Page 31 of Gifted & Talented

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Arthur woke up to motion in his hands and feet, which signaled in a way that had recently become noteworthy that he had probably not died overnight. He rolled over and felt the presence of warmth beside him, opening his eyes to see that Philippa’s hair was swept across his pillowcase, golden and honey-warm.

“Where’s Gillian?” said Arthur, and Philippa’s eyes snapped open.

“Well,” she said. “That’s one way to greet someone.”

“Sorry, I just—” He shook himself, reaching over to pull her closer, which was something he very much enjoyed doing. He had always loved waking to Philippa; the way Philippa curled into him like the slice of a crescent moon, all soft contentment and gentle narcissism, a kitten wanting to be stroked. But usually he had a mental space for waking up next to Philippa and/or Yves, and a very separate one for waking up with Gillian, and he had thought it was going to be a Gillian day. “I thought you’d gone to bed with Yves.”

“He’s up early this morning, as is your wife.” Arthur had the distinct impression that this word was meant to punish him somehow, although it didn’t seem reasonable. His arrangement with Philippa had always been rooted in Philippa’s distaste for the conventional, though he supposed it didn’t get more conventional than sleeping next to someone in accidentally matching pajamas, which was not his fault. For one thing, life among the middle-aged had given both Arthur and Gillian certain middle-aged (“mature,” they liked to tell themselves, since they could no longer envision themselves at the proverbial club) creature comforts. Besides, they didn’t coordinate; they just happened to like the same colors and brands. One Christmas they had gifted these pajamas to each other, him to her because she’d commented that the material was so soft and hers to him because she knew he’d like them. It had been one of the times Gillian had laughed so hard she started to cry, which was something that happened when Gillian thought something was really, gorgeously stupid. Usually, Arthur prided himself on a Gillian laugh-cry three to four times a year.

The point is that the pajamas were very comfortable, but hardly a comment on the institution of marriage.

“Gillian is a very early riser,” Arthur decided to say, which was true. Gillian was most productive in the hours before most people were awake, although there were technically no times when Gillian was unproductive. The thought gave him a strange wrenching sensation, so he reached into his nightstand for a bit more chocolate, breaking off a piece and tossing it into his mouth. His phone screen flashed with a string of headlines: WREN (D-CA) NOTABLY SILENT IN CONGRESSIONAL HOUSING DEBATE AFTER CLAIMING MARKETS “UNAFFORDABLE” FOR WORKING CL…

ARTHUR WREN IS RIGHT—THE EAST BAY IS UNAFFORDABLE AND IT’S HIS FAU…

“Are you getting enough sleep?” Arthur asked tangentially of Philippa, who by then was nestled comfortably into him, a veritable pea in a pod. “Or enough… vitamins?”

“I wonder where we go when we sleep,” said Philippa, turning over her shoulder. “Do you think our consciousness runs into each other?”

“Gently, I hope,” Arthur replied, “but almost surely.”

When he and Philippa had first met, Arthur had dreamed of her and Yves constantly, as if he were longing them into being. He had always been particularly watchful of his dreams, a conscientiousness he owed to Lou’s grandmothers.

Lou again.

“I had a friend once,” Arthur began telling Philippa, “who told me our dreams were sometimes a meaningful communion with the fabric of nature, the connectedness of our spirits to things in this world and beyond. But other times they’re just neurological snapshots, like all our thoughts were poured into a bottle and shaken up. She said that things became unrecognizable when we saw them from a different perspective like that, as if they’d happened inside someone else’s heart.”

(Yes, Lou had been a person once, not just a marionette ghost who existed only to remind Arthur of his failings. Not that Arthur had made that distinction yet.)

“Imaginative friend,” Philippa commented, turning to look at him. She was so terribly arresting in the mornings, like intimacy incarnate. Arthur hated to make a mistake and ruin it, the fragility of it all. The delicate nature of perfection.

“I’m going to see her today, actually.” Arthur reached down for Philippa’s hand, stroking the valleys between her knuckles. “Meredith and I can’t decide whether it’s better that one of us go alone, so we’re all going together.”

“In a pack? That can be quite threatening,” said Philippa.

