“The engagement. Tell me everything. I deserve details,” Kayla says, kneading a piece of everything bagel between her slim fingers, rolling it into a small ball. Poppy and sesame seeds scatter on the faux granite surface of our wobbly little table.
“Details are overrated, K,” I say.
“Nice try. How did he propose?”
For some reason I don’t want to tell her.
“It happened Saturday after a delicious dinner at a four-star restaurant in the Left Bank. He got down on one knee in our hotel room,” I say, and pause.
“And?”
“And he read me something. It was Plato,” I say, looking down into my salad of wilting spinach.
Kayla laughs. “Plato? So, Banker Boy is a closet philosopher too?” Kayla makes fun of the fact that I was a philosophy major all the time. She was an economics major. While she was studying market forces, I was contemplating the cosmos.
“Very funny. I knew you were going to laugh. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“Don’t go soft on me, little Mrs. I think it’s sweet. I’m just having fun,” she says, backpedaling. I’m not sure if she means it. “Tell me everything,” she says.
And so I do. I tell her everything I can remember…
Sage and I stumbled back from dinner after two bottles of ’82 vintage red. I wore my violet lace camisole that Michael bought me at the Barneys warehouse sale. Sage wore his blue sport jacket, the one with the gold buttons that his mother bought him for church. It was the first time he wore it. Once in our room, I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward our mountain of a bed, but he resisted me. He walked to the corner, keeping his back to me the whole time, and then I heard the pop. Champagne. He tipped the bottle and poured slowly into twin crystal flutes and floated a lone strawberry in each.
I asked him if we were celebrating something and he smiled. I asked him where my birthday cake was, but he ignored me. His eyes grew wide and focused. His lower lip trembled. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. As he unfolded it, his hands shook. He glanced at it only once, folded it up again, and then spoke.
“So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man. Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the tally-half of a man, and he is always looking for his other half…”
Plato. We both began to cry. And Sage grabbed a small box from behind the ice bucket. His lips trembled faster now and he lowered himself on one knee, paused and looked up at me, and said, “Prudence Quinn O’Malley. I’m done fishing. I knew from the moment I met you. You’re my other half. Will you marry me?”
And I didn’t even look at the ring, but said yes, screamed it actually, and tackled him to the ground, knocking the box from his fingers. We rolled around the carpet laughing and crying. Side by side, pressed into one another, we stared up at the embroidered ceiling and the soft glow of the miniature chandelier. Sage reached for the box, popped it open, and I saw it, the ring. He slipped it on my finger.
But the next morning was different. It was one of those mornings that began quietly, but with startling confusion. The world was peaceful, and yet brutally foreign. There was a faint knock on the door. Panicked and sweaty, I shot up in bed and looked around. I scanned the room desperate for clues. I was naked—and hostage under a mess of powder-soft ecru sheets. A deep burgundy velvet canopy with braided gold tassels loomed above. A petite mosaic table lingered in the right corner of the small room between a pair of over-stuffed chairs covered in fading red toile.
Finally, thankfully, I spotted something familiar—the canary yellow label of a kicked bottle of Veuve. It was capsized, swimming in silence in a silver monogrammed ice bucket full of water now warm.
I was in Paris. I began to remember.
I grabbed a plush robe from the mahogany closet and tied it around my bare body and answered the door. A man in a hotel uniform hugged a vast arrangement of flowers. I took them from him, placed them down, and read the small card: “Congratulations to my Sage and his lady! À bientôt! Mama.”
I looked over at her Sage, his ruffled tuft of dark blond hair peeking out from the top of the sheets. I bent over him, planting a soft kiss on the back of his head. I slid off the bed, trying my best not to wake him. My head was pounding.
Our small room had a bow window framed by lush gold drapes, with a half-moon seat covered in thick tapestry. When I peeked through the drapes, light bounced in and there it was: the Eiffel Tower. Sun shimmied through lace curtains in front of twin French doors opposite our bed, casting spiderweb shadows on beige carpet. I tiptoed over, jimmied the antique iron key in the lock, and slipped through out onto the tiny balcony. The streets were quiet and the air was cold. A faint aroma of cigarette smoke came and went with the strong January wind. A truck or two ambled by.
