Chapter Text
Good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen.
In a tradition dating back to college, the three of us got together every Tuesday for dinner and a glass of wine at a restaurant near my house. Who are we? Me and my close friends. Why Tuesday? Because on Friday we used to be busy with our own business. Why am I so sure? Because it was so from the very first days of our friendship.
Melly and I became friends in high school when we signed up for extracurriculars in English literature together. She always had an abundance of wet wipes, gum and harsh judgments on any issue — especially anything that involved guys. When I found out all the details, I exhaled: it was minus one challenger in the ring.
Such a dyed-in-the-wool cat lover like me could choose pretty friends under one condition: if there were no doubts in their absolutely nonstandard sexual orientation.
Or I should look for a married one — that's how I found the second.
She transferred to our college in the midst of the semester due to the moving. Melisandre went into a fit of fake coughing when we first heard her name — the professor was marking those present — and then showed me a note on her phone.
“Sounds like an escort girl name.”
“Like an escort girl name from Mount Olympus,” I typed.
I couldn't help but agree. In college I became bolder, and now it was already unclear which of the two of us could have taken the Golden Globe for inventing funny nicknames for classmates. Do they award Golden Globe for this? After all, this is part of the profession of the future pop journalist — and what else will we become, having received a diploma from this, if I may say so, college? And moreover, there are stages in life that you have to go through, one way or another, and sometimes the sooner the better. It's like drinking. It's better to be able to do this by some age.
But life is a funny thing. The new girl with a magic name not only did not turn out to be an escort, but was even married at twenty-one. It was unusual — just like the fact that she was a person albeit non-communicant, but she missed human interaction with someone other than her husband.
“Where’d you go to college?”
“Oh, many places.”
“Where’d you live?”
“Here and there.”
Taciturn, acrimonious, and as if wrapped in a shroud of mystery — of course, I wanted to get closer. The new classmate was the embodiment of everything that I once wanted to be: a living revelation, about which you know nothing with certainty. Can it be possible? Shouldn't a reputation — both good and bad — be preceding, entering a room before a person and painting it either grey or gold?
But hers was red.
She was managing to say practically nothing about herself, but nonetheless she became the missing third element of the system; in attempts to find out some details, Melly and I became even more united; our interest did not fade, but warmed up with renewed vigor, especially over time.
Sometimes, back in college days, her husband would pick her up in an old clapped-out purple Volkswagen. This type was well-known, there are men like him in your own circle. He was gorgeous, and he knew it. “And my wife is gorgeous,” that could be read in his slightly narrowed eyes, and his hand fell on her waist in the usual possessive manner. This is what you expect from a daddy with many years of experience, but not from a young guy who shifts with little money and ekes out to pay for their small house.
Both were invited to my wedding, and there was no man more obsessed with his wife than Jaime Hill. Even my own spouse would be in second place. With all due respect, Orty.
In the end, either under Jaime’s pressure, or deciding that it was not very decent, but Cersei invited Melisandre and me to her place — after four years of friendship. It was her twenty-fifth birthday. She repeatedly said that this was a modest dinner for the closest ones, asked not to dress up and not to give her anything. Of course, no one listened to her. The new silk shirt was wrapped in rustling gold paper, and Melly carried a box of wine glasses for eight persons.
Their house was old, they didn’t have enough money to rent something more: according to Cersei, Jaime was trying to develop his own business with might and main, and she herself had only recently finished her studies. A bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, a guest room, two bathrooms and a small attic — and none of these rooms had new faces. Only Jaime greeted us in the kitchen, took a bottle of beer from the fridge and went into the living room to watch TV. Cersei was already finishing up the cheese plate.
“Shall we wait for somebody else?” Melly could not resist, and after this question the air seemed to thicken, and from somewhere even smelled of rot. I felt like stepping on her foot. “Your parents?”
“His parents died,” Cersei said with truly royal patience, putting the knife in the sink.
“And yours?”
She just won’t stop.
“My father and I don’t talk anymore,” she said shortly, wiped her hands on the kitchen towel and took the box from Melisandre's hands. “Thank you, it seems we haven’t got any…”
“And why?”
Damn you, Mel.
Cersei glanced into the living room, where the TV blinked like a blue in the dark, shrugged and chuckled. “He didn't like my choice.”
