13. Limerence, Part I
Rhode’s former girlfriend Lace Ann marries her bakery investor, Miller.
It’s a lavish affair downtown—rehearsal dinner for forty in a private back room at the Lowell, ceremony at St. Patrick’s, reception at MoMA.
Rhode scrolls through the pictures on Instagram and thinks how, if he and Lace Ann had gotten married, it would have been City Hall followed by Korean BBQ.
He’s able to think this dispassionately.
He can see that Lace Ann looks beautiful but he feels nothing.
His romantic interests now lie elsewhere.
Taylor Wilson, who is one of his top students, showed him a poem that she’d written in her class journal entitled “Limerence.” Rhode was unfamiliar with the word, but when he looked it up (“a desire to form a relationship with the object of love and also to have one’s feelings reciprocated”), he thought of Simone.
He sees her all the time, every day, and when he’s away from her, he’s thinking of her.
She turned down his offer of a date—the rejection felt like she walloped him with a two-by-four—but then in the morning, she texted to accept his offer. What changed her mind? he wonders.
Doesn’t matter. They have a date for Saturday and Rhode is going all out.
Simone asks Rhode the dress code for Saturday night and he says, I’m wearing a jacket and tie.
Simone dies inside and considers wearing jeans, but she reminds herself this date has a purpose.
She tells the girls on her floor that she’s going out to dinner with Mr. Rivera and could they help her choose what to wear?
OMG. The girls shriek and raid their closets.
Simone ends up borrowing an Out of Office original from Davi—a jade-green bias-cut slip dress, which Simone pairs with her nude stiletto sandals and a faux fur wrap that she borrows from Tilly.
Madison J. does her makeup and Olivia H-T lends her a beaded clutch.
Simone offers to drive but Rhode says he has it covered (a relief, since Simone won’t make it through the date without drinking).
She figures he’ll call an Uber—but instead she finds he’s rented a luxury SUV with heated leather seats and a new-car smell.
Extravagant, Simone thinks, but nice and toasty.
Rhode opens the passenger door for her (the car is already running, seat heated) and waits for her to arrange her dress, her feet, her purse on her lap.
“Have I mentioned?” Rhode says. “You look beautiful.”
She smiles. Rhode’s hair is spiky with product. She bows her head until he closes the door.
They head off into the dark country night, two teachers on a date.
Simone longs to be back in the dorm, eating popcorn in the common room, watching Love Island.
“Where are we going?” she asks. He’d mentioned the Hobgoblin and the Wooden Duck; she hopes for the Wooden Duck because it’s closer.
She’s been on this date for five minutes and can’t wait for it to be over.
Rhode has his phone synced with the car radio; he’s playing Billy Joel. Okay, Grandpa, Simone thinks.
“It’s a surprise,” Rhode says. “I wanted to do something special.”
Simone turns off her heated seat and unzips the faux fur; she’s suddenly roasting.
The road in front of them is illuminated only by their headlights.
Out here there are no homes, no streetlights, no gas stations or convenience stores.
It’s woods, farmland, ponds, and creeks; they go over a little bridge and Simone thinks how easy it would be for Rhode to murder her.
She pulls her cell phone from her clutch; she has no service.
“Everything okay?” Rhode says. “I’m sorry I’m not much of a conversationalist but I need to watch the road. The last thing I want to do is hit a deer.” The rental cost Rhode so much money that he decided to decline the collision insurance.
“No, I get it. It’s fine, I’m fine,” Simone says. They ride along in silence except for Billy Joel’s piano: He is the entertainer… waving Brenda and Eddie goodbye… while the lights go out on Broadway. Where the hell are they going? A sign in the distance reads VERMONT WELCOMES YOU!
We’ve crossed state lines? Simone thinks.
Rhode slows down, takes a right onto a gravel road. “Almost there.”
Up ahead, Simone sees a pair of headlights coming toward them, the first vehicle they’ve encountered since pulling out of the Tiffin gates.
Rhode slows down as they pass; he waves to the driver of a crappy gold pickup.
Simone watches the driver respond in kind.
This will be the witness authorities call upon when Simone’s body is found.
They trundle down the road through dense woods until the landscape opens up and Simone sees a body of water before them—a big pond or small lake, it’s hard to tell—and a row of cottages.
Rhode parks in front of the only cottage with lights on.
