Magnificence by Lydia Millet Page A

above her, which featured a mako shark. She felt reassured by it. She was a murderer, after all. For once it was a comfort to think so. Being a murderer made her equal to Steven.
    She lifted her hands from the grinder and waited till it wound down, then pulled off the top and tipped the grounds into a filter.
    “Well, I’m glad you convinced Tommy I wasn’t worth suing,” she said humbly.
    A murderer, like a shark, must have rows of hidden sharp teeth behind the ones at the front.
    What he said was true, of course, though his whole bearing filled her with resentment. Resentment and unease. Of course she didn’t deserve the house. No one deserved a house like this. She didn’t deserve anything, she knew that. But he deserved even less, she suspected. All she could think of to do was flatter him. She would show him some gratitude, presume a kindness in him and will it into existence. Maybe he would follow a rare generous impulse and leave her alone.
    “You liquidated this property, we’re talking megamillions,” he said.
    A month ago, T. might have bought it himself. Made her his partner, bulldozed the big house and converted the lot to rows of houses like cupcakes on a tray.
    “I would hate to sell it,” she said softly. “They’d tear it down and build a subdivision.”
    “Ee-yup.”
    “But it’s beautiful,” she said, in a subdued tone. Needing somewhere else to look, she opened the refrigerator with a preoccupied air.
    “Spacious accommodations for a single lady,” he badgered.
    “I rattle around in here,” she said, though this was not at all the way she felt. In truth she glided through chains of rooms streamlined, perfectly graceful in the long halls. Perfect not in and of herself, but in and of the house.
    “Yeah, no kidding.”
    “I’m not sure what to do with the house yet. I admit. But I will do something.”
    “Do something?” said Steven, and drained his beer. “Like what?”
    “You know there are parrots that live wild in the neighborhood?” she asked brightly. “Whole flocks of wild parrots!”
    •
    When she was ushering him toward the front door, two beers later, he stopped to pick through a box of odds and ends on a tabletop—she had it ready to go out to Goodwill—and lifted an old keychain. A dusty bronze ornament dangled.
    “Oh yeah,” he mused. “Shit yeah. You know about this?”
    “About what?”
    “Some club. It’s the logo of that old club he was so into. You don’t remember? Only thing I remember from when I was over here as a kid. Those fuckers were already ancient. They used to hang around the place with walkers and oxygen tanks.”
    She held it up to the light: gold and red, with a lion. There had once been words, but they were too worn to read.
    “Drive safe,” she said, as he got into his car. “And I really appreciate you respecting the spirit of the will. Going easy on me. It means a lot, Steve.”
    Maybe her self-effacing tone would ring in his ears when he thought about litigation. She crossed her fingers behind her back like a schoolgirl and hoped hard, into the bare air, that he would not return—that he and his son Tommy, of high principle, would leave well enough alone.
    He backed up in a spurt of pebbles and rolled out the gate; she watched through the holes in the hedge as his car flashed away. She clutched the medallion.
    •
    Later she stood out on the poolside terrace drinking wine with Jim the lawyer and listening to the fountain at the end of the pool, where water flowed over jumping marble porpoises. He came over once or twice a week in the early evening, when his wife worked late or had made other plans. There were no children.
    “Look at me. Already I’m jealously guarding my property,” she said. “As though I earned it or something.”
    “You don’t want your asshole cousin coming in and trashing the place,” said Jim. “It’s hardly irrational.”
    “Because it’s mine ,” she said, shaking her head. “My personal Club