Chapter 6
six
RODRIGO
Alana and I are having yet another fight.
There is a philosophy I have developed, living with Alana, about the relationship between beauty and danger.
The most beautiful things in the world, I have found, are almost always the most dangerous ones.
A coral reef. A live wire. A wolf in a snowfield.
Alana, in a silk robe the color of a flamingo, currently winding up for her third plate.
I should explain. But first, I need to duck this flying object.
I side-step just in time: slam! The plate hits the wall and breaks into a hundred pieces, broken shards collecting next to another, similar pile.
“?Cálmate!” I shout, momentarily forgetting there’s nothing an angry woman loves more than being told to calm down.
“You said you don’t think I’m worth marrying, and you want me to calm down?!” Alana shouts, this time grabbing a mug off a shelf on the back kitchen wall. It zips past my ear and shatters.
What I said, to be precise, was: “I’ve been thinking that maybe we should slow things down a little.
” I thought this was a gentle approach. I thought this was the compassionate entry point into a larger conversation that would eventually, over time, allow me to extricate myself from this situation with my family members still alive. I was wrong.
Alana grabs another mug and shoots it toward me with the speed of a professional baseball pitcher.
This one I manage to catch somehow, snatching it from the air by pure reflex.
My palm burns with the force of the thing.
I set it carefully on the counter. Alana looks at me with an expression that says she is not impressed.
“Slow. Things. Down?” she repeats, in her particular sing-songy cadence.
Her voice carries the same warm, airy sweetness it always does.
She holds the lapels of her robe together and tilts her head.
“That is so funny that you said that. It’s actually hilarious.
Because, like, what does that even mean? ”
“It means—” I begin.
“Because we are soul mates,” she continues, over me, “and soul mates do not slow things down. That’s actually the whole point of them, Rodrigo. That’s the definition.”
“Alana—”
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, walking around the kitchen island with careful steps, “about our future.” She reaches the wall with the vision board.
She taps it with one long, perfectly-manicured nail that’s painting toward a photoshopped image of us as bride and groom.
“I have manifested this. This is our life. We are going to get married and we are going to have friends and I am going to find my best friend— my maid of honor— and none of that,” she turns to look at me, her pale steel eyes doing the thing they do where the dark centers expand slightly, like a cat preparing to pounce, “is going to be slowed down.”
I take a breath. I think about what I’m going to say.
“I just think,” I say carefully, “that marriage is a serious commitment, and?—”
“Is Benny a serious commitment?” Alana asks.
I stop. There it is. The name I knew was coming, delivered in exactly the sweet, mild tone I dread. She picks up an apple from the fruit bowl and bites into it.
“Because Benny introduced us,” she continues, “which means Benny is part of our love story. And I would hate for anything to happen to Benny.” A pause. “He’s such a good driver.”
This is what I get for letting my degenerate cousin meddle in my love life. I cannot let Alana kill Benny because I couldn't handle one difficult conversation.
“Benny is great,” I say, very carefully.
“He is great,” Alana agrees, smiling. “So. We are staying together. And you are coming with me today.”
I look at her, searching. Then, I remember: “The baby shower.”
“Oh my goodness,” Alana softens, her face opening with gentle realization. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? That I’m taking you to Melissa’s baby shower! You got cold feet because the shower made you think about commitment, and love, and children?—”
“That’s not?—”
“Shhh,” she puts a finger to my lips, stopping me mid-sentence.
“It’s normal for men to get cold feet at a serious event like this.
I like, totally understand now.” She smiles, her blistering white teeth shining at me.
“This was never about how you feel about me! Because like, I’m totally amazing so how could you have any doubts? ”
“Right…”
“Look, honey,” she says, her voice sweet again. “I made a friend, Rodrigo. A real one. And today I get to be there for her, and I get to meet her other friends, because Melissa says there’s one in particular I might really hit it off with–”
“I thought Melissa was your new friend–”
Alana rolls her eyes like I’m stupid. “She is a new friend but she’s about to be very busy with a baby, and so I’m going to use my connection with her to meet someone that better suits my needs.
Got it? And you are going to come with me because that is what supportive partners do.
” She takes another bite of her apple. “Besides,” she adds, her voice dropping back into its lower register, “if you don’t, I’ll be very sad.
And who knows what I’ll do when I’m sad. ”
I look at the remaining plates on the shelf.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”
She smiles. Radiant. Devastating. She crosses the kitchen, stands on her toes, and kisses my cheek in the way she does that makes me forget, for exactly three seconds, every single reason I have for wanting to leave.
Then she turns and disappears into the bedroom to get ready, and I hear the sound of her humming to herself— something bright, something cheerful, as if the plates never happened.
I stand in the kitchen for a moment. I look at the vision board that takes up an entire wall.
All those magazine women with their magazine friendships, laughing in the park, walking along cobblestone streets in each other’s company.
I think about Melissa, and this other friend Alana keeps mentioning— the one she hasn’t met yet, the one she’s saving that maid of honor slot for, the one who is going to be at this shower today.
I look at the vision board for a long time.
Whoever she is, I think, pressing my palms flat against the cold of the counter, she has no idea what’s coming.
