by Daniel Riley
“By yourself, all alone,” Will said.
“It never really came up,” Whitney said. “But I got the sense that he wouldn’t have cared, either way.”
“So it’s all just as you’d hoped it’d be out there. Shooting scripts and audition tapes and Adrien Green.”
“We had another drink. He slid around the booth to look at the scenes I was reviewing. He gave some suggestions I didn’t ask for, and at some point his hand fell into my lap.”
“Just like that.”
“A nice little rhyme to your and my experiences.”
“Bare legs, too?”
“Jeans for me. But I got the picture. He paid for the drinks.”
“So it’s his room or yours, then?” Will said. “I still can’t believe this.”
“Here’s the thing,” Whitney said, smiling helplessly again, “he wasn’t even staying there. He was just making a dutiful little sweep of the hotel bars after a charity dinner he’d attended nearby.”
“God, why didn’t I think of that? Get off the subway after work, scour the Standard and the Bowery. See if any beautiful bundles of nerves seem lonely?”
“So he comes up to the room,” she said. “He plugs in his iPhone and puts on some English band from the eighties. He flips through the books on the coffee table…he actually uses all the stuff they set out to make the room look cool.”
“And from there it’s from there.”
“I…I guess that’s right. How much detail?…”
“I don’t need to know much, I guess. I mean, I’ve seen the guy shirtless in every magazine we work with. And I’ve fucking seen him full-frontal on an Imax screen.”
“He was shorter than I expected, if that’s any consolation.”
“Shorter than me?”
“Well…maybe still taller than you, but I was expecting the oversize muscle-bound mutant. Six-five or something.”
“Did he sleep over?”
“That’s a…that’s a question that’s hard…”
“You just fucked all night.”
“We stayed up for a while.”
“Jesus,” Will said. “So what do we mean here? What are we talking?”
“Well, we just kinda kept…I dunno.”
“One after another in a hotel room on the beach,” Will said.
“There were a couple, a few,” Whitney said. “And then a shower.”
“He fucked you in the shower.”
“Then a couple more hours, I dunno.”
“Whitney. I got a bloody nose and a black eye, and you played out your all-time fantasy.”
“Look, it wasn’t anything. He’s mostly an idiot.”
“Who was nominated for an Academy Award. Who has a cock that every late-night host and male lead in Hollywood has paid homage to with envious jokes.”
“Look, it was too big, if you want to know the truth. It was gross.”
“Whit!”
“I don’t know what you want me to say!” She was laughing now. Pink in her cheeks, guilt gleaming in her teeth. “I’m telling you the truth—it was way too big, it wasn’t for me.”
“You’re saying you could barely get your mouth around it,” he said.
“Will,” she said.
“It’s so gross, but you can’t stop hopping aboard for another ride. Light comes up and it’s time to go to set, and hearts are still pouring out of your eyes as he strolls out the door and says he can’t wait to see you again.”
“It was one night. He doesn’t give a shit about me,” she said. “I never heard from him again. It was purely sexual.”
Will strained his hair through his fingers, his face practically in the gambes.
“Seriously, that’s all it was,” she said. “It’s the whole point of what this was about!”
“I hope that counted for all three. I hope that gave you the nice rounded-out experience you were looking for when you suggested three instead of one.”
“That’s not fair—we agreed on three together.”
“I’ll take that to mean it didn’t count as all three.”
“Look, I’m not exactly loving hearing about yours, either,” she said. “But I didn’t say all that to hurt you. I just, I’m telling you the truth, ’cause those are the rules, and what’s the point of lying at this stage? It was one night with this one guy.”
“The longest night with the biggest movie star with the biggest dick.”
“A movie star with a big dick.”
“It was purely sexual. Christ,” he said. “The explanation that puts everyone at ease.”
“Well, guess what?” she said. “You’re up. But I’ve got to go to the bathroom first.”
“Ask the waitress for another bottle of wine if you see her,” he said.
Earlier in the year, they turned twenty-nine within a couple weeks of one another and celebrated with an all-expenses-paid trip back down to school. Whitney had been invited to give a talk at the arts-and-media fair where she’d learned about TV jobs in the first place. But the trip also served as an anniversary of sorts. It was the overnight-blooming spring of that part of the country, during the same time of year when they’d first met. The spring of the basketball tournament. The spring of the Masters. The spring of Thomas Wolfe’s plump adjectives. This was why they’d chosen to go to school where they’d gone. They’d both visited then, and walked right into the marketing scheme—the trees plugged in like strands of neon, the students slung out half naked on the quads, classes outside, classes dismissed. And though they’d skipped previous reunions, and felt in almost all ways beyond it, they were heavily tethered still, too. They didn’t miss opportunities like this one—to feel the feeling of that place again, over and over. It was, after all, their point of origin. It was where they’d found each other during the time of year when they’d changed their lives for good.
