By the time the doorbell rang, everything was ready to go-Madison back from the piano teacher, fed and in her pajamas, the videos selected, the pans laid out and the scallops prepped-and Natalia got up out of the chaise longue in her two-piece and chiffon robe and drifted through the open French doors like something floating on the breeze. She always moved like that-everything in its own sweet time, “Don't rush me, just look at me”-and he heard the greetings at the door and came out of the kitchen with two fresh cocktails in hand. The kid-the daughter, Lucinda-made a bolt for Madison's room and Kaylee, a bony blonde with pinched little shaded glasses and a frizz of hair twisted up in a bun, pulled him to her for an embrace. “Hey,” she was saying, “we just saw the most awesome thing out on the road on the way here, this white bird? — Jonas says it was an egret-just like perched there on the yellow line like it was in the middle of a river or something-”
Peck handed her a Sea Breeze, even as he gave the husband's right hand a squeeze and fitted the cold glass into the socket of his left. “Hey,” he said, and the husband-stubble-headed, goateed, going to fat around the ring in his earlobe-returned the greeting.
“Wasn't that an egret, Jonas?” Kaylee was saying.
“It is a white bird,” Natalia said, bending to levitate her hand two feet from the tiles as her breasts, on display, shifted in the bikini top, “about this high off the ground, yes? We are seeing them all the time,” she avowed, straightening up. “With the binoculars. Common, yes. Very common here.”
“Really?” Kaylee lifted her eyebrows, raised the cocktail to her lips. “It's like really beautiful, though,” she murmured over the rim of the glass. “Like magical, you know?”
The husband wasn't having it. He just held on to his grin and said, “Maybe we ought to get one and stuff it for the Corte Madera place.”
“Oh, Jonas,” the wife said, making a face. She looked to Peck for approval. They both did, the whole party arrested in the entryway, gulping vodka and making small talk about birds.
“Sure,” he said, “why not? And we can stuff the tourists while we're at it too.”
The conversation at dinner ran to a whole host of mainly numb-brained subjects, from Nautilus machines to stair-steppers, the stock market, the Giants, A's, farm-raised salmon and the new Kade movie to the “like super-expensive” European vacation Jonas was treating his wife to, a whole month and the kid at Grandma's, week in Paris, week in Venice, then the rest of the time on some jerkoff's sixty-thousand-foot-long boat off the Islas Baleares. They'd actually said that, actually given him the Spanish with the rolling r and the whole deal, as if they were a tag team of waiters in a Mexican restaurant, first him-“Islas Baleares”-and then her, like an echo. They'd praised the meal-and the wine, and they'd brought two bottles of Talley Chardonnay that wasn't half bad-but as the sun went to bed and the stereo got louder and they began to put a real appreciable dent in the bottle of Armagnac that had cost him sixty bucks at the discount place, Peck began to realize he could live without these people. He really could. Kaylee he'd approved of because she kept Natalia occupied and off his back, but the husband was full of shit to his ears-they both were-and he felt himself getting restless, getting edgy, and that wasn't good because it destroyed the mood of the day and made him think of other things, things that had a negative energy, things that brought him down. Like Dana Halter. Like “Bridger,” that asshole.
He'd called the number that morning and got a message-“Hello, you've reached Bridger's cell; leave a number”-and he felt as if he'd pulled the handle on a dollar machine and got two cherries instead of three. Bridger. What kind of name was that? And why was he playing the game instead of Dr. Dana Halter? If he was some kind of cop he wouldn't have been stupid enough to display his number… which meant he wasn't a cop. But then who was he?
“So, Dana,” the husband was saying, fat-faced, red-faced, leaning into the coffee table as if it were the municipal pool and he was about to plunge in, “anything new with you?”
He felt the smallest burr of irritation. He gave the guy a look to warn him off but he was too dense to catch it.
“I mean, with your practice-that office space in Larkspur? How'd that ever work out?”
It wasn't just a burr-it was a thorn, a spike. Who “was” this clown? And what had he told him? Shit, he couldn't even remember himself. He reached for the snifter and took a moment to study the way the brandy swirled and caught at the glass-it was the color of diet cola when the ice melts down in it, and how had he never noticed that before? — and then he realized that nobody was talking. The husband was staring at him, waiting in his gerbil-faced way for a response, wondering vaguely if he was being dissed, and if he was, what to do about it-and both girls had stopped jabbering away about so-and-so's boob job and were watching him too. “I don't know,” he said finally, trying to control the bubble that was swelling inside him like one of the bubbles that punch through the sauce after you fold the cream in, “with all the malpractice insurance, I don't know how anybody could say it's worth it. Really. Sometimes I think I'd be better off just staying out of it-”
Kaylee's mouth flapped open as if it were spring-operated: “But you're so young-”
The husband: “And your training. What about your training?”
They'd moved into the main room from the dining table-“No, no, don't bother,” Natalia had said when Kaylee tried to help her clear up, “leave it for the maid”-and he'd taken a certain satisfaction in going round the room and flicking on the lamps to create a feeling of intimacy and warmth, as if lamps were hearths and the twenty-five-watt bulbs miniature fires blazing against the night and the fog creeping in across the hills behind them. He studied the husband just the briefest fraction of a second-was the fat fuck mocking him? Was that it? But no: he could detect nothing but a kind of stubborn booze-inflected obtuseness in the man's dwindling stupid little eyes. He didn't answer.
“But all that work, medical school and all,” Kaylee said. She arched her back and did something meant to be furtive that tautened the thin black straps of her bra. “It seems such a shame.”