“Wow,” you said. “Wow.”
I smile at nothing and everything as I walk back to the shop, carrying your salted caramel. We are a dream couple, we are what happens after Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks finally kiss, after cancer-free Joe Gordon-Levitt and sweet shrink-in-training Anna Kendrick eat their pizza in 50/50. We are Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke after U2 finishes singing “All I Want Is You.” When I reach the bottom of the stairs, you clap but you are puzzled.
“Joe,” you say. “That tall cup is too tall for the drawer.”
“I know,” I say and I love you for living in here, for not fighting.
“So how are you going to get that to me?”
I smile and show you the low, wide mug I bought for that specific purpose and you say it again, “Wow.”
You’ve said that word more in the past twenty-four hours than you have in the past twenty-four weeks and you call me a genius and ask me to tell you again about how I got Benji to go to the shop. We have our coffee together on opposite sides of the cage and when I finish telling you the story you shake your head and here it comes again, “Wow.”
“Nah,” I say.
“One thing though,” you say and you set your coffee on the ground. “That last Benji tweet, you said in Nantucket. And I remember reading that tweet and thinking he must be seriously fucked up because he knows that it’s on Nantucket and not in Nantucket.”
“Nice work, Sophie,” and I grin and there is no mourning and there is no war because we are united, we are Unicef. We give.
“Thanks, Professor.” You glimmer and you wink.
“Break?” I say.
“Perfect,” you reply and we are so good in here and I play “We Are the World” and you laugh and ask why I chose that song and I tell you about how I feel like we improve upon the world in this basement and you are serious and you know what I mean and you agree and I have never been this connected to another human being in my life. You know the way my senses work, the way my brain works. You like it in there, in here.
The hours fly by and something in The Da Vinci Code leads into a conversation about the Dickens Festival and costumes leads to hats and I blush and you realize that I know about the Holden Caulfield hat. You close your Da Vinci Code. You hug your knees the way you do when you are truly, totally sad.
“That must have been horrible for you,” you say.
“It doesn’t look good on him either,” I say and I am as stealthy as Robert Langdon. But you still feel bad.
“I’m a phony.”
“Beck, no you’re not.”
“You’re like this nobleman of the Priory of Sion running around figuring me out and I’m so inept I can’t even properly hide a hunting cap, let alone a disgusting and cheap and shitty fling.”
Disgusting! Cheap! Shitty! Fling! It is a relief to hear you talk this way and I smile. “You give it your all, Beck. You just have to be more careful about who you give it to.”
“You’re right,” you say. “Nobody is more dedicated, more intense than you, Joe.”
“Except for you,” I say and you smile. You wink.
We read. When we are both in it we are quiet. We get sucked into a book in the same kind of way and at some point we both fall asleep. I wake up first—Yay!—and I let you rest. I go up into the shop and stretch. Ethan has texted me:
Joey my man! Congrats to Beck. Blythe tells me she is getting published in The New Yorker! That’s amazing! Let’s meet up for a drink next week! On me! Or housewarming, moving to Blythe’s as we speak!!!!!!
Exclamation Point Ethan finally has reason to use exclamation points and I feel happy for him. I go to Fiction A–D and find Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and I am dizzy. I anticipate our future, the day I tell you about following you to Bridgeport, to the Dickens Festival in Port Jeff. You will say wow. Again.
And less than an hour later, my predictions prove accurate. You leaf through Great Expectations. “Wow,” you say. “So you really did know what my half siblings look like.”
“Yep,” I say. “I bought a beard, you know, just in case.”
You toss Great Expectations in the drawer. “I think you’re a genius.”
I pull the drawer and take Dickens out. “You ready?”
You grin. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We settle into our spots and it feels like we’re holding hands and running off the dock, holding our breath as we jump back into the deep, consuming water that is The Da Vinci Code. These are the happiest moments of my life, looking up at you and waiting for you to feel my eyes as you give me what I want. “Two forty-three. You?”
“I’m on two fifty-one.”
“Well, take a break and let me catch up,” you say and you remark once again that I am both a fast reader and a thorough reader which is special because most people, men especially, are just one or the other.
We cry when Robert and Sophie make it to the chalice. We know what’s to come as they cross the landscape and enter the church. You put your hand on the drawer and I put my hand on the drawer and the drawer is designed to keep our hands apart, but I feel your pulse, I do. You sniffle. “I don’t want it to end.”
“This is like the end of The Corrections,” I say and the problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates. You turn the page and there is nothing and we are both crying. We are happy for Sophie and Robert and we are jet lagged from travel. We journeyed. At times we were so in the book that you were Sophie, descendant of Christ, and I was Langdon, savior of Sophie, and we are easing back into our bodies, our minds. You yawn and I yawn and your back cracks. We laugh. You ask me how long it’s been.
“Three days, almost four.”
“Wow,” you say.
“I know,” I say.
“We should celebrate.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know,” you lie, you nymph. “I could go for some ice cream.”
The Da Vinci Code is the greatest book in the world and someday, when we live together, we will have a shelf—brand-new, not used, I know you and your new things—and there will be nothing on the shelf except our Da Vinci Codes, nestled together, merged forever by the supernatural force that is our love.
50
I run out to buy you ice cream and I hear Bobby Short singing in my head—I am your prince—and I am on air on the way to the deli and on the way back. I bound down the stairs, can’t get to you fast enough, with the ice cream you wanted, vanilla. You are simple again; three weeks ago you would have wanted some fucking gelato you read about in the Sunday Styles. I want to tell you about the funny dude in the line at the deli but when I reach the bottom of the stairs you are different. You are naked. I am still. “Beck.”
“Come over here,” you command, low. “Bring the ice cream.”
I do as I am told and your right hand moves over your collarbone and onto your breast and you have another demand. “Give me my dessert.”
I tear at the bag and the spoon falls on the floor but fuck it and I tear off the lid as well as the plastic lining. The ice cream is soft and my dick is hard and I know why Bobby Short felt like a racehorse; I am a racehorse.
“One second,” I say.
“Ticktock,” you say, you purr.