Something Borrowed

  What was a girl to do? Stay in a marriage with the wrong man, all in the name of appearances? Jessica knew the shit that she would get, not only from friends and family and her own husband, whom she had promised to have and to hold forever (not just a mere 120 days), but from the whole world—or at least those of us so bored with our own lives that we devour People magazine the second it hits the newsstands. Yet she went for it anyway, realizing that you only live once. She stuck her neck out in traffic, and like the frog in my all-time favorite video game, made it across the street, safely into the little box on top of the screen, or, as it were, into a six-million-dollar pad overlooking Central Park. Owning up to her mistake actually took real grit and courage. And maybe Jerry, too, deserved credit for ignoring the wrath of the world, following his heart at any price. Maybe true love just prevailed.

  Regardless of what really happened with Jessica, Eric, and Jerry, my notions of rule-following in love are shifting.

  “So, do you know what you’d like to have?” Dex asks me.

  I smile and tell him that I am waiting to hear the specials.

  After dinner Dex asks me if I want to go get another drink.

  “Do you?” I ask, wanting to please him, give him the right answer.

  “I asked you first.”

  “I would rather just go home.”

  “Good. Me too.”

  The night has cleared somewhat, and as we are dropped off on my corner, we see a few fireworks exploding in the distance over the East River. Blues and pinks and golds illuminate what feels like our own private city. We hold hands and stare up at the sky, watching silently for several minutes before we go inside and say good night to José, who by now thinks that Dex is my boyfriend.

  We go upstairs, undress, and make love. It is not my imagination—it is better every time. Afterward, neither of us speaks or moves. We fall asleep, our legs and arms entwined.

  In the morning, I wake up just as the light is returning to the sky. I listen to Dex breathe and study the sharp curve of his cheek. His eyes snap open suddenly. Our faces are close.

  “Hi, baby.” His voice is scratchy with sleep.

  “Hi,” I say softly. “Good morning.”

  “What are you doing awake? It’s early.”

  “I’m watching you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love your face,” I say.

  He looks genuinely surprised by my comment. How could he be? He must know that he is handsome.

  “I love the way you look too,” he says. His arms move around me, pulling me against his chest. “And I love the way you feel.”

  I feel myself blush.

  “And the way you taste,” he says, kissing my neck and my face. We avoid mouths, as you do after sleep. “And I guess all of that makes sense.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, because…”

  He is breathing hard now and looks nervous, almost scared. I reach for a condom from my nightstand drawer, but he pulls my hand back, and moves inside me, and says “because” again.

  “Because why?”

  I think I might know why. I hope I know why.

  “Because, Rachel…” He looks into my eyes. “Because I love you.”

  He says those words exactly as I am thinking them, fighting a growing impulse to say it first. And now I don’t have to.

  I try to memorize everything about this moment. The look in his eyes, the feel of his skin. Even the way the light is slanting through my blinds. It is a moment beyond perfection, beyond anything I have ever felt before. It is almost too much to bear. I don’t care that Dex is engaged to Darcy, or that we are creeping around like a couple of outlaws. I don’t care that my teeth need a good brushing and that my hair is messy and limp around my face. I only feel Dex and his words and I know, without a doubt, that this is the happiest moment of my life. Snapshots flash through my mind. We are dining by candlelight, sipping fine champagne. We are curled up next to a raging fire in an old Vermont farmhouse with creaky floorboards and snowflakes the size of silver dollars falling outside. We are sharing a picnic lunch in Bordeaux in the middle of a meadow filled with yellow flowers, where he will give me a vintage diamond ring.

  This might just happen. He loves me. I love him. What else is there? Surely he won’t marry Darcy. They cannot do happily ever after. I find my voice and manage to say those three one-syllable words back to him. Words I haven’t uttered in a very, very long time. Words that meant nothing before now.