Cersei's handful of food for thought put a lot of things in their place. I suddenly realized when she had had time to acquire habits unusual for poor people. She was throwing out the clothes after the first small snag, and could live in the same sweater for a month, provided it looked great. It's another matter if there was a turn for the worse for her with marriage. Then it looked like she could well be the very only daughter of a very rich man. Well, you know, when your daughter looks so much like your deceased wife that you can't refuse her anything.
Except for the running away with a pretty penniless boy.
I’m not saying that being poor is a sin. Some time ago, I had to work as an au pair, until a friend found a job for me in a publishing house. But it's a sin not to try to get out of this situation. And her husband did not seem to try. Every time I saw the Hills, one nasty, disgustingly everyday saying came to my mind. When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window. And they lasted an incredibly long time.
They say that over time, close people become surprisingly similar to each other. They adopt from each other the smallest, barely noticeable gestures and elusive details: they equally tap on the table when they are waiting for something, speak in low voices, and ask questions in the form of statements. For all their outward similarities, the unity of thoughts did not even loom on the horizon. Cersei, whose eternal pretense has become second nature, well pretended that this state of affairs did not oppress her at all, that she believed that the next business plan would work out, and she would be able to buy lipsticks not at a discount. I say “pretended well” because if she did it masterfully, then I would have no reason to convict her of faking her emotions.
A couple of years after the wedding, my husband and I had a son, and for a while I was cut off from what was happening in that family. I even forgot how hard it was for them until, on Russell's third birthday, Cersei gave him a homemade blanket with hand-embroidered stars.
“You know, it seems he did it,” she said, her eyes glowing, when she helped me to place candles on the cake, and I remembered how recently on the phone I heard that they should probably move somewhere else.
We stayed here for an unreasonably long time.
I guessed what changes were coming. They bought a new car, the whole small family moved into a house two streets away — bigger than the old one and brand new, like their life — and a year later they were able to buy it. Melisandre was also happy: this meant that the Hills were definitely not going anywhere anytime soon.
“Now they’re going to have a baby too,” she declared with the air of a connoisseur, while we waited for Cersei for dinner to celebrate her small promotion at work, “it is not possible to raise a child with money from side works, but now this is in the past. And I will stay alone, run a dog shelter…”
She always liked to play poor as a joke, because she didn't know what it was like to really need something.
We did not change our habit; neither me having a child, nor the mountain of work that fell on Cersei, nor Melly's frequent business trips around the country — nothing would make us miss our Tuesday night. When you go to the same place for, like, years, then not only the owners know you, but even the frequently changing staff. Many years ago, we chose one chain restaurant because it was the closest to our college — and we continued to go to it, although after ten years we could afford a different price category.
The dark times were over. Melly was setting the money aside for a summer trip, a year later Russell was supposed to go to school, and Cersei…
She took a day off that evening because she wasn't feeling well. So she told Melly on the phone. “Nicely celebrated,” she laughed into the phone speaking to me, retelling the dialogue. “A difficult age. Jesus never made it any further. But I told her,” Melisandre was obviously doing several things at the same time and was holding the phone on her shoulder because her voice got louder, “to stop pretending and come to seven, as usual. She just needs a little drink.”
Cersei arrived a little late. We usually sat at a table by the window, not far from the door, but when I saw her face, I myself suggested that we move to a quieter place. She was wearing a homely gray striped jumper, jeans that she never wore when going out (those are gardening clothes!), and her hair was in a bun. The concealer, alas, did not hide the bags under her eyes.
“You could insist,” Melly began, much more uncertain than in the morning.
“It's all right,” Cersei smiled, and gestured to the waiter for a menu, “thanks for waiting.”
While we were waiting for her order, Melly was talking about the place she would be sent to on the weekend. She will fly to Orlando as a photographer for some event related to domestic violence. The topic was close to me and even interesting, but I could not tear my eyes away from Cersei's hands, which had never been calm, and now they just went crazy.
She endlessly fiddled with her wedding ring, twisted it, took it off, put it on her finger, took it off again, and so on several times until the wine was served.
It is useless to pressure such people, they won’t tell you anything — you just need to create the proverbial sympathetic surroundings: they will feel safe, trust and open up. No matter how closed person Cersei is, we have already gone through this with her, and very successfully — otherwise we would not have been friends for so many years.
“And how are you?” I asked when her glass was already half empty. “How were your birthdays?”
She was born on the same day with her husband. It was a sign of fate that I personally found terribly romantic. As long as we knew each other, she was always very passionate about this day, trying to choose a gift that he would like and remember for a long time. His plans for this day in the list of her priorities were always higher than her own, and she only celebrated her twenty-five with us — at his insistence, in the roomless kitchen of their first home.
