The Stranger Just One Night Part 1(37)
“Do you have a problem with me?” I ask her. I’m not sure I care about the answer. This night is filled with demons more frightening than her.
“No one has a problem with you, Kasie,” Asha says before inhaling again. “You were given your job as a gift from a grateful lover and now you’ll be married to both. You’re blessed.”
“No one gave me my job,” I counter. “I pulled a string to get an interview, that’s all.”
“True.” She takes an empty glass and drops the cigarette inside. The smoke curls up and rises out, making the stemware into something of a witch’s cauldron. “You’re very good at your job, too. Just be careful. Because the problem with strings is that if you keep pulling them, things unravel.”
* * *
IT’S ANOTHER HALF HOUR before Simone catches up with me. She pulls me into the bathroom and checks for feet under the stalls. “What are you doing?” She hisses once our privacy is ensured.
“I couldn’t reject him in front of everyone. Our family, our friends, his colleagues . . . I couldn’t.”
Simone breathes out her frustration. “I underestimated Dave,” she mutters more to herself than to me.
“He can be very romantic.”
Simone looks up sharply, studies my expression, and seems unhappy with what she finds there.
“So what now?” she asks, her tone harsh, demanding. “You’ll reject him tonight? Tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
“After the witnesses have gone and you’ve reclaimed the stage?”
I look down at the ruby. I see my parents’ faces. I think about the exuberance outside of this restroom. I think of Dave and his desire to do things right.
Once upon a time I had wanted to do things right, too. I had believed in black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. The truth is, I’m not really a Taoist. I just learned enough about the religion to pass my college exam. I learned enough to romanticize the philosophy when it’s convenient. I’ve never had a comfortable friendship with ambiguity.
“We are good,” my mother said, but she didn’t know how wrong she was. I’ve gagged and bound the angel on my shoulder and given my devil my mind and body as a playground.
Can I go back? Do I even want to?
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s an answer to both Simone’s questions and my own. I tried taking one step at a time but now I don’t know what direction I’m supposed to walk in. So I stand in the bathroom, weighed down by secrets and jewelry, looking for bread crumbs to lead me back to a path that doesn’t terrify me.
The bathroom door opens. It’s Ellis, the woman who I went to school with during my undergrad years, the woman who took me to the luncheon where I first met Dave. We rarely see each other anymore . . . maybe three or four times a year for a reunion lunch, but tonight she treats me like I’m her best friend in the world. “I’m so happy for you!” She gushes as she brushes past Simone. “I always tell everyone I know that you and Dave are the perfect couple.”
And as she embraces me, I hear Simone mutter to herself, “Perfect, like the statues of Italy.”
* * *
DAVE DRIVES ME HOME. My ring needs to be resized. It squeezes a bit too tightly.
I’ve given my answer but have yet to make my decision. My world is upside down and backward like that. And it’s my fault. I can no more blame Robert Dade for the complexities in my life than I can blame a fierce storm for knocking down a poorly made building.
“Are you happy?” he asks, and I nod and smile because I don’t know what else to do.
He pulls into my driveway and turns to me. “May I come in for a nightcap?”
The word takes me off guard. It’s old-fashioned and formal, the kind of thing a man asks for with an ironic smile on a third date. But Dave has been with me for six years, touched my bare skin more frequently than my favorite perfume has. Tonight he pledged to spend his life with me. He’s past the point of having to drop hints to charm his way into my home.
Still, I don’t question it. So much has been strange between us lately, maybe this new twist in his vocabulary is simply in keeping with our new awkwardness. So I lead him in and as he watches from the doorway of my kitchen, I select a sweet port from my small collection of wines and two fragile glasses for us to drink from.
But before I can open the bottle, he puts his hand on mine. It’s a light touch and yet . . . it holds a different kind of weight.
“It’s been a while, Kasie.”
I stare down at the unopened bottle.
“Ten days since we’ve made love,” he continues.