9
The restaurant was so dark that Alice had to put her hand along the wall as she walked down the two steps and toward the hostess stand, where three tall women in identical black dresses stood stone-faced, and for a moment Alice thought that it might be so dark that they actually couldn’t see her, but then the woman in the middle said, “Can I help you?” Alice cleared her throat and gave them Matt’s name, and one of the other women silently turned, holding out her flat hand like a mime delivering an invisible cocktail. She turned a corner into the dining room, and Alice followed.
The floor was black, glossy as a marble, and Alice stepped gingerly, afraid she might slip. All of the chairs were covered in what looked like draped tablecloths, the way furniture is covered in period piece films, to be whipped off by a fleet of servants just before the rich family arrives. Matt was sitting at a table along the far wall, handsome in a suit.
“Hi,” Alice said, kissing him on the cheek before settling into her chair. It felt like sitting on a badly folded fitted sheet.
Matt picked up his glass and took a gulp. “Hey,” he said. “Isn’t this place crazy?”
Alice looked around. The waitstaff were all wearing silk pajamas, which seemed like a terrible idea, in terms of stains and dry-cleaning bills. The restaurant was new. Alice hadn’t worked in food service, but she was a native New Yorker, which meant that she knew the statistics for how many restaurants failed. Her hopes were not high. At least nowadays gorgeous celebrity chefs could always turn back to television.
A silk-pajamaed server came over and deposited menus on the table—each one a leather-backed tablet nearly two feet long. As far as Alice could tell, the food items were described only by their ingredients and not by their final form: pea shoots, kabocha squash, handmade ricotta. Sage, egg, brown butter. Oyster mushrooms, sausage. “Can I have a large glass of wine, please? White? Nothing sweet?” Alice said before the woman walked away.
Matt was bouncing his knee under the table, shaking the surface slightly, like a minor earthquake. He looked handsome and sweaty, and Alice knew what was going to happen. She could see it all on fast-forward—the meal, Matt getting more and more anxious, them eating tiny, delicious things off plates that looked like painted compositions, a pause before dessert, and then Matt putting a small velvet box in front of her, right on top of a small drop of soy sauce.
“I’ve been thinking,” Matt said. “What if you moved in?”
The server brought over Alice’s wine, and she took a big sip, feeling the cool liquid slide across her tongue. “Why?” she asked. “Don’t you like having your own space? Time alone?” Alice had never introduced Matt to her father. Sam thought it was weird, but Alice thought it was weird that Sam liked being pregnant. It was obvious that Leonard and Matt wouldn’t particularly like each other, and so it had never seemed worth it. One upside to having a single parent was not rushing to get married, like so many people she knew had, just because they were trying to be adults. It was embarrassing, if you slowed down long enough to think about it, how many major life decisions happened because they looked like the model you’d been given.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was just thinking, you know, if you moved in, we could get a dog, maybe? My friend from college just adopted this Siberian husky, it’s so badass. It looks like a wolf.”
“So, you want us to move in together just to get a dog?” Alice was trolling him—Matt was trying. She could see it, still, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to step out of the oncoming traffic or just let it flatten her. Who knew how she would feel once he actually said the words? Maybe it would feel different than she thought it would, and maybe it would feel good knowing that someone once had wanted to ask her the question, because maybe no one else ever would.
Matt used the corner of his napkin to dab his forehead. He was beginning to look ill.
The server came back and asked if they knew what they’d like, and then launched into a ten-minute explanation of the menu. Alice and Matt both listened and nodded. When he was done, Alice asked where the bathroom was, and walked down another pitch-black hallway to an unmarked door that led to a large communal sink surrounded by stalls. It felt like a bunker, like she was now deep underground. She splashed water on her face and a woman appeared out of nowhere to hand her a towel.
“This would be a great place to murder someone,” Alice said. The woman recoiled. “I’m sorry, it’s really nice, it’s just so dark. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it. My boyfriend is going to propose, I think.”