Jonathan Tropper

by Everything Changes (v5)

  She breaks into a full, surprised smile. “You’re just saying that because it’s true,” she says, blushing.

  My phone rings. I let it go to voice mail. “You’re screening?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. Screening is the universal marker of an embattled middleman.

  “I’m just not in the mood today.”

  Tamara grabs my arm and steers me toward the door. “You need Bloomingdale’s,” she declares.

  Tamara tears expertly through the labyrinth of racks in the evening wear department at Bloomingdale’s, pulling dresses off and folding them over her arm, handing them to me when her pile threatens to become unmanageable, all the while insisting that the odds are still in my favor. “It could be anything,” she says. “A kidney stone, a muscle tear, or a million other things that mean nothing.”

  Although she’s shed it for the most part, the trained ear can still occasionally pick up the last vestiges of Tamara’s suburban New Jersey accent, the softer r’s and stretched vowels betraying an adolescence of food courts, big hair, and Bon Jovi albums. The accent becomes more pronounced whenever she’s speaking forcefully, whether in anger or, as is now the case, stern, maternal tones, and I always take a secret pleasure in hearing the unpolished syllables roll off her tongue, a vocal intimacy to which few are privy.

  “I know,” I say.

  “Just don’t jump to conclusions,” she says. “You’ll make yourself crazy.”

  “I just can’t shake this feeling that it might be something serious. Things have been going too well for me lately. I feel like I have some bad karma headed my way.”

  Tamara frowns at me as she leads me toward the dressing rooms. “That’s a pretty dire outlook on life,” she says. “What’s the point in working to be happy if you’re going to be constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering when it’s time to pay the bill?”

  “What are we shopping for?” I ask her through the dressing room door, trying not to think about what she looks like slipping in and out of dresses on the other side.

  “A dress for your thing.”

  “What thing?”

  The door swings open and she steps out, making minor adjustments to a snug black cocktail dress. “Your engagement party? This Saturday?”

  “Oh,” I say. “Right.”

  “You forgot your own engagement party?”

  “Just for a second.”

  She looks at me inquisitively, seems about to say something, and then flashes a wry grin. “She’s a lucky girl, Zack.”

  She steps back into the changing room and within seconds the dress is flung half over the door. What technique does she employ, I wonder, that enables her to doff it so quickly? “Come in and zip me,” she says.

  Christ.

  I step into the stall and she turns her back to me, staring critically at her dress in the mirror. When I pull on the zipper, the dress moves ever so slightly back, giving me an accidental view of the spot where her spine descends into her backside, and I am afforded an inadvertent glimpse of the twin uppermost curves of her bottom, just below the waistband of her thong. As I move the zipper up past the creamy expanse of her back and the soft curves of her scapulae, I can feel my hand starting to tremble. When I’m done, I look up to find her staring back at me from the mirror, a strange expression on her face. We stand like that for a few seconds, daring each other’s reflection, and then she turns around to face me. “So,” she says, banishing the moment with her bright tone. “What do you think? A little too slutty?”

  I step back and affect a critical pose. “Just slutty enough, I should think.”

  “Just slutty enough,” she repeats delightedly. “That’s exactly the look I was going for.”

  It’s close to noon when she’s done shopping. We step out of the store into midtown, a cold October wind battering our cheeks as we walk downtown, toward my office. The sidewalks are teeming with the professional lunch crowd racing to and from lunches, grimly purposeful, looking up only to invoke their right of way against turning cabs at crosswalks. “Listen,” Tamara says, looking at her watch. “I have to get home. Celia’s babysitting, and I told her I’d be home by twelve.”

  “Where are you parked?”

  “Around the corner from your office.”

  “You’re going to be late.”

  “I always am. Just ask her.”

  “Don’t you two get along?”

  “As well as anyone can get along with the overbearing mother of her dead husband,” she says.

  “So, no,” I say.

