by Rumaan Alam
He has slept there, twice now, the first time another Friday night, just after starting his new gig, and his cool shoulder in her back that Saturday morning wasn’t as strange as she thought it would be. They’d dressed that morning and gone to the indoor flea market, where they ate fresh doughnuts and looked at people buying garbage. They’d walked around in the unseasonably mild chill, had lunch at a terrible Frenchy place on Atlantic Avenue, and ended up back at her place, Rob still in the clothes he’d worn to the office the day before. He mentioned this, then stripped out of his clothes and fucked her on the floor of the living room. They showered together, she cooked a frozen pizza, and they sat in their underwear and ate it, then he left the next morning, kissing at the front door. Now, seeing Rob waiting, hands in his pockets, in the front of the restaurant, which is dark, and very warm, feels familiar. A scene she’s lived before, the scene of meeting him in a place they’ve never been together before, but recognizing him, the slope of his shoulders, the long arms, the beginnings of a bald spot, the easy grin. Rob always looks satisfied.
“How was work?” Rob had joked to the hostess—Give us the best seat in the house—and it had worked. A back booth, out of the way, giving them a command over the whole room, candlelit, hushed despite the crowd, some trick of the acoustics.
“Gluten free,” Lauren says. The waitress brings them cocktails, and they knock their glasses together before they take a first sip, and Lauren can’t tell if the gesture is ironic or not. “You?”
His face brightens even further. He loves his job. “Great. We got the green light on that profile. So that’s exciting. And spring training starts soon. I think that’ll be good.”
“Awesome,” she says, and that, too, sits awkwardly, somewhere between irony and sincerity. She is excited for him; his excitement is infectious. She wants good things for him, and that seems surprising. It must mean she likes him more than she was aware of liking him, to this point. She is not one of those women who frets about what it all means, who is always checking the present against some grand game plan. She thinks of poor Meredith, her ravenous desire to use those nouns: boyfriend, fiancé, husband. Meredith would love Rob, who is handsome, but accessibly so: not beautiful. Beautiful men are horrible. Much better, a man who looks like a man, a man who is generically handsome, well proportioned, unfeminine, a man with faults, though it’s early enough that Lauren’s not privy to Rob’s faults, not yet. She’s never heard him burp.
“It is, right? What are you going to order?”
They have settled into a pattern of consulting each other before ordering in restaurants, exercising the right to reach across the table to the other’s plate. She opts for fish; he asks for lamb, even though they both agree it sounds cruel, and that there ought to be some euphemism for lamb, something nonpartisan, like veal, or something misleading, like sweetbreads.
They order a warm dessert—apples and caramel in a salty pastry, topped with saltier ice cream, this vogue for salty desserts is a winning one—and she pays the bill. This is something they’re still feeling through, this question of paying, but it’s idiotic to expect him to pay simply because he has a penis. She has the better job, after all. She puts down her corporate card—she’s allowed, it’s research, they’re scoping out the hotshot Korean chef who runs this place—and he says nothing, then thanks her when she’s signed the bill. It all feels like something they’ve done a million times before, but in the best possible way.
They walk to the subway, not holding hands but not far apart on the sidewalk, their shoulders brushing occasionally, and when they stop at the corner newsstand so he can buy a copy of a literary journal he likes, he asks if there’s anything she wants, and he buys her a copy of Elle and carries them both like a high school sweetheart in the 1950s, clutched to his chest. As they walk down the steps into the station, he offers her his hand—there’s ice, hidden beneath the puddles. She takes it. They push through the turnstiles and sit on the bench, knees pushed together, despite the intercession of the little wooden partition meant to offer commuters a modicum of personal space. The train arrives, and she finds a seat and he stands above her, both hands on the overhead bar. She holds the magazines on her lap, looks up at him. His face looks different from below. She likes this view of him, from below, his body near enough that she can pick up his scent—deodorant, faded by the day, chewing gum, something vaguely like pine, which might be his shampoo. There, on the bench, his dick so near her face, his dick that feels like it’s hers now, her special province, her territory. Tonight, she will sit like this, below him, and kiss his balls, and breathe in his smell deeply, and tomorrow morning they will kiss good-bye at the door and she’ll do the laundry and go grocery shopping. She’s out of yogurt, she noticed that morning.