On their first night back on campus, Will parked at the edge of the gardens, where he knew there was a break in the hedge. They were on their way to dinner, she didn’t know what he was doing. No one was allowed in the gardens after dark—same rules as ever. But it had never kept anyone out. It was one of the unofficial graduation requirements, sex in the gardens. They’d missed some of the others but had checked that one off before the last day of classes. She’d brought a blanket and worn a skirt and no underwear. Now, as then, they strolled into the gardens hand in hand. There were no lights except the bright blue emergency beacons. They found the path by squinting and consulting the yellowed map in their heads. Whitney bent at the waist to sniff the flowers. Will stared up into the royal canopy of the sky and at the stars that pierced through crisply. There was an underwater darkness. They found the clearing, the wide-open grassy hill where students liked to lie out and read or toss a baseball around. And in the vicinity of where they’d first encountered one another, Will slowed his steps and dropped to a knee.
He had a ring in his hand—the ring his mom had given Will that he kept in a shoebox in their closet, the ring Whitney had never known about. Her fingers flew to her mouth, a gesture Will had never seen Whitney make before. She started crying and she lifted Will to his feet. She hugged him and he could feel the dampness on his chest, the quake in her bones. But he couldn’t tell if she’d said yes. She was getting snotty and he held her face in his hands and asked her what she’d said. She nodded but didn’t say it and he took it to be good enough. He slid the ring onto a finger of her shaking hand, but it was too big—for her ring finger and any other. And so he pocketed the ring. They would have forever to get it right. It was the perfect surprise. It was exactly the right place and exactly the right time. And though he couldn’t make out her face in the darkness as they walked back to the car, he figured she must’ve looked as happy as he’d always hoped she would.
They decided not to tell anyone that night. Not while they were down at school and not right away when they got back to New York. It was tacky to post something so meaningful to social media. Besides, they’d need to tighten th
e band first. Till then, the ring could go back in the shoebox in the closet. They talked about telling their parents or at least a couple friends, but they pushed it to the end of the weekend and then it was a very busy week at work, one of the busier weeks of the year for each of them. And before long it was another weekend, and it had been nine days of silence. Of late nights at the office and early mornings at the gym. Of no meals at home together and not much chatter. No conversation about a potential date or venue. They’d talked about locations before, in the abstract: somewhere on the coast in California, somewhere in the neighborhood in New York. But there was something that obviously hadn’t locked into place the way it should.
One night that second week back, he asked her about it. She denied anything was wrong. They fought a little bit about the full sink of dirty dishes and the pileup of laundry in the corner of the studio. A week later, in for the night on a Friday, they drank whiskey and lemonade, and as they drained the cocktail shaker they finally cut to it. She was worried. Not just about her, but about him. They were meant to be together, she was certain, but there was something that had been gnawing at her, she said, low-level gumming her guts for years. They were still young. But they’d spent their twenties together. They’d gotten old prematurely. What happened if that suppression of twenties-dom reared its head someday down the road? If all the crazy, if all the lost nights, if all the solitary searching and shame they’d skipped right over bubbled up and buried them alive at a future time and place TBD? What then?
He knew her well. He knew what she was really saying. “You’re worried I’m gonna want to fuck other people,” he said.
She didn’t answer right away. She had tears in her eyes and she looked at him cautiously. “I’m worried about you, I’m worried about me.…We’re still…changing. We’re still becoming who we are. We still have some things to figure out, don’t we?”
“I’d never do that to you and you’d never do that to me,” he said, still caught up on the first part.
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hit me here,” she said, placing painted nails on her stomach.
“So what,” he said.
“So nothing,” she said.
And they danced around it for the rest of the night, and the next day and the day after that. And neither of them told anyone else anything. But then one night while they were screwing around, teasing each other’s bodies, bringing each other to the edge, they started saying it aloud. For fun at first, just speaking the words, making one imagine what it would be like if the other were with a stranger. To be single for a night, a weekend, a couple weeks max. To bury the question for good. To go out and have one last time, or maybe two, or at the absolute max three. It was like someone had cracked open the window and let the outside in, a razor-sharp breeze in the bedroom.
No one knew about the engagement still. Another week passed. There was an elaboration of the fantasy. Busy days at work, but a rush to get home. More sex than they’d had in years. Personas embodied. Strangers come between them. He asked her if they should finally tell their parents. She said it was probably a good idea. But nobody called home. Not yet.
Another few days. Her bosses asked her if she could spend a month in L.A. To keep an eye on the production of a pilot she’d helped to develop. On previous trips out west she’d stayed with Will’s folks, but this was different. This was the most critical trip of her nascent career. She had to be in Santa Monica. Close enough for when they needed her when they needed her. They’d put her up in a nice hotel. It was the perfect opportunity, she told him. It would be one month, five weeks max. Late April to late May. A discrete period. Away from here. Somewhere else. Both of us with one month to work out what needed working out.
He was stunned. He couldn’t believe she was serious. She saw the hurt in the lines around his mouth, and she flew across the apartment to his side, assuring him that she was just kidding, she didn’t mean it, it was only a game for the bedroom.
