Good Company

A Novel

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062876027
• Print ISBN:
  9780062876010
• Subtopic: Literature General

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

"Plumbs the depths of marriage, motherhood and friendship with warmth and wit. I devoured it in one gulp!” —Maria Semple

A warm, incisive new novel about the enduring bonds of marriage and friendship from Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Nest

Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring—the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five.

Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company—Good Company—afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?

With Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s signature tenderness, humor, and insight, Good Company tells a bighearted story of the lifelong relationships that both wound and heal us.

A Most Anticipated Book From: OprahMag.com * Refinery29 * Houston
Chronicle * The Millions * Elle * Buzzfeed

Five

Flora almost didn’t go to the party the night she met Julian.

She almost didn’t go.

In all the years that followed, she would occasionally say to him—half in wonder, half in fear—“What if I hadn’t gone to your party?”

“It was just our first way to meet,” he’d say, certain in the belief that they would have met somehow, some other day, that life would have broken in his favor concerning her.

She almost hadn’t gone because the only person she would know at the party was her roommate (and friend—she and Margot were becoming genuine friends, to Flora’s astonishment and joy), who was coming from another gathering and would be late. Flora would have to go alone, and she dreaded walking into a place full of strangers clustered in conversation. She’d feel awkward and unwelcome whether or not it was true. Maybe some women in their twenties had a lot of experience walking into parties alone, but not Flora, who had broken her engagement to her first, her only, boyfriend only nine months earlier. She’d known Patrick since they both knelt at the same altar at Holy Sacrament when they were seven and received first communion side by side (Flora Mancini and Patrick McGuire; the alphabet was their matchmaker). Going to a party alone was novel and scary, and Margot’s friends—like Margot—all boasted some kind of pedigree that Flora most certainly did not. Juilliard (Margot) or Yale Drama or Tisch or trust fund. Flora had spent two years at Hunter College before running out of money and interest and throwing herself into musical-theater auditions, and as far as she could tell, Margot and her friends—well, they were not a musical-theater crowd. They were Chekhov and Ibsen and O’Neill and Albee and maybe the Davids (who she’d finally figured out were Hare and Mamet and Rabe). They tolerated musicals. She could occasionally find a Sondheim kindred spirit, but Flora often felt adrift in their company, a little in over her head. The last time she’d gone out with Margot and her friends, she’d been stuck at one end of the table between two men who spent most of the evening arguing about Brecht’s theory of alienation versus Aristotelian logic. “You should really read Poetics if you haven’t. As a starting point,” one of them had said to her as they were putting on their coats.

“Oh, they’re both asses.” Margot had laughed it off on the way home. “They’d kill to have your job right now, trust me.”

This was true! Her miraculous new job as a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Flora was still pinching herself, still dumbfounded. She was a good singer and a passable dancer, but she was not a classically trained actor. Nobody would think to put Flora and Shakespeare in the same sentence, not even Flora. She wouldn’t even have known about the audition if Margot hadn’t called her at work, demanding she leave the office on her lunch break. “I can’t. I just took lunch,” Flora said. “Besides, Shakespeare? That’s not for me.”

“It is for you; it’s Shakespeare in the Park—looser, more fun. You’ve been to the Delacorte, right?”

Well, no. Flora had never been to the Delacorte. She’d heard of Shakespeare in the Park, of course. She sometimes read the reviews in the New York Times, but she’d never gone. For all the times her mother complained about the cost of Broadway, all the penny-pinching to take them to shows, not even the free admission was enough to lure Josephine to stand in line for hours to sit outdoors. The mosquitoes! The humidity! Alfresco was not Josephine’s style. Her style was a nice dress, good shoes, a matching handbag, and a center orchestra seat.

“Maybe once,” Flora lied to Margot. “When I was younger, I think. I don’t remember. But they’re going to want a monologue. I don’t have a classical monologue.”

“Not a big deal,” said Margot. “They’re seeing non-equity actors for a few hours tomorrow. I’m putting your name on the sheet. We’ll work on a monologue tonight. Flora, the fairy chorus is an actual chorus.”

“I thought the fairies were usually children.”

“Not always. Not this time. And every fairy needs to sing. The setting is going to be a Vegas nightclub or something. Very Rat Pack. Very Ella.” Well, okay. Almost all the songs in her audition binder were Porter, Berlin, Gershwin, Arlen—the American standards, her favorites.

