Poked

by Naomi Niles

  “I can honestly say I’m surprised,” said Sean. “I never expected her to give in and sleep with anybody.”

  “Maybe you had the wrong image of her. She’s not all cakes and books.”

  Sean shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t imagine sex would be a pleasurable experience with someone so inexperienced. More than that, I think he had trouble believing that Lori could be wild and sexy. “I wonder if she’d be up for doing it with two guys.”

  “Doubtful,” I replied with a stony glare. “She seems pretty committed to me and me only.” During our mid-coital talking session, we had spent a few minutes verbally affirming our love for each other. Lori admitted that she wanted to be more than just a casual dating partner. It was a riskier declaration than anything we had done with our bodies that night. I knew if we weren’t careful we could end up married in a year or two, and somehow the thought did not trouble me.

  “For a long time,” she had said, “I didn’t know if I was ever going to be in a relationship. I always pictured myself growing old alone, a reclusive writer in a large house filled with books.”

  “Like the woman who marries George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Have you ever seen that movie?”

  “Oh, of course,” said Lori. “Aunt Trish and I used to watch it every Christmas.”

  “I’m thinking of the scene where George is seeing what the world would be like if he had never been born. Mary never got married, but she runs the library.”

  “I never liked that scene, because it seemed to be implying that it would be a horrifying fate to be single and a librarian. Like, they create this alternate reality dystopia and the very worst thing they can think of to signify how bad it is is having Mary run the library.” She shook her head in annoyance. “Anyway. I’m not saying I was miserable before, but my life is much happier since I met you.”

  “Same.” I leaned over and kissed her on the side of her head. She had finally taken off her bra, but now she was modestly covering her chest with a sheet. “I can honestly say you’re my favorite bookworm.”

  “How many bookworms do you know, really?”

  I started counting them off on my fingers. “You… I think your sister counts as one… the chick from It’s a Wonderful Life… Harriet the Spy…”

  “Okay, okay,” said Lori, laughing, “but how many non-fictional ones?”

  “Oh, just two.”

  Throughout the next week, I had visited the bakery at least once every day. Pastor Gustman had been thoroughly taken aback when they showed up in his office with the money in hand.

  “Were you aware,” Sean asked me, “that SCHOP doesn’t own the property rights to the entire strip mall?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean they only own half of it. The other half is owned by the family that runs Magnolia Plantations and Gardens, one of the most famous historical sites in South Carolina.”

  I had a vague memory of Lori trying to tell me about that place. There were strange legends surrounding it, and the hedge maze was said to be haunted. “I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  There was a hint of impatience in Sean’s voice. “Ever since the pastor guy moved in, he’s been forcing Lori and Sam to pay exorbitant rent. But if someone else were to buy out the entire property, then presumably they wouldn’t have to.”

  “So you want me to convince the owners of Magnolia Plantations to buy the entire strip mall and run the guy out of there?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said slyly. “If you were to make the purchase yourself…”

  “How? How could I possibly do that?”

  “I’ve looked into it,” he explained with perfect matter-of-factness, “and to purchase the whole property, you would only need two million dollars…”

  “Only!” I nearly spat out my beer. “My friend, I think you may have seriously over-estimated my net worth. Anyway, we’d have to convince him to sell first, and he’s not budging.”

  “Okay, but assuming you win the invitational, how much money would that give you? If you can get the money, I’m sure you could convince him.”

  “That seems like an awfully big assumption, given that I’ll be playing against the most seasoned players in the world. But for the sake of argument…” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. “According to their website, first prize is ten million dollars.”

  “Well, there’s your answer,” said Sean with perfect assurance.

  “And second prize is only one and a half million. I would have to win the entire competition. And while it’s flattering that you think I could actually do that, maybe don’t base your entire plan on this happening?”

  But Sean had total faith in me, and there was no talking him out of it. “When you win the ten million, spare a thought for your old friend who said it could be done.”

  “In any case,” I said, returning my phone to its pocket, “I need to be heading back soon. Lori and I are having dinner together tonight, and I’ve healed enough that I think we might actually go out. I think we might get Asian food. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had Asian food?”

  “Too long, I imagine,” said Sean, and then raised his can in sorry salute.

  The rest of the way to Lori’s house, I brooded over my argument with Sean and the unrealistic expectations everyone seemed to have of me. Just because I was the best player they knew personally didn’t mean I was the best. At least Lori hadn’t suggested that she was counting on me to win the ten million dollars. Talking to her, I got the sense that she would continue to love me regardless of whether I won or lost this weekend, and that knowledge was enough to help me relax a little.

  “I hope you know,” she had told me the day before, “I still would have loved you even if you hadn’t just saved our business. You’d still be my Marshall.”

  “Yes, but it probably helped a little.”

  “A little,” she said with a laugh and twined her arms around me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Lori

  “This may come as a shock to you,” I told Marshall, “and I hope you won’t be offended. I know I said I’ve never had a boyfriend, but there was a night when I was engaged.”

