700 PM Marco
“It’s funny,” Emily said, “it, like, refuses to stay down.”
She ran two fingers over Marco’s cowlick. A waiter stood behind them, a bottle of wine held in each hand. He asked Marco if he cared for any.
Marco said, “I’ll have some of the white, please.”
Leaning back, he watched as the waiter filled his glass, the back legs of his chair sinking deeper into the sand.
Emily passed her hand through his hair a final time, then returned it to her lap.
On the other side of the table, Mitch Reynolds said in a triumphant voice, “That, my friends, is why they call it ‘the Houdini,’ ” and the two men sitting on either side of him laughed.
“Well, you look handsome.” Emily took a sip of her wine. “Crazy hair and all.”
Marco patted her knee. He was wearing a gray linen suit, a white linen shirt, and a pair of stiff oxford lace-ups.
Earlier in the hotel room, Emily had encouraged him to forget the suit and wear another shirt, a guayabera that she had ironed and hung from the bathroom’s doorknob while Marco showered.
It was blue and embroidered with small pink flowers blooming on their vines, and when he saw it Marco said, “Yeah, I actually don’t think I’m going to wear that. ”
Emily had been putting on mascara. Her hair was tied up and off her neck, though a few blond wisps hung down around her ears.
“Then why did you pack it?”
“Because I thought I was going to, but now I think it looks sort of insane.”
“Insane how?”
“I don’t know.” Marco wrapped a towel around his waist. A small puddle was forming at his feet. “Insane like I’m wearing a costume or something.”
Emily used the tip of her fingernail to remove something from the corner of her eye.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, why?”
“You just seem tense.”
“I’m not tense at all.”
She wiped her finger with a tissue. “Okay, well, the invitation’s dress code said something about a hacienda.”
“So what?”
“So I think most people are going to be wearing shirts like that. Also, it looks nice on you. It matches your eyes.”
Marco picked up the shirt. It was light and airy, its sleeves fluttering as he raised it to get a better look.
With his free hand he adjusted the towel wrapped around his waist. Emily leaned closer to the mirror.
In fact the shirt did not match his eyes.
In fact, as Marco reminded her as he lowered the shirt, “My eyes are hazel.”
Emily returned the cap to the bottle of mascara.
Smiling, she said, “I know what color your eyes are. I meant it brings out your eyes.”
Marco looked at the shirt again. He returned it to the bathroom doorknob.
Along the bathroom sink Emily had arranged her makeup and small vials of lotion in short, purposeful rows.
A washcloth, folded into a tidy square, sat directly next to the basin.
For a few seconds Emily considered the makeup, tapping her fingernails against the bathroom tile.
Then, with a sense of assured finality, she selected a lipstick.
Marco said, “I’m just going to wear my suit.”
“Babe, I think you’re going to be very hot in your suit.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Except of course he was not fine. The suit’s linen stuck to the backs of his thighs, and he could feel large patches of sweat on his chest; if he removed his jacket, his shirt would be translucent.
There was also sand in his shoes—small piles of it that had accumulated after the cocktail hour, when he and Emily had walked hand in hand across the beach to their table, where they presently sat.
Around them, other guests turned to each other, talking.
Butter was slathered on dinner rolls; utensils scraped plates; on the other side of the dance floor, the lead guitarist from Saturday Night Live worked his way through a list of jazz standards.
“I Love My Baby.” “The Look of Love.” “Love Is Here to Stay.” Mitch Reynolds landed another punchline, the entirety of which Marco couldn’t hear, and the men on either side of him laughed again.
To Emily’s left, Satya Patel asked if anyone knew where Courtney and Geoff were going on their honeymoon.
Someone said France, and someone else said Greece, at which point Satya set down her butter knife, shook her head, and said, “No, you’re wrong, it can’t be Greece, because Courtney hates feta cheese.
” A salad materialized in front of Marco, a heap of spinach leaves topped with shredded carrots and mushrooms. At the center of the table: gravy boats filled with oily dressings.
Emily clapped her hands together once. She said, “Well, this looks delicious.”
People began eating; Marco looked at his salad and did nothing.
Another drop of sweat worked its way down his spine, and then a second one traced the length of his sternum, passing between his ribs before pooling in his belly button.
