The Perfect Couple Read online

  “You’ll excuse us, please, Elida?” Greer says.

  Elida nods and scurries away.

  “Does Elida live here?” Nick asks.

  “She does not,” Greer says. “She works seven to five. Today she came a bit earlier because of the wedding.”

  Nick follows Greer over to a simple mahogany desk, gleaming as though just polished. On the desk are a laptop, a legal pad, three pens, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. There’s a Windsor chair at the desk and Nick takes a seat and turns his attention to the computer. “So this here, A Slayer in Santorini, is the piece you were working on last night?”

  “Yes,” Greer says.

  “It says you closed it at twelve twenty-two a.m. But you told me eleven fifteen.”

  “I stopped writing at eleven fifteen. I closed the document at twelve twenty-two, apparently.”

  “But you said you went right to bed. You said you went to bed around eleven thirty.”

  “I did go to bed,” Greer says. “But I had difficulty falling asleep, so I had a drink.”

  “Of water?”

  “No, a drink drink. I had a glass of champagne.”

  “So sometime between eleven fifteen and twelve twenty-two a.m. you went to the kitchen for a glass of champagne?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you notice any activity then?”

  Greer pauses. “I did not.”

  “You didn’t see anyone?” Nick says.

  “Well, on my way back to my room I saw my daughter-in-law, Abby. She was going to the kitchen for water.”

  “She was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t she get water from the bathroom?”

  “She wanted ice, is my guess. She’s pregnant. And it was a warm night.”

  “Did you and Abby have a conversation?”

  “A brief one.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “She said she was waiting for Thomas to get home. He had gone out with Benji and the others.”

  Ah, yes. Nick recalls that Abby was annoyed that Thomas had decided to go out. “Anything else?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “And after you got your champagne, you returned to your bedroom to sleep?” Nick asks.

  “That’s right.”

  Nick pauses to scribble down notes. She lied to him ten minutes ago; there’s no reason to believe another word she says.

  “Let me switch gears here. We found a two-person kayak overturned on your beach. Do you own such a kayak?”

  “It belongs to my husband,” Greer says. She cocks her head. “It was left overturned on the beach, you say?”

  “Yes. Does that seem odd to you?”

  She nods slowly. “A bit.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Tag is fanatical about his kayaks,” Greer says. “He doesn’t leave them just lying about.”

  “Is it possible that someone else used the kayak?”

  “No, he keeps them locked up. If the two-person kayak was left out then he must have taken someone out on the water. If he were going out alone, he would have taken his one-person kayak.”

  “Any idea who he might have taken out?”

  Greer shakes her head. She looks far less confident than she did a moment ago, and Nick feels her losing her grip on the explanation she had so neatly written in her mind.

  “I suppose you’ll have to ask my husband that,” she says.

  Wednesday, May 30–Tuesday, June 19, 2018

  TAG

  He takes Merritt’s number but makes no plans to see her again. It’s a one-and-done, a weekend fling, which is how he likes to keep things with other women. There have been half a dozen or so over the course of his marriage, one-or two-night stands, women he never sees or thinks of again. His behavior has nothing to do with how he feels about Greer. Or maybe it does. Maybe it’s an assertion of power, of defiance. Greer entered the marriage with more money and higher social standing. Tag has always felt a touch inferior. The prowling around is how he balances the scales.

  When he gets back to New York, two things happen. One is that Sergio Ramone calls. Tag considers letting the call go to voice mail. He fears that Sergio has learned that he took Merritt to the wine dinner and he’s calling to express his disapproval. But then Tag reminds himself that taking Merritt to the dinner was done with Greer’s blessing.

  “Hello,” Tag says. “Sergio, how are you?”

  It turns out that Sergio is calling for a very different reason. His contact at Skadden, Arps has told Sergio that there’s grumbling within the litigation department about Thomas Winbury. He isn’t pulling his weight, apparently. He takes long lunches and unscheduled vacation days. He often leaves work at five o’clock when other associates stay until nine or ten at night. At his last review, he was given a warning, but he’s shown no improvement. There’s talk of letting him go.