  Neither of us acknowledges what we said that day, but I can feel it in the air, all around us. It is more palpable than the thick humidity. I can feel it in the way he looks at me and the way he says my name. We are a couple, and our words have made us brazen. At one point, as we are walking through Central Park, he takes my hand. It is only for a few seconds, five or six steps, but I feel a rush of adrenaline. What if we get caught? What then? A small part of me wants that result, wants to run into an acquaintance of Darcy’s, a coworker stuck in the city for work, going for a brief stroll in the park. She will play informant on Monday morning, telling Darcy that she saw Dex with a girl, holding hands. She will describe me in detail but I am generic enough that Darcy won’t suspect me. And if she does, I’ll just deny it, say that I was at work all day. Say that I don’t even own a pink shirt—which is new, one that she has never seen. I will be wildly indignant, and she will apologize and then turn back to the issue of Dex cheating on her. She will decide to dump him and I will be supportive, tell her she is doing the right thing. This way Dex won’t have to decide anything or do anything. It will all be handled for us.

  We walk up to the reservoir, circling it as we admire all the views of the city. We pass a boy wearing head-to-toe army fatigues, walking an aged beagle, and then an overweight woman panting along in a slow jog, her elbows jutting out awkwardly. Otherwise, we have the usually populated path to ourselves. I listen to the gravel crunching beneath our sneakers as we walk in perfect rhythm. I am content. The reservoir, the views, the city, and the world belong to Dex and me.

  Dark clouds are rolling in when we finally leave the park. We decide not to change for dinner, heading straight for Atlantic Grill, a restaurant near my apartment. Both of us are in the mood for fish and white wine and vanilla ice cream. After dinner, we dash back to my apartment in a downpour, laughing as we cross the streets midblock, splashing our way through the puddles formed on the sidewalks. Back inside, we strip off our wet clothes and towel each other off, still laughing. Dex puts on a pair of boxers. I wear one of his T-shirts. Then we play a Billie Holiday CD and open another bottle of wine, red this time. We stretch out on my sofa where we talk for hours, only getting up to brush our teeth and transfer to my bed for another satisfying sleep together.

  Then suddenly, as it always happens, time accelerates. And just as being with Dex on our first night felt like the start of the summer, fearing the end of our time together reminds me of late August, when those daunting back-to-school commercials for Trapper Keepers would replace the ones featuring gleeful towheaded kids sipping Capri-Sun poolside. I remember the feeling well—a mixture of sadness and panic. This is how I feel now as we sit on my sofa on Saturday while afternoon bleeds into evening. I keep telling myself not to ruin the last night by being sad. I tell myself that the best is yet to come. He loves me.

  As if reading my mind, Dex looks at me and says, “I meant what I said.”

  It is the first reference to our sacred exchange.

  “I did too.” I am filled with a deep longing, and am sure that our talk is coming. Our Post–Independence Day Talk. We are going to discuss ways to make this crazy thing work. How we can’t bear to hurt Darcy, but that we must. I wait for his lead. It is his conversation to begin.

  That’s when he says, “No matter what happens, I meant that.”

  His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record. A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is w
hy you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated. I want to cry, but I keep my face placid, give myself a psychological shot of Botox. I can’t cry, for several reasons, not the least of which is that if he asks why I’m crying, I won’t be able to articulate an answer.

  I fight to salvage the night, bring the golden cast back. He loves me, he loves me, he loves me, I tell myself. But it is not helping. He looks at me worriedly. “What’s wrong?”

  I shake my head, and he asks again, his voice gentle.

  “Hey, hey, hey…” He lifts my chin, looks into my eyes. “What is it?”

  “I’m just sad.” My voice trembles tellingly. “It’s our last night.”

  “It’s not our last night.”

  I take a deep breath. “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  But that doesn’t really explain much. What does “no” mean? That we will continue in this fashion for a few more weeks? Until the night before their rehearsal dinner? Or does he mean that this is only our beginning? Why can’t he be more specific? I can’t bring myself to ask. I am afraid of his answer.

