“Were you throwing books out the window?” Rob asked.
“No,” Greta said.
“You distracted me. That’s why I fell.”
“Wasn’t me,” Greta said.
“You can’t steal from the library. It’s extremely bad luck.”
“I only take books that have more than four copies in circulation,” Greta said. “Damaged paperbacks.”
Rob gazed at Greta in silence. Greta worried she had a concussion and would die in her sleep that night. The ER was only a block away.
“Fine. I won’t do it again. Listen, you should go to the hospital.” Greta pulled Rob to her feet. “Can you walk?”
Rob laughed. “I fall every day. I have a hard head. Write your number in one of those books.”
Greta chose My ?ntonia, by Willa Cather. She wasn’t sure why she’d stolen it, as it didn’t look like it contained swears or sexual situations. Greta figured it would take Rob a month to read it, after which she would call Greta and tell her about it. But Rob called a few hours later.
“Wanna cuddle?” Rob asked.
Greta laughed. “You read that book already?”
“I don’t read books!” Rob said. “I want to take you to D’Angelo’s. I’ll buy you a steak-and-cheese with hots. More importantly, there’s a ceiling fan hanging by a thread. We should sit under it and wait for it to fall on our heads. Then we’ll live happily ever after.”
“Decapitated?” Greta said.
“Rich,” Rob said. “We’ll sue.”
The ceiling fan never fell on their heads or anywhere else, even after ninety minutes, but Greta fell head over heels for Rob, even though Rob drove an unfashionable Trans Am, claimed to be cursed, had terrible stick-and-poke tattoos, and had dropped out of St. Mary’s, where Greta would soon become a sophomore. Now Rob worked as a line cook at a diner to support her father, who’d gambled himself into bankruptcy with the French Canadians on the other side of the river. These circumstances were present in Rob’s body odor, which worked on Greta like catnip, though Rob claimed to smell earthy because she was half Cherokee.
Later that day, Rob lost her keys, wallet, and dog all within two hours. She broke her arm in four places trying to hunt everything down. A week after that, they went to a party in a tree house that collapsed; Rob landed straight on a nail and got tetanus, which gave her lockjaw. But she made everything she did seem choreographed, including falling down the stairs and running on crutches.
Their relationship lasted six months and was oddly chaste, possibly because Rob still considered Greta a child, but also because Rob played basketball with a few of the nuns from St. Mary’s. Rob was probably very Catholic, Greta guessed, even though she claimed luck was her only religion.
“Anyway, it was all hanky and no panky,” Greta told Big Swiss. “If you know what I mean.”
Big Swiss shook her head.
“Little to no touching below the belt,” Greta said. “But we loved making out and humping each other. She ended up dumping me for a waitress at the diner she worked at. I was devastated.”
As soon as Greta graduated high school, she bought a plane ticket to California and never saw Rob again. They’d known each other during a much simpler time, when you could move out of state, or even three exits away, and never be seen or heard from again. But then Facebook came along and disrupted the natural order, and suddenly there was a picture of Rob on her screen, her words in a message.
I see you live in LA. I’m here for work. Wanna cuddle?
Greta did in fact wanna cuddle. Just for one night. But did she also wanna chlamydia? Rob was still rough around the edges, no doubt, and cursed. There was also Stacy to consider. They’d been together seven years by that point. But Greta looked forward to not having to explain herself, because Rob already knew most of the beautiful and ugly things about Greta.
A day later, Greta was sitting in a corner booth at a steak house near Rob’s hotel, the Farmer’s Daughter. Greta was elated to see Rob’s face, which looked lived-in but not dilapidated, despite what had probably been twenty years of steady boozing and blackouts.
“Can you still run really fast barefoot?” Greta asked.
“Jolie laide,” Rob said.
“What’s that?”
“French,” Rob said. “It means ‘beautiful ugly,’ which is how I would describe your face.”
“Fuck,” Greta said. “Are you negging me?”
“You’re uniquely handsome,” Rob said, and reached for Greta’s hand. “You’ve been very hard to forget.”
“Can you still plunge your hands into scalding water?” Greta asked.
“I’m not a reptile, Greta,” Rob said. “I’m a human being. With feelings.”
Greta’s current feeling was shame. Although she’d had plenty of opportunities, she’d never cheated on Stacy, especially not with her father, because that’s precisely who Rob reminded her of—her father, with tits.
“Are you dating anyone?” Greta asked.
Rob shook her head. “My last few girlfriends have been totally deranged. Like, really nuts. I only seem to attract women who are mentally ill.”
“College girls,” Greta said.
“One or two were in their twenties,” Rob admitted. “But you? You, I loved. I still remember our second date. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years.”
They’d gotten high and made out on a slanted rooftop for many hours, during which Greta had injured her back. Later, Greta had eaten Nutella off Rob’s boobs.
“It was Cool Whip,” Rob said soberly.
“Nutella,” Greta said. “I’m not a Cool Whip person.”
Rob sniffed. “You must have licked Nutella off someone else.”
Greta had fallen hard for Rob that night, had been madly in love with her for months, but it felt dangerous to admit this now, because Rob seemed desperate to hear it.
“I’m just happy we found each other again,” Rob said.
Greta cleared her throat. “I’m in a relationship. With a really good guy. We live together. We’re engaged.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“My curiosity got the better of me,” Greta said.
Rob glanced at her watch. “What do you think? Can we get out of here now?”
“Without paying?”
“Greta,” Rob said patiently. “Will you stop treating me like a degenerate?”
“A sexy degenerate,” Greta said, correcting her.
They tongued at the table like a couple of losers. Rob smelled more complex than Greta remembered. The top note was the same: the undergrowth of a cedar forest. The middle note varied between almond croissant and armpit musk. When Greta correctly sensed the derision and contempt of the entire waitstaff, she managed to pull away. She decided she couldn’t wait to roll around with Rob in her hotel room.
“So, you had an affair,” Big Swiss interrupted at last.
“Yes,” Greta admitted.
Greta rattled on about how connected Rob had been to old ideas about herself, how strung-out Greta had felt, how her interactions with Rob reminded her of smoking crack—a two-minute high followed by the realization that she’d shit her pants—how ready she was to get off the pipe, to salvage her relationship with Stacy. Instead, she’d ended things with Rob and gone right back to sleep for another two or three years.