He told her he thought maybe she was right, and that he could do it if she could do it. Only, could she really do it? She was the one who kicked him in the shins when his eyes followed a pair of yoga pants across the street. Who flicked his forehead when he smiled too long at a barista. Who twisted up the bedsheets when he described the summer associates fresh out of Stanford and Yale, lawyers who were so much younger than she was now, leggy redheads and petite blondes.
Four or five weeks. She thought about it. She could handle it if he could handle it, she said. She was pretty sure she could.
“One, then?” he said.
“One it is,” she said.
And with their minds sweating a little at the prospect, their hands and mouths found each other’s bodies right there, and she wound up bent over the couch, her dress pushed up around her waist, her hair gripped tightly in her fiancé’s fist.
Then one became two and two became three. Three was the only number that made sense, they decided. A variety of experience, a triangulation. A system that enabled each to take a swing right out of the box. That wouldn’t necessitate an assessment of whether the he or she across the bar was good enough for the one and only shot. Two meant too much comparison and contrast, an attempt at the full spectrum of possibility as defined by two points on a line. But three—three provided depth and shading and roundnesses. Three meant opportunity in three dimensions, three dimensions of a lifetime of experience crowded into a month of secret living.
Whitney in L.A. Will in NYC.
1-2-3, they’d call it.
1-2-3, in emails and texts and occasionally over the phone.
1-2-3, they said in front of a friend before Whitney left for California, and the friend was none the wiser.
They wouldn’t tell a soul. They wouldn’t tell one another until the end of it all, when they’d go somewhere special to reveal the scheme in full. They would take a trip, Memorial Day weekend. After it was wrapped, after the month-plus apart. They’d get on a plane and drink in the details of a foreign city and then, on the final evening, fill each other in on the plot points of their lives while they’d been living on opposite edges of the continent. Together, on their trip, they would walk the streets and see the sights and fall in love all over again. And on the very last night, they would sit across from one another and eat strange food and hopefully not barf from envy and rage as they spilled their secrets about what they’d done and who they’d done it with.
The flash-fried rice balls followed Whitney back from the bathroom to the bar.
“What if I told you there wasn’t a Number Two?” Will said.
“I’d know you were lying,” she said, sitting down. “I see it in your eyes that you want this one to hurt.”
“I don’t want it to hurt. I’m the one who asked you to marry me. I’m the one who was fine with everything as it was.”
“And so it’s all my fault, all this. You get to chase twenty-five-year-olds around the East Village—that burden? I’m responsible for holding your feet to that fire?”
“I’m just saying, I didn’t need it. And I’ll never need it again. But let me preface this by saying I don’t think you’re gonna like Number Two.”
“Petite-er, blonde-er.”
“I slept with Kelly Kyle.”
“What?”
“It happened once, not much to report.”
“What the fuck?!”
“Hold on, hold on, look…”
“There was one rule. One cardinal rule. No one we knew. No one who knew both of us. No one we fucking work with.”
“Hold on. Kelly left. She put in for a transfer. Her last day was a few weeks ago.”
“I said: no friends, no coworkers. Not Lily. Not Christina. Not Kelly. I remember literally naming her.”
“Look, I’m sorry, but we don’t work together anymore. I knew better than that.”
“There was a reason it had to be strangers.”
“Don’t make this more than it is. You know the disadvantage I had. You were in a city all
alone with endless options, all working in the industry. You were surrounded by movie stars and people you had a million things in common with. I was stuck in our apartment, couldn’t bring anyone home, couldn’t use the bee app, couldn’t meet people through work. I either had to creep at bars or, I don’t know what. How do people meet other people without their friends or phones?”
“I just wish it wasn’t someone I’ve met,” she said. “Someone I can picture.”
“Trust me, I can picture Adrien Green better than you can picture her.”
“The day we ran into her and her boyfriend in the Rockaways.”
“That was, like, three years ago.”
“Those perfect giant round tits. That line that no one’s supposed to have running right down the middle of her stomach.”
“Whit, I don’t know what to say. Want me to skip this one? I’m sorry this upsets you. I’m sorry it’s easy for you to say It was purely sexual but not to hear it.”
“It wasn’t, though,” she said. “That’s the whole thing. You had history. She was, like, your work wife…”
“Jesus, no she wasn’t. This whole thing is exactly as fucked as I thought it would be,” he said. “I’m glad it’s over and I hope you got what you needed.”
“What I needed? There it is again! You’re such a prince for letting us do this. You’re such a noble innocent for your sacrifice.”
“How ’bout you dive into your Number Two, then?” Will said.
“What did you tell her about us?”
“I said you were in L.A. and we were on a break.”
“And what did she say? Was she surprised?”
“She didn’t ask for more. People’s relationships are complicated. She said she hoped we figured out what would make us happiest.”
“Do you think she told anyone?”
“I asked her not to.”
“And what about that guy—is she still dating him?”