  “I guess not. She and Paul are constantly checking on Sophie, like there’s no way I could be taking care of her properly without Rael there to help me. And I don’t know if I’m projecting this or it’s real, but I feel like I’m not allowed to seem happy around them. Like, how can I be happy when Rael’s dead, you know?”

  “Are you ever?”

  “What?”

  “Happy.”

  She sighs. “I have my moments.”

  It’s begun raining by the time we reach the Spandler building, just a faint mist, and Sixth Avenue is chilly and gray. Tamara isn’t wearing a coat, so she stands shivering under the building’s awning, hugging her arms to her sides for warmth, her shopping bag between her knees. I look into the lobby uncertainly.

  “What are you thinking?” Tamara says.

  “I’m thinking I can’t go back up there,” I say.

  “You’re worried about the biopsy.”

  “Of course I’m worried. I don’t want to die.”

  She reaches forward and grabs my forearm. “Zack. You’re not going to die.”

  I nod. “Suddenly, nothing in my life seems right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “My life, this job, getting married. I feel like none of it makes sense to me.”

  “You were just saying how well things were going,” Tamara points out.

  “That was what I thought,” I say. “But now everything makes no sense. There are so many things I want to do with my life that I’m not doing. If I did die, I would die never having done them.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think I just need to get out of here for a few days, to do some thinking.”

  “You’re going to just sit in your room until Friday, waiting to hear the results of your test?” she says. “You’ll go crazy.”

  “I’m going crazy here,” I say. “If I stick around, I’ll be climbing the walls.”

  Tamara takes my hands and centers herself in front of me. “Zack,” she says softly. “Is it possible that you’re overreacting a little?”

  I look at her dark, wide eyes and the soft lines of her lips. I wonder why I’m finding her so utterly captivating today. “I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve been underreacting for some time now.”

  Her smile conveys perfect understanding. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “I know it.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But until it is, I just don’t want to be here.”

  “Okay, then,” she says. Her face is burnished pink from the drizzle, and she looks adorable bouncing in place lightly to keep warm.

  “Tamara,” I say, a powerful rush of warmth vibrating in my chest. “You’re the greatest.”

  She smiles, and steps forward and there we are again, in one of our patented hugs. I inhale the clean aroma of almond shampoo and scented soap. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers in my ear, giving me a light kiss on my temple. And then, without any warning, I pull back and plant a kiss on her lips. It’s a medium-length kiss, openmouthed, with only the incidental contact of tongue, and maybe it could have been explained away later as an accident, except that while I’m kissing her, my hand comes up to brush the cool, damp skin of her cheek. Her lips are amazingly yielding, built for kissing, and seem to absorb mine automatically, ready for them, even though I’m not sure she’s actually kissing me back. The rhythmic patter of the rain is all around us, punctua
ted by the swishing sound of taxi tires rolling through puddles, and when I finally pull away, her eyes are wide and questioning, her lips still in the half-opened position of a kiss.

  We look at each other for a long moment, my lips still reeling from the sense memory of hers. She nods slowly, as if to register the kiss in some internal log, and then flashes a bemused smile and says, “What was that?” There is no anger in her voice, nor even surprise, for that matter. Her tone is inquisitive and even mildly amused.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  “Well,” she says. “You certainly did it.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t.” She waves her hand to cut me off. “Don’t apologize. You’ll just make it weirder.”

  “Okay.”

  She leans forward to hug me again, and gives me a light kiss on the cheek, as if to undo the first one. “Call me tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She smiles at me and heads uptown, toward her garage. I watch her walk away until she rounds the corner, and then pull up the collar of my jacket and head west, toward the subway, feeling strangely uprooted; a spectator to my own inconceivable actions. I cross Broadway to Seventh Avenue and the 1 and 9 trains, struggling to quell the powerful urge to run back upstairs to my office and reclaim the normalcy of my life. I can still feel Tamara’s lips, still taste her on my tongue, and it brings a crazy smile to my rain-soaked face. My cell phone vibrates and I instinctively lift it to glance at the screen. Six messages. Without removing it from my coat pocket, I know my Blackberry is heavy with unreturned e-mails. I turn the phone off in midring and jam it into a coat pocket, a move that feels every bit as reckless as kissing Tamara.

