A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [45]
A number of possible replies occurred to Stephanie: allusions to the fact that they still didn’t know anyone; her suspicion that there wasn’t anyone worth knowing. But she let them pass. It was Bennie who had chosen Crandale, and in some deep way Stephanie understood why: they’d flown in private jets to islands owned by rock stars, but this country club was the farthest distance Bennie had traveled from the dark-eyed grandmother in Daly City. He’d sold his record label last year; how better to mark success than by going to a place where you didn’t belong?
Stephanie took Bennie’s hand and kissed a knuckle. “Maybe I’ll buy a tennis racket,” she said.
The party invitation came three weeks later. The host, a hedge-fund manager known as Duck, had invited them after learning that Bennie had discovered the Conduits, Duck’s favorite rock group, and released their albums. Stephanie had found the two deep in conversation by the pool when she returned from her first tennis lesson. “I wish they’d get back together,” Duck mused. “What ever happened to that spastic guitarist?”
“Bosco? He’s still recording,” Bennie said tactfully. “His new album will be out in a couple of months: A to B. His solo work is more interior.” He left out the part about Bosco being obese, alcoholic, and cancer-ridden. He was their oldest friend.
Stephanie had perched on the edge of Bennie’s deck chair, flushed because she’d hit well, her topspin still intact, her serve slicingly clear. She’d noticed one or two blond heads pausing by the court to watch and had been proud of how different she looked from these women: her cropped dark hair and tattoo of a Minoan octopus encompassing one calf, her several chunky rings. Although it was also true that she’d bought a tennis dress for the occasion, slim and white, tiny white shorts underneath: the first white garment Stephanie had owned in her adult life.
At the cocktail party, she spotted Kathy—who else?—across a crowded expanse of terrace. As Stephanie was wondering whether she would again merit an actual hello or be downgraded to a crabbed Who are you? smile, Kathy caught her eye and began moving toward her. Introductions were made. Kathy’s husband, Clay, wore seersucker shorts and a pink oxford shirt, an ensemble that might have seemed ironic on a different sort of person. Kathy wore classic navy, setting off the bright blue of her eyes. Stephanie sensed Bennie’s gaze lingering on Kathy and felt herself go tense—a residual spasm of unease that passed as quickly as his attention (he was now talking to Clay). Kathy’s blond hair hung loose, still bobby-pinned at the sides. Stephanie wondered idly how many bobby pins the woman went through in a week.
“I’ve seen you on the court,” Kathy said.
“It’s been a while,” Stephanie said. “I’m just getting back into it.”
“We should rally sometime.”
“Sure,” Stephanie said casually, but she felt her heartbeat in her cheeks, and when Clay and Kathy moved on she was beset by a giddiness that shamed her. It was the silliest victory of her life.
II
Within a few months, anyone would have said that Stephanie and Kathy were friends. They had a standing tennis date two mornings a week, and they’d become successful doubles partners in an interclub league, playing other blond women in small tennis dresses from nearby towns. There was an easy symmetry to their lives right down to their names—Kath and Steph, Steph and Kath—and their sons, who were in the same first-grade class. Chris and Colin, Colin and Chris; how was it that of all the names Stephanie and Bennie had considered when she was pregnant—Xanadou, Peek-a-boo, Renaldo, Cricket—they’d ended up choosing the single one that melded flawlessly with the innocuous Crandale namescape?
Kathy’s elevated status in the pecking order of local blondes gave Stephanie an easy and neutral entrée, a protected status that absorbed even her short dark hair and tattoos; she was different but okay, exempt from the feral scratching