“Jonelle?”
“Oh, is that her name?”
“We … er … met earlier.”
“Oh, really? I’m not surprised. According to an Axe deodorant body spray poll, Newark Liberty International airport was voted the number one airport in the nation for making a love connection.”
“Really? Is that true?”
“Yes, from no lesser authority than the digital billboard right behind you. So, far be it from me to get in the way of you and Jonelle. I don’t want to be responsible for Newark’s drop in the rankings.”
“Trust me, I’m not interested. She’s an aeroanxiety specialist under the misguided impression that she can cure me.”
“Are you anxious?”
“Since you ran over me? Extremely.”
“You hide it well. Oh, wait, here’s the gate and … This does not look good.”
“That all depends on your definition of ‘good.’”
“There seems to be quite a number of people who also need to get to St. Thomas this evening. Wait here while I talk to the customer ser vice rep. Or, uh, don’t. I mean, you don’t have to wait for me.”
“I’ll wait, Jessica. It’s fine. I’m looking forward to dragging this out to its maximum awkwardness.”
[Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.]
“What’s the word?”
“The word is: screwed. There are, like, a million people ahead of me on standby. It looks like I’m in Newark until tomorrow.”
“Do you need to call Bridget and Percy?”
[Sigh.] “I already told Hope to tell them I wasn’t going to make it. I was hoping to surprise them by actually arriving on time. I’m afraid if I call them right now, I’ll just… Shit.” [Sniffle.]
“You tried, Jessica.”
“I know.”
[Pause.]
“Well, I’m definitely not crashing in the airport overnight. I’m so over this place.”
“I’m not crashing here, either.”
“You’re not? I figured you’d be the type to rough it. Camp out right here in the terminal, under the fluorescent lights, curled up on the crummy carpet on which millions of passengers have trod before you, using your duffel as a pillow, the recorded reminder to please maintain contact with your luggage at all times—mantenga el contacto con su equipaje siempre, por favor—your bilingual lullaby …”
“As romantic as you make that sound, hell no. I’m headed for the shuttle train that goes to all the airport hotels. I’m getting a room.”
[Pause.]
“I guess I should, too.”
“I hear good things about the Here hotels.”
“‘If you can’t be where you want to be, you might as well stay Here.’”
“Or their new motto: ‘Wherever you go, Here you are.’”
“Veeeeery bumper-stickery.”
“Hey, don’t hold that against Here E-Dub. Let’s see. Free Wi-Fi… high-def plasmas … A complimentary breakfast buffet… Oh, and we can get to know our fellow guests with the hottest selection of interactive gameplay…”
“Have you been paid by a guerrilla marketing firm?”
“I’m reading the digital billboard over there.”
“Oh. Right. So. Uh.”
[Pause.]
“Want to get a room?”
“At Here E-Dub?”
“Yes. Or wherever.”
“Like, together?”
“Yes, together. We can pass the time. It makes sense, doesn’t it? I’ve enjoyed talking to you. And I would prefer to be in your company instead of all alone in front of the high-def plasma TV. So how about it?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not? You were just lamenting how it was too bad that we didn’t have more time together, and now we do. Or were you just saying that to be nice?”
“There you go again, accusing me of being nice.”
“Seriously, Jessica. Why not?”
“I don’t think we should push our luck.”
“Push our luck? What are you so afraid of?”
“Doing—I mean, saying something I’ll regret.”
“I haven’t taken as many psychology classes as you have. But it’s a well-known fact that people tend to regret the things they don’t do more than the things they do, er, do. Or say, in your case.”
“I am familiar with that research. And so I won’t have any regrets later, I need to make something very clear now.”
“And what’s that?”
[Most dramatic pause.]
“We’re not going to have sex.”
[Stifled then unrestrained laughter.]
“There is nothing even remotely funny about what I just said.”
[Another wave of laughter.]
“WHAT. IS. SO. FUNNY?”
[Throat clearing.] “You.”
“Me.? How?”
“‘We are not going to have sex.’ An announcement like that says more about what’s on your mind than what’s on my mind.”
“You did not just say that.”
“I most certainly did.”
“This is what I get for trying to handle the situation like an adult. I see I’ve overestimated you.”
“I’m the immature one here? Really? Hey, why are we even debating this issue? What’s the point? You’ve made it very clear to me that you are suffering through [throat clearing] your monthly cycle. Oh, and don’t you have a contagious disease? Though there seems to be no signs of either of these afflictions at the moment.”
[Cough. Cough. Cough.] “Your point?”
“I think I’ve made my point.”
“You suck.”
“Oh, and you accuse me of being immature.”
“You suckity suck suck.”
“All I’m saying is that you have a history of failing to make good on chaste promises.”
“What? When?”
“I recall a certain no-sex proclamation made at my locker when we were juniors in high school. After you found that poem I had written you, the one with all the Adam and Eve imagery.”
“Oh God. When I marched up to you and said, ‘We will never be naked without shame in paradise.’”
“And you were wrong.”
“I was only half wrong.”
“Half wrong? How so?”
“We were naked without shame in Pineville, not paradise.”