A thing like Valentine’s Day can poison a fledgling relationship. In truth, forgotten tulips can undo even a marriage. Women are weird about these things. So, too, are men, though. Rob brings a box of chocolates, heart shaped, the next time he comes, but it’s meant to be a joke, and Lauren gets it. They eat them all, though they’re not very good.
Even if she’s not using any nouns with respect to Rob—and she’s not, or hasn’t, she’s been careful—he is going to be her date to Sarah’s wedding, which implies a certain seriousness, at least to Sarah. That afternoon, after Sarah had announced her pregnancy, they’d left the hotel in Midtown and just walked, past Mr. Morgan’s library, past the Empire State Building, through that weird intersection near the Toy Center, through a Union Square filled with slush instead of skateboarders. They’d kept walking, past the smoking undergrads at the New School and the smoking undergrads at NYU, past counterfeit handbag sellers and praying Muslim cabdrivers. They turned toward the bridge, slipped down streets lined with seafood markets and fruit vendors and the odd, colonizing art gallery. There was an organic restaurant Sarah had read about somewhere.
“You haven’t sent your response card in,” Sarah said.
“I haven’t decided if I’m coming.”
“I’m serious, you’re going to fall afoul of Willa, which I would not recommend.” Sarah smiled. “I assume you’re bringing the temp?”
“We can call him Rob now,” Lauren said. Sarah’s invitation had arrived: thick stock, postage in a denomination she’d never before encountered, flawless calligraphy on the envelope, and on the card itself, the vague promise of herself, Lauren Brooks “and Guest.”
“I’ll need a bit more information. Like his surname. You know Lulu needs to know everyone’s last name.”
Lauren did know this. Lulu has a thing about knowing a person’s first and last name, some weird colonial tic, a strain of old-world formality. “Well, it’s Rob Byrne.”
“I’m glad you’re bringing him,” Sarah said.
“Well, I’m sure he’s glad to be going.” This was a lie. She wasn’t sure how he felt about it at all. Their relationship wasn’t old enough to handle Valentine’s Day; a best friend’s wedding—it was asking more than she’d like to. She was doing it for Sarah. She knew Sarah would be happier to have a relative stranger in attendance at the wedding, because she wanted Lauren to have a date. This was like the rehearsal dinner party: a gift.
“Lolo?” Sarah looked at her, pantomimed rubbing a hand over an extended belly. “I’m pregnant.”
“I remember,” Lauren said. They laughed.
There is what you think, and there is what you say. Of course, Lauren’s heart is warmed by the idea of mother and father and baby, that unbridled joy, those sweet infant smells, the softness of new skin, and those pliable, plastic faces. Perpetuating the species is all important. But she cannot brook the smugness of a certain class of parent, the mother in yoga gear pushing the Brobdingnagian stroller, vaguely Scandinavian and overly efficient, the mommy sighing and eyeing passersby, her face now a beatific smile, now a suspicious glower. Lauren’s neighborhood is lousy with such women, and it’s not always women, indeed it can be worse when it’s men, men eager for you to notice
that strapping baby Hazel to their chest makes them different from, and better than, other men. Having a baby, she often wants to tell these parents, is no cause for sanctimony. Doing what the body is designed to do; teenagers the world over do it. Girls can bake up babies in rapid succession; boys can get boners moments after ejaculating.
Lauren isn’t certain Sarah will end up one of these smug sorts, but she does know that she’ll be the friend Sarah calls when she’s got to report a transgression by one of her other mommy friends’ horrid children. And she will have mommy friends: Fiona will one day pop out a Quentin, Amina will birth a Nikhil, and the babies will enjoy a friendship based only on the fact of parentage; no more random, in the end, than a lifelong relationship based on having once sat next to someone at the school orientation when you were eleven years old. An undercurrent of hostility, the inevitability of competition when Max crawls/takes solid foods/develops teeth/speaks clearly/poops on the potty/rides a scooter/learns Mandarin/loses his virginity/gets into Yale sooner or more easily than his pal Theo. Lauren knows what women are like. She is one. Sarah will get through it though. That much she knows. She always wanted to be like Sarah, when she was younger—to be loud, and listened to, and smart, and comfortable dealing with adults, and able to solve problems on her feet. She never knew Sarah to get into trouble, not once, not ever.