Sensing Emily glancing over at him, he smiled and reached for his fork.
As he loaded it with spinach, he considered the possibility that the reason he was sweating was not because of the heat, or the humidity, or the fact that he had elected to wear a gray linen suit, but rather because Mia Hoffmann was sitting directly across from him.
From three and a half years ago: a memory.
There were of course many of them—the way her breath smelled in the morning, the three Thanksgiving dinners he’d spent outside of Lansing, Michigan—but as he watched Mia use one of the gravy boats to dress her salad, this one appeared to Marco so fully formed, its edges so nauseatingly defined, that it caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end.
In it, they sat together at the small, square dining table in the studio apartment they shared in Greenpoint.
Mia’s laptop was open in front of her. As Marco went to the refrigerator to get them beers, she toggled among a handful of tabs on Firefox, comparing Tripadvisor ratings and prices for hotels in Bogotá and Medellín.
She switched between sites, bringing one leg to her chest so she could rest her chin on the peak of her knee.
It was the second week of December—in the apartment upstairs, their neighbor played “Empire State of Mind” on repeat.
Marco opened the beers and set them on the table.
“How many days do you want to spend in Bogotá?” Mia asked. “Like, how many do you think we need?”
“Three? And then another two in Medellín? I want to make sure we have time to get to the coast too.”
Mia clicked on one of the hotels.
“I’m really excited we’re finally doing this,” she said.
“Me too.”
“I found some cheap flights—I’m going to book them tomorrow.”
“Fantastic.”
She drank from her beer. “My mother’s convinced I’m going to get kidnapped by the FARC.”
“No one’s getting kidnapped by the FARC.”
“I know that. I’m just saying it’s nice that she’s worried.”
Mia squinted as she scrolled through a review, her lips moving silently as she read. Marco took a sip from his beer. Using two fingers, he pressed the screen of the laptop down a few inches.
Mia looked at him. “What are you doing?”
“I got some good news today.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
Their neighbor’s bass thumped against the ceiling. Reaching across the table, Marco clinked his beer against hers.
“I got a job.”
“Shut up. Are you being serious?”
“You are now the proud owner of an employed boyfriend.”
She cocked her head. “I can’t actually tell if you’re being serious right now.”
“Is it really that inconceivable that someone hired me?”
Mia leaned across the table and took his face in both her hands. She kissed him long and hard, the tips of her fingers sliding into his hair.
“Is it the Goldman thing?”
“No—that one didn’t pan out. It’s at the World Bank.”
“In Midtown?”
“Actually, in Washington, DC.”
Mia let go of him. The sides of her mouth tilted downward.
“You didn’t tell me you had applied for things out of New York,” she said.
“I didn’t think I was going to get it.”
“But now you have. You have gotten it.”
“Yes, I guess I have.”
She sat back down, her face taking on a confused expression—not shocked or angry, but confused, her head tilted slightly to one side.
“Huh,” she said quietly, and then looked around the apartment.
It had been listed at 425 square feet, which meant that it was really 400; their belongings were cramped in every corner; they shared one dresser, dividing all their clothing between three shallow drawers.
They joked about it constantly, how they were living literally on top of each other, though now as Mia looked at their bed her face softened, as if she was seeing the apartment in a new, nostalgic light.
Marco took another sip of his beer—he felt guilty, traitorous, but what else was he supposed to have done?
He had been unemployed for nearly two years after Lehman Brothers imploded.
Once it was clear that he would not be getting another job at a bank, he had applied for positions at restaurants and bars and SAT prep services, all of which were now flooded with applicants exactly like him.
On a Saturday at the beginning of 2009, he had gone to a new Trader Joe’s in Cobble Hill, where he stood in line with more than two hundred other people waiting to drop off their résumés.
They all looked to be about his age, and wore the same dispirited expression he did, a hardening around the eyes and mouth that signaled to Marco that they had all reached the same conclusion—that the frictionless trajectory they’d been sold as children was a con; that from now on, they would live with suspicion and uncertainty.
“So you’re going to move to DC,” Mia said.
“I didn’t say that. I want to discuss it. That’s all.”