The Tower stood tall and quiet, a lone soldier, only yards from me. Even in the early morning, guards swarmed like ants around its base, protecting it from evil. I’d seen it before—while on vacation with my family, on my European tour with the girls after high school graduation, but that morning it was different. It wasn’t the cliché, the trite image stamped on one too many postcards displayed on twirling wire racks. No, unlike my disoriented and shivering self, it was full of power. It was a symbol—of human accomplishment, and of national pride. Its shape was simple and exquisite, phallic. It was at that moment—when I found myself comparing France’s national treasure to the male anatomy—that I relived the night before.
Sage had proposed.
The stone on my finger caught the light of the rising sun. I remembered the words. I remembered how it all happened.
The balcony was an icebox in the air. Goosebumps spread over my skin. Wind blew my robe. But I couldn’t stop staring at the stone; I was mesmerized. At twenty-seven, I was as captivated as I was at six when Mom and Dad caved and bought me the Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas. Maybe Mom, forever paranoid, was scared of exposing her little girl to fire. More likely even, the feminist in her did not want me to tread the domestic path at such an impressionable age. But I already had a little lawyer in me even if my powers of persuasion had only just begun to bloom. I begged my parents to the point of sheer annoyance and wrote a surprisingly articulate letter to Santa begging him too. My persistence paid off.
I went back inside. Shifting sheets marred the perfect silence. Sage curled up—a lovable lump under the pile of sheets—and shielded his eyes from the sun I had ushered in. In that moment, as he bridged the worlds of night and day, I loved him more than ever.
Sage was still sleeping. He was a gorgeous creature that morning, even more so than usual. He had picked me. Proposed to me.
He stirred, stretching in the canopy bed, limbs poking out from sheets. Through the thickening fog of my obnoxious hangover, I flashed back to the night before. He had looked into my eyes with a new brand of love.
Even forever had a beginning.
His touch had been softer and his lips, sweeter. His strokes were gentler, his grip on me protective. This is it, I’d thought as I felt his strong body move on top of me, two halves becoming whole. For the first time in too long, I felt safe.
The reality of it all was daunting and delicious. He’d take out our garbage. I’d wash his smelly gym socks. Well, maybe. He’d father my babies.
“You, my pretty pastry, can tell a story,” she says, handing me half of her black-and-white cookie.
“Well, there’s a footnote to that story,” I say. “An important one.”
“Do tell.”
“I had a dream that night. After he proposed,” I said. I told her about the dream—the bizarre courtroom wedding, the lineup of grooms, that diminutive bailiff in black.
It was that dream that tugged at me, a detectable tarnish on the beautiful morning. Immediately, I chalked it up to my hangover. Even then, though, I knew in the back of my aching mind, my symptoms wouldn’t vanish w
ith Excedrin and carbohydrates.
I plunked down on the burgundy velvet chaise that ran the length of the window, pulling my knees tight to my chest. I stared out the window, this time past that Tower. I was worried. I’d always preached to Sage and my cynical friends about the importance of dreams, about how they reveal bits and pieces of the truth, shadows of feelings we all try to bury.
While Sage showered that morning, singing Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line,” tone deaf as ever, I found a stack of hotel stationery in the precious little antique desk and scribbled away. Every detail of the dream I could remember.
“Quinn, it was a goddamned dream. Relax,” Kayla says, and takes a sip of her coffee. “All of a sudden you’re a believer? You think psychic powers are tingled during REM?”
I shrug.
“Look, I’m sure this is all very normal. I hear everyone freaks out when they are getting married. Hell, I would break out in permanent hives. It would be very sexy,” she says. “If your dream was prophetic, can I have one of the leftover grooms? Phelps, preferably?”