  Tag sighs. Thomas has always put in just enough work to get by. Abby’s family is so wealthy that Tag suspects Thomas wants to get fired. He’ll work for Mr. Freeman in the oil business. He’ll move to Texas, which will break Greer’s heart.

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Sergio,” Tag says. “I’ll have a talk with him.” He hangs up before Sergio can ask him how the wine dinner was and then he swears at the ceiling.

  A few nights later, Thomas and Abby come for dinner at Tag and Greer’s apartment. Greer has made a leg of lamb and the apartment is redolent with the smell of roasting meat, garlic, and rosemary, but as soon as Abby enters the apartment, she covers her mouth with her hand and bolts for the bathroom.

  Thomas shakes his head. “I guess she’s gone and ruined the surprise,” he says. “We’re pregnant again.”

  Greer reaches out for Thomas, but they all know to limit their reaction to cautious optimism.

  Tag shakes Thomas’s hand, then pulls him in for a hug and says, “You’ll make one hell of a father.” No sooner are the words out of his mouth than Tag doubts their veracity. Will Thomas make a hell of a father? He needs to buckle down at work, start setting an example. Tag nearly brings Thomas into his study to tell him as much, but he decides, in the end, to let the occasion be a happy one, or as happy as it can be with a woefully sick Abby. He’ll talk to Thomas another time.

  That night, Tag can’t sleep. He slips from bed and goes into his study. His three home studies—the one in New York, the one in London, and the one on Nantucket—are sanctuaries dedicated to Tag’s privacy. No one enters without permission except the cleaning ladies.

  Tag takes out his phone and scrolls for Merritt’s number.

  She answers on the third ring. “Hey, Tag.”

  Her voice brings it all back. There is noise in the background, voices, music—she’s out somewhere. It’s two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday night. Tag should not be pursuing this.

  “Hey yourself,” he says. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  She laughs. “I’m downtown at this speakeasy thing. It looks like a laundromat but there’s a secret door, a code word, and voilà, you enter the underworld. Do you want to come join me? I’ll tell you how to get in.”

  “No, thank you,” Tag says. “I just called to tell you your instincts were correct. Abby is pregnant. She and Thomas told us tonight at dinner.”

  “Who?” Merritt says.

  “Abby. Abby, my daughter-in-law. She was with you during Celeste’s bachelorette weekend. You said—”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Merritt says. “Abby. Yeah, I’m not surprised.”

  Tag feels like a fool. He should hang up. He’s going to see Merritt in a few weeks at the wedding and it would be best if their dalliance were a thing of the past. But there is something about this girl. He can’t leave it alone.

  “Where did you say your apartment is?” he asks. “I think I’ve forgotten.”

  Tag sees Merritt the next day after work, and the day after that, and on Saturday he tells G
reer he’s going to run in Central Park but instead he goes to Merritt’s apartment. After sex, they walk down the street to a really good sandwich place and order lunch and sit side by side and talk and laugh—and in the middle of it, Tag realizes that he is losing control of the situation. What is he doing? Anyone might see him here with this girl.

  He walks Merritt back to her apartment and she pulls him in by the front of the shirt. She wants him to come inside. And he wants to, oh, does he want to. He agrees, but just for a minute, he says.

  She has turned him into a teenager again. His desire is so intense, so relentless, it frightens him. He can’t remember wanting anyone or anything as much as he wants this girl. His feelings for Greer seem almost quaint by comparison.

  Merritt is twenty-eight years old, nearly twenty-nine. She has a lukewarm relationship with her brother and she doesn’t speak to her parents at all. This, Tag can’t understand.

  “What do you do on Thanksgiving?” he asks. “Christmas?”

  She shrugs. “Last year, Thanksgiving was Chinese food and a movie. On Christmas, I flew to Tulum for a yoga retreat.”

