“Well,” I say. “How’s she doing with all of it?”
“I mean… she’s great. I don’t know why I was so worried.”
“I do,” I say. “Because you care.”
“Yeah,” you say. You stroke my hair. “I liked it when you looked at me at the table, when you wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just bravado on her part, that she really was okay about us being together.”
I take your hand. “Well, I like it when you read my mind.”
You air-kiss me and pick up a jar of face cream and rub cream on your neck as if you think we’re going to sleep and you gaze at my empty red wall. “I mean… can you believe this day? Can you believe we’re actually here?”
“You really had me going there for a second, so I’m doubly happy we’re here.”
You rub some of that cream on my face and that’s more like it, Mary Kay. “Oh come on,” you tease. “We had you going for a full minute. You were scared.”
I take that jar of antifucking cream and put it on the nightstand and I take your wrists in my hands. “If you must know, yeah, I’ve never been more scared in my life.”
After we make love—this is our life now!—you wash your face and reapply your night cream and you are a woman, so you feel the need to rationalize your decisions. You tell me things I already know, that Patton Oswalt got remarried only a few months after his wife passed away, that he has a daughter, that no one gets to tell anyone how long the grieving process goes on. You take a picture of us and you crop the picture—we don’t need people to know we’re in bed—but we are Red Bed official and we are Instagram official and the Meerkat is the first one to like it and more likes are pouring in, so much love, and you like those likes and it’s our first night as a couple and the Meerkat texts you. She wants to know if she can take the blanket off my sofa and I tell you that she doesn’t have to ask.
“This is our house, Mary Kay. My stuff is all of our stuff and you can both do as you please.”
You kiss me on the cheek. “You’re my mind reader, Joe. I love you.”
And you do. You do.
39
Yesterday I preordered two copies of a new Murakami because this is our life now. You’ve lived here with me for twenty-two sleeps in our house, where we make the rules and your books are all mixed up with mine. Your Murakami kisses mine and your Yates leans into my Yates and you are there, on the steps to the sunken living room, our sunken living room.
“I don’t know if you know this, but we do have access to a library.”
“No shit?”
“You’re funny, Buster.”
“Well, someone moving in… blending the books. It’s new to me.”
There are times when I am a kid again, too young, and you are the Sassy creature who is too old for me, but then your hand finds the back of my neck. “Remember, we’re less than ten years apart so…”
“So I’m the same age.”
You kiss me. “I never did this either, you know? Phil… well he wasn’t much of a reader.” And then you sigh. You sit on the Red Bed sofa. “I think I did something wrong.”
“What did you do?”
You put your feet—always in socks, something I know now that we live together—on the coffee table and it still astounds me, you being here, Nomi down in the Whisper Room watching Dirty Dancing, your dirty dishes in my sink, your shoes lined up on my doormat. I sit by you and kiss you the way you kissed me in the window at Eleven Winery last night. You remind me that Nomi is downstairs and I laugh. “I’m just trying to find the logic. It’s okay to make out in full view of everyone at the winery on Winslow and put a selfie on your Instagram for the whole world to see… but this is too much? She’s downstairs.”
You jab me. “Don’t make fun of my Instagram.”
“Rest assured, Mary Kay. I will always make fun of your Instagram.”
This is why we’re good, because we’re different. You’re a show-off. A fox who wants everyone to know about the wolf in your den, and I’m helping you remember that the best thing about happiness is that it’s yours. Ours.
“Okay,” I say. “Fess up. What did you do that’s so awful?”
You look down at your iPad. “Do you have anything going on later this week?”
“Nothing major, why?”
You hand me your iPad and you didn’t do anything wrong. You planned a trip for us and we’re going to another island that you describe as Cedar Fucking Cove: The Victorian Version. You promise that Port Townsend is a Victorian paradise of old homes and you tell me that we’ll have Victorian sex. You keep saying that you’re relieved that I’m excited and how in the hell would I be anything but excited? “You’ll love it, Buster…” I love that sometimes I am Buster and other times I am Clarice and I kiss the top of your head. “This is fucking perfect, Hannibal.”
“Is it? It’s just two nights but honestly, two nights is enough and there are people there that live like Victorians and I just… I can’t wait for you to see it.”
This is the second surprise party you’ve thrown in my honor and the Meerkat emerges from the basement. “Hi, guys. Bye, guys.”
“Where you going?” you ask.
“Seattle,” she says. “Peg’s friend has this daughter… I dunno, she’s okay and her friends don’t suck. Whatever. I have to go.”
Your Meerkat is off Columbine and she’s wearing a new T-shirt and you tell her to take a jacket and she groans. “I’m not eleven.”
She slams the door and you laugh. “Is that my child?”
I tell you that all change, even good change, is hard, and we go at it on the Red Bed and I tell you to put that on Instagram and you laugh—Such a sicko—and we eat our beef and our broccoli and we go to bed full, satiated, but the next day you wake up screaming. This happens sometimes, you have nightmares. I try to take your sad song and make it better but you won’t tell me what you dreamed about. My phone buzzes while I am spooning you.
“Who’s texting you?” You’re never at your best after your nightmares, and your voice is full of suspicion as if I would ever lie to you.
My new friend Oliver. “My old friend Ethan.”
“You should invite him up. He has a girlfriend, right?”
I open the 1stdibs app and inquire about another David LaChapelle and I don’t want you to meet my friends and I squeeze you. “A wife,” I say. “And that’s a great idea.”
I put my phone away and you pull away and walk into the bathroom naked and you turn on a song—“Hallelujah”—and oh. You were dreaming about your rat and I go into our kitchen and turn on my music and I am a good guy. You are allowed to mourn in your own fucked-up way and I pour milk onto eggs, onto flour and I dream too, Mary Kay. Sometimes whether I like it or not I see RIP Beck in the cage and RIP Candace in the water at Brighton Beach, alive, swimming in a sea of blood.
“Mmm,” you say, dressed now. Ponytail low. Did you rub one out in the shower? “I’m starving.”