“Well, Lou and I didn’t part on the best of terms,” Arthur said. It felt strange to be discussing Lou with Philippa now. Not solely because he and Philippa didn’t typically undress the details of each other’s lives—she was more intellectual than that—but because he’d done such a marvelous job of conserving Lou to the recesses of his memory, preserving her in the usual dark places for shame and regret. “But Meredith and I disagree on which one of us she’ll be angrier with.”

“Did you both sleep with her?”

“No. Well, I don’t think so.” Granted, he didn’t really grasp the difference between platonic sisterhood and the erotic closeness of girlhood. Among the things he did know about Philippa’s early life were some fascinating anecdotes of her own relationships in boarding school. The experience of being sent away for schooling had been formative to both their sexual tastes, though Arthur hadn’t acted on his for a very long time. Yves, however, had gone to the local school in the small village where he’d lived with his father, his mother, his father’s wife, his half-siblings from his father’s marriage, and all of his mother’s first cousins. Which, Yves pointed out, was not really a thing their village was known for, but rather an eccentricity for them personally. (It was unclear how or when Yves got the introduction to cars, but Yves did have a way of making things seem quite reasonable without providing any actual reasons.) And as for whether Meredith and Lou had ever been involved romantically, Arthur doubted Meredith would spell that out for him. Though she had certainly seemed upset when she’d discovered what Lou and Arthur, in her absence, had done.

“Did you wrong her terribly?” asked Philippa with a small flutter of her lashes. “One of your juvenile mistakes, this Lou?”

“No, actually. Well, not that I know of.” Arthur quieted a moment, remembering the day he’d snuck Lou into this bedroom, lain with her in this bed. “But I must have,” he admitted. “She just stopped talking to me after that.”

“Ah, an unsatisfied conquest,” Philippa teased.

“No. Well, I don’t know if she was satisfied,” he said, feeling forgivably embarrassed for what his teenage self hadn’t yet understood about the clitoris, “but she wasn’t a conquest. I loved her. I was in love with her.”

You could fall in love with anything, Lou had said to him. A light breeze. A good idea. The smell of cookies in the oven.

I do love cookies, Arthur had said.

See?

“I guess it just wasn’t enough,” Arthur finished, and cleared his throat.

“Oh, poor thing.” Philippa stroked his cheek with one of her lovely hands. “Is she the one that got away?”

“Oh, I don’t know about the one. Lots of people have gotten away.” Never because he let them. True, people had the tendency to float in and out of his life, but not for lack of connection. Never because he hadn’t cared.

“You say that like you’ve lived a lifetime pining in the shadows,” said Philippa with a slight wrinkle of her nose.

Arthur laughed. “I’ve never wanted for sex, if that’s what you’re worried about. I didn’t have an awkward adolescence.” Unless, dear god—what if this was his awkward adolescence? Given the headlines, he was certainly starting to feel like he was aging out of his appeal.

But the loss of his youth was not such a sacrifice, he remembered, picturing Riot again. Her mother’s golden hair was probably unlikely, given Arthur’s half-Asian genes, but even a Punnett square left room for the implausible. There was always a little magic, as Lou used to say to him. The impossible was never entirely out of reach if you knew where to look.

Arthur placed a hand on Philippa’s stomach, stroking a line from her navel with his thumb.

“What are you doing? Stop it.” Philippa smacked his hand away lightly, then caught his fingers with hers, bringing them up to her lips. “What are you going to say to this lost love of yours when you find her?”

Hi Lou, sorry about the sex, can you help me stop dying?

For a politician he really should be better with words, but then again, he was about to be a displaced one. Arthur was very good, he realized, at being loved for a brief window of time; in the honeymoon space where nobody really had to know him. The reality of him was disappointing, irreconcilable with the person that other people’s imaginations routinely built him up to be. It was no wonder Meredith felt she should come along.

“What do you think I should say?” asked Arthur.

Philippa tilted her head, deep in thought. “Pragmatically it might be worth pointing out that you’ve recently come into a vast sum of money,” she said. “It’s gauche, but depending how artfully you put it, probably a real conversation starter if you don’t want her to slam the door in your face.”

“Well,” said Arthur reasonably. “Can’t argue with that.”