“August told me about what happened this morning.”
I glance at my bruised arm.
“He feels terrible. He likes you. He really does. It’s just . . . Well, it’s complicated.” She looks into her lap, blushing.
“Hey, it’s nothing,” I say. “It’s fine.”
“Jacob!” shouts August from behind me. “My dear fellow! So glad you could join our little soirée. I see Marlena has set you up with a drinky-poo; has she shown you the dressing room yet?”
“The dressing room?”
“Marlena,” he says, turning and shaking his head sadly. He waggles a finger in reprimand. “Tsk tsk, darling.”
“Oh!” she says, leaping to her feet. “I completely forgot!”
August walks to the velvet curtain and whisks it aside.
“Ta-dah!”
There are three outfits lying side by side on the bed. Two tuxedos, complete with shoes, and a beautiful rose silk dress with beading on its neck and hemline.
Marlena squeals, clapping her hands in delight. She rushes to the bed and grabs the dress, pressing it to her body and twirling.
I turn to August. “These aren’t from the Monday Man—”
“A tux on a wash line? No, Jacob. Being equestrian director has the odd perk. You can clean up in there,” he says, pointing to a polished wooden door. “Marlena and I will change out here. Nothing we haven’t seen before, eh darling?” he says.
She grabs a rose silk shoe by the heel and chucks it at him.
The last thing I see as I shut the bathroom door is a tangle of feet toppling forward onto the bed.
When I come back out, Marlena and August are the picture of dignity, hovering in the background as three white-gloved waiters fuss with a small wheeled table and silver-domed platters.
The neckline of Marlena’s dress barely covers her shoulders, exposing her collarbone and a slim bra strap. She follows my gaze and tucks the strap back under the material, blushing once again.
The dinner is sublime: We start with oyster bisque and follow with prime rib, boiled potatoes, and asparagus in cream. Then comes lobster salad. By the time dessert appears—English plum pudding with brandy sauce—I don’t think I can take another bite. And yet a few minutes later I find myself scraping my plate with my spoon.
“Apparently Jacob doesn’t find dinner up to snuff,” August says in a slow drawl.
I freeze midscrape.
Then he and Marlena dissolve into fits of giggles. I set my spoon down, mortified.
“No, no, my boy, I’m joking—obviously,” he chortles, leaning over to pat my hand. “Eat. Enjoy yourself. Here, have some more,” he says.
“No, I couldn’t possibly.”
“Well, have some more wine then,” he says, refilling my glass without waiting for a response.
August is gracious, charming, and mischievous—so much so that as the evening wears on I begin to think the incident with Rex was just a joke gone awry. His face glows with wine and sentiment as he regales me with the tale of how he wooed Marlena. Of how he recognized her powerful way with horses the very moment she entered his menagerie tent three years before—sensed it from the horses themselves. And how, to the great distress of Uncle Al, he refused to budge until he had swept her off her feet and married her.
“It took some doing,” says August, emptying the remains of one champagne bottle into my glass and then reaching for another. “Marlena’s no pushover, plus she was practically engaged at the time. But this beats being the wife of a stuffy banker, doesn’t it, darling? At any rate, it’s what she was born to do. Not everyone can work with liberty horses. It’s a God-given talent, a sixth sense, if you will. This girl speaks horse, and believe me, they listen.”
Four hours and six bottles into the evening, August and Marlena dance to “Maybe It’s the Moon,” while I lounge in an upholstered chair with my right leg draped over its arm. August twirls Marlena around and then stops with her extended from the end of his straightened arm. He’s weaving, his dark hair tousled. His bow tie trails from either side of his collar and the first few buttons of his shirt are undone. He stares at Marlena with such intensity he looks like a different man.
“What’s the matter?” says Marlena. “Auggie? Are you all right?”
He continues to stare into her face, cocking his head as though evaluating her. The edge of his lip curls. He starts to nod, slowly, barely moving his head.
Marlena’s eyes grow wide. She tries to step backward, but he catches her chin with his hand.
I sit forward, suddenly on full alert.
August stares for a moment longer, his eyes shiny and hard. Then his face transforms again, becoming so sloppy that for a moment I think he’s going to burst into tears. He pulls her to him by the chin and kisses her full on the lips. Then he steers himself into the bedroom and collapses face first onto the bed.
“Excuse me a moment,” Marlena says.
She goes into the bedroom and rolls him over so he’s sprawled across the center of the bed. She removes his shoes and drops them to the floor. When she comes out, she pulls the velvet curtain shut and immediately changes her mind. She pulls it open again, turns off the radio, and sits opposite me.
A snore of kingly proportions rumbles from the bedroom.
My head is buzzing. I am entirely drunk.
“What the hell was that?” I ask.
“What?” Marlena kicks off her shoes, crosses her legs, and leans forward to rub the arch of her foot. August’s fingers have left red marks on her chin.
“That,” I sputter. “Just now. When you were dancing.”
She looks up sharply. Her face contorts, and for a moment I’m afraid she’s going to cry. Then she turns to the window and holds a finger to her lips. She is silent for almost half a minute.
“You have to understand something about Auggie,” she says, “and I don’t quite know how to explain it.”
I lean forward. “Try.”
“He’s . . . mercurial. He’s capable of being the most charming man on earth. Like tonight.”
I wait for her to continue. “And . . . ?”
She leans back in her chair. “And, well, he has . . . moments. Like today.”
“What about today?”
“He nearly fed you to a cat.”
“Oh. That. I can’t say I was thrilled, but I was hardly in danger. Rex has no teeth.”
“No, but he’s four hundred pounds and he has claws,” she says quietly.
I set my wineglass on the table as the enormity of this sinks in. Marlena pauses, then lifts her eyes to meet mine. “Jankowski is a Polish name, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Poles do not, in general, like Jews.”
“I didn’t realize August was Jewish.”
“With a name like Rosenbluth?” she says. She looks at her fingers, twisting them in her lap. “My family is Catholic. They disowned me when they found out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Although I’m not surprised.”
She looks up sharply.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “I’m not . . . like that.”
An uncomfortable silence stretches between us.
“So why am I here?” I finally ask. My drunken brain is unable to process all this.
“I wanted to smooth things over.”
“You did? He didn’t want me here?”
“No, of course he did. He wanted to make it up to you, too, but it’s harder for him. He can’t help his little moments. They embarrass him. The best thing to do is pretend they didn’t happen.” She sniffs and turns to me with a tight smile. “And we had a lovely time, didn’t we?”
“Yes. Dinner was lovely. Thank you.”
As yet another silence engulfs us, it dawns on me that unless I want to try leaping across train cars drunk and in the dead of night, I’ll be sleeping right where I am.