I laugh. “Sure, he’s all yours.”
But something in me still thinks: No, he’s all mine.
“Good, I’m going to hold you to it,” she says. And then she’s quiet for a moment and sadness creeps over her perfectly lined eyes. “I thought I was your other half.”
I smile.
Kayla looks at me now, searching my eyes. “What are you so scared of?”
And I hate her and love her for this question.
“Being trapped,” I say. In a career? In an office building? In a marriage?
“Hence the sublimely symbolic handcuffs,” she says, nodding. “You know, Q, people spend their lives trying to find the right person to trap them, to stand still with.”
“You’re right,” I say, nodding. Because maybe she’s right. Maybe there’s a fine line between feeling trapped and feeling safe.
“So, the sex is still good?” Kayla says, killing our silence.
It’s snowing outside now. I think of that little groundhog and how good he has it. If he sees his shadow, if he senses bleak and uncertain times, he can just crawl back in that hole and wait for brighter days.
“Yes,” I say, no doubt blushing. “Sex has never been an issue.”
“Can’t build a good marriage on a foundation of bad sex,” Kayla says.
“Since you’re the authority?”
She ignores this one. “Bet the sex in Paris was more unbelievable after he gave you that ring,” she says. She’d be right at home at my gym’s locker room.
“Well, yes it was as a matter of fact.”
“Figures. Who knew? Diamonds and guilt bring out the little sex kitten in you,” she says.
“Guess so,” I say.
“So, what’s the problem then?” Kayla asks, slurping the rest of her coffee. “Good sex, good ring. Good man who is pussy enough to quote Plato.”
“K!”
And suddenly the dire fog has lifted and I’m no longer fixated on the alarm bells of a bomb threat and an unwelcome reverie. For a brief and delicious moment, we eat bagels and cookies and giggle like girls.
Until now, I haven’t noticed the man next to us. He stops fumbling with his crumbling croissant and stares at us now, seemingly shocked by the candid and colorful exchange between two preppy lawyers cloaked in basic black.
Chapter 9
Can’t beat the white stuff,” Kayla says, sniffling.
A few months ago, this statement would’ve alarmed me. Kayla had a brief but intense fling with Cap’n C (her stealthy code name, not for Cap’n Crunch) when we started at the firm. Said it kept her going. I opted for coffee.
Tonight, it’s snowing. Times Square, the rainbow mistress, is momentarily cloaked in innocent white. Kayla and I wind our way through clusters of tourists, dodging the usual rush hour behemoth. Normally at this hour, we’re at our desks, hunkering down for a night of document review or due diligence, debating delivery options. But tonight, we’re out early heading to our firm’s Winter Party.
“Dad always said they ruined this place when they got rid of the strip clubs and Disney-ed it up,” I say.
“Who knew Daddy O’Malley was a fan of the vintage peep show?” Kayla says, and smiles.
For a brief moment, the streets are charming. Hardly Main Street, U.S.A., but still. I take a calculated risk and share my thought with Kayla. “Snow is magic,” I say.
She smiles. “Someone woke up on the right side of the bed this morning.”
“You have a choice,” I say, rubbing a few flakes between gloved fingers. “You can see this as a nuisance, curse the traffic, the soaked clothes, the ruined heels. Or you can see it as a reminder of nature amidst the man-made. Plus, everything looks good in white. Even this hell.” Days ago, I was cursing that little groundhog for the prediction that this stuff would fall. Now it’s bringing out the poet in me.
Kayla looks at me like I’m a Martian. “And while we’re at it, a sign that maybe global warming ain’t that bad, huh?”
It all depends on how you look at things, really, and I’ve decided to experiment with something new and foreign, decidedly less dangerous and less sexy than Cap’n C: optimism. Sage’s drug of choice.
Everything in moderation, right?
After all, my life is hardly a sob story. I’m healthy. I’m financially secure. I have a man willing to put up with me for a lifetime.
