Ed could smell her alcoholic breath. “Enjoying the view?” he asked, hoping he sounded droll. His hands still burned from the heat of the habaneros and he wanted to be alone with her, to embrace her closely, to let her feel the tingle of his eyelashes and the strength of his arms. She had seen the Actor naked now, but he also had a body, and it too was trim and cared for.
“Oh my God,” Vinod said. “No!” Masha was now on the deck, and her stare was affixed most prominently where by Abrahamic law and custom it should not have been （though who could fault her?）。 To further the contrast with the naked man, she was dressed in a mid-income blazer for her video calls, though her feet were bare. And then she took his hand. She turned him around carefully like a tugboat guiding an oil tanker into port.
“Didn’t you hear those two tonight?” Karen said. “My assistant went to New Haven. Asking what your major was is how those people flirt. I bet he’s sampled the goods already.”
Vinod laughed at her outer-borough mercantile phrasing.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have taken that video,” Ed said. “You know, privacy.” Karen shrugged. Ed understood that to Karen and her ilk from the Valley anything that involved pixels and a thumb was always permissible.
“Should we tell Sasha?” Vinod asked. “I’m sure she just took him to the bathroom and—”
“And helped him wash off!” Karen shouted. Dee laughed.
“Well,” Ed said. “Thanks for that. Are you guys sure you still want to watch this show? It’ll seem dull by comparison. No horny Russian shrinks or nude stars of stage and screen. You have been warned.”
The show began and they watched it as it was intended, as background entertainment, as a soft soothing noise. In accordance with the rules of Russian novels, each thought about another. “Night, Karen-emo,” Nat had said to her, the child’s hands folded before her warm face in the default position of Christian prayer, a pretty Korean boy and a truculent llama beneath her pillow, the world guarded and impeccably safe from viruses and men.
She should take her somewhere, Karen thought. Somewhere far away. Two sisters making a life together. The plan built in her mind like a storm. And Vinod? Could she love a man she pitied? But what if she no longer pitied him?
* * *
—
The wind pressed against the Actor’s window, thumping it back and forth, making sleep impossible. He had to get out of here. What would the next weeks look like? Getting handjobs from Senderovsky’s wife while Dee ignored him at dinner? He had peers who craved humiliation more than anything, so-called action heroes who liked to be flagellated and “pegged,” but he did not count among their number. He would get in the Lancia and be back in the city by early morning. He would live dangerously among its emptiness. He would make a statement of brotherhood, or sisterhood, with the cashiers and grocers who remained. But he couldn’t! He wanted to run out and serenade her bungalow with his impeccable singing voice. But what if the window opened and it was him? He pictured a pocket square tucked into polka-dot pajamas, a victorious smile, her rustling in the bed behind him. Or maybe, despite the storm, despite the cold, they were taking an outdoor shower together, the very outdoor shower that had been denied him in the Petersburg Bungalow. He put on a robe from the California vineyard Ed despised and took his tablet to the main house. Outside, the battering wind leaned into him, misjudging his strength as they all did. In the quiet of the kitchen, the lights of the espresso machine blinking semaphore, he clicked through her oeuvre some more, impatiently settling on her social accounts. And there, posted just an hour ago, was the enhanced photo of the two of them. Elspeth would see it and leave a message of garbled intensity. His publicist would say something both worldly and worried. His fans—ah, but who cared about them. They would adjust. She posted their photograph together. She wanted the world to see. He put the pad down on the counter and smelled the fish and rotting meat in the garbage, the windows working fast in their panes. Come to me, he said to the wind. I am the trickster Odysseus. You will fill my sails.
* * *
—
Senderovsky sat up for the prescribed hour before going to sleep, hoping to ease the acid reflux out of him. But he still coughed. Dryly. “Let me just take your temperature,” Masha said.
“Oh, look how kind she is now,” Senderovsky said in Russian. “Maybe you can help me take a shower, too.”
“I don’t know what you think happened,” she said in English, “other than me once again having to clean up your mess.”