She tapped on Connor’s door and he opened without asking who it was—the luxury and privilege of being a man.
“Minnie Mouse! Fancy meeting you here. What’s up?” he said, his voice bright with alcohol.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“My room is your room,” he said, ushering her in. He closed the door behind them.
Connor was handsome in a sneaky way. His teeth were a bit big and his mouth had to do some extra work to cover them. His eyes were unremarkable, the color of chili. He looked like a computer-generated version of a man. Something aliens would create to explain humans to one another. Something plain enough to get the point across, but nothing too special. That was the sneaky part. The more Minnie looked at him, the more time she spent with him, the more handsome he became. Like one of those magic pictures that revealed something even deeper, even more important, if you looked at it long enough and let your eyes go out of focus.
“You’re a night owl too,” she said to him and meant for it to be a question, but it didn’t come out like one. It made her more insecure, the fact that she couldn’t even ask a proper question.
“Sometimes. Samantha is the early bird,” he said. There was one bed in the room. Connor sat against the headboard, crossed his feet at the ankles. He was wearing his glasses and usually wore contacts. He was wearing a blue Cubs T-shirt, which made her think of Adam, except she was already thinking of Adam, so it felt like wearing a wet bathing suit in the rain.
Minnie didn’t know where to sit. They were friends, had been friends for years. Close friends, even. But it wasn’t like she was used to being alone in hotel rooms with him. There was a chair and a desk. She pulled out the chair and sat there.
“Is it creepy if I say you can sit on the bed?” Connor asked.
“No. You’re not a creep. It would be creepy if you were a creep. Besides, I came over here. It’s not like you showed up at”—she looked at the clock, read the time aloud—“twelve forty-five in the morning at my hotel door claiming you couldn’t sleep. I’m the aggressor here.”
“What are you aggressing, Wilhelmina?” Connor asked. He smiled. Connor smiled a lot.
“You’re the only person in the whole world who calls me Wilhelmina. Not even my parents call me that.”
“It’s a pretty great name.”
Minnie shrugged, got on the bed beside him. He looked at her.
Minnie was shocked at how easy it was to kiss Connor. One moment they were making jokes about some random commercial and the next, Minnie had her head on Connor’s shoulder. So when Connor turned his head to look at her and leaned forward, they were kissing. Almost like an accident.
Once Connor was on top of her, there was a moment when he stopped kissing her, pulled away, took his glasses off and extended his arms so he was hovering over her.
“Are you sure this is okay?” he asked. Her mouth tasted like his—the pepper-metal of vodka, the bright, starry bite of lime.
“Are you sure this is okay?” she asked him.
“Samantha and I have kind of an open relationship thing. She has a guy…a man…she sees him sometimes. I don’t ask too many questions,” he said.
“Adam and I—” Minnie started, then stopped.
“Yeah?”
“This is okay,” she finished, nodding.
Connor and Samantha’s open relationship thing meant Connor had condoms. Minnie tried not to think about the other women he did this with. How often? How many? One? Five? One hundred? He was a pharmacist and Minnie thought about that when he was inside of her. She pictured him in his white coat, the name tag. She’d seen him in it a couple times when she went to the drugstore where he worked.
She opened her eyes and saw the pinched vertical line between his. I am having sex with Connor. I am having sex with the viola player. I am having sex with a pharmacist. I am having sex with a man who is not my husband. I am having sex with not-Adam. She wondered if Connor saw the periodic table when he came, if he thought about metals and gasses, if he anxiously double-checked his brain to make sure he hadn’t screwed up someone’s prescription. He made a dove-like sound when he finished—a quiet, gray coo. Minnie laughed after she came. Maniacally in a burst. Connor shook his head and laughed with her, gently pulling the hem of her shirt down for her as she put it back on. Connor went barefoot to the vending area and brought back one of every candy bar—sugary-chocolate sticks of peanuts and nougat and almond and coconut and milk chocolate, dark chocolate—and they ate them in bed together, watching a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef.
“Everything is dying,” Minnie said as they watched the neon-green fingers of a sea anemone wiggle in the water. Glowing hot-purple, blue, and pink corals, crookedly stacked like dirty plates in a kitchen sink. She licked chocolate from her fingers and began to cry as the smack of a shock-yellow fish moved through the ocean. Connor pulled her close, touched the back of her neck and let his hand stay there.
“You’re okay,” he said. He said it again, softer.
Minnie snuck back into her room in the early morning hotel hallway light. No one knew what had happened but the two of them, not even Stella. And at breakfast, the only things Connor did to acknowledge it:
maintain eye contact while he took his shoe and purposely tapped the top of hers as she sat across from him putting jalapeño cream cheese on her toasted bagel
and
put his hand on the small of her back as they left the hotel. A light touch, like a feather blowing by. The wind?
Yes, it happened once. And sleeping with Connor was the worst thing she’d ever done. Couldn’t everyone see it? Didn’t the green-haze fug of it pulse from her skin?
* * *
Back in her basement, with Connor’s face on her phone screen, Minnie considered these things and simply said again, “That was a long time ago.”
“Well, about six weeks ago,” he corrected her. Frowned.
“Let’s talk about something else. Like, how I wish I had a cup of tea.”
“What kind?”
“Rooibos and honeybush with a wedge of lemon and a smidge of sweetness.”
“If you were here with me, I’d make you that cup of tea.”
“Would you?” she asked.
“You know I would,” Connor said.
Minnie took a deep breath in, tried to keep herself from crying and said, “Okay, I’m going to bed.”
“So am I,” he said.
Neither of them budged.
Neither of them looked away from their screens until Adam opened the basement door and Minnie jumped and ended the call.
“Sorry I startled you,” Adam said, yawning.
“I’m done down here,” she said.
“Good. I fell asleep. I couldn’t even hear you.”
“Go to bed. I’m coming up in a sec.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
When Adam was gone, Minnie texted Connor.
Sorry! It’s fine! I was just jumpy. Adam came down here. Thanks for practicing with me tonight. See you tmrw. X
He responded quickly.
No worries. Until tmrw. Goodnight, Minnie Mouse.
Minnie went upstairs, scrolled through Adam’s phone. There were no texts from Caitriona. Minnie was disappointed and felt foolish for that disappointment, which made her feel even worse. She was a black cloud, a sunken ship. She washed her hands at the kitchen sink, stood there drying them, staring off at nothing.