The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [92]
Regina emerged from the bathroom, more awed than annoyed by his immobility, the half-buttoned shirt. My God, she said. You really are stunned.
She was radiant. In a simple black dress with thin straps. Her breasts pushed somehow out and up so that their smooth white crests were exposed. Voluptuous Regina, who would become more voluptuous now. With his child.
—How do I look? she asked, spinning happily.
______
They were late. He might have said embarrassingly late, though embarrassment belonged to his other life. They ascended stairs and emerged into a crowd, voices already risen past a decent decibel. The party seemed to be held in a series of rooms, like chambers in a museum — the drinks in here, the food in there. White-coated waiters, diplomatically not African, moved from room to room with silver trays. Regina, beside him, turned heads, as she did not normally do, her glow like plutonium, the radiation high. His own radar tuned elsewhere, a personal early warning system deploying. Needing to find Linda before Regina crowed. He searched for blond hair and a cross, found blond hair more often than it occurred in nature, but not a cross. As disastrous as the circumstances were, he wanted nothing more than to see Linda — if only a glimpse — though that would simply fuel desire. And he was surprised by how much it hurt, this returning to life. Numbed limbs remembering pain.
Thomas, not discovering Linda, found his Marine instead. The man looking uncharacteristically deflated, a defeated Marine a sorry sight. Introductions were offered and received, Regina towering over the Marine’s wife, a diminutive dun-colored woman in a royal-blue suit.
—Your boy’s not here, the embassy official said.
Thomas, at first not understanding the reference to “your boy,” thought the man had the wrong person. And then, suddenly, he comprehended. Kennedy? he asked.
—Not coming. The Marine took a large swallow of what looked to be straight scotch. No ice. His face was white and hollow-cheeked.
—What happened?
—Scheduling conflict. So they say. The Marine spoke through tight lips. Bearing up. Though the wife looked as though she had been crushed long ago.
—He’s in the country? Thomas asked.
—No, the man said, aggrieved. That’s the point.
There seemed nothing to say but I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Thomas said.
—It’s your gig, the unhappy official said.
Thomas, out of politeness — manners instilled from long ago, seemingly irrelevant now — lingered with the Marine as one would with a man who’d just been fired or lost a valuable contract. All the while scanning the crowd, unable to help himself, breaching irrelevant manners with his sporadic inattention. Regina, contrary to expectation, kept her secret to herself, though to be fair, she didn’t know the embassy wife at all. Still, Thomas had expected a joyous blurting out. Had braced himself for an announcement that couldn’t fail to reach unwilling ears. Perhaps Regina was simply being prudent, waiting for confirmation. She had, after all, already lost one child late into the game. Or possibly his wife was superstitious, a trait he’d failed to notice before.
When it was feasible, Thomas excused himself from the crestfallen embassy official (Regina remaining, the wife and she apparently having found something in common) and made a more determined search for Linda. Though the event was not black-tie, everyone was attired just a notch down from that, so that there were many long dresses and dark suits. He saw his editor across the floor and might have tried to part the crowd to get to him, the editor being nearly the most interesting person Thomas knew. But Thomas, a man with a mission, merely waved instead. He spotted Roland, who did not, mercifully, see him, as well as a journalist he knew from somewhere — the university or the Thorn Tree. Men and women seemed locked in conversations that required shouting. Thomas took a glass of champagne from a silver tray and guessed the waiters were Marines. Was that possible? He entertained for a moment the notion