Chapter 11 #2
The key is new enough that it still catches slightly in the lock, the way new keys do before they’ve learned the shape of where they live. (It’s me, I am the key.) I push the door open with my shoulder, the bag with the dress tucked against my chest
He’s already here, in the kitchen where he seems to spend most of his time, which is ironic for a man who isn’t known for a lot ‘culinarily.’ He doesn't look up when I come in, but he also doesn't look surprised, like the sound of my key in his lock is already a thing that makes sense to him.
He just learned a new word, and suddenly it belongs in the vocabulary of his life.
I don’t know what to do with that thought, so I put it on the shelf next to the toaster. (The cabinet, sorry.)
“What are you making?” I ask, dropping my purse on the entry table. (Bad luck to put it on the floor.) But the dress bag stays in my hand.
“Scrambled eggs,” he says, with a quick glance over his shoulder to see me, getting ready to crack one in with flawless timing, even though I’m no less than twenty minutes later than I said I’d be. (And he seems to know it.)
“In a pot?”
“Talk to your countrymen about that.” I hop up on the counter and kick off my shoes, which I know he hates, which is exactly why I do it.
I swing my legs and his jaw tightens at the sight of it.
But he’s carefully scrambling eggs in a way he can’t abandon to push me down. (Again, the reason I do it.)
“Gordon Ramsey,” I laugh, “screams at people for sport, so I’d choose your allies carefully… Actually, he might be right up your alley.”
The corner of his mouth tugs on his lips, wanting to release a smile, one he seems to let sneak through.
I watch it happen and look away before he can catch me, because the minute he knows I get joy from something he does, I’ll never see it again.
He plates the eggs and takes them to the island.
He has a perfectly good dining table, even though I doubt he ever uses it.
And yet, it remains set like he needs to be prepared for some kind of impromptu dinner party.
(I doubt the guests I’ve seen are here for dinner.)
“If you want dinner, you have to get down,” he says.
I consider arguing (for about three seconds), which is about how long it takes the smell of perfectly made scrambled eggs to dismantle my entire position, so I hop down.
Some battles aren't worth it, they are worth exactly one plate of Gordon Ramsay eggs. Which are, I’ll admit (with great reluctance), perfect.
“Okay, these are actually good,” I say, as I take another bite of the soft, folded eggs.
“You sound surprised.”
“I am surprised. Pleasantly.” I take another bite. “I know you said you could make eggs. I didn't know you meant you could make eggs.”
“Those are the same sentences.”
“It is categorically not the same thing,” I say, borrowing his own words, in a voice meant to mock his own.
And this time the smile doesn’t get managed.
It runs right through the front gate of his control, just for a second, real and unguarded, and I feel it land without permission (his or mine) somewhere in the center of my chest.
He picks up his own fork and doesn’t say anything, and I let him not say anything, and we eat.
This is new, not just the eating, we have eaten together before.
But that had purpose and agenda and somewhere to point itself, this is just dinner, or breakfast. (It’s breakfast for dinner, which I love.)
“What's in the bag?” Not asking it as a question, exactly, even though it is and his inflection should go up at the end, but there’s no oral question mark, he asks questions like they are facts he’s decided to surface. I look at the dress bag I draped across the stool next to me.
“Nothing.” I adjust it to make sure it stays balanced. “Just a dress.”
“For Wednesday.”
“Ready to put the wed in Wed-nes-day” I say.
“Technically, the wed is silent,” he counters. And the more we speak I can see how quickly his mind moves. He sets down his fork, wipes his hands as if he’s about to do something precious, looks at me, and says two words. “Show me.”
“You don’t want to see a dress.”
“Your wedding dress, I absolutely do.” He’s watching me, waiting, and he looks like he has the patience to wait me out, which is annoying because he is very good at waiting and I am very bad at being waited out.
Especially as the amber at the center of his eyes catches the lamp light and it always feels like I can see it move, see myself in the reflection of it.
Until he blinks back into himself, and remembers he was supposed to look away.
