed at him.
“Of course, of course,” Senderovsky said. “Here, you can watch me.” She stood over him in her bathrobe as he washed his hands for twenty seconds, the stench of marijuana overtaking the bathroom like a dirty hamper.
“So,” she said, “how many of us have to die for your personal reenactment of The Big Chill?”
“Please,” Senderovsky said. “It’s been a tough couple of years with the television scripts and all. Did you hear how your beloved actor made fun of me at dinner? I’m the only one he treats that way. He can smell weakness. Just let me enjoy a happy minute or two with my friends. Come on, Masha. I need this.”
“Does Vinod need this? And you as an asthmatic. I heard you coughing in your sleep last night.”