  Clay threw office equipment and kicked the walls, but I’m thinking that maybe there are other, quieter ways of losing your mind.

  Chapter 19

  Rael and Tamara’s wedding. Jed, Rael, and I were leaning against the bar, drunkenly toasting our friendship, while Tamara and her bridesmaids posed for some impromptu photos on the dance floor. Jed caught me watching them and said, “Oh, no,” waving his hand in front of my eyes as if to break a trance. “Don’t do it, man.”

  “Do what?” I said, still staring across the room.

  Jed put down his gin and tonic and turned to face me, grinding an ice cube between his teeth. “I have one rule about dating,” he said.

  “No you don’t,” I said.

  “But I do.”

  “This from the man who lost his virginity to his aunt,” Rael said, snickering.

  “Ex-aunt,” Jed clarified. “She was already divorced from Uncle Phil.”

  “Oh, well, then that’s okay.”

  “Listen,” Jed said. “It’s a good rule.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Do tell.”

  Jed leaned back and took another sip from his drink. “Let me start by saying that rules for dating are like rules for being mugged at gunpoint. The very concept is flawed, since it flies in the face of one simple fact: you’re not in control.”

  I leaned back and sipped at my own drink, a whiskey sour. “And yet, you have a rule.”

  “Five words,” Jed said. He placed his drink on the bar, fixed me with a somber look, and paused for dramatic effect. “Don’t date the fucking bridesmaids.”

  Rael and I nodded sagely. “Wow,” Rael said.

  “Brilliant,” I concurred.

  “Go ahead, make your jokes,” Jed said, shaking his head sadly. “But remember this moment, because one day you’ll be sorry you didn’t take heed.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “Bridesmaids are an optical illusion, aglow with excitement and ripe with sexual promise, an idealized version of the true woman beneath. It’s false advertising. Their hair and makeup are professionally done. Those gowns are designed to accentuate the positive, while any flaws are hidden beneath all that puffy crinoline. How else can you explain why they look so good in such ridiculous dresses? Plus”—he paused and held up his empty glass demonstratively—“you’re probably drunk.”

  Rael and I looked at each other and laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Jed insisted. “You get them out of that getup and it’s all there: the bad skin, the sagging breasts, and an ass that has somehow, magically doubled in size. And the tragedy is, if you’d met her like this to begin with, you might still have been interested, but the contrast to her idealized self is simply too much to overcome.”

  “Tamara was a bridesmaid when I met her,” Rael said with a grin.

  “The exception that proves the rule,” Jed said dismissively.

  But Jed had it wrong. It wasn’t the bridesmaids at whom I’d been staring. It was the bride, smiling as she came toward us at that moment, her hair pinned back to expose the graceful descent of her cheekbones, her tan skin luminescent above the scooped neck of her dress. In the year or so that she’d been dating Rael, I’d grown close to Tamara, and I was certainly aware of her beauty on an instinctive, male level, but she was my best friend’s fiancée, and I’d never taken it personally before. All through the ceremony, I’d been too wrapped up in my duties as best man to really pay her much attention. Now, though, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “So, Zack,” she said, grabbing me by the arm. “You going to dance with me or what?”

  “Go ahead,” Rael said, leaning against Jed. “I’m just catching my breath.”

  The song was “Wonderful Tonight,” and as we danced, reflections from the ballroom chandelier sparkled like Roman candles in her eyes. “Rael told me about Lisa,” she said.

  Lisa, whom I’d been dating for the last few months, had broken up with me last week because, as she put it, we’d “maxed out our emotional connection.” I didn’t disagree, but I’d been hoping we’d last a little while longer, so that at least I’d have a date for the wedding.

  “I’m over it,” I said with a shrug.

  Tamara fixed me with a look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told Rael.”