  Tag senses a hole inside of Merritt, an emotional hole, which he knows is very, very dangerous. He needs to end this thing now, while there is still time to recover before the wedding. But the attraction grows stronger. Soon, he thinks only of Merritt—when he’s working, when he’s exercising, when he and Greer are eating dinner at Rosa Mexicano. Greer is consumed with finishing her novel and planning Benji’s wedding. She is so focused on these two projects that she doesn’t notice any change in Tag. She doesn’t see him, she doesn’t hear him, and sex is out of the question. She jokes that they’ll have a second honeymoon once Benji and Celeste are on their first honeymoon. But Tag knows that once the wedding is over, Greer will collapse, exhausted, or she’ll go into a funk because there’s nothing left to look forward to.

  He schedules a drinks meeting with clients at the bar at the Whitby Hotel and he asks Merritt to go sit at this bar without letting on that she knows him. She does exactly as he asks, wearing a slinky black dress and five-inch stilettos, and Tag excuses himself from his clients for a moment. He follows Merritt into the ladies’ room, where they lock the door and have shockingly hot sex. When Tag walks out, he is so intoxicated he doesn’t care who sees him.

  Later, he chastises himself for being reckless. He asks himself what he’s doing.

  She is given tickets to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. Will he go with her?

  “I can’t,” he says. “It’s too risky.”

  “Please,” she says. “They’re second-row seats.”

  “That’s the problem,” he says. “If they were nosebleed seats, I wouldn’t worry about seeing anyone I know.”

  “Fine, then,” she says. “I’ll take Robbie.”

  “Who’s Robbie?”

  “My on-again, off-again,” Merritt says. “He’s the daytime bartender at the Breslin.”

  Tag is addled by news of Robbie’s existence, although what did he expect? Naturally, there’s a Robbie. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were half a dozen Robbies. The thought is so dispiriting that the next day finds Tag at the bar of the Breslin at lunchtime, ordering the rabbit terrine and a scotch egg—at least it’s a good place—from a big Irish hunk. Robbie. He has six inches and forty pounds on Tag, plus he’s twenty-five years younger. This is who Merritt should be dating. Not only is Robbie a bartender, he’s an aspiring actor—and idle chitchat reveals that he’s just been cast in a pilot. Tag hates Robbie with a bloodred passion; he leaves him an absurdly large tip.

  The night of the concert, Tag is agitated. He imagines Robbie putting his shovel-size hands on Merritt’s waist and swaying to the music behind her. He’s so unsettled by this vision that he tells Greer he isn’t hungry for dinner; he might have a sandwich in his study later.

  He sends Merritt a text: Let me know when the concert is over. I’ll meet you at your place.

  Twenty fraught minutes later, he receives a text back: K.

  K. Has there ever been a less satisfying response in the short history of texting? Tag thinks not.

  Eleven o’clock comes and goes, eleven thirty. Tag succumbs to his hunger and heads to the kitchen for a ham sandwich. He sees a light on in their bedroom. He opens the door to find Greer wearing her tailored blue pajamas. Her hair is in a bun held up with a pencil and her reading glasses are perched on the end of her nose. There’s a glass of chardonnay to the right of her laptop. She’s in the middle of a scene, he can tell, but she looks up and smiles.

  “Shall we go to bed, then?” she asks.

  Yes, Tag thinks. Say yes. Look how elegant his wife is, how productive, how ingenious. She’s absolutely everything he could ever want in a woman.

  “I need to keep going,” Tag says. “Ernie and I are putting that Libya deal together. It’s going to be huge. He’ll be at the office first thing in the morning and I have to have the numbers waiting for him.”

  Greer shuts off her computer. “Well, I’m calling it a night.” She raises her face for a kiss. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  “You know I won’t,” Tag says. “Love you, darling.”

  He waits until twelve thirty and when there is still no text from Merritt, he sneaks out of the apartment, hails a taxi, and goes down to Perry Street. He stands outside her building and buzzes her apartment, but there’s no answer.

  Then he hears her laugh. He looks down the street to spy Merritt and Robbie on approach. They are walking close together but not touching. Tag tries to hurry down the steps of the building before she sees him… but it’s too late.

