Vladimir’s body was far more toned than I had imagined. His arms were muscular, his chest was firm and hirsute, his stomach was flat and muscled. He was such a specimen that even John commented, in his funny way, “You’re so sexy, Vladimir,” to which Vladimir, displaying an unexpected sense of humor, said, “I know,” and winked. He said that his only hobby other than writing was working out. We spoke about writers who did things, like Hemingway or Mailer, who pursued hobbies to fuel their writing. Vladimir said he wished he could be more like them, but he didn’t possess the instinct to take up fishing or motorcycling—he wasn’t a gearhead, he was a Russian nerd who started weight lifting in high school PE and never stopped. John mentioned Cheever, Fitzgerald, Updike, Roth, a whole list of writers who pursued nothing other than writing.
“Well, sex,” I said, “they all pursued or were in some way obsessed with sex.”
John shrugged. “It takes up time,” he said, and Vlad rolled his eyes with an indulgent generosity, so casual it surprised me.
“Vlad and I went out last Tuesday,” John said, as if to answer my unasked question.
“Oh.” Tuesday was the weekly gathering at the music hall. I always came back late. John and I didn’t always check in on what we did, but I was surprised he hadn’t told me—he usually kept me apprised of his goings-on and whereabouts whether I wanted to know about them or not.
“We talked,” John said.
He lay in a lounge chair, his belly visibly resisting the elastic of his swim trunks and pulling at the buttons of his guayabera shirt. He stared into the sun, but I could tell from a certain tension around his mouth that he was pleased with himself. My husband is an incredible talker when he wishes to be. Clearly he had taken his new colleague out for drinks and had charmed and convinced him, if not onto his side, then away from personal condemnation. I could see John sitting at his favorite bar in town, buying beers and shots and disarming Vlad with jokes, anecdotes, self-flagellation, and occasional flashes of unexpected insight.
“I see,” I said. John smirked, and Vlad dove down to the bottom of the pool and did a handstand, putting his feet in his daughter’s face, who laughed and grabbed at them.
As the afternoon went on, I noticed that Vladimir liked to spread his arms wide in gestures that displayed his form to great advantage. When he came out of the water for lunch, he rubbed his stomach slowly and flagrantly, a completely unnecessary use of the towel, meant to draw our eyes to his abdominals. Either he was flirting with us or he flirted with everyone. He hung his towel around his neck and kept his shirt off to eat. He was obviously vain, he ran his hands over his hair many times in order to hide the thin spot on top. When I served the bun bo xao （which really is a simple dish—rice noodles, lettuce, cucumbers, crushed peanuts, quick-pickled daikon radish and carrot, lots of fresh chopped mint and cilantro, tossed with light dressing and topped with marinated steak）， I watched as he piled mostly rice noodles on the plate for Phee （who proceeded, in trying to eat them, to fling them so far from her plate that I was finding hardened curls of vermicelli on my porch and yard for weeks） and took an extremely small serving for himself.
I made coffee after lunch, and we sat around the pool, shifting our chairs every now and then to remain in the warmth of the sun. As long as Phee was in the water, circling around in her donut, impervious to her own shivers, she was happy, so we were able to speak more than I thought. “She has the inner resources of a second child,” he said. “She’s happy by herself, she doesn’t seem like a firstborn.” I remembered I felt the greatest compliment people would give my parenting was to say that Sidney didn’t act like an only child, even though it is in fact proven that only children do better in life and are usually more generous and community-oriented in their adulthood.
“Firstborn,” I said. “Does that mean you’ll be having more?”
“I’d like to. I was one of four, the youngest. Cynthia is an only child, she doesn’t know if she wants another.”
I watched Phee trailing her fingers in the water, singing to them as if they were little fairies skipping on the surface.
“Why do you think she’s that way?”
“Cynthia?”
“No, Phee.”
“Oh, I know exactly why,” he said. “It’s because my wife left when she was one. Cynthia was hospitalized after her suicide attempt. For six months it was a nanny during the day, and me on nights and weekends.”
He brought this up aggressively—the fact like a battering ram he carried around with him, ready to smash in any door of politeness that was other than the truth.
We all knew Cynthia Tong had tried to kill herself. He had told the hiring committee in his interview. It was one of the reasons Vladimir Vladinski got the job.
* * *
He stayed until the sun went down. I was glad to have cleaned the house, because after it was too cold to swim we went inside and John played the piano for us and we sang some folk and pop songs for Phee, who danced around the living room, clutching and kissing a ragged piece of red fabric Vlad said that was the only thing she played with. Then he put her in front of the television and we had gin and tonics on the porch, watching the last of the light in the sky. He kept asking if it was all right that they were staying, and we kept insisting how much we were enjoying their presence. He didn’t want to leave. It felt like young love, I thought—responsibilities looming, the mounting anxiety of your life building while you clung, lolling pointlessly in bed, to a new someone who gave you a sad and fearful pleasure.
I did worry that something about the afternoon had made us appear parental to him. John wasn’t exactly slapping me on the ass, or throwing his arm around me and kissing me, but we were pretending, and enjoying to pretend, a communication and solidarity we hadn’t felt in a long while. Had Vlad’s wife been there, we would have been two couples, peers, fellow academics and coworkers. But because she was gone, we seemed to take on the role of an august mentor couple. And why shouldn’t we, I kept telling myself. John was sixty-three, I was fifty-eight, and although I wasn’t really old enough to be his mother, I was old enough to be his mother. He continued to flirt with both of us throughout the evening, laughing loudly and repeatedly touching me on the arm and shoulder, so much so that he even commented on and apologized for it and I shrugged it off, pretending I hadn’t noticed.
I drove the conversation toward intellectual concerns and politics, forcing discussion like I would do with my students. We talked about the rise of autofiction, and how most of the creative-writing students at the college did not even want to write fiction, but creative nonfiction instead, and primarily autofiction and memoir. I said it was because they were so obsessed with themselves they couldn’t imagine existing outside of their viewpoint. John said it came from an anxiety about representing identities and experiences other than their own. Vlad posited it was because they had grown up online, representing themselves via avatars, building brands and presences and constructions of selves before they even knew that’s what they were doing. We talked about the rise of populist ideology, both on the left and the right. Cautiously sidestepping any Title IX discussion, we talked about how different the college used to be—rigorous but freewheeling （drugs, drinking, sex）—and how neutered the kids were now, calling their moms every day, prizing friendship over romance. Philomena drank so much lemonade that she threw up on Vlad’s shirt. John lent him a linen button-down—the kind of shirt for touring amphitheaters during Grecian summers, and, with it hanging off his tanned body, Vlad looked like Jay Gatsby, or the owner of a yacht. When, finally, Philomena fell asleep on the couch, Vlad picked her up in his arms to leave. Truthfully, he said, he was just so relieved that he didn’t have to do bedtime. He had been hoping she would fall asleep in the car ride on the way home, but this was even better.