I unzip the dress bag, exposing it, and in this light it’s just as beautiful as when I saw it the first time.
(This time much less crumpled on the floor.) The pearls catch the light and throw them back in small soft pieces.
And he looks at it with a focus that does not perform the casualness it probably should.
Instead I see his throat bob, as he swallows hard. Pressing his lips together.
“Good,” he says, reaching for a glass of water.
“Glad it meets your approval,” I say to him. “Don’t worry, I think you’re beautiful,” I whisper to the dress as I tuck it back into the hanging bag.
“So do I.” His voice is lower, softer in tone, saying nothing else, and yet, it feels like more.
After dinner he rinses the plates (of course he does) before putting them in the dishwasher, and as part of our arrangement marriage (get it, like arranged marriage?), I agreed to sleep here, consistently.
I’ll use my apartment for recording, for anything else, but given the attention to detail he lives his life with, and the intensity with which Mrs. Saraceno watches his front door, we knew this was the best option.
I am trailing behind him the way I do when I'm somewhere new and my feet are more curious than the rest of me.
(Who am I kidding, I am also curious.) We walk through the main space, past the dining room that is probably lonely and jealous of the kitchen island, and down the short hallway that leads to one of the three bedrooms. Stopping in front of the door.
“Your room,” he says as he joins me at the door. “Go on, open it.”
I turn the knob and I step inside, and he’s behind me.
This room looks like Nancy Meyers designed it on a really good day after a phone call with someone she loves.
(And a glass of wine.) The duvet is botanical, subtle soft greens and creams that sneak through, a whisper of something growing in a place where nothing is supposed to grow, which feels, now that I'm standing here, like a description of exactly what is happening in this apartment. The windows are offensively large, and there are curtains, not just blinds. This room is designed, intentionally. I won’t say for me, but he definitely made sure any guests (that don’t spend the night in his bed) have somewhere comfortable to drift off to sleep and dream.
(About him.) We share a wall, this man and I, this is the same building, on the same floor, he and I have to take the same elevator, we have shared plumbing!
I live in a small, makeshift one-bedroom, and he lives like this?
! (Well, not like this, this is for guests.)
This whole room suggests thoughtfulness, not in utility but real, sincere comfort.
He’s standing in the doorway as I mosey. (As I do.)
“Did you always have this duvet?” I ask, examining the botanical print as I run my hand across it, and it's fluffy and soft in a way I want to be swallowed whole. I wonder if this is what his bed is like, the kind of multiple-marshmallow-level duvets that let you sink into them. (He doesn’t give a ‘sink into a bed’ vibe.)
He lets a breath pass between us as I drag my hand around the bed, walking across the room where there's a perfect reading chair and ottoman, and a throw blanket, which is the first one I’ve seen here. (He also doesn’t look like the ‘I get cold, pass me a throw blanket’ kind of guy.)
“No.”
“Hmmm,” I say. Just that, because if I say anything else I will either laugh or cry at this situation, and I genuinely don't know which, and neither seems appropriate right now.
He didn't do this to make me happy, I know that, for whatever internal jury is currently deliberating in my brain. He is a master of strategy.
“I couldn’t listen to you call my decorating style ‘institutional’ again,” he says like it explains the thoughtfulness away.
(I did do that, didn't I.) “Bring whatever you need,” he says.
“Books, clothes, whatever makes it work. Your apartment next door will be yours, but we will call this our bedroom to anyone who asks.”
I turn around to look at him as he’s leaning against the doorframe with his arms loosely crossed, and he looks almost (almost) relaxed, which is so rare on him it reads as a different feature entirely. (I wonder how to get him to the ‘relaxed’ setting, that feels like a good one to know.)
“Hang your Wednesday dress in the closet.” There’s something about the casual way of him that warms me and I’m not prepared for it.
My Wednesday (aka Wedding) dress has about seven days to pull herself together.
We may have made progress today with the license, but we have a week before we stand in front of the Justice of the Peace to make it official.
So I have one week to stop looking at him like that.