“You are that,” Lauren had said.
“Hey, we should get together, don’t you think? The four of us? He’s going to be at my wedding, it would be nice if I got to know him and his dapper shoes before that, no?”
Lauren had been expecting this. Sarah loves a double date. She and Gabe, Sarah and Dan: seeing whatever nonsense was at the Guggenheim followed by pasta someplace uptown, three hours of Matthew Barney at the Film Forum, then drinks and shared confusion at a bar in Soho. Not bad times, even though she never looked forward to them. Sarah was Lauren’s, not something she wanted to share with Gabe and Dan. They made it into something else entirely.
“We just got through Valentine’s Day, man,” Lauren said. “I’m taking him to a wedding. Let’s not tempt the gods, okay?”
Sarah shrugged. “A night out with friends, it’s not exactly meeting the parents, Lauren.”
“Baby steps, Sarah. They’re not all Dan. Some guys, they get spooked.”
“Men.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “God. What if it’s a boy?”
They both laughed.
Lauren likes clothes, but Lauren hates shopping. Why does it make you so tired? The small talk with salespeople, the visual stimulus, the chemical, perfumed smell of department stores or the bouquet of the boutique: flickering fig candles and the proprietress’s takeout, somewhere backstage. There’s never anywhere to sit, unless you’re trying on shoes. It’s a bore.
Of course, she’d swallowed this, fought it, not mentioned it, and gone with Sarah to that appointment at Bergdorf’s. Then another, for good measure, at a smaller salon downtown, then a second appointment at Bergdorf’s. She’s due to go back with her again, for the second fitting. Sarah’s had to confess the pregnancy to the seamstress. The seamstress has seen it all. It comes with the territory. The dress is the right one, though: long but not trailing (what was the sense in that?), sexy but not whorish, modest but not dowdy, modern but not boxy, romantic but not ridiculous. Standing on that little velveteen-covered cube, spinning around, the three-way mirror reflecting her a thousand times over, Sarah looks like a bride, Sarah looks as she should, Sarah looks pretty.
Today: more shopping, and on this, the first sunny day in March, that first day you sense that spring isn’t a delusion but an eventuality. They should be strolling down the West Side on that path overlooking the river, the one that leads to her favorite underattended movie theater in Manhattan. They should buy the paper and then only read the Week in Review and the magazine. They should stop at a diner and order french fries for no reason. That’s the point Lauren and Rob have reached in the relationship; they are not at the clothes-shopping point in the relationship, but here they are.
Rob says he could use a suit. He’s only got one, and it’s harder to button the jacket than it should be. She worries that he’s going to think of her, annoyed, when he’s reckoning with this thousand dollars on his Citibank card. This is about Sarah’s wedding, naturally.
“I like this one?” He sounds unconvinced. The salesman has pinned the pants’ unfinished hem up under itself on his left leg, so they can see how it’ll look. The suit is black, and it looks the same as every other suit he’s tried. They’re all the same, suits; isn’t that the point?
“It’s great,” she says. “It’s the shirt and tie that will make it, I think.”
“And the shoes,” Rob adds. The salesman at the previous store had said this, noting, disapprovingly, Rob’s mottled winter boots.
Later, at his place, the suit paid for and sent away in the stern, capable hands of the Russian woman who will finish the pants and bring the cuffs up at the wrists, Lauren takes off her shoes, curls into a comfortable spot on his bed, watching as he moves around the room, disposing of his new purchases. He moves without a hint of consciousness, with something like grace, a quality you rarely observe in a man. But then this is his room, his home. It’s like watching a chef in his kitchen, an artist in his studio, watching Rob tear little plastic tags off the shirt and ties (he bought three, he said he needed them anyway), slip collar stays out of their tiny pockets.
