I had seen the woman come in at the same time as Marcus, but hadn't thought they were together. Nothing about them matched. Stacy was a total fashion plate, wearing a cropped teal leather jacket and a sweet pair of lizard pumps. As we were led to our table, I shot Dex a dirty look, irritated at him for suggesting that I might want to "tone it down" when I had busted out with my Louis Vuitton white cape and red tartan taffeta bustier. So now I was stuck in an understated black-and-white tweed jacket next to splashy Stacy. I assessed her again, wondering if she was prettier than I was. I quickly decided that I was more beautiful, but she was taller, which annoyed me. I liked being both. Incidentally, I had always believed that every woman wanted to be the most attractive in any group, but once when I admitted my feelings to Rachel, she gave me this blank stare followed by a diplomatic nod. At which point I backtracked somewhat and said, "Well, unless I'm friends with her and then I don't compare."
Fortunately, Stacy's personality wasn't nearly as scintillating as her wardrobe, and I succeeded handily in outshining her. Marcus was extremely entertaining, too, and kept our table in stitches. He wasn't an outright jokester, but was full of wry observations about the restaurant, the fancy food, and the people around us. I noticed that whenever Stacy laughed at him, she'd touch his arm in a familiar way, which made me fairly certain that if they weren't dating, they had at least hooked up. By the end of the night, I reevaluated Marcus's looks, upgrading him several notches. It was a combination of Stacy's obvious interest in him, his sense of humor, and something else. Something was just sexy about him: a gleam in his brown eyes and the cleft in his chin, which made me think of Danny Zuko in Grease (that first beach scene in the movie was my idea of romance for years).
After dinner, as Dex and I were cabbing back to the Upper West, I said, "I like Marcus. He's really funny and has surprising sex appeal."
Dex had grown accustomed to my candid commentary on other men, so it no longer fazed him. He just said, "Yeah. He's a character, all right."
I waited for him to say that he could tell Marcus approved of me as well, and when he didn't, I prompted, "What did Marcus say to you at the end of the night when you were getting our coats? Did he say something about me?"
Stacy and I had been chatting a few feet away and I had figured that Marcus was saying something like "You got yourself a hell of a woman" or "She's way hotter than your college girlfriend" or even a nice, straightforward "I really like Darcy—she's great."
But after I pressed Dex at length, he told me that what Marcus had shared was that he and Stacy had been dating, and despite the fact that she gave "bombass blow jobs," he was ending things because she was too demanding. Needless to say, the fact that Marcus garnered blow jobs from a girl like Stacy made him rise even more notches in my book of judgments.
And the more Dex and I hung out with Marcus, the more I liked him. But I still didn't think of him as anything other than Dexter's friend and a groomsman in our wedding until a few months later, the night of Rachel's thirtieth birthday, when I threw a surprise party for her at Prohibition, our favorite bar on the Upper West Side. I remember sometime that evening sidling up to Marcus and telling him that he may have been the party boy back in college, but that I could drink him under the table now.
He smirked and slapped the bar and said, "Oh, yeah? Bring it, big talker."
We proceeded to do Jagermeister shots. It was quite a bonding experience, not only because we were drinking together but because we hid the shots from Dex, who hates it when I get wasted. It's unbecoming. It's immature. It's unhealthy. It's dangerous, he would lecture. Not that it ever stopped me, especially not on that night. At one point, before our final round of shots, Dex found us at the bar and looked at me suspiciously. "Are you doing shots?" he asked, glancing at the empty shot glasses on the bar in front of us.
"That wasn't mine," I said. "Those were Marcus's. He did two."
"Yeah, man. Those were mine," Marcus said, twinkly eyed.
As Dex walked away, with raised eyebrows, Marcus winked at me. I laughed. "He can be so uptight. Thanks for the cover."
"No problem," Marcus said.
As of that moment, we had a secret, and having a secret—even a little one—creates a bond between two people. I remember thinking to myself how much more fun he was than Dex, who never lost control. On top of the fun factor, Marcus was looking hot that evening. He was wearing a navy polo shirt—nothing special—but for once it wasn't totally baggy so I could tell he had a pretty nice body. As I sipped a martini, I asked him if he worked out, which is a flirtatious question at best, downright cheesy at worst, but I didn't care. I wanted to go there.
"Once or twice," he said.
"C'mon. You have a great body. Do you lift? Run?"
He said only if he's being chased. He then proceeded to tell me that he had gone running with a girl the other day, despite his better judgment. "I never should have gone," he said, rubbing his thighs. "I'm still paying for it. And the date went nowhere."
"Was this with Stacy?"
"Who?"
"Stacy. You know, the redhead that you brought to Aureole?"
"Oh! That Stacy. Ancient history."
"Good," I said. "I wasn't a big fan. She was a bore."
Marcus laughed. "She wasn't your brightest bulb."
"So then, who was your jogger girl?" I asked.
"Just this chick."
"Does this chick have a name?"
"Let's call her Wanda."