She drank from her beer again, and then for a long time was quiet. Finally she said: “I’m very proud of you. I want to lead with that. But this also puts me in a very difficult position—”
“I understand that.”
“—because if I’m not happy for you, then I’m an asshole. But at the same time, it’s taking a lot of effort to be happy for you.” She looked across the table at him. “I mean, what am I supposed to do, Marco?”
He reached over and held one of her hands.
“Well, I was thinking we could move down there together.”
Now Mia’s confusion hardened, her brow furrowing. With the hand he wasn’t holding she brought the beer bottle to her mouth and pressed the glass against her teeth.
“I can’t just do that. I have a job, you know.”
“You hate your job. You complain about the Daily News all the time.”
“Of course I complain about it. What else are you supposed to do with a job?”
“Okay, so we’ll find a job for you to complain about in Washington. There are newspapers there, you know.”
“What about all my friends?”
“We know plenty of people in DC.”
“Like who?”
“My cousin Gina, for one.”
“She’s not even your cousin.”
Upstairs “Empire State of Mind” started over again. Mia turned back to the bed. She ran a hand over her face.
“What did you tell them?” she asked. “The World Bank, I mean.”
“I haven’t told them anything yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Marco, I love you. I love you a lot.”
“I know that. I love you too, a lot.”
Mia smiled wanly. “Okay, then,” she said, “let’s talk.”
“Great. Excellent. Let’s talk.”
They shifted in their seats, taking small, periodic sips from their beers.
Once or twice Mia turned back to the dresser they shared, and Marco found himself wondering if she was thinking the same thing he was—if she was trying to imagine what the drawers would look like with only her clothes inside of them.
But he never asked her. In fact, neither of them said anything for a very long time.
The band played “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours).
” Marco finished what was left of his salad and looked to the other side of the dance floor, where Richie was sitting.
On one side of him was an older woman, a thin, reedy-looking grandmother with tan skin and a shock of white hair, wearing a purple dress.
She had one hand atop Richie’s wrist, and she was speaking directly at him, her lips a few inches from his ear.
Richie was nodding and refilling a half-full glass of wine.
Across the table, Adam was talking with Nina Guzman.
Or, rather, Nina Guzman was talking to Adam.
She had turned her chair ninety degrees to face him, and even from where he was sitting, Marco could see on his face a despairing, existential boredom.
A few minutes later a waiter removed Marco’s salad plate and replaced it with two beef enchiladas.
A thick red sauce dripped from their edges, drowning mounds of beans and rice.
He picked up his fork and glanced across the table again at Mia.
Since sitting down she had engaged with him only once, when she acknowledged both him and Emily with a tight smile and a clipped “hello.” Throughout the salad course they had occasionally locked eyes, though each time it happened Mia seemed to expend a tremendous amount of effort to ignore him, her gaze shifting directly over his shoulder as if he didn’t exist. Now the same waiter set a plate of enchiladas in front of her, and after looking at it, she glanced up at him and said, in an overly apologetic voice that grated Marco’s ears, “Actually, I ordered the chicken.” The waiter frowned and consulted a small piece of paper, and a moment later swapped out the plate for another one.
Once he had left, Mitch Reynolds leaned over to whisper something in Mia’s ear, and she laughed with what seemed to Marco to be an air of embarrassing performance, tossing her head back as she pressed her fingers against her chest.
“Oh my God, Mitch,” she said. “Stop.”
He whispered something else and Mia laughed harder, this time placing one hand on top of his. Another drop of sweat fell down Marco’s spine. Forcefully he cut off a piece of enchilada with the side of his fork, then set it down without eating it.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
Mitch looked at him, and so did Mia. Her smile remained perfectly intact.
“Sorry, what?” she said.
“I asked what was so funny. You’re laughing pretty hard.”
Emily adjusted her chair to ask Satya Patel about her own wedding. Mitch and Mia shared a glance.
“Nothing,” Mia said, still laughing. She stood up from the table, folded her napkin into a loose square, and set it next to her plate.
“Where are you going?” Marco asked.
Mitch and Mia looked at each other again, though this time Mitch raised one eyebrow. It was hardly perceptible, but Marco was certain that he saw it, and it caused Mia to laugh again.
“The bar,” she said. “To get something stronger to drink.”