He was wearing a red dress. Heels, wig, and makeup. Fake eyelashes, even, it looked like to Arlen, though she was standing at the sink a good fifteen feet away from him. My husband is wearing fake eyelashes. For some reason, the eyelashes were what told her that this wasn’t a joke. The eyelashes told her this was very serious indeed.
Eric stood there, silently, looking at Arlen’s face, a million thoughts in each one’s head, not a word spoken, the weight of the moment and the years of their lives running together in a blur, and then he started to cry.
Arlen looked at him and thought: If this is my biggest problem…
*
“Hi,” said Lucy. “I’m, uh, Lucy.”
“And I’m Ben. Come on in.”
Sunny was right, Lucy thought. He wasn’t classically good-looking, but he had something. A quality.
“What a great place,” Lucy said.
“Thank you,” said Ben. “I don’t own it. I wish I did.”
“This is a cool neighborhood,” said Lucy.
“Yeah,” said Ben. “Although an old lady got shot on the corner last week. We’re at that tipping point, half artisanal coffee bars, half stray bullets. A good time to buy.”
“The perfect time to buy,” said Lucy.
He walked over to the bookshelf and turned on some music. He was wearing 501s and a waffle-weave shirt that clung to him just enough that you could tell what was underneath. His stomach was perfectly flat. It just went straight down into his jeans at a 180-degree angle. I’m treating him like a piece of meat, Lucy thought. Well, that’s what this was supposed to be, right? Lucy and her piece of meat.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Ben asked. “I’ve got some wine.”
“Wine is good.”
“Sunny said white. Is that right?”
“It is. Thank you.”
He went to work opening the wine while Lucy tried to think of something to say.
“So, your sister went to college with Sunny Bang?”
“She did. Sunny used to come to our house for Thanksgiving every year because it was too far for her to fly home.”
“I can’t even imagine Sunny Bang in college.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “You call her Sunny Bang?”
“Yeah. We all do. I don’t know why,” said Lucy. “If she’s not in the room, she’s always Sunny Bang.”
Ben handed her a glass of wine. She took a big sip.
“So,” said Lucy.
“So,” said Ben.
Lucy took another sip of wine. “Um, this is nice. This wine. I like it.”
“Good.”
He leaned in and started with her neck. Not kissing it, exactly. More like smelling it. Really softly. Really, really nicely.
Lucy put her wineglass down.
“That was…” Lucy said.
“That was what?”
“That was really, really”—Lucy searched her brain for a better word but only one would fit, and so she said it—“weird.”
Ben started to laugh.
“The sex was, I mean, new, and good, but mostly it’s just incredibly weird to be here, doing this. With you.”
“I was married for thirteen years. I think I understand.”
“Can I ask you something? How is it that I could just walk into your apartment and drink three sips of wine and then you had sex with me?”
“What do you mean?”
“It was like being in a porn movie. Is this what people do now? Is this how people behave?”
“I got the sense, in the kitchen, that too much talking was going to freak you out. And we both seemed pretty clear on why you were here. So I rolled the dice.”
Lucy looked at him. “I bet you have a lot of sex.”
Ben just smiled a self-deprecating smile.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Nope. Not at the moment,” said Ben. “I date a lot, I guess. People fix me up.”
“You get around,” said Lucy.
He smiled. “I get around.”
“Well, um,” Lucy said. “Thanks?”
Ben just laughed at that.
“I kind of feel like I should shake your hand,” said Lucy. “Or leave some money on the nightstand.”
“So, what do you think?” he said. “You want to try this again sometime?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably,” Lucy said. And then she blushed and said, “Yes.”
“No more playdates with Blake,” Owen announced the moment Lucy walked through the front door.
Owen was reading a thick paperback in the red chair when Lucy got home from her day in the city. Her sex day. He had a bottle of wine by his side and looked a little bedraggled from his time with Wyatt and Blake.
“Why, what happened?” Lucy asked.
“Well, apparently his house is bigger than ours,” Owen said. “And his parents’ cars are nicer. And he has three cars and we only have two. And why do we only have two cars? And why are they so messy?”
“He always says that,” said Lucy.
Lucy went to grab a wineglass.
“Blake also is very concerned about how clean our house is,” Owen called.
“Tell him to join the club.”
“Apparently his mother puts the laundry away right when it comes out of the dryer. She folds it as she takes it out of the dryer so nothing gets wrinkled, and then she puts it into everyone’s drawers. And she vacuums the entire house every day, which is why he has to put away all of his toys right after he plays with them. And he also helps her with the laundry, because he likes to put his clothes away into his drawers neatly.”
“None of this is news to me,” said Lucy. “Blake has told me all this before.”
“And then every five minutes, he walked up to me and said, ‘Um, excuse me, Mr. McIntire? I found another Cheerio on your couch.’ And then he’d hand it to me. And stand there, with his hands on his hips, judging me. After the third one, I just started popping them in my mouth. I’d say, ‘Thank you, Blake, I’m very hungry.’ ‘Why, thank you, Blake, this is a tasty snack.’”
Lucy laughed. “Why does Claire vacuum their entire house every day?” she asked. “That’s what I want to know. Half the women who live up here are wasting their whole lives on complete bullshit.”
“Their house does sound very clean and nice,” said Owen.
“Well, I’m not standing between you and the vacuum,” said Lucy.
“He’s obsessed with his EpiPen. I took him outside and he started screaming, ‘Where is my EpiPen! I need my EpiPen!’ I’m like, ‘What happened? Did something happen?’ And no, he just really, really wanted his EpiPen.”
“Claire told me if Blake gets stung by a bee, he could drop dead in thirty seconds.”
“That’s not possible. Nobody dies from bee stings like that.”
“Something happened when he was a baby,” said Lucy. “He got stung and ended up in the ICU at Mount Sinai for over a month.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s horrible,” said Owen. “I hereby retract the neurotic EpiPen obsession from my list of complaints about Blake. But the rest still stands.”
Owen snuggled up to her. “I’m starting to understand why you’ve been losing your mind,” Owen said. He put his arm around her waist and kissed her on the neck. “How was the city?”
“It was good,” said Lucy. “I had a nice day.”
“I’m glad.”
Owen slid his hand onto Lucy’s hip.
“Did you close the chickens in?” she asked.
“I forgot. I’ll do it.”
“No, no,” said Lucy. “I’ll go.”