She’s seen worse boy apartments than Rob’s. It’s true that the sofa is actually a futon, but it’s not too horribly ugly, and the futon has been pressed into service as a sofa because Rob has a real bed, or, actually, a queen-size mattress, on top of a box spring, sitting on the floor. The bedroom is too small, he tells her, to get a bed in there. She thinks the mattress on the floor gives the apartment a bohemian vibe. Rob’s tidy and has been thoughtful about certain things, like stashing the plastic-wrapped quartet of toilet paper rolls inside a closet rather than leaving the whole thing sitting out on the floor of the bathroom. She’d once known a guy—twice fucked a guy—named Jesse whose bathroom floor had been sodden and sticky with what she could only assume was urine, flicked off his and his roommate’s dicks and left to molder on the linoleum. There’s a fuzz of dust under the bookcase, but the books are tidy and organized. Rob’s apartment has gestures that imply the homey: a vintage poster for a Smiths record, framed, on the living room wall, a striped throw pillow on the futon, a reasonably sized television. There are no video games, she noted the first time she went to his home. A lot of men she has known still play video games.
“You’re okay with this, right? The suit, the shoes, fuck, you didn’t have to buy the shoes.”
“I’m okay with it, Lauren. Stop asking.”
“It’s just a lot of money.” It’s a considerable sum, but she’s long been in the habit of spending impulsively. Now, those impulses are a little easier to justify. The raise wasn’t much, not when you stretch it out over twenty-six paychecks, but it is something, and Mary-Beth has said something about a bonus. Lauren’s trying to look at it from his perspective, though.
Now he’s just tidying up. He shakes a crumpled sweater out, lays it on the bed, folds it. “It’s fine. It’s a work thing. Dress for the job you want, and so on.” Rob grins, more to himself than her. “Besides, I want to look awesome at this wedding.”
“Well, it’s a pretty nice suit,” she says.
“Wait until you see my dancing.”
“That bad?”
“A fancy suit will only partially make up for it,” he says.
She shrugs. “I just don’t want you to, I don’t know, feel obligated. You can wear whatever.”
“That is total bullshit, but okay. Seriously, don’t worry about it. My sister will get married eventually. I’ll have to go to funerals. A man can use a black suit.”
“Future funerals, do tell me more.” She picks up one of the tags he’s snipped from one of the shirts, a heavy rectangle of cardboard, and throws it at
him. “Maybe I can recommend a good psychiatrist?”
“God, you’re so pretty, you know that?” He drops the sweater on top of the dresser. “You are so pretty.”
Junior year, coming out of a classroom, maybe European history, but her memory can only manage the general feelings, the atmosphere, she heard a snatch of conversation, not directed at her but not necessarily meant to be kept from her. Patrick Adler, finishing something he was saying to someone, some guy named Shane or Shawn. Speaking of her, and Sarah, she knew that, though she can’t remember the context that made it clear that it was them he meant: something to do with a party, a concert, a plan for a coming weekend. “You take rich, I’ll take pretty.” She’s always remembered that. She’s always known which she was. She’s never been quite sure which of them came out better, in the end.
“Thanks,” she says. What can she say?
“You don’t have to thank me. You are.” He hurls himself onto the bed, leaps onto it, like a boy into a pile of leaves. The mattress quakes under the force of him.
She thinks he is going to kiss her, thinks he is going to fuck her, thinks she should suck his dick, do something, he deserves something, he’s spent more than a thousand dollars on something he thinks is going to please her, and done it with a smile on his face. But he doesn’t. He reaches up for her, pulls her down toward him until she’s lying on the bed next to him, the two of them staring up at the ceiling, where a little patch of late winter sunshine still lingers. The apartment is quiet. It smells of him—detergent, maleness, something hard to place. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does she, and after a few minutes she realizes he’s fallen asleep, abruptly. She lies like that, next to him, for what seems a long time, not wanting to wake him.
