He rolled his eyes and told her to quit being dramatic. “I keep it out of habit.”

“What kind of fucked-up habit is that?”

“Leverage, then.” He smirked in what he thought was a cocky way but she saw right through it. He was only trying to impress her, to say, see, I have leverage over you.

Something occurred to Ivy. “Did Sylvia know about you going to jail?”

“I don’t hide that stuff.”

But Sylvia had told Ivy that Roux dropped out of high school to support his dying mother, not because he’d gotten arrested. So even brazen Sylvia Speyer was capable of shame.

“You’re not involved in anything—illegal—now, are you?” she asked.

“Ah… work talk is boring.”

“You can tell me, kangaroo,” she said in a baby voice. “I can keep a secret.”

Roux stubbed out his cigarette and turned to her with burning eyes. She thought he would take her, right there on the balcony.

“You don’t have to be Sylvia,” he said, and stood up to go back inside.

* * *

THE NEXT TIME she went over, Roux continued his story. In New Mexico, after his release, he’d found a job at a ranch shoveling horse manure. The secret money he’d stashed away from the car sales he now invested in a fertilizer company that used horse manure as part of a formula that multiplied grain production, the same horse manure that Roux’s farm was producing, and whose owner had given Roux 2 percent share of the farm’s initially nonexistent profit as opposed to paying him an actual salary. Eventually, every shovel of horseshit earned Roux around five hundred dollars on the stock market. When Irena finally got ahold of him with the news of her illness, she was already on her last weeks of life, sustained by an oxygen machine. All this time, she’d never stopped being Baldassare Moretti’s mistress, the main cause of contention between mother and son. Baldassare had set up an apartment for her next to his house with a private nurse in the second bedroom; the apartment was always filled with flowers and casseroles from all of Baldassare’s relatives, including his wife and his son, Ernesto. They were apparently one big fucking family at that point. “I’ll always remember the smell,” said Roux, “right before she passed. Flowers.” Roux said he’d been moved by the way Baldassare’s entire family had come together for Irena—they paid for the funeral, the cremation, the urn, even offered to let Roux continue living in his mother’s apartment. One thing led to another, and soon Roux was managing payroll at Moretti’s restaurants, then promoted to GM, then given the green light to launch his own businesses; the division of Roux’s money and the Morettis’ money became as murky as their living situation.

“He sounds like the Godfather,” said Ivy. She laughed nervously but Roux did not. She could have pressed him for more details but she didn’t really want to know. So much of Roux’s life felt ominous and repulsive to her. The gun, for one thing. Only extremists kept handguns in the house. Rifles would have been preferable, especially displayed in a glass cabinet. Rifles were classier, for sport, while handguns hidden in a drawer were sordid things. Then there were the envelopes of cash stuffed in his drawers and wrapped in wax paper underneath the sink. The old-fashioned cell phones as blocky as cement. No friends or family besides the Morettis, and Ernesto Moretti could hardly be called a friend. He’d been an angry, churlish kid back in West Maplebury, with the kind of fragile ego and prideful blubber that made him an easy target of bullies but also a bully himself, the weak preying on the weaker, and Ivy heard the same ridicule in Roux’s voice when he spoke of Ernesto now. Under the sheen of his luxury goods, Roux’s life, current and past, was an ugly black hole, one she drew away from, the same way she still avoided looking at the vagrants on her street too closely.

But if she forgot these unsavory details, she could enjoy their arrangement. Roux liked everything modern, convenient, and preferably unattainable. He wanted the best service, the best food, he wanted to feel rich. Ivy obviously preferred her fiancé’s brand of cultured breeding, but that didn’t stop her from making ample use of Roux’s hedonistic profligacy. After sex, Roux would put on a foreign movie on his state-of-the-art television and order a feast of Maine lobster, Wagyu steak, fatty bluefin tuna shipped out that morning from Tokyo. When the weather turned cold, they soaked together in his Japanese-style tub with the heated salt rocks, their hips and legs stacked together like Tetris pieces, and afterward he would rinse out her hair with a little wooden spout he’d coaxed from a Tibetan monk who’d used it as a rice-measuring cup. Ivy fancied her and Roux as two separate but amicable pirates taking a break from plundering the world. He had his toys, his money, his art, his businesses, and she had Gideon. Rules, God, society—nothing applied to them in the impersonal sanctity of his apartment.

A month into their affair, she began to pilfer money from Roux’s manila envelopes—twenty dollars at first, then hundreds, then thousands. If he ever asked her about it, she planned to say she only wanted to buy nice clothes for herself. He, himself, took great pleasure in dressing the part of the millionaire bum: low-collared sweaters, ripped jeans, white T-shirts, tan leather boots. But he liked to indulge her with presents. It made him happy when she squealed over a beautiful pair of earrings or a necklace, although she never wore any of it outside of Astor Towers. She didn’t want Gideon noticing her sudden extravagance.

It was impossible that Roux did not know she was stealing from him—once a person knows hunger, he’ll count every grain of rice, as Meifeng would say—but he never said a word. This was because Ivy was the one with leverage now. She could stop coming to him any time she wished, but he could not stop himself from desiring her. And desire, Ivy knew, was the strongest form of leverage. Roux would always be willing to do what she said. She enjoyed his admiration for her, which she knew to be genuine, and she liked the way he looked at her, his eyes soft pools of gray, like the sea before a storm, and his mouth curved into a smile that seemed to sing Beautiful, beautiful! At times like those, she felt benevolence well up within her, and she was extra gentle with him those nights, extra affectionate, to give back a little of what she’d taken from him.

16

TWO HOURS AFTER SHE LEFT Roux, Ivy arrived at Ted and Poppy’s town house in Beacon Hill. The entire street was a row of navy oak panel doors with gold knockers, like a line of schoolgirls in uniform. Poppy greeted them from the kitchen, dressed in a blue cashmere sweater and fitted khakis that grazed her bony ankles. Ivy wore an almost identical outfit except that her sweater was polka-dotted and her khakis were black. Both women wore pearls around their necks and enormous jewels on their ring fingers.

“You’re shrinking a little more each time I see you!” Poppy said, rubbing Ivy’s spine and eyeing her son. “Has Gideon not been feeding you?”

“Excuse me, I am a wonderful cook,” said Gideon, placing his hands on his hips. “I take out the pizza from the box, put it on a plate, and spin it in the microwave for three minutes. Very arduous. Ivy loves my cooking.”

“I caught a cold last week,” said Ivy after the chuckles died down. “Plus, I had to make room for tonight, knowing how good your cooking is, Poppy.”

“I wish I’d had your foresight,” said Ted, patting his slightly protruding belly. He walked around the kitchen island to hug Ivy. “How are you, kiddo?” he said warmly.

“I’m great,” Ivy responded, just as warmly. “Thank you for having us tonight.”

They were all standing around the kitchen island, rosy-cheeked and jocular; this prolonged ritual of greetings that Ivy had once found affected in its unnecessary exuberance—they’d only just seen one another at lunch a few days ago—now felt as natural and automatic to her as a handshake. Though she and Ted never had much more to say to each other than these stock phrases, her affection for him increased each time he called her kiddo and asked how she was doing. That sheer repetition of superficial interactions could breed intimacy, in a different but no less meaningful way than did deep vulnerability, was a lesson the genteel had learned early.