Property: A Collection. Lionel Shriver

subsequent non sequitur was not premeditated. Nevertheless, he needed to investigate the question pressing in on him: Is there something wrong here, have we all along been doing something wrong? So after she related how last week during a tutorial her student kept emitting such evil farts (“there must be an intermediate state in physics that’s halfway between a gas and a solid”) that she had to keep excusing herself for a bathroom break or drink of water just to get out of the room, he said, “Oh, right. I asked Paige to marry me last night.”

      Dropping that bombshell was an observational experiment. He watched her face. The face that he loved—that he either loved innocuously or loved dishonestly. Whatever was happening in that face, it was complicated. Which meant something in itself. And her pause implied a reckoning. Did one reckon with good news?

      “Wow,” she said after the elongated beat. “You’ve sat here all this time, telling me a slightly lame recipe for crab cakes, and then it’s like, also, I’m getting married, and don’t forget the cilantro?”

      “We’ve never been hung up on telling stories in hierarchical order.”

      “If an extraterrestrial spaceship had landed on the Chevaliers’ lawn this morning, I think I might have let you know before telling the anecdote about Fart Boy.”

       Equates Paige with invader from outer space.

      “… was this proposal something you’ve been planning for a long time?”

      From the very outset, solely concerned with whether Baba has been concealing his intentions from her.

      “Awhile.”

      “I’m surprised you’ve never mentioned the idea. Mister Mysterious!”

       Inference corroborated. Subject cares more about enjoying privileged communication with ostensible “best friend” than about life-changing content of revelation. Indicative of narcissism and/or unhealthy obsession with Baba–Frisk relationship.

      “I don’t tell you everything,” he said.

      “Oh, you do, too!” she exclaimed, prodding his arm again.

      “I don’t even tell myself everything.”

      “You tell me what you haven’t told yourself. That’s one of the main things I’m for.”

      “I do occasionally talk to my own girlfriend,” he reminded her.

      “All lovers require editing. That’s why I can tell you that ‘I’m so aroused!’ is a turnoff, but I wouldn’t have told Sullivan that in a million years.”

       Implicitly relegates Baba–Paige relationship to subsidiary status. Marriage proposal = emotional trump, palpable evidence that Baba–Paige relationship is primary. Subject in denial.

      “You know, you still haven’t asked if Paige said yes,” he said.

      “Well, of course she did. She’s smitten with you. It’s amazing you didn’t call to cancel tennis, because she’d already dragged you off to the registrar at town hall.”

      Instinctively associates Baba getting married with not playing tennis. Good guess, by coincidence, but for Frisk, not playing tennis = end of world [see ET mention above; Paige = calamity/Armageddon]. Once again, Paige/marriage = threat.

      On reflection, since he had plenty of experience with therapy, Weston added a second note: Describes Baba–Paige relationship in terms suggesting unequal emotional involvement. More comfortable with Paige being “smitten’” w/Baba than w/Baba being smitten with Paige. Assumes Paige must be driving force behind marriage (“dragged” to town hall), imputing passivity or unwillingness to Baba.

      “You don’t seem all that happy about my news,” he submitted carefully, as if dropping a catalyst into a test tube with a pipette.

      “I might be happier if you seemed happier. But you’re acting so morose. I asked before we played if you felt down, and you said yes. That’s not the way I’d expect you to feel after popping the question. Hey”—another touch, on the shoulder—“maybe not leaping and frolicking, but at least a smile?”

       Actively looks for signs that Baba does not really want to marry Paige.

      His obligatory smile was pained.

      “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she pressed on.

       Actively dissuades Baba from marrying Paige.

      “When am I ever sure of anything?” he said. “Except that obviously, if I did propose, then on balance I decided that yes, it’s a ‘good idea.’”

      “Then why are you so disturbed?”

       Deliberately exaggerates what Baba believes is carefully controlled affect. But Weston could no longer sustain a clinician’s arch distance, and put down his mental pen.

      Why am I disturbed? he considered. Let me count the ways. Because I am starting to see things from my lover’s point of view, and I don’t want to. Because from that perspective, I am either a cruel two-timer or conveniently delusional. It seems that I have been trying to have it both ways at a good woman’s expense. I put my would-be fiancée through unnecessary suffering out of selfishness. I have heard my whole life that men and women can never be friends. I have nursed the vain notion that you and I are exceptions to that rule, not because this is necessarily true, but because being a supposed exception suits my purposes: I can have my cake and play tennis with it, too. But I am also disturbed because I love you, and whether that love is corrupt, or covertly flirtatious, or interfering with my ability to fully embrace another woman without holding something back, it is still love, in all its near-indestructible dreadfulness, and I am about to take a sledgehammer to my own heart.

      “Oh,” Weston said lightly. “You know me, I’m moody.”

      JILLIAN INEVITABLY CONTEMPLATED the matter, and would have liked to have been happier, which wasn’t the same as being happy. But then, while many people are overjoyed when they decide to get married themselves, it’s hardly normal practice to hoot and sing hallelujah when someone else does. Understandably, too, Baba’s new circumstances underscored her own—she hadn’t even dated for over a year—and thus his announcement moved her to feel a tad pensive, a degree more concerned that she for one was destined to remain single. Worse things could happen, of course. Having proved in Jillian’s experience more durable than romance, friendship often provided a form of companionship as good as marriage, if not better.

      When she scrutinized herself—which made her feel like Baba—she didn’t appear to feel doleful or pissed off or excluded, because she was already integrated into Paige and Baba’s social life. Paige was already acclimated to her boyfriend’s amity with an old college classmate, which had lasted his adulthood through. So there was no reason that anything would change after a wedding. Apart from a possible honeymoon, it would be back to tennis and a musing debrief thrice a week, punctuated by twosome, threesome, and several-some dinners, liberally lubricated with libation.

      Any self-interested consternation that Baba was taking himself off the market would be irrational. Back in the day, they had each had opportunity to pursue the other as marriageable material, and they had each walked away. The two of them as an item were not meant to be. What was meant to be was exactly what they were. In fact, in the more recent go-round, Jillian had been the one who’d cut it off, and she could never bear women who got huffy when other women picked up their discards. You either wanted a guy or you didn’t. If you didn’t, it made no more sense to get retroactively possessive than it did to become incensed that a neighbor was walking around in a shirt that you’d donated to the Salvation Army.

      Yet the following several weeks felt indefinably out of kilter. If this summer were a bed, it would be rumpled and unmade. Baba canceled tennis dates more often than he once