If I'd Known You Were Coming

A Matter of Time

1 A hinge or a latch or some goddamn thing had rusted out and now the front door kept swinging open like an invitation. This was when things were better than they had been, but still bad enough Lorrie was sure it couldn’t get any worse. This was in Calabasas, in the five-room bungalow with the small square back porch that was partly detached, leaving a gap wide enough to catch a foot. The bungalow with the little kidney-shaped pool with the cracked floor, empty, leaving only a slick of green pointing toward the drain. This was on the other side of a head-high block wall, on the outside of a sprawling new development and just blocks from a mall—a mall, for god’s sake. On the weekends A Matter of Time 2 A M a t t e r o f T i m e a line of cars snaked past the front windows, waiting to pull into the mall parking lot. It was watching all those people, in their ripsleeved t-shirts, trapped in their cars, looking sweaty, drumming their steering wheels, that made Lorrie all the more restless. “It’s only a matter of time,” Marty would say. He wanted more, too. Caroline, their daughter, had had to start kindergarten at the school on the other side of the mall. Lorrie was suspicious of the teacher; she never seemed wholly awake. And Lorrie was sure that it was not a matter of time at all, but rather, a matter of whom you knew. So they were having friends over, select friends. Lorrie found recipes and wrote a questionable check for good liquor, plenty of it. Select friends and Nick Regan. They knew Nick Regan. Lorrie had a knack for finding things that looked more expensive than they were, of assembling the appearance of luxury. She frequented yard sales and, though loath to be living near a mall, she bought the stemware and a tablecloth at Macy’s. Through the Penny Saver she found thin bronze figurines of marching stickmen—à la Giacometti—and candlesticks and a crystal chandelier , polishing what needed polishing with toothpaste and a toothbrush, bringing it all to a high shine so as to distract the eye from everywhere else. Marty called her brilliant and kissed her forehead and cupped her shoulders in his hands, as if congratulating her for playing so hard at a game so clearly unwinnable. They had gone to college with Nick Regan, near Cambridge, Massachusetts. Not at Harvard, but a college not far from there all the same and they’d enjoyed taking the liberty of saying they went to college in Cambridge, aspirating the A. Nick had always had a plan. If he hadn’t spoken of it so often Lorrie might have thought more of his plan then, before it all panned out. In the nine years since graduating he’d produced as many films, each one doubling the previous one’s budget. Lorrie learned this from the interviews she’d been reading. Now anyone could know Nick Regan as well as they did. Maybe better. This was their third attempt to have him over for dinner. Lorrie was finishing the canapés, fully dressed—slipped into a Lagerfeld rip-off, her hair teased up and in a satin headband. But Marty was humming, still unshowered, moving through the A M a t t e r o f T i m e 3 house with a box of tools. She could smell him, his pleasant musk, wholly unfit for company. Caroline was sitting on her hands, sagged into the couch, in a depressing tulle poof of a dress, looking small. She wondered if the girl could possibly manage to keep the one outfit on through the evening. She’d been going through a phase—for years—of needing to wear each piece of clothing out of each drawer at least once a day. Marty found this funny, suggesting Caroline was practicing for wardrobe changes— another little thespian in waiting, like himself. Lorrie felt Caroline watching her. A pitcher of spiked lemonade was sweating on the table. “Go change,” Lorrie said, shooing her off with her hands. Caroline fanned the dress over her knees. “You said look nice.” “Go on, please. Put on jeans. Help your dad.” Maybe Marty had this right, going about his day as he was— Nick could cancel again—but it irritated Lorrie to no end that Marty had still...