“Welcome to Forty-Second Street Twirlers,” I say.
“Dance classes in the penthouse,” he grumbles. I follow his gaze to the small mass of girls, all of these beautiful, high-spirited girls bursting with life and fun like a bright tornado.
“I really appreciate your allowing us to hold the class here,” I say. “Thank you.”
“It’s your place, too, right now,” he says.
Kelsey comes over. “You’re really gonna make her teach from the doorway?”
“Better than the ceiling,” I say.
“What? No, you can go in.” He’s shaking his head. “Go on. Go on in,” he says.
I don’t need to hear it twice. I go in there, clapping my hands, rounding the gang up for another run-through from the top.
They’re doing a great part of the routine, running and jumping. I want him to see them, to see how beautiful and amazing those little girls are. And so talented. Maybe it’s stupid, but I want him to see.
Seventeen
Benny
* * *
The kids are ninety-nine percent pure mayhem, and Francine, directing it from the center, is right in her element, surrounded by crazy preteen energy, laughing and dancing and throwing out compliments. She seems taller in a strange way. Happier, maybe. Full of generosity. Creative generosity. Generosity of spirit.
She demonstrates a move and my breath catches in my throat. It’s been so long since I saw her dance—all of that grace and heart and vulnerability. And god, the hopeful longing. I never knew anybody so full of longing, so full of dreams.
At one point she twirls around, demonstrating something for them, and I’m back on the couch in the den, hands eating up her skin, tasting her, reveling in her. I loved the way we seemed to fit, and how every second was hotter than the last. It was a struggle to keep from unspooling with lust, to keep from devolving into the panting dog I once was. I could barely maintain control, to resist my impulses to worship every inch of her.
I shove my hands in my pockets as if that will somehow force away the images of her.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
I forgot what it felt like, to desire a woman like this.
As if she can feel me thinking about her she turns and looks at me and smiles.
I bask in it like a schoolboy. I remind myself that it could just be that she’s grateful for the use of the space. Thankful. For a second though, I have the illusion that it’s for me.
It was my own private struggle to light that stage production of “Alejandro,” to follow the lighting design set forth by the Beau Cirque powers that be. I knew how to run tech across the ceiling and along the apron, how to get the angles. I knew how to follow the scheme to make the lighting braid in with the music, but in truth, I really only wanted to light Francine. She wasn’t the star, but she was the best thing up there, no question and I lit her beautifully. She was all I’d see. She’d dance her heart out, and I’d tweak the lights. A one-sided collaboration.
Kelsey comes and stands by my side. “We could power half the air conditioners in Manhattan with that energy, huh?” she says.
The kids. She’s talking about the kids. “Quite a handful,” I say.
“Yup.” I can feel Kelsey watching me, wanting to engage me, but I can’t quite tear my gaze from Francine out there. Even when she has to stop the class and scold the misbehaving rebel of the group, she does it with love. I never saw this side of Francine. There’s so much I don’t know about her.
She claps and asks them to circle up. She’s whispering excitedly, hands on her hips. I’d give anything to know what she’s saying.
“Really, dude,” Kelsey says after a spell of silence. “What are you doing?”
“I never knew how into working with kids she is,” I say. It’s not an answer. I don’t owe anybody answers. I don’t need to explain myself—not to her, not to anybody. It’s one of the beauties of being me.
“This is her thing for sure,” Kelsey says. “This age, especially.”
We watch Francine hassle the kids for being lazy. Teasing, but always with kindness. “She has such a good way with them.”
“This whole wife thing, though,” she says. “What’s up with it?”
“It works for me, that’s what’s up with it.”
“Why, though? Because if you’re out to hurt her, to use her in some way—”
“Nope,” I say.
“What’s the endgame?” she asks.
“I have this wife nobody sees. May as well let people get a look at her and—”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I should’ve clarified; not the bullshit explanation, please,” she says. “The real one. Why make her play your wife? It’s weird as fuck, dude.”
I turn to her. “I wanted to.”
“That’s not a very complete reason.”
“She came for a divorce and my gut said no,” I tell her. “I always go with my gut.”
Kelsey snorts. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days? Your gut? You mean the one that lives below your belt? And sometimes thinks for you? Because I’m gonna tell you, I think you’re angling to get into her pants.”
I give her a stern look, though really I’m impressed by her directness, and surprised that Francine didn’t say anything about what happened between us, just because I know she and Kelsey are extremely close.
I like that she kept it private. Something just for us. Way back when, she didn’t seem to care about anybody else’s feelings but her own. But that hasn’t seemed true these past two weeks. Do I need to update my perception of her?
I changed, after all. I left the past behind.
Kelsey’s watching me, wanting an answer.
“I follow my instincts,” I tell her. “They know more than the brain.”
“Hmmm,” Kelsey says. “I’m going to remember that the next time I need a bullshit reason for something. It’s very good.”
“I’m not playing you,” I say. “Once I decide something, I do it.”