When they were both home later, Margot opened her book of Shakespearean monologues and mumbled to herself as she turned the pages. Flora had seen Margot work in a couple of small productions, a one-act downtown, a small part in a revival of Agnes of God in Connecticut, but that night—in their living room over a takeout pizza and Diet Cokes—was the night she saw what she imagined Juilliard had seen in Margot. Every few pages, Margot would stop and toss off a name of a character or play.

“There’s Beatrice from Much Ado, but I hate that play. Adriana? Katherine from Shrew?” Then she would answer her own question. No. No. No. Too predictable, too romantic, too whatever. Sometimes she would read a few lines, stop, and read them again with a slight adjustment or a completely different attitude. Her voice got stronger, filled the room, and her face and body would become angry or disbelieving or sorrowful. It was a remarkable thing to watch, how she could look regal or defeated with a gesture, a posture, hitting a word in just the right way. Margot in real life was a restless soul, fidgety and impatient. But onstage, even when the stage was the small alcove off the small living room that became her bedroom every night, she was focused and magnetic. A star. Flora could have watched her for hours.

“I think this is the one,” she said. “Hermione from A Winter’s Tale. ‘Sir, spare your threats. The bug which you would fright me with I seek.’” Her voice switched back to conversational Margot. “It’s short and sweet. What do you think?”

“I think you’re going to be very famous.” Margot looked up, surprised and pleased. “You’re so good. I don’t know how to do that,” Flora said, gesturing at Margot. “I don’t have it in me.”

“Sure you do,” Margot said, sitting down on their sofa and patting the cushion next to her. “Sit and we’ll break it down. It’s not that hard.”

But it was hard; they worked for hours with Margot directing her. Flora was too angry, then she was too weak. “Hermione is defending herself, but she’s not ashamed or sorry. She’s strong. Try again.” They worked until almost two in the morning, and the next day Flora was so tired she didn’t have the energy to be nervous. She went into the audition room—it all seemed so improbable!—and did it as they’d practiced the night before. Well enough not to be cut off after ten seconds with the dreaded Thank you, that’s all.

Then it was time to sing. She had an old-fashioned alto voice, bright and clear, and when she started snapping her fingers and tapping her foot and swaying her hips a little while singing “Fly Me to the Moon,” she saw the musical director look over at the show’s director and smile. Days later, after rounds of cuts and more songs and more cuts and more singing, she and Margot and five others were left standing on the stage when the director said to all of them, “Congratulations, fairies. We start next week.”

Flora was deliriously grateful to have been plucked from the downtown law firm where she worked in the word-processing pool from three to eleven p.m. five nights a week and dropped into a group of young, eager strangers bound together by gossamer fairy wings. Rehearsal at the Shetler Studios started the following week, they would move to the Delacorte in May. She would be that much closer to having her equity card when she was done. Her world was about to bloom. For the first time in months she wasn’t brooding or burdened by her unhappy, claustrophobic relationship. But going to a party alone? She’d rather sit home and read.

“Come on, Flora,” Margot persisted. “Both guys giving the party are my friends. Both are single.”

“Not interested. Not one iota. I am giving myself at least a year to date, at least.”

“What’s wrong with a distraction? A transition? A little love affair.” This was the kind of old-fashioned expression that didn’t sound strange coming from Margot—a love affair—it sounded romantic. “A few people from Midsummer will be there. It would be good for you to meet them. I heard Oberon will be there.”

Flora laughed. “I’m sure Oberon and I will have so much in common, so much to discuss.” The actor playing Oberon was the second-most-famous person in the production. The first being the woman playing Titania, who had recently won an Oscar for a movie about sharecroppers in the South in the 1930s. The billboards of her sweaty and dirt-stained face had plastered the sides of city buses for weeks. “I’ll be there around ten p.m., and I want to see you the minute I walk through that door. Don’t disappoint me, Flora. Don’t disappoint yourself.”