  “Tag?” she says.

  He’s caught. It’s nearly one in the morning; there is no way to play this off as casual. He’s a worldly, successful man standing in front of a girl’s apartment building like some schlub in a rom-com; if Greer could see him now, she would find him so absurd she might even laugh. But the sight of Merritt sends a surge of adrenaline through Tag. He feels enough passion to kick Robbie the lickspittle to the curb despite his size advantage and then carry Merritt up the stairs over his shoulder. She’s wearing a white crocheted sundress and dangling earrings and her hair is up. She’s as fetching as any woman he’s ever seen.

  “I need to talk to you,” he says.

  “Okay,” Merritt says. She looks up at Robbie. “Robbie, this is Tag. Tag, Robbie.”

  Tag extends a hand automatically. Robbie says, “Weren’t you in for lunch the other day? At the Breslin?”

  Tag shouldn’t have left such a big tip. It would have been impossible to forget.

  “Were you?” Merritt says. She looks amused. She now understands the power she has over him. He has made such a mess of things, he thinks. He should have just gone to the concert.

  Merritt’s birthday is June 18. She wants to do something special. She wants to go away with Tag. Tag considers this request. Where would they go? To Paris? Rome? Istanbul? Los Angeles? Rio de Janeiro? He does some research on Istanbul but decides flying overseas is impractical and risky, even if they do so separately. He books a hotel room in New York instead, at the Four Seasons downtown. He worries a bit because before he and Greer moved to New York, they used to stay at the Four Seasons in midtown, and they like to stay at Four Seasons when they travel. But it’s a brand he trusts and it’s only one night and the hotel is all the way down by the Freedom Tower, which isn’t a neighborhood that anyone he knows frequents after five o’clock.

  The weekend before Merritt’s birthday, Tag and Greer are on Nantucket. Greer has a three-hour meeting with Roger Pelton, the wedding planner. Tag goes for a ride in the kayak, then he drives into town to get lunch—he loves the soft-shell crab sandwich from Straight Wharf Fish—and while he’s at it, he decides to buy Merritt a present. He has been trained by Greer to understand that the only acceptable present for a birthday or anniversary is jewelry. He walks into the Jessica Hicks boutique thinking he will get earrings or a choker, but when he describes the y
oung woman he’s buying for—he pretends the gift is for his daughter-in-law, Abby, who is pregnant with their first grandchild—Jessica shows him the silver ring with the lace pattern embedded with the multicolored sapphires.

  “It’s meant to be worn on the thumb,” Jessica says.

  “The thumb?” Tag says.

  “Trust me,” Jessica says. “It’s a thing.”

  Tag buys the thumb ring and leaves the store feeling a sense of giddy anticipation. The ring is beautiful; Merritt will love it, he’s certain.

  His happiness is a thing.

  On the eighteenth, Tag gets to the hotel early. He has had a bouquet of expensive roses delivered to the room as well as champagne. He sets the box from Jessica Hicks between the flowers and the ice bucket. Everything is as it should be, but he can’t relax. Something about this scenario makes him feel like a run-of-the-mill cheat. He’s a stereotype, a middle-aged man sleeping with one of his daughter-in-law’s friends because his wife is busy and distracted and he needs to boost his self-esteem.

  He waits in the room for Merritt to arrive but she texts to say she’s at the salon getting a bikini wax and she’ll be late. He’s a bit turned off by her frankness. Is it necessary to tell him she’s getting waxed? It feels inelegant.

  He decides to go down to the bar for a drink. A real drink.

  As soon as he walks into the bar, he locks eyes with a man, then he realizes with horror that the man is his son Thomas. Before Tag can think better of it, he ducks behind a pole. He waits a few seconds, not breathing, his heart skidding to a near stop as he waits for Thomas to confront him and ask what he’s doing there. What should Tag say? Meeting a client for drinks, of course, and then when the client doesn’t materialize, Tag can pretend to be annoyed and skip out to make a phone call.