  We were seated together at the dining room table in my apartment eating vegetable lasagna stuffed with onions and Portobello mushrooms, served with warm bread rolls and a side salad. Marshall set down his wine glass and peered intently at me over the table. “This might be the most intriguing beginning to a story I’ve ever heard,” he said. “Please continue.”

  I nudged my plate away so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat while I was telling my story. “I think I may have already mentioned that I had a best friend in college. His name was Jonathan.”

  “I’ve heard you mention him once or twice,” said Marshall.

  “We were about as close as a boy and girl can be without actually dating. On the weekends, we used to go and spend all day together hanging out by the river studying and talking. And then he would take me out for dinner at Waffle House, and he never let me pay for my own meal. I once spent an entire spring break at his family home on the coast of Maine. It was the first time he had ever invited a girl home, and it gave me hope that maybe there was something more between us than just friendship. My sister kept wanting to know when we were going to go out.”

  “And somehow you ended up engaged.”

  “It was Tuesday night of finals week. At around midnight he called me up and asked if I wanted to make a late-night run to Wal-Mart.” I mimed the action of making a phone call with my hand. “We drove out there and bought a whole bag full of chips and snacks, and on our way out the door he stopped by the wine rack and picked up a bottle of champagne. We drove back to Rutger Hall and sat in the lobby drinking the whole bottle. That was our first mistake.

  “We got to talking that night, and I was tipsy enough that I finally came clean and admitted my feelings for him, the torch that I had been carrying around for most of the year
like a stupid girl. Jonathan admitted that he had struggled with feelings for me, but he wasn’t sure whether his parents would approve of our relationship because they had considerably more money, and I was just a poor girl from Ohio. We got to arguing about it, and I asked him why he didn’t just go out with me if he liked me so much.

  “So he said, ‘Fine,’ and pulled a piece of string out of his pocket and wrapped it around my ring finger. At first, I thought he was kidding, but there was no lie on his face when he asked me to marry him. Of course, I said yes because I was young and dumb and in love with him. I treasured that piece of string like it was made of diamonds. It was the first thing that had gone truly right the entire year.”

  “But surely he didn’t mean it?” asked Marshall.

  “He meant it,” I replied. “If you’d been there, you’d never have doubted it. Unfortunately, it didn’t last more than about half a day. I woke up the next morning elated. It was probably the happiest I had ever felt in my life up until very recently. My room was almost packed, I had one more final to take, and then I would be going home, an engaged woman.

  “But alas, it didn’t turn out that way. He came and knocked on my door at around nine in the morning, and I could tell right away by the look on his face that there was something wrong.

  “He said he wanted to call off the engagement. He said he meant everything he had said the night before, but he liked me too much. He hated how much he was into me, and he had decided to drop out of school so we would never be tempted to go out again. He said he thought this was for the best, for both of us.

  “Of course, I begged and pleaded with him to reconsider. I said it was ridiculous for the two of us to be separated if we both liked each other as much as we said we did. But he was impervious to all argument. He had already made up his mind. I’ll never forget how he took me by the hand and said, ‘Please never doubt that I loved you. I’m only doing this because I love you.’ I asked if I could come see him that summer and stay with his parents again, and he said no. Although he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it, I knew that was probably the last time we were ever going to see each other.

  “So he left. He left me sitting there on the floor of my room, on the cold tiles, surrounded by boxes, and we never saw each other again. Shortly thereafter, he blocked me on all social media—you can imagine how I cried and cried when that happened—but Sam continued to stalk him, and she informed me that he had met a girl in Paris. A rich, beautiful girl with Audrey Hepburn curls and a voice like Doris Day’s. I can only assume his parents approved of the match because they were engaged by the end of the summer.”

  “Wow,” said Marshall. He stared into the bottom of his wine glass and silence fell over the table for a minute. “I don’t even know what to say. What a miserable way to end the school year.”

  “It was the worst finals week I ever had. And then the next year when I returned to school, I basically shut myself up in the library and only came out to eat and sleep. What was the point of making new friends when I had already lost the best friend I had? It was at this point that my professors began joking about how I was going to become a nun.”

  “That must be when you started being afraid of boys.”

  “I think it must have been. I had never really been against them until then. But after that event, all I could think about was reading and studying. I made Dean’s List three semesters in a row, which I had never done before because I had been too preoccupied with Jonathan.”

  Marshall leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head, struggling to process this new information. Feeling a bit nervous, and still shaky from having bared my soul to him, I asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m just realizing that there’s still so much I don’t know about you. I didn’t even know you had been engaged.”

  “Only for about ten hours,” I reminded him. “I don’t know if that counts.”

  “It counts if you both meant it. How odd that you were engaged to a man you had never kissed, never dated.”

  “And if we hadn’t both been very tipsy,” I said, “it would never have happened. But at least I had the satisfaction of being able to say I had been engaged to Jonathan Levine for a few hours—as empty as that was after he left and broke my heart.”

  “Wait, Jonathan Levine?” He combed his fingers through his hair, thinking. “You dated the lead singer of Street Penny Prophets?”

