“Look at you,” Brian said when someone—Rachel suspected Melissa—put a dollar in the jukebox and pressed B17, “Since I Fell for You,” and they were compelled to dance to it a second time that night. He raised his eyebrows at their reflection in the full-length mirror on the back wall, and she saw herself head-on. She was surprised, as she always was in the very first millisecond of seeing herself, that she was no longer twenty-three. Someone had once told her that everyone had a fixed age in their mind’s-eye image of themselves. For some it was fifteen or fifty, but everyone had one. Rachel’s was twenty-three. Her face had, of course, grown longer and more lined in the ensuing fourteen years. Her eyes had changed—not the gray-green of them—but they were less sure and less adrenalized. Her hair, so dark a shade of cherry it looked black in most lights, was cut short with a side bang, a look that softened the harder curves of her heart-shaped face.
Or so a producer had once told her when he convinced her to not only cut her hair but straighten it. Before that conversation, it had always been a long tangle that fell to her shoulders. But the producer, after prefacing his critique with “No offense,” words that always preceded something offensive, told her, “You’re a few steps short of beautiful but the camera doesn’t know that. The camera loves you. And that’s making our bosses love you.”
That producer was, of course, Sebastian. She thought so much of herself that she married him.
As she and Brian swayed on the dance floor, she acknowledged what a huge improvement he was over Sebastian. A step up in every way—better-looking, kinder, better conversationalist, funnier, and smarter, even though he tried to downplay that part of his makeup, whereas Sebastian always played it up.
But there was the issue of trust again. Say what you would about Sebastian being an asshole, but he was a genuine asshole. Such an asshole that he didn’t think he had to hide the fact. Sebastian didn’t hide anything.
On the other hand, with Brian, she didn’t know what she had lately. Things had been unnervingly polite between them since he’d returned from his trip. She had nothing to support her mistrust, so she didn’t press the issue. And he seemed fine with that. And yet they moved around each other in the apartment like they were circling a jar of anthrax. They pulled up short in conversations lest they say something that could lead to conflict—his habit of leaving yesterday’s clothes hanging over the bedpost, her predilection for not changing the toilet paper roll if there was still one square left stuck to the cardboard—and chose their words with ultimate care. Soon they’d stop discussing potential spots of tension altogether, which would only lead to resentment. They smiled distantly at each other in the morning, smiled distantly at each other in the evening. Spent more time on their laptops or their cells. In the past week, they’d made love once and it was the carnal version of their distant smiles—as binding as water, as intimate as junk mail.
When the song ended, the group clapped and a few whistled and Melissa tapped a fork into her wineglass and shouted, “Kiss! Kiss!” until they finally obliged.
“How self-conscious do you feel right now?” she asked Brian as she leaned back in his arms.
Brian didn’t reply. He was trying to make sense of something behind her.
She turned as his fingers parted and she stepped out of his grip.
A man had entered the room. He was in his early fifties, with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail. Quite skinny. He wore a gray unstructured sport coat over a blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt and dark jeans. His skin was leathery and tan. His blue eyes were so bright they looked aflame.
“Brian!” He opened his arms.
Brian exchanged a quick glance with Caleb—it was so fast that if Rachel hadn’t been standing three inches from his face she would have missed it—and then a smile flooded his face and he approached the man.
“Andrew.” He grasped the man behind his elbow with one hand while shaking his hand with the other. “What brings you to Boston?”
“A show at the Lyric.” Andrew raised his eyebrows.
“That’s great.”
“It is?”
“Isn’t it?”
Andrew shrugged. “It’s a job.”
Caleb walked a pair of drinks over. “Andrew Gattis, back in da house. Stoli still your poison?”
Andrew drained the drink in one swallow and handed the glass back to Caleb. He took the second drink from him, nodded his thanks, and took a moderate sip. “Good to see you.”
“You too.”
Andrew chuckled. “It is?”
Caleb laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “That seems to be your line tonight.”
“Andrew, my wife, Rachel.”
Rachel shook Andrew Gattis’s hand. It was surprisingly smooth, even delicate.
“A pleasure, Rachel.” He gave her a knowing, reckless smile. “You’re smart.”
She laughed. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re smart.” He was still shaking her hand. “I can see that. Shit, anyone can. The beauty, I get. Brian always liked beauty, but the—”
“Play nice,” Brian said.
“—brains, that’s a new one.”
“Hey, Andrew.” Brian’s voice was very light.
“Hey, Brian.” He let go of her hand but kept his eyes on hers.
“Still smoke?”
“I vape.”
“Me too.”
“No shit?”
“Care to join me for one on the sidewalk?”
Andrew Gattis cocked his head at Rachel. “Think I should?”
“What?”
“Join your husband for a vape?”
“Why not?” she said. “For old times. You can catch up.”
“Mmm.” He looked around the room, then back at her. “What were you dancing to?”
“‘Since I Fell for You.’”
“Who would dance to that?” Andrew gave them both a big, baffled smile. “It’s a hopeless song. It’s all about emotional imprisonment.”
Rachel nodded. “We’re trying to be post-ironic, I think. Or meta-romantic. I can never decide which. Enjoy your vape, Andrew.”
He tipped an imaginary hat to her and turned toward Brian and Caleb.
The three of them headed for the door, but Andrew Gattis suddenly turned back. He said to Rachel, “Google it.”
“What?”
Brian and Caleb, almost at the door, noticed he wasn’t with them.
“‘Since I Fell for You.’ Google it.”
“There’s about two hundred covers of it, I know.”
“I’m not talking about the song.”