* * *

FLORA SMELLED THE STRAWBERRIES BEFORE she saw them. She was walking down Broadway, on her way to get something to eat. (She was not going to the party.) But then she smelled the strawberries and they had no business being as beautiful or fragrant as they were, not in March, not given that they had to have made the journey from California, across an entire country, over a bridge or through a tunnel, before they were unloaded and displayed outside of the Fairway. Pedestrians gathered around the display, stupidly grinning as if they were watching a litter of puppies, fingers floating above green boxes stained red at the bottom.

“Six dollars?”

“I just saw them at Pioneer for only two dollars.”

“But not like this.”

“Like what?” said a middle-aged woman, lifting her half-moon readers, which were dangling from a piece of butcher string around her neck, to take a better look. “Are they made of gold?” She took one of the berries and popped it into her mouth. Everyone watched her brow soften, her eyes brighten a little. She nodded, granting permission. “They taste like summer,” she told them, while putting quart after quart in her plastic basket.

Summer. When it was summer, Flora would be on stage in Central Park. She saw herself walking into a party where she knew no one and casually saying, This summer? I’ll be at the Delacorte. Strawberry? Even though she hadn’t left the house to go to the party (she hadn’t!), she was wearing her good jeans, the black ones that made her legs look longer, and a new bright pink blouse she’d found on sale at Bolton’s. The color brightened her olive skin and dark hair, and okay, she’d put on a little makeup and taken some care with her head of unruly curls, and maybe it would be a waste to eat all those berries by herself. Maybe she should stroll by the party and check it out. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look, would it?

* * *

STANDING ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE the small apartment building where the party was taking place, Flora held two quarts of the berries in her hands. She’d spent half the money she had in her wallet, money that was supposed to last for at least the next five days. She hoped this was the kind of party where they had food that could pass for dinner. Not just snacks. She was hungry.

She could hear music and the din of voices snaking out of the upper-floor window. While she was looking up, hesitating (she still had time to bring the strawberries home and eat them alone while reading a book), a guy in a plaid flannel shirt leaned out the window and tossed a slice of pizza toward the sky. From behind him, she could hear a woman’s laugh. “Julian! You’re insane.”

He looked down as Flora looked up. “Hey!” he yelled. Something inside of her, hungry heart or hungry gut, she couldn’t tell, soared to meet the arcing slice. She stood watching it. “Friend!” the guy in the window sounded urgent now, “Watch out!” She heard a careening through the tree branches above her, scurried back, and the slice of pizza landed at her feet. Pepperoni. Well. At least they had dinner.

Flora climbed the two flights up to the party. The stairs were creaky beneath the worn carpet that had been beige once; the wooden banister was faded and dull from all the hands running its length. On the second floor, one of the apartment doors was wide open, the party inside high-spirited. Standing on the threshold, she could see through the crowded living room into the small galley kitchen. The thought of making her way past all those people kept her rooted in place. She could feel her brow start to sweat, her chest and neck flush. From her vantage point, everyone inside seemed to know everyone else. She couldn’t imagine walking up to any of the people in that room and interrupting, introducing herself.

Oh, this had been a mistake. She stepped away from the door and took a few steps down the hall, considering. As easily as she’d traipsed up to apartment 2B (to be or not to be!), she could run back down. Nobody would know; nobody would miss her. She could plead a headache or an upset stomach to Margot later (who wouldn’t be fooled). She could hear Margot’s voice as if she were standing next to her. Why are you so afraid? They’re just people. Show folk. Our folk.

But Margot moved through the world in an entirely different way than Flora did, especially the world of show folk. She was an insider, with all the ease of an insider. A blithe spirit incarnate. How many times had Flora been out with Margot at an audition or a show and seen her establish some kind of connection, sometimes with complete strangers, within minutes? Maybe they’d crossed paths at Juilliard or they’d been in a workshop together or the person knew her theater-world-famous mother or they were all regulars at the same annual Thanksgiving parade brunch on the Upper West Side that everyone loved so much. Margot had been acting since she was a preteen; she’d accompanied her mother every year to this or that summer stock production. She knew costumers and stage managers and directors and musicians. It was intimidating. And Flora sometimes thought of herself as Margot’s mascot, the person who gave her a deeper kind of legitimacy becaus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-One
• Twenty-Two
• Twenty-Three
• Twenty-Four
• Twenty-Five
• Twenty-Six
• Twenty-Seven
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Also by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
• Copyright
• About the Publisher