BooksBarbecue
Back True Enough Save as PDF
Chapters (29)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Acknowledgments

Peter finished packing the clothes, clicked shut the snaps on the leather suitcase, and set it beside the closet door where a fully loaded duffel bag was already waiting. He was making a temporary move to the extra bedroom of a recently divorced colleague at his law firm. It was a bad moment to be out pounding the Manhattan sidewalks in search of an apartment, but he’d manage. He was motivated, refreshed; he felt younger somehow.

He sat back in the hand-shaped chair, leaned forward, and said, “Is there anything you want to ask me, Desmond?”

It was an odd question, the kind of thing a veteran cancer patient might ask someone who’d recently been diagnosed. In fact, there were lots of things Desmond wanted to ask, but he was afraid most of the questions would sound voyeuristic: Where did you meet? How old is he? How did you find the time? Probably Peter just wanted what most people in his situation wanted—an excuse to speak his mistress’s name aloud. “Who is this . . . person?” Best not to assume anything.

“His name’s Sandy,” Peter said proudly. “You don’t know him.” And then, draping his arms over the back of the chair, he began to rhapsodize about a stockbroker he’d met on the subway.

Three

Drinks with Dale

1.

The one thing you couldn’t take away from Dale Barsamian was his looks. Time would do that sooner or later, but at least for the moment, his looks were there for everyone to enjoy, and for the most part, everyone did.

As Jane watched him walk into the cocktail lounge of the Boylston Hotel, she thought: Thank God I’m not married to him any longer. Handsome, sure of himself, oozing poised masculinity, Dale loosened his tie as he laughed with the maitre d’, and you could practically hear people sighing on all sides. Woe to any woman married to a man who was as effortlessly charming and seductive as Dale. If someone wasn’t snarling at you for having snagged him, they were being nice to you in an effort to get closer to him. Men, women, it didn’t matter. Just Caroline just wasn’t up to this kind of rogue. Seeing him across the room, Jane was reminded of all the comforts of being married to a man like Thomas, someone solid and reliable, attractive but unexceptional, someone you could trust to be utterly steadfast, even when you didn’t want him to be.