“I’m alright,” Cersei answered colorless, and awkwardly turned in her chair to find the waiter. “Can we have another bottle? The same one?”
Usain Bolt himself would have envied the speed with which Melly and I managed to exchange glances.
“What was the gift?” Melly asked carefully, and Cersei clutched at her ring again.
Previously, she had another, cheap, yellow gold. When they moved to another house, Jaime insisted that the rings also needed to be changed, that they should completely renew themselves and ask each other again if they still wanted to be together. For three years now she had worn another, made of white gold with a small diamond, but now she tormented him with such fury that I even felt sorry for it.
She finally saw me looking at her fingers and hurriedly moved her hands under the table. “A book.”
“A book?”
“Yes. A good, interesting one. With pictures. Something about color matching in clothes.”
The waiter justified the awkward silence by his appearance.
“I just…” she suddenly spoke up again, and I exhaled. She needs to talk. “It seems to me that.. God, I don’t know.”
But I knew. I knew what she was trying to say and understood that it was too late to stop her; such thoughts, once settled in the head, never leave it. I also knew that husbands do not give their wives books if it is not the Kama Sutra. Especially the husband of Cersei. He couldn't be dissatisfied with his life.
“Just a month ago, I… Never mind,” she finally exhaled, and looked somewhere to the side. “I think that.. he met someone.”
A nervous laugh left my lips, and I was ready to kill myself for it.
“It's impossible,” I said immediately. “Anyone who has seen you at least once would say the same.”
“Never in my life have I been more in agreement with Tae than now,” support came from where I did not expect.
“A month ago,” Cersei interrupted us, and I could already hear drunken sobs in her voice, “I came across one extract from our joint account. Well, about a purchase, a check or something.. There was a necklace, gold, with a pendant.” She sighed loudly and put her hands on the table again. “I thought it was for me. For the birthday. I’m so damn blind ,” she pointed out poisonously. And this is how a nerve storm usually begins. I opened the uber app under the table.
“And.. You know..” while I called a taxi to Mel's house, the inflamed brain had already climbed into the annals of memory and began to remember everything that until yesterday could not find an explanation. “And today he came home, and in the corner of his mouth, right here,” she showed where, and thin fingers lingered on her face for a while,” he had a trace of lipstick. Light, pale pink, almost colorless. And that week too. I thought that maybe one of his colleagues celebrated something, and it was a cake, and.. ” she looked at her glass, and then raised her eyes all of a sudden. “But he doesn't eat sugar. I’ve just remembered. Strange, isn't it? It's strange what your consciousness can do when it doesn't want to see.”
“It still doesn't mean anything,” I don’t think Melly believed in herself enough to try to dissuade her, but in my mind I gave her ten points for trying.
“We always had sex on our birthday,” Cersei suddenly blurted out, and the green eyes drowned in wine again. “And yesterday he said he was tired. I lay next to him the whole fucking night, saw how the second of August became the third, and all I could think about was that necklace with a cake.”
I vividly imagined how I had caught Orton cheating, and felt the acid gathering on my tongue. The screen lit up, signaling that the carriage awaited, and I cautiously showed Melisandre the phone.
“Cersei, our taxi’s here. Do you want to stay at my place tonight?”
Melly and I were getting stronger telekinesis every second. The last thing that she now needed was to work herself up into a state even more, and this is what will begin, as soon as she sees Jaime.
“No, no,” Cersei answered hastily and reached for her wallet, although the bill was paid while she was hypnotizing her hands. “And I’m probably better off walking. I need some air.”
Of course, this was out of the question. In the worst case, one would have to call someone who cannot be named now, but no one would have let her go home alone.
When the car turned towards their house, he was already standing on the porch, leaning against the open door, in a gray tracksuit and with a displeased face. The yellow light from the street lantern made a real grimace out of the Greek-handsome face. It came to me, somewhere in the subconscious, that he hadn't reacted like that to our meetings earlier, but I decided that the wine had an effect on me too. “Where’s your car?” he shouted in our direction.
“Near the restaurant,” Cersei replied, slamming the door as I rolled the glass down to the middle. She overcame the thorny path five meters to her door without incident, but I still hoped that she could change her mind. “I'll be back for it tomorrow after work.”
The husband put his arm around her shoulders, gave a short kiss on the temple and let her go in front of him. When he took hold of the handle, our eyes met; he made sure I was looking at him, smiled with the corners of his lips and closed the door behind them.