“Fine. You got it in your head and you went with it.”
“It’s true,” I say.
She crosses her arms and looks out over the class. “She did say you’re the most single-minded person ever.”
“She said that?” I ask, surprised.
“Oh, yeah,” Kelsey says. “She said that once you’re on a thing, you hate being torn off from it. Like really hate that, and you scare people a little, but they don’t get that it’s just your passion. Apparently people have you really wrong in many ways.”
Francine said that? To her friends? “Wow,” I say.
“Yeah, she thinks you’re so misunderstood,” she says. “But apparently she understands you.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kelsey says. “Furthermore, contrary to public opinion, you have a sense of humor; in fact, Francine says you’re hilarious. I don’t know if I see it, but…” She makes a weird face. A new song starts and she runs back out there and picks up the class from Francine.
Francine sits on the floor across the room, clapping to the music while the girls do some sort of balancing exercise under Kelsey’s direction.
She really said all of that about me? Is this more proof that I need to update my perception of her?
It’s not easy.
Distrust of Francine is embedded so deeply in me, it’s a reflex, no different than pulling my hand away from a hot flame, except the hot flame of Francine is made of pain and humiliation. It might be a decade old, but the memory is as acute as if it had been yesterday.
Reflexes exist to protect you. But it doesn’t mean that they always do. It doesn’t mean that they’re even needed.
Francine bends down to talk to one of the girls. She looks tired. She’s probably hungry. We should have dinner after this. A nice dinner like a normal couple—not that that’s what I’m trying to be. That window is shut.
Still.
Mac has his hands full with all of these unexpected guests but I have a phone, do
n’t I? Both Francine and I need to eat.
Before I can think better of it, I’m ordering up a whole feast. Back at the Beau Cirque buffet table, she was a big one for loading her plate up with coconut shrimp. She seemed to like baked brie things and tofu spring rolls. It’s not a very thematically coherent meal, but those are foods she liked, so I order them up. Of course I have bubbly water on hand already. I arrange it all on my phone while I’m standing there watching her clap.
I’ve been viewing her as a woman who’d use and discard people, not caring for anybody but herself. Not seeing anybody but herself.
Spending this time with her over the last two weeks, something’s been shifting. And the way she is with the kids, and the kind things that she said about me, it’s all chipping away at the picture I had of her.
Yes, she did walk out without so much as a word or even a goodbye ten years ago, refusing to answer so much as a text. She discarded me after using me to heal her bruised ego.
But maybe she’s changed. Maybe…
Something tightens in my chest at the thought of it. Can I believe this new Francine? What does it mean to let go of my old image of her? Why is it so fucking unsettling?
Of course, it means I’m the asshole for putting her through all of this. It means I might be falling for her again. It means I’m putting my heart on the table again. It means I’ll be like that kid again.
This dark feeling grinds inside of me. I’ll never go back there. Not ever.
I turn and get out of there. I can’t watch class anymore.
For now, we’ll have dinner.
Eighteen
Francine
* * *
I get out of the shower to find a text from Benny. Dinner is served.
I look at it for a long time. Really? Dance class and then dinner? Can this man be more confusing?
Though I was just going to scrounge around in the kitchen. I’m absolutely famished, no doubt about it.
I throw on a T-shirt and a skort, then I decide that looks like I’m trying too hard so I change it to yoga pants. Then I decide that I felt better in the skort, so I change back to the skort.
The smells coming from the dining room are unbelievable.
I head in, crossing the kitchen. His ubiquitous Pandora mix is playing, and I’m hoping Dave Matthews Band doesn’t come on. I need to tell him what I did. He’ll probably think it’s funny.
I walk under the dining room archway and am stopped in my hungry tracks by the sight of this table loaded with food and lit candles. Benny’s already sitting there, unbelievably handsome in a light brown button-down shirt that matches his eyes and skims his broad shoulders.
“Dude,” I whisper. “I think a man wants to have sexual relations again,” I say. Okay, it might be a woman who wants that.
“A man can’t feed his wife dinner?” he protests.
“Oh, a man certainly can.” I take a seat. There’s a tall glass of fizzy water with a twist waiting for me. He thought of everything. I help myself to several spring rolls and a coconut shrimp. “This looks amazing.”
He just sits there all remote and mysterious. I don’t know what to make of him. It would be so much easier if I didn’t care, if I didn’t feel so happy around him.
“Seriously, though, what’s the occasion?” I ask.
“No occasion.” He toys with his spoon. He seems to have something on his mind. Is he going to let me off the fake wife gig? And is that what I want?
“You looked hungry,” he says.
“Um, thanks?” I say. “You know, usually the wine-and-dine thing goes before the marriage.”
He shrugs. “You know me.”
There’s also an elaborate charcuterie board, and some sort of risotto dish. I point to it. “What is that?”
“It’s a baked Brie and asparagus risotto.”
“What a strange and delicious dinner,” I say.
He frowns. “It seemed like something you’d like.”
