Michael Chabon

“It’s nice that your old girlfriend was so understanding,” Arthur said, nearly smiling.

I’d faked an apologetic telephone call to Claire, explaining to the dial tone that something had come up, I wouldn’t be able to make dinner, and that I was sorry she had gone to so much trouble for me for nothing, which last, I’d reminded myself, was certainly true.

“Ha. Yes. Where is Momo from?”

“Lebanon,” said Arthur, and then a lovely brown woman in a sarong approached, with a delighted look and arms spread, preparing a brace of wide hugs.

“Momo! Arthur!” she cried. Her eyes were large and brown, made up with gold flecks and three mingled eye shadows, and her hair was shot through with colorful objects, lacquered chopsticks, and bits of feather and crepe. I stood by the open door, watching the traded embraces, keeping a patient, big, phony smile on my face. Momo cried out, cursed in French, and ran deep into the house, with a grim, insane look on his face, as if in pursuit of some prey he’d finally cornered after a million-year hunt. Our greeter, whom I took to be Riri, had splendid shoulders, which fell, smoothly and unhindered by clothing, to the bouncing top of her flowered wrapper. Like many Persian women, she had an eagling kind of beauty, hooked and dark, and mean about the eyes. After she had kissed her two boys, she turned to me and held out a hostesslike cute hand.

“Riri, this is my friend, Art,” said Arthur.

“Delighted,” I said.

“Oh, delighted!” said Riri. “So polite! All your friends are so polite, Arthur! Come in! Everyone is here! Everyone is drunk—but politely! You’ll feel quite at home! Come into the parlor!”

She turned and walked into the parlor, a large, red-curtained room, which deserved its antique name. It was filled with vases, people drinking, and a grand piano.

“Is it really that obvious?” I whispered, close to Arthur’s ear but not too close.

“You mean that you’re polite?” He laughed. “Yes, it’s embarrassingly obvious—you’re making a well-mannered fool of yourself.”

“Well, let’s get rude, then,” I said. “Is there a bar?”

“Wait,” he said, grabbing me by the elbow. “I want you to meet someone.”

“Who?”

He led me through a web of kids, most of whom seemed to be foreign, holding a drink, and smoking a cigarette of one kind or another. Some halted their loud conversations and turned to greet Arthur, who gave all an able, curt, and rather arrogant “Hi.” He seemed to be well-liked, or at least to command respect. Many of the small bundles of people tried to enclose him in their conversations as he passed.

“Where are you taking me?” I said. I tried to sound apprehensive.

“To meet Jane.”

“Oh, good. Who is she?”

“Cleveland’s girlfriend. I think she’s here—just a second. Stay here for a second, okay? I’m sorry. Be right back. I’m sorry about this, but I see someone, um—” said Arthur, and he unhooked me and vanished.

I stayed, and surveyed, and wondered at all the handsome women of many lands. He had deposited me in a corner of the parlor with a towering piece of furniture, which I leaned upon and cooled my cheek against. Many of those I saw had brown skins, every lovely grade of brown: Iranians, Saudis, Peruvians, Kuwaitis, Guatemalans, Indians, North Africans, Kurds—who knew? Caucasian women were draped about like bits of pale lace; and there were boys with interesting headgear and Lacoste shirts, or ill-fitting gabardine suits, laughing and eyeing the women. Arthur studied in that department of the university to which rich or very aggressively lucky foreign children are sent, to learn to administer great sums of international money and the ills of their homelands. Diplomacy, he’d said, when I’d asked him where his future lay.

“I go to these parties to practice,” he’d said. “There are factions, alliances, secrets, debts, and a lot of messing around—I mean, of course, sexual messing around. And they all see themselves as Iranians, Brazilians, whatever, but I—I don’t see myself as an American: I’m an atom, I bounce all over the place, like a mercenary. No, not a mercenary, a free agent—a free atom—isn’t that something in chemistry? I’m always at the outside orbit of all the other, um, molecules?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” I’d said. “I forget what a free atom is. I think you’ve made it up.”