“Or,” said the manager, “let’s try this on for size. You were never lovers, merely friends.”
“You made a friend and she betrayed you,” the publicist said.
Yes, they all agreed, that was good. He had made a bad friend under duress.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. “I have to go,” the Actor said.
“One last thing,” the agent said. She had been a dramaturge in a previous, less remunerated life and had remained a fan of spoken gravitas.
“What?” The Actor sighed.
“You have to remember that you’re not just a man. You are not just a ‘person.’？” The agent paused for effect. “You are a responsibility onto this world.”
* * *
—
As they sat down to a dinner of swordfish and finocchio, the thunder, a known overactor, couldn’t help itself and rang out in a succession of monstrous bursts, scaring sound-sensitive Nat and confusing the newly frightened diners who mistook some of the thunderous peals for gunshots. Karen and Vinod, whose chairs both faced the driveway, periodically checked for incoming pickup trucks.
After ten minutes of silent chewing had passed, Dee began to talk. She put her hands beneath her chin in the manner of her author’s photo and then spoke calmly and brightly the way one talks to the British.
“I was watching Nat and Karen set out the place mats today,” she said, “and I just got to thinking. We pretend we’re so diverse around here. As Sasha himself announced so proudly back when we had our first dinner, ‘I have almost no white friends!’ But, still. I have to ask: Where are the Black people at this table? Where are the gay people? The noncisgendered people?”
“Where are the Latinx people?” Nat said in the same tone as Dee, her hands also folded beneath her chin. They had recently had a Cinco de Mayo “module” at her school.
“And where are the poor people?” Dee said, ignoring the child, realizing how much she disliked precocity among the elites, and wondering whether she could bring that up as a way of castigating Nat’s parents but not the child herself.
“One can always go right back to the city,” Masha said to Dee. She had been following Dee’s travails on social media like everyone else at the table. “The virus is ebbing there and also there’s plenty of economic diversity if one knows where to look.”
“I think Dee is having a tough day,” Vinod said, “and we should try to help her in a nonconfrontational manner.”
“Oh, I agree,” Dee said. “Let’s be nonconfrontational. And let’s stop with the lying please.” She pitched a quick knowing glance to Senderovsky, the known liar. “I say we do a little exercise. We go back to our rooms, take out our calculators, and come back with a full disclosure of our net worth. That way we know just where we are situated within the system. I would also itemize income taxed at an unfairly low rate, capital gains, for example, and underline inherited wealth. If you need to call your money managers, you can bring us the results at dinner tomorrow.”
They heard a thunderclap and then sustained bleating from the sheep meadow, a reminder of the ovine world beyond. The colonists remained silent.
“Since I can see how scary this idea is to most of you,” Dee said, “I’ll be happy to go first.” She took out a piece of paper and unfolded it. “My total net worth is two hundred thirty-eight thousand three hundred forty-five dollars and twenty-three cents. About nine thousand dollars of that is my car after depreciation, and about twenty thousand is in a retirement account, i.e., invested in the market and taxed accordingly. I own no property.”
No one spoke. There was but the clanging of cutlery against plates. “Wait a minute,” Karen said, “is that supposed to be a little or a lot?”
“It is what it is,” Dee said. “My goal is to be transparent.”
The laughter they heard was Masha’s. It was rich and theatrical （and historical） and suddenly reminded Senderovsky of why he once loved her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think Dee is trying to say that she’s poor in comparison to the rest of us. That she’s suffered. That her actions need to be excused on that basis.”
“That’s not it at all!” Dee shouted.
“You’re, what, thirty-one?” Masha said. “When I was your age, after college and med school, I was worth negative two hundred thousand dollars.”
“When I was that age, I was addicted to horse tranquilizer,” Senderovsky said. There was laughter around the table. Masha put her hands over Nat’s ears.