  “Rachel, I love you.”

  His lips stay curled up at the end of the last word, until I lean over to kiss him. A kiss is my response. I won’t say it back until we have our talk. Way to take a stand!

  We are kissing on my couch, followed by the unzipping and unbuttoning and attempting to gracefully slide out of denim, which is impossible. We move various sections of the Times out of our way and onto the floor. The sure fix, I think—the panacea. We are making love, but I am not in the moment. I am thinking, thinking, thinking. I can feel the dials of my brain whirring and rotating like the inside of a Swiss watch. What is he going to do? What is going to happen?

  The next morning, when I wake up beside Dex, I hear him saying “no matter what happens.” But during sleep my mind reprocessed the meaning of his words, landing on a perfectly logical explanation: Dexter just meant that whatever shit hits the fan, no matter what Darcy says or does, if we need some time apart in the aftermath of blood and guts, he will be waiting to love me and it will all be fixed in the end. That is what he must have meant. But still. I want him to tell me this. Surely he will say something more before he returns to the Upper West Side.

  We get up, shower together, and go to Starbucks. Already we have a routine. It is eleven. Darcy and the others will be home soon. We are down to minutes and still no conversation, no conclusions. We finish our coffee and then stop at a toy store. Dex needs to buy a baby present for one of his work friends. Just a small token, he says. I can’t decide whether I enjoy the feeling of being such an established couple that we run errands together, or whether I resent wasting our dwindling moments on this random task. It’s more the latter. I just want to get back so that we have a few moments together. Time for him to share his plan.

  But Dex lingers over various toys and books, asking me my opinion, laboring over a decision that doesn’t matter one bit in the scheme of things. He finally decides on a stuffed, green triceratops with a cartoonish expression. It’s not what I would choose for a newborn, but I admire his conviction. I hope he will have similar conviction about us.

  “It’s cute. Don’t you think?” he asks, cocking its small head.

  “Adorable.”

  Then, as he’s about to pay for the dinosaur, he spots a plastic bin full of wooden dice. He picks out two red ones with gold-painted dots and holds them up in an open palm. “How much for a pair of dice?”

  “Forty-nine cents per die,” the man at the register says.

  “A bargain. I’ll take ’em.”

  We leave the store and walk toward my apartment. People are returning to the city in droves; traffic has resumed its normal pace. We are almost at my block. Dex is holding the bag with the dinosaur in his right hand and the dice in his left. He has been shaking them along the way. I wonder if his stomach hurts as much as mine does.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask him. I want a long answer, articulating everything I am thinking. I want reassurance, some small nugget of hope.

  He shrugs, licks his lips. “Nothing much.”

  ARE YOU MARRYING DARCY? The words roar in my head. But I say nothing, worrying that pressuring him is not strategically wise. As if what I say or don’t say in the final minutes of our togetherness might make a difference. Maybe it is that tenuous—the fate of three people hanging in the balance like the cradle in the nursery rhyme.

  “You like to gamble?” Dex asks, examining his dice while still walking.

  “No,” I say. Surprise, surprise. Rachel playing it safe. “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I like craps. My lucky number is six—a four and a two. You have a lucky roll?”

  “No…Well, I like double sixes,” I answer, trying to mask my feelings of desperation. Desperate women are not attractive. Desperate women lose.

  “Why double sixes?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t feel like explaining that it stems from playing backgammon with my father when I was little. I’d chant for double sixes and whenever I rolled them he’d call me Boxcar Willy. I still don’t know who Boxcar Willy is, but I loved it when he called me that.

  “Want me to roll you some double sixes?”

  “Yeah,” I say, pointing down at the filthy sidewalk, humoring him. “Go ahead.”

  We stop on the corner of Seventieth and Third. A bus lurches past us, and a woman with a baby nearly runs her stroller into Dex. He seems to ignore everyone and everything around him, shaking the dice with both hands, an expression of intense concentration on his face. If I saw him exactly like this, but in Atlantic City wearing polyester and a gold chain, I would wonder if he had his house and life savings on the line.

