800 PM Marco #2
Darkening her phone, Satya shoved it back into her purse. “You wouldn’t believe this fight if I told you about it,” she said. “Rachel’s actually super lucky that I still even speak to her.”
Marco drank from his water; he watched Mitch Reynolds signal to the waiter for another bottle of red wine, then looked at Emily and Mia.
They were closer now, their knees nearly touching, Emily nodding gravely at something Mia was saying.
He remembered how, after saying hello to her at Alison’s party, they’d ended up staying for another hour—the two of them sitting at the bar while everyone else filed out into the rain.
At first the interaction was stilted, but after one whiskey, and then a second one, things became looser, both of them pushing the boundaries of the conversation an inch further until Mia’s fingertips were grazing Marco’s shoulder each time she laughed.
His jacket was dry by then—it was after one o’clock in the morning—and when she asked him if he wanted a third whiskey, he forgot entirely about his cousin’s graduation and said, sure, what the hell, why not.
Mia had stood up on the rung of her stool, then leaned on the bar and held up two fingers.
When the bartender put the glasses in front of them, she sat back down.
“So…” she began.
Marco set his elbow on the bar and blinked. He was drunk.
“So what?”
Mia squared her shoulders to him, rotating herself on the stool. She said, “So have you ever thought we should give it another shot?”
“If I take a shot right now I’ll puke.”
She laughed nervously. “That’s not what I meant.” Her cheeks turned red and she looked over her shoulder.
“Ah.” Marco laughed too. He began to understand what she was saying. “Ah.”
Her hand rested on his knee.
“I think I fucked up, Marco. I think I really fucked up. I mean, it’s just DC.”
They both drank from their glasses. Rain lashed against the bar’s windows.
The red from Mia’s cheeks spread down to her neck as she chewed on a sliver of ice.
Marco realized that it was his turn to say something, though for a long time he didn’t.
He felt warm and light, filled with the satisfaction of having been right.
He took another sip from his drink—he was dizzy, and realized that his heart was beating faster, and that he didn’t exactly know what to do next.
“Wow,” he said. “Yeah, I don’t know,” and then watched as Mia shrank into herself, her shoulders curving inward, her hand reaching up to touch her face.
She began speaking quickly, backpedaling with an incoherent explanation of how whiskey always made her say the strangest things.
“Have you ever noticed that?” she asked, and he told her, “No, to be honest, not really.” Mia laughed far too loudly, saying, “Huh” over and over again as she folded a paper napkin into tight squares.
The rain lightened up; Marco felt his satisfaction fade to a numb, hazy confusion.
Over the next five minutes Mia finished what was left of her drink, then told him she had to get going.
The bartender brought their bill, though when Mia reached for her credit card Marco stopped her and said that he would pay for it.
She fidgeted while he uncapped the pen, and as he signed his name at the bottom of the receipt.
On the street outside, she’d hugged him quickly and with a single arm, then walked north to the L train.
Drizzle dampened Marco’s hair. He opened his umbrella, turned toward Seventh Avenue, and called Emily, whom he had been seeing for two months.
The phone rang and rang as cars passed him, their wheels throwing off waves of gray-brown water.
Eventually the call rolled over to her voicemail and Marco stopped walking, pressing the phone against his ear so he could hear Emily on the outgoing message.
She was clear, crisp, light: I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can.
He’d hung up without saying anything, and realized that his hands had been trembling, though now they were not.
Hearing her voice had the dual effect of erasing doubt and absolving guilt.
He was able to convince himself that he had done nothing wrong, even if nothing felt right.
Satya said, “Speaking of Rachel, have you seen her? She’s been gone forever. She didn’t even eat her enchiladas.”
Marco pointed up toward the steps leading from the beach to the pool. “I saw her walk that way after they served dinner.”
“I need to put a leash on her at these things—I’m serious, just a short, tight leash.” Satya stood up. She said, “I’m going to find her. I’ll be right back.”
Hiking her dress up an inch, Satya walked directly through the middle of the dance floor and across the sand to the stairs. On the other side of the table, Mitch Reynolds laughed, draping his arm over the back of his chair. The seats surrounding Marco were empty: there was no one else to talk to.
“So, Mitch,” he called out. “How is everything?”
Mitch glanced away from the two men and toward Marco, his smile flattening.
He said, “What was that?”
“I said, how is everything? You’re at Goldman Sachs now, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Very cool.”
The man to Mitch’s left dipped a chip into some salsa. Marco waited for Mitch to ask him about his own life, and when he didn’t he said, “I’m at the White House. I moved over from the World Bank.” Mitch continued staring. “I work for the president.”
“Uh-huh.”
“As in, of the United States.”
“Great.”
Marco looked out at the water. “Where are you living these days?” he asked.
“What?”
“I said—”
The man to Mitch’s right said something about the Malaysia Airlines flight that had disappeared, and Mitch turned away from Marco to offer a theory involving a freak tornado and Russian spies.
A waiter set a fresh bottle of red wine on the table.
Marco began scrolling through emails on his phone, not reading them, not even opening them, simply scrolling through them as if to confirm his existence.
He had rewound himself all the way back to February when he heard a dull thud, and then the sound of Mia gasping.
When he looked up, he saw that the bottle of red wine had toppled over, its contents now pooling in Mia’s lap.
“Yikes,” Mitch said. “My bad.”
Mia leaped up from her seat. “Shit,” she said.
Her dress, which seconds before had been light green, was now splattered with purple splotches. Grabbing a napkin, she frantically blotted at the stains. Then she hurled the napkin to the ground.
“Goddamn it,” she said, and walked off in the direction of the bar.
Emily’s purse hung from the back of her chair, and Marco watched as she began digging through it.
“Where are you going?” Marco asked.
“To help her.” Emily stood up. “I’ll be right back.”