  “We never dated, but yes, we were briefly engaged. This was way back before he was famous. There’s a song on their second album that I’m pretty sure is about me.”

  “Sean worships that band,” said Marshall, incredulous. “He’s never going to believe this.” He took out his phone and began to text him.

  While he cleared the plates from the table, I set up the DVD player in the living room. Somehow, I had managed to talk him into watching Fanny and Alexander, one of Bergman’s later movies and my personal favorite. I had spent most of the previous evening raving about it. “It feels like you’re actually there enjoying a Christmas feast while snow swirls against the windows. It’s the coziest movie. I love watching it during the summer because it feels like the middle of winter. The first time I watched it with Sam, the movie tricked me into thinking it was the holidays.”

  “Is there a plot?” Marshall had asked skeptically. He automatically distrusted any movie that my sister liked.

  My enthusiasm, however, was irrepressible. “There is a plot, but it’s not very important to the story. I know how that sounds, but bear with me. Fanny and Alexander are two kids who are siblings, and the movie is about how they cope with the changes in their life after their father’s death. It doesn’t really have a linear structure, though. It’s more like a dream than any film I’ve ever seen!”

  “Mmmm, sounds gripping,” said Marshall, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

  “It is, though!” Sensing that he was losing interest, I made a last desperate bid for his attention. “Think about those gorgeous moments you had growing up when you were half asleep, and you thought you heard choirs of angels singing. That’s this whole movie. Somehow, Bergman was able to capture that feeling.” Seeing his blank stare, I added, “Wait, has that never happened to you?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never heard choirs of angels singing,” he said with an amused smile.

  “But haven’t you ever had moments that were just so stunningly beautiful that they seemed not of this earth? No, just me?”

  “Well, maybe this movie will help me to understand what that’s like,” said Marshall, not very hopefully.

  “You mean you’ll watch it?” I asked, practically leaping up in excitement.

  “Maybe. How long is it?”

  “Only five hours.”

  “ONLY five?!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, there are two different versions. The one made for TV is five hours and the one made for cinema is only three, but you don’t want to watch that one. Half the joy of watching it is being fully immersed in this other world and just the sheer abundance of detail.”

  “Alright, alright,” said Marshall, beginning to look exhausted. “We’ll watch the first part. But I’m afraid I can’t stay long on Friday night because I have to be at the airport early on Saturday morning.” He was leaving for the weekend for his competition in Vegas. It was our first time being apart since we had started dating.

  But we didn’t make it more than about ten minutes into the movie on Friday night before he fell asleep. My first instinct was to be upset—it was one of my favorite movies. But as he continued to lay there with his head on my shoulder, peacefully snoring, I thought better of it. After all, it was a very sleep-inducing movie, and even I was beginning to feel drowsy.

  So we lay there together for about an hour while Fanny and Alexander enjoyed chocolate bonbons and their uncle Gustav had an affair with the plump maid. I stroked his back and thought about the conversation we had had earlier over supper and his reaction, which had been so m
atter-of-fact. He hadn’t judged me for keeping secrets from him, still less for having once been engaged. I got the sense it was a bigger deal to me than it would ever be to him.

  Finally, when the first part of the movie ended, and I knew he needed to be getting home, I reluctantly woke him.

  “Hmmm?” said Marshall, groggily stirring.

  “You need to be getting home,” I said softly. “It’s getting late.”

  “Oh.” He looked around the room as though trying to make out where he was and how he had ended up here. “Sorry we didn’t get to do anything else tonight.”

  He didn’t have to specify; I knew what he meant. “That’s okay. I’m sure there will be more chances in the future. For now, I just need you to go home and get good and rested so you can do well tomorrow.”

  “Promise.” He hugged me once around the waist and rose from the sofa. I walked him to the door and stood there waving as he pulled out of the driveway and out of sight.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Marshall

  I landed in Vegas at around eleven on Saturday morning and arrived at the Venetian about an hour later. I wandered the floor feeling lost and overwhelmed among the thousands of other players scrambling to put in their bids for the ten million dollars. I almost wished I had a friend or a brother to accompany me because I felt badly out of place amid the red patterned carpets, wood paneling, and cut-glass chandeliers. It was too much for an old country boy from Texas.

  Because the tournament was being televised live, there were film crews and reporters everywhere. While we waited for the opening matches to begin, they kept themselves busy by interviewing random people and asking them the same set of questions: where were they from? What had brought them to Vegas? What did they hope to accomplish? Every contestant, without fail, said they wanted to win the ten million dollars. It made for pretty boring television.

  I acquired my key at the front desk and rode the elevator to the fifth floor to a gray and white room built with Baroque excess. Feeling tired and worn out after my trip, I laid down for about an hour but was unable to fall asleep. I wished Lori was here next to me. I wished I hadn’t fallen asleep during the movie last night, but I had been so tired, and the movie dragged on and on. But I didn’t especially mind the subtitles or the fact that nothing had happened for the first hour because I was with her.