  “What are we betting?” I ask.

  “Betting? We’re on the same team, baby,” he says in a Queens accent, and then blows hard on his dice, his smooth cheeks puffing out like a little boy blowing the candles out on his birthday cake.

  “Roll me double sixes right now.”

  “And if I do?”

  I think to myself, You roll double sixes, we end up together. No wedding with Darcy. But instead I say, “It will mean good luck for us.”

  “All righty then. Double sixes coming right up for ya.” He licks his lips and shakes his dice more vigorously.

  The sun shines in my eyes as he tosses the dice in the air, catches them easily, and then dramatically lowers his arm toward the ground as if he’s about to roll a bowling ball. He opens his hand, fingers splayed, as the cubes clatter to the concrete right at the busy Manhattan intersection.

  One red die lands on six immediately. My heart skips with the thought, What if? We are crouched over the landed die and its spinning twin, rotating on its axis for what seems like forever. If you tried to make a die go that long, you couldn’t do it. But there it is, turning on its corner, a blur of gold dots and red background. And then it slows, slows, slows, and lands neatly beside the first one. Two rows of three dots on the second die.

  Double sixes.

  Boxcar Willy.

  Holy shit, I think…No wedding with Darcy!… He wanted to talk about “no matter what happens” as if someone were steering from up above; well, here you go. Here you have it. Double sixes. Our fate.

  I look up from the dice at Dex, debating whether to tell him what the roll had really been for. He looks at me with his mouth slightly open. Our eyes return to the dice as if maybe we got it wrong.

  What are the chances?

  Um, that would be precisely one in thirty-six. Just under three percent.

  So we aren’t talking one-in-a-million odds. But those statistics are misleading when removed from our context. We have reached the end of a pivotal, meaningful weekend together. Right as we are minutes from parting ways (for the day? forever?), Dexter buys the dice on a whim, plays with them instead of putting them in the bag with his stuffed dinosaur, and adopts his boyish gambling persona. I play
along, even though I’m in no mood for games. Then I decide, albeit silently, the terms of the roll. And he rolls double sixes! As if to say, we are foolproof, baby.

  I look at his ninety-eight-cent (plus tax) dice with the reverence you would have for a crystal ball in a richly upholstered room with the world’s greatest fortune-teller, wrinkled by the Persian sun, who has just told you how it was, how it is, and how it is going to be. Even Dex, who doesn’t know what he just sealed for us, is impressed, telling me that he needs to take me to Atlantic City, Vegas, that we’d make a hell of a team.

  Exactly.

  He smiles at me and says, “There’s your good luck, baby.”

  I say nothing, just pick up the dice and wedge them into the front pocket of my shorts.

  “You stealing my dice?”

  Our dice.

  “I need them,” I say.

  We return to my apartment, where he collects his things and says good-bye.

  “Thanks for an awesome weekend,” he says, his face now mirroring mine. He is sad too.

  “Yeah. It was great. Thank you.” I strike the pose of a confident girl.

  He bites his lower lip. “I better head back. As much as I don’t want to.”

  “Yeah. You better go.”

  “I’ll call you soon. Whenever I can. As soon as I can.”

  “Okay.” I nod.

  “Okay. Bye.”

  After one final kiss, he is gone.

  I sit on my sofa, clutching my dice. They are a comfort—the roll is almost as good as a talk. Maybe better. We didn’t have a talk because it is all so obvious. We are in love and meant to be together, and the dice confirmed everything. I place them reverently in his empty cinnamon Altoids container, nestled in the white paper liner with the sixes still facing up. I touch the rows of dots, like reverse Braille. They tell me that we will be together. It is our destiny. All of me believes it. I close the lid of the tin and push it against the base of my vase filled with lilies that are still clinging on. The dice, the tin, the lilies—I have created a shrine to our love.