“It’s everything I like!” And nothing that’s going to blow weigh-in—not after the athletic day I had. “I don’t know which to eat first,” I say.
He lowers his voice. “Does my sweet wife need a suggestion?”
I point my fork at him. “At your own risk! I’m telling you, I could eat a horse.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You do that.” I load my plate up with a little bit of everything and start eating. Completely famished.
Benny feeds Spencer a bit of meat from the board.
I dip a spring roll loaded with veggies into a little thing of peanut sauce and take a bite. “Mmm! Tofu spring roll alert!”
He’s concentrating on his water. Sometimes it’s like he doesn’t want to let himself be too happy around me.
“Look at us having dinner as a fake married couple,” I say. “Or a fake real married couple. I kind of don’t know what we are.”
“Maybe we’re something that doesn’t have a name,” he says.
“How very mystical of you.”
“Definitions are rooted in the past.” He tears apart a hunk of bread. “I’m focused on the future now. The past is in the past.”
I study his hands as he spreads butter over the steamy bread. I love his hands almost as much as I love his lips. He wipes his fingers on his napkin and folds it just so, lips pressed together with Benny-ish attention, and I want to get up and go over and kiss those lips and then I would kiss his Benny-esque nose, and I would sit on his lap and take off his glasses.
Maybe we’re something that doesn’t have a name.
He’s definitely still every inch the fierce and idiosyncratic thinker he was back then. He’s a man who wants to change the world. He is changing the world, I suppose.
“Past in the past. Works for me,” I say, because I still feel ashamed for how I was. “However—” I point at him with my fork. “You must never undo your past decision of having bought this condo. Because it is perfect. If I had to make up a setting for a real-slash-fake marriage, this is where I would want it to be taking place.”
“Mmm,” he says strangely, stuffing a bite into his mouth.
Mac comes by to announce that he’s leaving for the night.
“Thanks so much for arranging everything with that class,” I say to him. “That was completely amazing and hard to do.”
Mac smiles. “No big!”
“And this dinner is inspired! You managed to assemble all the best foods.”
“Benny did it,” he says. “Oh, and by the way, there’s a delivery that came for you during class. I put it in the foyer.”
“A delivery?” I ask. “To me? Here?”
I look over at Benny, who shrugs. “Not from me.”
“Weird,” I say.
“It’s big,” Mac says. “Addressed to Mrs Benjamin Stearnes. Hold on.” He disappears, returning moments later with a giant rectangle that looks to be nearly four feet tall and three feet wide, like a large bulletin board or something, all wrapped in brown paper. With that he takes off the for night.
I stand and go over to it. “Wow!” I grab the envelope off the front of it and pull out what looks like an invoice.
“What is it?” Benny asks from somewhere behind me.
“Uhhhh…” For a second my eyes aren’t able to make sense of what I’m seeing.
I hear Benny getting up, coming around the table.
“What the hell,” I breathe, because what I’m looking at is an invoice for seven million, made out to me for something that I apparently ordered ten days ago. And then it hits me. It’s the painting that Vicky was talking about. The fake seven-million-dollar painting she was going to have made.
I didn’t know she was really going to do it!
“What the hell?” Benny says, which tells me that he’s caught sight of the invoice. He snatches it from my fingers and examines it more closely. “What is this?”
“It’s not what you think,” I say.
Thick brown brows furrowing h
andsomely. He’s way more annoyed than I think I’ve ever seen him.
“It’s hard to mistake a seven-million-dollar invoice,” he says. “Seven million. It’s plain in black and white. You ordered whatever this is...on the credit card I gave you?”
Like I’d ever!
I’m surprised. It’s as if he wants to believe the worst of me or something!
Just for that, I decide to wait to tell him it didn’t cost millions. I pull the brown paper wrapper off to reveal a giant portrait of me. It’s actually pretty good. I’m standing next to a Grecian-looking column wearing a ballet tutu and a diamond tiara with actual cubic zirconia bits affixed to it, sparkling like diamonds, and apparently they had extra cubic zirconia, because there are what looks like diamonds in the air surrounding my face. Like I’m enchanted. Or surrounded by really bright gnats.
I love it!
“Seven million dollars?” he growls
I frown. Seriously, he thinks I’d do that? Now I’m annoyed, too. What kind of person does he think I am?
“You don’t think it would look good above the mantel?” I ask. “You don’t want to honor your beautiful wife?”
“You can’t order that kind of thing!” he says.
“Why not? I’m your wife. You said to go crazy.”
“Not seven million dollars’ worth of crazy!”
“Is this our first fight? I can’t believe you don’t like it!” I take the picture and carry it into the living room. He has a beautiful, tasteful photo over the fireplace mantel. I lean the picture of me over the photo. “There!” I say.
He looks pale.
I stand back and link my arm through his. “Don’t you think it’s pretty? Do you like the way the diamonds shine?”
“No, I don’t like the way the diamonds shine.”
I snort.
“What?” he demands.
“It’s not what you think,” I say.
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