“Very true.”
“But this time, Marcus, I promise you I won’t be wrong.”
“You have me thoroughly convinced that I won’t be getting laid tonight. By you, anyway.”
“Were you always such a laugh riot?”
“I am only as good as the material I’m given.”
“Hear me now, Marcus. I understand that even though we’re two consenting adults, we’re exes with a very complicated history, and sharing a hotel room could seem like an invitation to Fuckfest 2010. But that is not the case here. And if you’re thinking otherwise, you’ll be better off in your own room with pay-per-view porn and a box of Kleenex.”
“Is this your way of telling me that you’ve agreed to share a room with me?”
“Yes. I agree. But in a platonic way. Which means that you cannot and will not pull shit like that whole glasses thing earlier.”
“Pull what shit on what glasses thing?”
“When you claimed that you couldn’t compliment my appearance with an indirect compliment of my appearance.”
“You seemed to like it when I said it!”
“But that was when I thought we were about to say good-bye.”
“So?”
“So I knew that it wouldn’t lead to anything untoward.”
“Untoward? Who talks like that? You really are fucking old.”
“Har-dee-har-har. And what’s more, I’ve looked in the mirror! I know my current appearance is not worthy of such compliments! I call bullshit on such flattery in both form and content!”
“I, Marcus Flutie, promise not to compliment your appearance directly or indirectly from
this moment onward. And I will not refute your claim that the aforementioned flattery was illegitimate because that would be a direct violation of the promise I just made.”
“Just promise you won’t try to make this night into something it shouldn’t be.”
“I promise. I guess.”
“Marcus!”
“Okay! I promise!”
“Let’s shake on it, then.”
[Pause.]
“Yes, Jessica. Let’s.”
one
Within minutes of keying in to Room 2010, Jessica Darling surrenders herself to the mattress. She’s also helpless to the spectacle of Marcus Flutie slowly … slowly … and with great care … removing all his clothing. She wonders how far he will go. And how long she will watch.
He is waiting for a reminder to behave himself.
two
Jessica and Marcus are staying at Here EWR, the latest in a successful chain of boutique business hotels located as close to major airports as the Transportation Security Administration will allow. The success of this and all the properties in the Here Hotel Group depends greatly on the failings of the airline industry. Investors are banking serious money on current travel trends indicating that the number of stranded, grounded, or otherwise waylaid passengers will only continue to escalate. When forced to spend a night in a city they never wanted to visit in the first place, and given the choice between chic cheap and chiggers cheap, most airport refugees will choose the former. Jessica has spent too many nights in too many hotels to be impressed or depressed by any hospitality industry amenities or lack thereof. As for Marcus, he has just spent a week sleeping three people to a two-person tent. As long as they don’t check out with a parasitic infestation they didn’t check in with, both have fully embraced the motto: “If you can’t get where you want to be, you might as well stay Here.”
They have barely spoken since stepping off the shuttle train. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, exactly, but rather a mutually accepted silence with an edge, a silence between two people who recognize that they have agreed to share roughly twelve hours in each other’s company (minus whatever is lost to sleep) but have no idea how that time span—one that feels simultaneously luxuriant and meager—will be spent. Jessica worries there are far too many hours to fill with amusing anecdotes and idle gossip, especially when Marcus is pushing for truth and dare. And Marcus fears that time is too short for anything but, particularly after Jessica’s professed reluctance to play along. They both try to make sense of the most perplexing aspects of their conversation thus far. (Why didn’t she want to tell me about that girl Sunny? he wonders. Why didn’t his story about the watch make any sense? she wonders.) They ask themselves if they should have said more (Why didn’t I just tell her about The Queen’s uncanny prediction? Or the true meaning of the watch? Or Greta?) or less (Why did I blurt out Lens name? Why was I so snarky about Hope? Why did I keep bringing up Sunny?).
Jessica takes a risk. She decides to say something. “It’s a nice room,” she mumbles, her face half pressed into a goose-down pillow.
“It is a nice room,” Marcus replies, standing on the opposite side of the second double bed.
“I am particularly fond of the soothing palette of earth tones,” remarks Jessica. “It’s nice.”
“I myself am quite taken with the roomy walk-in shower,” responds Marcus, “and the complimentary spa-quality toiletries.”
“Very nice.”
“A nice room at a nice price.”
“For two nice people.”
“The nicest.”
Jessica laughs uneasily, wondering how long they can keep this up. Marcus keeps going.
“This bed,” he says, placing both hands flat on the one he has chosen. He pumps up and down a few times in quick succession, as if he’s performing CPR on the mattress.
“What about this bed?” Jessica asks as if by rote, feeling like the straight woman paid to set up the star comic’s punch line.
“It’s like the gun in Act One,” he says.
Jessica stares blankly.
“When a director reveals a gun in Act One, it’s sure to return in a major way in Act Two.”
As Jessica shakes her head, her ponytail loosens and makes a soft swish-swishing sound against the bed linens. “I assure you, Marcus, that when this bed returns in a major way, as you say, it will do so for the purpose of sleeping.”