I go to find my jacket.
* * *
Melissa’s house has a banner across the front that reads IT’S A GIRL in letters large enough to be read from a moving vehicle.
There are pink balloons tied to the mailbox.
There is a wreath on the door that appears to be made entirely of pastel ribbon.
Standing on the sidewalk looking at all of this, I feel overwhelmed.
Next to me, Alana is practically vibrating.
She’s changed into a dress the color of a peony— fitted, feminine, immaculate— with a pair of heeled shoes that are so pointed they abuse the sidewalk.
Her hair is perfect. Her nails are perfect.
She’s holding a gift bag wrapped in coordinating tissue paper and topped with a bow that took her fifteen minutes to tie correctly.
In the car, she rehearsed what she was going to say to Melissa if there’s a toast and she has to speak.
She rehearsed it three times. I didn’t interrupt.
She rings the doorbell. The door swings open.
The woman in the doorway is eight months pregnant and moving through the world as if this is something she has decided is not going to slow her down, not even slightly. She’s in a floral wrap dress, hair pulled back, and her face is so open and kind. She sees Alana and lights up.
“Oh my God,” Melissa says, and then she’s wrapping Alana in a hug.
Alana beams in her embrace.
Dios mío, I think. Alana really does want a best friend.
Melissa steps back, one hand on her enormous belly, and looks at me.
“You must be Rodrigo,” she says.
“That’s me,” I confirm.
She looks at Alana. “He’s hot,” she says flatly, as if reporting a fact. Then she looks back at me. “Come in, come in.”
The inside of the house is warm in the way only lived-in homes are warm.
Everything is slightly too much— too many flowers, too many balloons, too many small sandwiches arranged on tiered trays in the kitchen.
The light is low and yellow. There are a handful of women scattered through the main room, balancing small plates.
Soft music comes from somewhere. I stand near the kitchen island and accept a cup of something pink.
Melissa introduces us to her husband Steve, who shakes my hand and says, “Hey, big man.” Then he winks at me in a way that says we share a secret. I wink back, but I have no idea what secret he’s referencing.
Melissa introduces us to the remaining guests, then adds, “Remind me to introduce you to Billie when she gets here!”
“Oooh, yes!” Alana squeals, clutching Melissa’s arm in her hand. “She sounds so amazing. Can’t wait to meet your best friend.”
A new victim, I think to myself.
Melissa disappears into the kitchen, then reemerges with a stack of printed papers in one hand, fanning them out.
“Okay, so,” she announces, and immediately everyone pays attention, because she is the kind of woman who commands a room without trying, “we are doing the baby photo game. I have printed out everyone’s baby pictures— yes, everyone’s, including yours, yes you know who you are— and you each get a sheet.
You write your guesses as to which baby picture belongs to which person.
Whoever gets the most right wins, and you’re gonna want this prize. The prize is big. Steve can tell you.”
Steve waves a hand in the air.
There’s a round of laughter. She hands out the sheets. I take one. The page is a grid of small photos— babies in onesies, babies in hats, babies making faces at cameras.
I scan the sheet. I don’t know these people. How am I supposed to guess?
I pause at a photo of a dark-haired baby sitting in what appears to be a garden in Spain. He is wearing a tiny knitted cap and making a face of extraordinary concentration, as if he is solving a very small problem. He looks like someone I know very well.
“Is that me?” I ask.
Alana nods, her mouth full with snacks. “I called your Mom.” She shrugs. “Can you guess which one is me?”
The job requires no analysis. Baby photo number seven is, impossibly, the most beautiful infant I have ever seen in my life.
Perfect features. A luminous, absurd, kind of beauty that looks too old for a child approximately six months old.
The effect is so creepy and jarring and strange…
I’m almost certain Alana edited this photo.
“Did you use a filter on your baby picture?” I ask Alana.
She slaps my arm and laughs but offers no confirmation or denial.
We mingle around the room, getting to know different guests as we begin the baby-game.
During a break in chit-chat, when the group we were taking to begins to disperse, Alana leans over and whispers in my ear, “When that Billie girl gets here, make sure you don’t ruin it for me.
I think she might be my future best friend. ”
“I thought she was Melissa’s best friend?” I pause, confused. “And Melissa was your intended target.”
Alana clucks her tongue. “Like I told you earlier, Melissa is very pregnant and will be too busy to be my maid of honor one day. No, no. If this Billie girl is nice, she’ll be perfect. Melissa told me so much about her. We’re going to be super close. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
I take a sip of my pink sparkling non-coffee and look at the front door.
Somewhere out there, a woman named Billie is on her way to a baby shower.
She thinks she is going to a party for her best friend.
She thinks today is going to be normal— a little awkward, maybe, the way events with new people always are, but fundamentally unremarkable.
She has no way of knowing that there is a vision board on the wall of our apartment with a carefully cut-out place reserved specifically for her. She has no way of knowing any of it.
It will be too late when she finds out, and she’ll be trapped, just like me.
I look at Alana. Her beautiful face, bright with anticipation, is completely sincere.
I look at the front door.
I really, genuinely wish I could warn this woman– Billie– to run away. And maybe… I can.