  She stopped moving and looked up at me, eyes wide and demanding. “Zack,” she said. “Rael and I are married. We haven’t merged into one being. After all the long nights I put in talking to you about your love life while Rael was snoring away, I would hope that you’d look at me as a true friend, and not simply an extension of Rael.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “I guess with the wedding only a few days away, I didn’t want to rain on your parade.”

  She nodded, mollified, and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek. “You’re too sweet, Zack,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder as we finished the dance. “Lisa didn’t deserve you.”

  “Who does?” I said.

  “I don’t know. But she’s out there. And we’re going to find her.”

  “We?”

  “Damn right, we,” she said, pulling back to look at me. “You’re my best man too, and that makes you my responsibility. Now, dip.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the end of the song,” she said. “Dip me.”

  And so I dipped her, taking in the triangle of soft flesh beneath her upturned chin as she threw her head back, and when I pulled her back up, Rael was there to dance with his bride. “I’ll take it from here,” he said, grinning at me.

  “She’s all yours,” I said, and then watched as he led her away from me, vaguely troubled by the intense feeling of loss that momentarily came over me. But then Jed stepped up behind me and threw his arm over my shoulder, and the feeling disappeared as suddenly as it had come on. “And then there were two,” he intoned gravely, steering me toward a group of women in lavender taffeta congregating near the bandstand.

  “Don’t date the bridesmaids,” I said dully.

  “Don’t date the fucking bridesmaids,” Jed corrected me, maintaining our course.

  “The swear is integral?”

  “Imperative.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Jed sighed and downed the rest of his drink in one
savage gulp. “Because we never fucking learn.”

  Chapter 20

  I get off the train at Eighty-sixth, but rather than go home, I walk slowly toward Central Park, relishing the cold sensation of the rain soaking my skin through my clothes. Wet weather has always seemed to me to be an invitation to extreme action, and, having just behaved extremely, the stinging spray is a welcome, retroactive justification. Leaving work in the middle of the day is erratic behavior, to be sure, but nothing that can’t be explained away. Kissing Tamara, on the other hand, was just plain reckless, and it leaves me feeling perplexed, ashamed, and undeniably excited. I want to take it back and do it again, all at the same time. I think of Hope in London, sifting through recondite paintings in a musty basement, dust mites collecting on her designer clothing, and I feel a deep pang of guilt. I think of Tamara and wonder what she’s thinking about me, if she’s reliving that kiss over and over again the way I am. Best not to think about that too much. But still . . .

  I step into the living room an hour later, teeth chattering, to find Matt and Jed napping in front of the television, Matt sprawled on the floor and Jed on the couch. A romantic comedy plays itself out on cable; a mistaken identity has been perpetrated by the woman in the name of unrequited love, but the deception will ultimately be forgiven, since both parties are just so good-looking and because only a fool would overlook the soundtrack and lighting cues that make it clear where the happy ending lies. A worn copy of Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark lies facedown on Matt’s chest. Despite the tattoos, earrings, and other assorted accoutrements of his trade, Matt’s not at all what you’d expect from a punk rocker. He’s passionate about literature, is majoring in it on his protracted route through college, which explains the Nabokov and why, mixed in with songs like “Bring Your Sister” and “Jerk-Off Jimmy,” you’ll also find ones like “Vonnegut’s Weed” and “Mr. Palomar” in his body of work.

  I tiptoe upstairs to my room, peeling off my wet clothes as I go. As I rub the rain out of my hair with a towel still damp from this morning’s shower, I enter into a staring match with the toilet. I’ve managed to avoid it all day, since this morning’s agonizing unpleasantness, but the telltale throbbing in my groin says that I can run, but I can’t hide. I decide to go sitting down. My piss is razor sharp, and in the mirror over the sink, I catch a glimpse of my face contorted in pain, the cords of my neck standing out in protest as I gasp through the stream. But then it’s over, and in retrospect, it wasn’t as bad as this morning, although I don’t know if that’s actually the case, or if I’ve only taken the element of surprise out of it. There’s definitely less blood than this morning, although that’s hardly a cause for celebration.