Marcus grins. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
The innuendo could end here. It should end here. And yet Jessica can’t mind her tongue as it tongues Marcus’s mind.
“By the way,” she says, releasing her hair from its elastic and shaking it over the pillows. “The bed isn’t the only place you’re not going to have sex with me.”
Marcus raises an eyebrow.
“You’re also not going to have sex with me on the floor, in that office chair over there, in the shower, or in the elevator down the hall. There is no limit to the places where you’re not going to have sex with me.”
Marcus audibly swallows once, twice, again. Each time, his Adam’s apple bobs up and down like a rubber ducky in high tide.
three
She’s testing me, Marcus thinks. And I’m passing.
Marcus is trying to prove he still has it in him, the ability to engage and enrage her in debate. He hasn’t been knocked down yet, but her oral and written exams have certainly worn him out in mind and body. And judging by Jessica’s languorous pose on the platform bed, she, too, must regroup before she can recommence the conversation.
No, not a test, Marcus reconsiders, shaking his head. That’s too onesided. This is an intricate partnership. A grandiloquent pas de deux. I’ve missed this, Marcus thinks. I’ve missed you.
“What?” Jessica asks.
“What what?”
“You were just shaking your head at me.”
“I was?” Marcus hadn’t noticed.
“You were.”
“Oh.”
Jessica is either too tired or too uninterested to pursue this line of questioning.
Marcus needs a shower. He hasn’t had a proper washing in a week. In New Orleans he stayed with the rest of Princeton’s volunteers in a tent city where conditions could be described as Spartan at best and squalid at worst. More accurately, it was the most basic of base camps, where running water and electricity were intermittently available but rarely used luxuries. Only now, in this hypermodern and sterile hotel room, is Marcus even aware of his own mammalian gaminess. He raises his arms to the ceiling and buries his nose in his own armpit. It’s surprisingly pungent, considering the source of the odor is trapped under multiple layers of clothing—the T-shirt, the dress shirt, the sweater. He doubts that his all-natural stench has gone unnoticed, even from afar. All afternoon Jessica has gone out her her way to avoid touching him—with the exception of their electric handshake, of course. Perhaps Eau de NOLA Outhouse, not emotional unease, is why Jessica has kept herself at a distance. This theory is far more encouraging than it is embarrassing. The odor, after all, can be remedied immediately through a rigorous scrubbing with a battery of rosemary-mint-scented bath products. Jessica’s psyche requires more complex care and attention.
She’s heaped on the double bed closest to the door. Marcus is surprised she didn’t bother whipping back the bamboo duvet cover first, assuming she’s the type to get all paranoid about strange body fluids and shared bed linens. Did you know that 93 percent of hotel bedspreads have tested positive for ejaculate? That’s just the sort of statistic Marcus memorized for his follow-ups to that first conversation with Jessica in the Caddie so many years ago. Conversational constructs, he called them. He had never resorted to such tactics with any other girl. No other girl had ever made him so nervous. No other girl had brought out his inner nerd. Only Jessica, whom he always knew was superior to him in every way. His only hope at holding his own—then and now—was to throw her off balance. Hence: Did you know that the average American spends six mon
ths of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green? Did you know that the mauve color on your walls changed the world? Did you know that 93 percent of hotel bedspreads have tested positive for ejaculate? He’s so tempted to ask, even though he’s unsure such a study of spunk exists. She might laugh with him in recognition of his old gambit. Or at him for his lame reliance on old ploys.
Jessica cocoons the duvet cover around herself. Perhaps her frequent travels have inured her to such hygienic transgressions. This would bode well for Marcus’s BO. However, even if Jessica does see fit to forgive him for his ripeness, Marcus is feeling increasingly claustrophobic under all those heavy layers of fabric and dirt. He needs to shed his filthy clothes, scrub his skin, and get clean, if not for her then for himself.
“I’m taking a shower,” Marcus announces. He is ready for her to accuse him of making this statement for the sole and inappropriate purpose of directing her attention to his impending nakedness. He has already decided to retaliate with an offer for her to take a whiff of the offending armpit.
But she doesn’t blink. In fact, she’s staring at Marcus in a heavy-lidded, dreamy way that, whether intentional or not, is more seductive than any look any woman has ever given him.
I want to tell you, Marcus thinks. I want to tell you so much.
four
He’s testing me, Jessica thinks.
Jessica is exhilarated with exhaustion, like an ultra-endurance athlete who is thoroughly depleted after a double triathlon or other superhuman test of strength yet still pretty! fucking! pumped! that she crossed the finish line. Only in Jessica’s case, it’s like finishing a double triathlon and then finding out that what she thought was the finish line is actually not the finish line because she signed herself up for a quadruple triathlon and she’s only halfway to the end so she better pound some carbs and chug some electrolytes and get back out there. But if his near-silence is any indication, Marcus is also in need of a respite before the next matchup, so she need not push herself just yet.
No, not a test, she reconsiders. That gives him too much power. This is a battle of wits between two well-matched opponents. And so far, it’s a draw. I’ve missed this, Jessica thinks. I’ve missed talking to you.