“Made it,” he says. He feels like his tie is strangling him; he’s desperate to remove it.
“What is this?” she asks. The cottage has gingerbread trim, like something out of a fairy tale. There’s smoke coming out of the chimney.
Rhode opens Simone’s door. “You’ll see.”
Ten minutes later, Simone is sitting at a table for two by a roaring fire, Sinatra is playing on a bona fide turntable, and Rhode is wrangling the cage off a magnum of very cold Veuve Clicquot.
The cottage—it’s the Wullys’ vacation home—is charming and cozy with big plate-glass windows that overlook Sweet Pond.
The champagne improves Simone’s mood; the bottle is the size of a small child.
Rhode says, “I remembered that you like champagne. You know, from that night at the Alibi.”
“Oh god,” Simone says, and for the first time all night, she smiles. “The Pour Deux.”
Rhode raises his flute. “Here’s to us,” he says.
Simone drinks.
Rhode hasn’t stopped at champagne. There’s a tin of caviar on the table that they eat with crème fra?che and homemade potato chips.
“It’s royal osetra,” Rhode says, then worries it sounds like he’s flexing. The caviar was Chef’s idea; he shamed Rhode into adding it to the menu. Chef also upsold him with the champagne. Rhode had suggested prosecco ( good prosecco) and Chef had laughed.
“This is over the top!” Simone says. “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”
“I wanted to,” he says. “You’re worth it.”
The champagne goes straight to Simone’s head. She is worth it! She digs into the caviar. Rhode escapes to the kitchen, where he whips off his tie and pulls the appetizers from the toaster oven, burning his finger on the sheet pan.
Rhode presents Simone with asparagus wrapped in puff pastry and oozing nutty Gruyère.
“Incroyable!” she says. “Did you make these?”
“I considered booking at the Hobgoblin or the Wooden Shoe—”
“Duck,” Simone says. Suddenly, she’s giggling. “The Wooden Duck . I think the Wooden Shoe is a restaurant in… Amsterdam? Sorry, dad joke.”
She’s loosening up, Rhode thinks. He feels better too, without the tie.
He settles into his chair by the fire and replenishes their champagne.
“But then I thought, why go to a restaurant when the best chef in the western half of the state is at Tiffin? So I hired Chef Haz to make dinner. That was Chef who passed us in the truck.”
“Oh!” Simone is relieved that Chef Haz knows she’s here, and the Wullys too, of course.
She and Rhode will be an item on Zip Zap tomorrow for sure, and then the whole school will know Simone and Rhode went on a date, including East. East will leave her alone, Simone thinks as she drains her second glass of champagne.
Simone will have saved herself before something really bad happened.
Rhode should have taken Haz up on his offer to stick around and serve them (for an additional hundred dollars per hour).
It wasn’t so much the cost that deterred Rhode but, rather, the idea of having a third person in the cottage—and someone from school to boot.
But right now, Rhode could use an extra set of hands.
He clears the asparagus appetizer but leaves the caviar, refills their glasses, and fetches more ice for the wine bucket because the champagne isn’t as cold as it was.
The Sinatra record ends and the silence feels awkward, so Rhode chooses another album.
He’ll stick with Sinatra but only too late realizes he’s chosen a Christmas album.
Oh well, it’s nearly Thanksgiving and Simone doesn’t seem to notice.
She’s drinking her bubbly, gazing into the fire, which could use another log.
Rhode grabs one in a hurry and gets a splinter in the same finger that he burned, but he can’t tend to it now because he has to plate and serve the roasted beet salad with goat cheese, toasted pistachios, and a blood orange vinaigrette.
He checks on the beef Wellington warming in the big oven as well as the spinach soufflé—has it fallen? No, it’s perfect.
He brings the salads out to the table and takes a breath. Does Simone need more champagne? She’d love some, she says. When Rhode lifts the bottle, he notices it’s significantly lighter than he expected. Have they really drunk a magnum already?
He picks up his fork and considers the plate before him, but he’s too nervous to eat. “Bon appétit,” he says.
“I thought when you drove me out to the woods that you were going to kill me,” Simone says. Beet juice drips from her mouth like blood. Rhode looks away. She’s getting drunk, but what did he expect, he’s left her alone with nothing else to do.
“Murder is not on the menu tonight,” he says. “I was hoping to get to know you better. How did you end up teaching at Tiffin?”