“That’s a harsh word, Ms. DiMarco.”
You lick your lips. “Tell me about your complaint.”
“Like I said, it’s not a complaint. I just want more, Mary Kay.”
“More what, Mr. Goldberg?”
Your bare foot finds my leg under the table and I pay the bill. Fast. Cash. I am up. You are up. You say you need to stop in the bathroom and the bathrooms are off to the left and you go in and close the door and then you open the door.
You grab me by the collar of my black sweater and pull me into the bathroom and press your body into my body, my body against the wall. The art in here is full of passion. Nudity and salt water. A naked woman in the sea on her back. Her hands grasp the shoulders of a frightened sailor, still clothed. It’s a shipwreck. It’s us. Wrecked. Groping. You kiss me and I kiss you and your tongue is at home in my mouth—land ho!—and the waves wash over your shouldprobablies. My hands slide under your tights—no panties, cotton crotch—and my thumb finds your Lemonhead—and you cling to me. You say it all. You wanted me on the Red Bed and you bite my sweater—this sweater makes you crazy—and there are sparks in the water—we are on fire—and you are the last page of Ulysses. You grab me. Oh God, Joe. Oh God.
But then you break away. Cinderella when the clock strikes twelve.
You remember what you are. A mom. My boss.
And you are gone.
5
I know, I know. It was just a kiss. I barely felt your Murakami and I didn’t lick your Lemonhead but then again. Oh God, Joe. Oh God. What a fucking kiss.
When you’re with the right person you do the right thing and I was smart to let you go home. I went to my Whisper Room and counted my blessings for all the bad women who came before you. I get it now. Of course you ran. Real love is a lot, especially at our age.
I don’t go to Pegasus on the way to work—your kiss is my caffeine—and you pushed me away, but this is the nature of grown-up love, especially when kids are involved: push, pull, push, pull. I open the door to the library—pull—and you aren’t at the front desk and the Mothball on duty doesn’t like me. The day we met she asked if I’m a Bellevue Goldberg and when I said no she turned her nose up at me. She points at Nomi’s chair.
“You mind moving that? It’s too cold by that window.”
I move the fucking chair into the fucking stacks and I grab my lunch—WE eat the beef and WE eat the broccoli—and I tell the Mothsnob that I’ll be right back and she rolls her eyes. Rude. “I hate to break it to you, but your little friend called in sick today.”
No. No.
The Mothsnob just chuckles.
You’re not sick and I go into the break room and where are you? Were you really that drunk? Was our kiss made of tequila? I storm away from Silverstein’s Whatifs and I pass your office and your door is closed. There is no light in the attic and you’re not sick. You’re scared.
I take my post in Fiction and the day drags. I sell a recently widowed accountant on some Stewart O’Nan and I get a day-tripping lesbian to read the first chapter of Fashion Victim and I am good at my job but I am better when you’re here to chime in. All day I check my phone and you don’t text and I don’t text and you kissed me so maybe I should be the one to text you and I try to find the words.
Hi.
But that’s too fucking wimpy.
Hey.
But that’s too fucking cocky.
Are you there?
But that’s too fucking pushy.
I’m here.
But that’s too fucking needy.
I hate cell phones because if it was 1993 I wouldn’t have a fucking phone and did you tell Melanda about our kiss? Did she get into your head? I walk out to the Japanese garden. I could bail on my shift—I’m just a volunteer—and I could pop by your house and be the Cusack to your valedictorian but I can’t do that because Nomi’s the one who’s graduating this year, not you. And I don’t do that. I don’t “pop by” and I don’t steal phones, not anymore. I check your Instagram—nothing—and I check the Meerkat’s Instagram but there’s nothing about you, nothing but Klebold. I want to share a picture of Love Story but I would never be that lame with you. That blunt. That clingy.
I need to talk to you now because the longer we’re apart, the more the kiss seems like a scratch in the windshield that’s easily sealed and I want to know why you’re hiding.
At the end of my never-ending shift I skulk back to the break room, wondering if I used too much tongue and then the door opens. It’s you. Your eyes are puffy and you fake a smile. “Hi.”
“Hey,” I say. “You’re here.”
Do we hug? We don’t hug. You’re wearing a faded green sweater and you don’t smile. You gnaw on your lip—you didn’t get enough sleep—and you say you just stopped by to pick up a few things. You sit across from me like we’re a couple of Mothballs comparing our MRI results, like you weren’t sucking on my tongue a few hours ago. I lean over the table to get Closer and you arch your back. Cold. Farther.
“Look,” I say. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”
“I know,” you say. “I feel the same way.”
I don’t speak. You don’t speak. You told me so much last night but I am getting that sick feeling that you didn’t tell me everything, that what you told me isn’t the whole story, but only part of the story. You are looking at me as if you are warming me up for the news. The bad news. The worst news in the world.
And here it comes. Those treacherous words: “Joe… we can’t do this. You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“Of course not, Mary Kay. You know I’d never do that…”
You are too relieved. “Okay, good, because if anyone here found out… if anyone said anything to Nomi…”
“Mary Kay, look at me.”
You look at me. “I am a steel fucking trap. You have my word.”
You calm down a little, but you’re still flinching, looking over your shoulder, a paranoid inmate on Crucible Island. You don’t let me talk. You say that last night was a drunken mistake—no—and you weren’t thinking clearly—yes you fucking were—and I tell you that you were perfect and you shudder. “I am anything but perfect.”
My words are coming out all wrong and I know you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect, but it would be too cheesy and needy to tell you that we are perfect together.
You purse your lips, those lips that are puffy from my kiss. Me. “Can we just go back to normal? You know… how we were?”
I bob my head like a trained seal that couldn’t make it in the wild. “Absolutely,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to rush into anything with you. We can take it slow. I want to take it slow.”
It’s a big fat lie and you cluck. “That’s the thing, Joe. There is no ‘it.’ There can’t be an ‘it.’ I have a daughter.”
“I know.”
“I can’t be getting home drunk after midnight. She has to come first.”
“Of course Nomi comes first. I know that.”
You hide your face behind your hands and tell me that you’re not emotionally available right now and I want to take a sledgehammer to the chip in the windshield and smash the glass because you’re making our kiss about your daughter. You pull your hands away. “It’s her senior year, Joe, and I don’t want to miss any part of it…” Then don’t spend two nights a week at a fucking wine bar with Melanda. “She needs me. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.” You raised an independent daughter who likes to read and so what if she’s not a minisocialite the way you were? Neither was I at that age. “To you she’s halfway out the door, all grown-up… But time flies and it’s almost Thanksgiving and in a few months, she’ll be away. And I just can’t make any big changes when change is already coming.” Ha! As if life is ever that predictable and you should let me in now, right now, so that I’m carving your turkey next week and you are wrong, so wrong and you sigh. “Do you get it?”