“Do you want to start it?” she asks, holding out the finished spliff and in her other hand the lighter.
“No, you do it,” he says.
She leans for the ashtray and places it between her bare feet on the bed and then lights the spliff.
The window is already open.
From somewhere below they hear the voices of the Szymanskis, speaking Polish.
She has a few tokes and then holds out the spliff for him.
He stands to take it.
He’s not sure why he’s doing this.
He knows he probably shouldn’t.
After a few inhalations he’s already feeling it strongly.
The Szymanskis’ voices, still there, sound more immediate than they did, and also there are these weird moments when he thinks he’s able to understand what they’re saying, even though they’re still speaking Polish. They seem to be having some sort of argument.
In his own dealings with them there’s a slight edginess now, especially with Mr. Szymanski. When they both worked for Karl Nyman they were equals. Now in some significant sense they’re not, and quite how they should speak to each other, how they should interact, is something that they’re still working out.
The Szymanskis’ voices aren’t there anymore.
There are other sounds now.
He looks at Helen’s friend again.
She’s lying on her back on the bed, and looking at her he imagines, with the intense vividness of being stoned, fucking her there and then. It’s almost embarrassing, how vividly he imagines it.
He imagines pulling down her bikini bottoms and licking her.
He imagines pulling the T-shirt up to her shoulders as he fucks her.
“Do you want this?” he says, holding out the spliff. There’s still about half of it left.
She turns her head to look at him.
Then she lifts her hand and he passes it to her.
For a moment he wonders whether to actually do something, to stroke her leg or something like that.
“I should go,” he says.
She doesn’t speak for quite a few seconds. It’s like the silence stretches on and on. “Okay,” she finally says.
“Thanks for showing me the picture,” he says.
She laughs, he isn’t sure why.
“Okay,” he says, after what feels like another massively extended silence. “See you.”
He opens the door and leaves.
And just as when he was in there the whole world outside that room hardly seemed to exist, now that he has left it’s the opposite, and everything that happened in there, including the thoughts that he had, seems as vague and insubstantial as a half-forgotten dream.
His birthday happens while Helen’s friends are staying. She invites some other people too. Other friends of hers mostly. None of István’s own friends are there. She wanted him to invite some and though he said he would, in the end he didn’t. He spends most of the evening talking to the Italian hedge fund manager who owns the next-largest private house in the area.
He seems to be more at ease with the Italian than he is with Helen’s friends. The two of them have played tennis a few times and once István went to a poker evening over there. When she asked István why he liked the Italian, he told her that the man “respected” him—with the obvious implication that her own friends somehow didn’t. And it’s true that the Italian seems to find it easier to talk to him than most of her friends do. He has a way of speaking to him, she’s noticed, simply as one man to another, whereas her friends, when they make an effort with István, tend to overthink things in ways that make them seem patronizing and insincere.
She finds the Italian uninteresting herself, with all his talk of money and politics.
He’s waving a huge cigar around.
István has one too, she sees.
They’re standing next to a large stone planter in the shape of an urn with a spray of vegetation in it.
She catches István’s eye and smiles at him, and he lifts the hand holding the cigar in acknowledgment. The Italian also looks momentarily in her direction and then they pick up their talk again.
People are mostly standing at one end of the terrace, holding drinks and plates of finger food and talking, although some have wandered farther away, down an avenue of flaming torches that leads toward the disappearing lake. There’s a light show projected onto the mellow Palladian façade of the house and the DJ is playing ambient hip-hop, a warm wash of sound that sits nicely with the dusky light. Later he’ll do something more lively for the dancing.
When István opens his presents there’s oohing and aahing and occasional applause.
Helen has provided something for Thomas to give.
“Go on,” she says, sort of nudging him forward with it.
“Thank you, Thomas,” István says. “I wonder what this is?”
Some people laugh. As is obvious from its shape, the present is a tennis racket.
István has another sip of champagne and then starts on the paper.
“It’s a Bosworth Tour,” Helen says, when he has unwrapped it. “It improves performace by up to twenty percent.”
“Maybe you should use it, then,” István says to Thomas. Again some people laugh. “Only joking,” he says. He stands up and spreads his arms.
Thomas takes a single unwilling step forward and then just stands there stiffly and passively while István hugs him.
“Oh, for god’s sake give him a proper hug!” Helen shouts, through the embarrassed patter of applause.
“Why do you have to do this?” she says to Thomas when István has let him go. “It’s pathetic. Why can’t you just hug him? Is that too much to ask?”
Thomas doesn’t say anything.
He disappears soon after that.
Helen keeps her own present to the end, knowing that it will be a hard act to follow. When there’s nothing else left she hands István a small package and he tears carefully at the wrapping while she waits, looking nervous.
There’s an expectant hush.
“This is very well wrapped,” István says, laughing, as he struggles with it.
“Should I help?” she asks.
“No,” he says.
A few seconds later he has it open.
“Whoa,” he says when he sees what it is. “Seriously?”
“I found it at auction,” she says. “In Geneva.”
“Wow.”
“I had to bid quite aggressively,” she says.
“I bet you did,” he says.
There’s sustained applause while István stands and kisses and then hugs her.
“Thank you,” he says, as if they were alone together.
She just nods.
The next morning, she knocks on Thomas’s door.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Even though it’s nearly noon, Thomas’s room is dim and stuffy. He’s sitting on the bed doing something on his phone.
“For what?” he says.
“You know what,” she says. “How I spoke to you last night.”
Thomas doesn’t say anything. He’s still looking at his phone.
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” she says. “Not in front of everybody. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay”
“Thank you.”
Heavily pregnant, still panting slightly from the stairs, she sits down on the end of the bed.
She puts out a hand toward him.
He looks up for a moment but doesn’t take it.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
He shrugs.
“Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Why wouldn’t you hug István yesterday?”
The way he looks at her when she says that makes her understand that it would be easier to stop talking about it.
Even so, she says, “Why wouldn’t you hug him?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
When he doesn’t answer that, when he just looks at his phone again, she says, more impatiently, “Why can’t you just accept that this has happened?”
“What?”
“That he’s part of our family now.”
“Our family?”