State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [47]
Walking through the city streets past all the closed up shops, Marina could understand how exciting it would be to see one of them open now. If there had been a light on in Rodrigo’s store tonight she would doubtlessly have gone and stood with the crowd on the street, craning her neck to try and see what was going on inside. She had not come up with a time line for how long she would wait in Manaus if the waiting continued to be nothing but an exercise in frustration, but she could feel herself coming to the end. Marina was used to being good at her work but she was no good at this. The same concierge who had been sitting at the desk in the lobby of Dr. Swenson’s apartment building at eight in the morning was sitting there still at nine-thirty at night. It appeared he was very glad to see her. After all, she hadn’t been by in several days. “Bovenders,” she said to him, and then touched her index finger to her chest. “Marina Singh.”
When Barbara Bovender opened the door and invited her in, Marina had the sense that she was crossing a portal from the wasteland of Manaus to another world entirely. Granted, she had spent more than a week in a badly furnished hotel room wearing the same three outfits she rinsed out in the bathtub at night. She was very far from beauty, and yet she had to think that this place would have struck her as beautiful no matter where she came across it. She praised it lavishly, sincerely.
“You’re so sweet,” Barbara said, walking her down a hallway past a series of small framed works on paper that could not have been Klee and yet looked like Klee. The hallway brought them into a large open living room with a high ceiling. Two sets of tall French doors were open onto a balcony and a breeze that Marina hadn’t felt anywhere in the city stirred the edges of the sheer silk curtains that had been drawn aside. The breeze smelled like jasmine and marijuana. From the height of the sixth floor the river appeared to be rimmed in small, blinking lights. If Marina didn’t focus her gaze she could have been in any number of splendid cities. “It’s a wonderful place,” Barbara said, looking at her home with impartial judgment. “I’m sure the bones have always been good but it really was a wreck when we got here.”
“Barbara’s done amazing things,” Jackie said, taking a small hit off a joint and holding it up to her. Marina shook her head and so he brought her a glass of white wine instead, kissing her on the cheek when he gave it to her as if they were old friends. She was surprised how much the kiss startled her, more even than the joint. Jackie raised his hands, motioning to the walls around him. “The woman who lived here before us, Annick’s last assistant, had her sisters strung up in hammocks all over the place.”
Barbara took the joint from her husband, allowing herself a modest inhalation before stubbing it out in a small silver ashtray. She gave herself a moment and then exhaled. “Annick just wanted something nice. That was the only thing she said to me about it. Of course you would, wouldn’t you? Coming in from all that time in the jungle, that’s not so much to ask. Good sheets, good bath towels—”
“A decent glass of wine,” Jackie said and raised his glass as an indicator that they should all drink up.
There was something perfectly spare about it all, a bouquet of some sort of white flowers she had never seen before on the dining room table, a long, low leather bench in front of an equally long white sofa, walls that were painted a shade of blue so pale it might not have been blue at all, it might have been the evening light. And then there were the Bovenders themselves, whose