So, tonight, the seedy haven is hot-cocoa-and-marshmallow innocent. The swarms of wide-eyed tourists wielding guidebooks and camcorders and fanny packs are welcome guests. Their infestation is a good sign. Mere months after disaster, the city is back. A concoction to drink in. Not a poison to avoid.
Tonight the flashing fluorescents are beautiful and dramatic, beacons of light and hope, casting an effervescent glow on the mosaic of faces. Not a sign of commercialism-gone-mad, epilepsy-waiting-to-happen.
Tonight the gigantic stock ticker is a reminder that here we are in the financial capital of the world. Not evidence of our obsession with the bottom line, the dollar. Or yen. Or euro.
Tonight the streaming headlines are bold symbols of truth and information. (This is Times Square, after all. Named after the best paper in the world.) Not clues that the world as we know it is beginning to crumble.
Tonight the American flags—flashing and flying—are emblems of unity, of patriotism, of national pride. No, the ubiquitous stars and stripes aren’t bizarre tokens of a premature and permanent Independence Day, a proclamation that we’re the best; not a red-white-and-blue screw-you to the other nations out there.
“If you ask me, this place right here,” Kayla says, pointing around us, “this is why they hate us.”
I don’t have to ask her who this “they” is. Most people wouldn’t dare say something like this to someone whose father that nebulous “they” so recently killed. But Kayla isn’t most people. And, even in this moment, I love her for it. It’s First-Amendment-all-the-way, no-censorship-crap with this girl.
Kayla and I wait on a corner for the light to change. A tall man in a long black coat carrying a vast black suitcase sneaks up behind us and mumbles something only a New Yorker could decode. “Louis Vuittons.”
He opens the suitcase a crack and I see the telltale brown and tan logo. He’s selling fakes.
“Very authentic,” he says, his breath condensing in the night air.
“They’re either authentic or they’re not,” Kayla mutters. She grabs my arm, but we’ve missed our light.
“No thank you,” I say to the man, and he disappears. Kayla looks at me as if I’ve committed a crime by being polite to this man. “He’s just trying to make a living.”
“Ah, Project Optimism,” Kayla says. “Guess NYPD has bigger fish to fry these days.”
“Indeed.”
“Now, that makes me optimistic. Yum,” Kayla says, pointing to the tan Adonis on the corner wearing nothing but tighty-whities and a cowboy hat. The Naked Cowboy. He’s become q
uite the cement celebrity.
“Selling sex in the snow,” I say. “How precious.”
“He’s just trying to make a living,” she says, and smiles.
Tonight, Kayla is an endearing girl trying to find herself, unwittingly airing insecurities about love and sexuality and life via constant cakey cynicism and Sex and the City chatter. Not a selfish debutante who dabbles in the law and who has been given unfair quantities of money and education and intelligence.
Tonight, we are two friends, bantering, laughing, strolling the streets, taking our city back. Not two overworked, over-privileged bottle blonds following the scent of free booze.
The streets swirl with bits and pieces of conversation, sirens, fading cologne, and roasting chestnuts. Trash cans over-flow with crushed Starbucks cups and mangled umbrellas. A homeless man crouches on the pavement in front of a newsstand. I drop a twenty in his shoebox, and tell myself that he will use it to buy food or to find a job. Not to fund addiction. Just as I’m really beginning to enjoy this new view of things, I see a little figurine of the Twin Towers in the window of that newsstand. Written in black ink on a little index card: “Remember what was.”
All of a sudden, I’m nauseous. About to faint. I sit down on the pavement, next to the homeless man. He moves his bag of soda cans to make room for me.
Kayla turns and sees me popping a squat by a bum and presumably thinks I’m just taking this exercise in optimism a bit too far. She grabs my hand and pulls me up.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, unsure if I mean it. I don’t tell her about the little Towers. That she can make comments about 9/11 and hatred for the West and Dad liking porn, but that I see a little index card in the front of a bodega and I’m about to turn into a faucet.
Life After Yes Page 9