Chapter I #3
‘Maudlin, overwritten, banal.’
‘Banal?’
‘Isn’t the whole thing about writing that the stakes have to be high? Who cares about this dope wandering around campus?’
‘That moment at the end when they’re standing there and—’
‘I know, the button thing. Didn’t do it for me.’
‘It was gorgeous and tender. Everything in it is working toward this mood, this ache, this very tactile sensation that gets deep in your bones. He sort of reminded me of you.’
‘Of me? That loser? How does he remind you of me?’
Because I’m a little in love with him. Because he moves me. I can’t think of anything true that I could say out loud.
‘If I ever write something decent,’ he says, ‘it’s going to be a whole lot better than that.
’ He stands up. ‘Hold on. I have something for you.’ He goes quickly down the stairs in the shirt I hadn’t seen before today, his skinny arms, his dark elbows.
He reaches into the back seat of his mother’s car.
He comes back up the stairs and hands me a book.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to arrive completely empty-handed. ’
It’s a paperback, gold and black. Hunger by Knut Hamsun.
‘It’s about being a writer, no matter the cost.’
‘Thank you.’ I want to hug it. Instead I read the back. Or pretend to. The words won’t stay in place.
‘I was nervous earlier. So I forgot to give it to you. You’ll like it, I think.’
‘Why were you nervous?’
‘I wasn’t sure you really wanted me here. That you were just being nice. On the phone.’
‘Wait till you sleep on that lumpy couch. You won’t think I was being very nice.’
‘And I worried you thought it felt like a date, tonight. At the restaurant.’
I laugh. ‘It did feel a little like a date, didn’t it?’
‘You put on a dress.’
‘I did.’
‘And the waitress thought so. She called you a keeper.’
I love that we’re reminiscing about the evening already. But for some reason I blurt out, ‘Your dad said I was the kind of girl you divorce.’
This stuns him.
‘Sam told you that?’
I nod.
‘My dad has said that about every woman since he left my mother. Even my stepmother.’
I’m embarrassed I brought it up.
‘My dad is a jerk, Jordan. It’s why I couldn’t stay there.
He didn’t want me working for my uncle, he didn’t want me seeing my friend EJ.
He didn’t want me spending time with my mother or playing tennis.
One minute I’m a lazy hippie and the next I’m a pretentious yuppie.
Either way, he’s convinced I am an all-American fuck-up, which is sort of his catch-all for any kind of person except him.
I’m like my mother, I’m as useless as a beggar in Calcutta.
Just a running commentary. He has these things on repeat and one of them is that every woman is the kind of woman you divorce. I feel awful you had to hear it.’
I wish I hadn’t said it and need to change the subject. ‘Have you ever brought a girlfriend home?’
‘Never.’
‘Not even Megan.’ That was his girlfriend in high school.
‘No. Only my mom met her.’ He tells a funny story about Megan causing a small house fire with her curling iron and I tell him about the foyer fiasco in Atlanta and we are comfortable again.
We go in the house and I show him the kitchen. There aren’t as many dishes in the sink as normal and I fear it is giving him a false impression. ‘There’s one bathroom and it’s up here.’ He follows me up the stairs with his Dopp kit in the dark. ‘It’s disgusting,’ I whisper.
Outside the bathroom I tell him he can use it first.
‘Oh, okay. Thank you. Noche noche, then.’
‘Noche.’
I turn around and go into my room. I can’t bear to shut the door all the way.
The bathroom door shuts. I stand there. I take off my underwear and throw it in the hamper.
It’s soaked through. My whole being wants one thing, the one thing it can’t have.
The clock radio says 3:33. I had nine hours with him.
Why isn’t it enough? Nine hours ago we were talking about Arlo and Bean and Mrs. Kane.
I think of something and laugh out loud.
He’s in the doorway. ‘What’s so funny?’ he whispers.
I go closer to whisper back. ‘I remembered this Halloween when we rang Mrs. Kane’s bell and she had no idea what day it was and gave us all old cough drops from the bottom of her purse.’
He kisses me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
He kisses me again. ‘I’m so sorry. I want to know more about Mrs. Kane.
I do.’ He walks me backward a few steps into my room.
We kiss. ‘Oh my God I’ve wanted to do this for so long.
You have no idea how long.’ We kiss a long time.
He looks over my shoulder. ‘This entire room is bed.’ He looks at me again.
‘Am I bungling everything? You should probably tell me to go downstairs right now.’
I shake my head.
He lifts his hands to the top of my dress. ‘I have thought about doing this all night.’ He unfastens the first button and looks at me.
I nod but before he can undo the next one I pull the dress up over my head and toss it in the corner. I’m not wearing anything else.
He is kissing me and laughing. ‘You didn’t let me do the whole sexy button thing all the way down.’
‘Claudette told me to give you a sign.’
‘This is a good sign. I love this sign.’
We get his clothes off, too, and we are still standing, looking at each other and grinning.
The feeling catches me off guard.
Oh.
Love.