This Close to Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

  “I do,” Emmett said.

  “We’re just riffling through the leftovers at this point. I waited too late,” Tallie said, walking away from him and down the other aisle. He could see the top of her head bobbing. And when she got next to him, she popped up over a rack of spooky signs. “There’s nothing good over here. Okay…I know, I know…but what if we do a couples costume? Not a couples­ couples costume, but you know what I mean…related costumes for two people going to a Halloween party together. Is that weird? Would you maybe do that?” she asked.

  “I’d do that.”

  “Really?”

  And when he nodded she said, “All right. Come on this side with me,” and waved him over.

  “What about Clark Kent and Lois Lane? Those are easy and don’t require too much,” Tallie said after they’d circled the store once with their new goal in mind. “It’s either that or Sandy and Danny from Grease. I can’t actually win the costume contest since it’s my brother’s party and it wouldn’t be fair…so be warned, we don’t have to have the best costumes, but let’s make a valiant effort we can both be proud of.”

  “Right on,” he said. She had a pair of black plastic-framed glasses in her hand, shiny black leggings thrown over her arm, purse hanging off her shoulder. “I’ll wear the glasses.”

  “Try them.”

  Emmett took the glasses and put them on. He would’ve done anything she asked in that moment. He looked at her, his new surprise friend Tallie.

  “Perfect. Okay, we need suspenders. Or maybe we don’t need the suspenders, but we do need a Superman shirt to put underneath a white dress shirt, and you can throw your tie over your shoulder. Windswept. Like Clark Kent transitioning into Superman.” He realized how seriously she was taking this. She’d walked into the store like it was casual, but now she was down to business. “I have a pencil skirt and the rest of it, but I need, like, a newspaper badge or something. Let me go ask this kid if they have those,” she said, taking the glasses off Emmett and putting the shiny leggings back where she found them. She walked to the front of the store. Emmett let pencil skirt hang out to dry in his brain momentarily, having absolutely no clue what those words meant put together like that. He was baffled and impressed by all the secret things women knew about the world.

  The cashier guy followed her and pointed. “We have these badges. FBI X-Files badges.”

  “Oh! Let’s be Mulder and Scully instead!” she said, grabbing two FBI badges from the rack next to them. The cashier guy straightened a shelf of ridiculous jester and skull hats on his way to the front of the store.

  “We can basically wear the same things, but not the glasses or Superman shirt. Mulder wears a lot of black or gray suits, but I do have a navy suit at home that’ll fit you.”

  “Joel’s?”

  “He never wore it.”

  “Why do you still have so many clothes he never wore?”

  “Because I haven’t gotten rid of them yet and I wanted him to be something he wasn’t, and he only wears black or gray suits,” she said sharply—a needle through paper.

  “I like Mulder. I’ll be Mulder.”

  “You’ll be a perfect Mulder,” she said with steely confidence.

  Emmett followed her to the counter.

  “I have plenty of money. At your place. In my backpack. You don’t have to pay for my stuff all the time,” he said. He pictured his backpack at Tallie’s, safely snug in between her couch and the end table where he’d left it. It didn’t make him nervous leaving it at her place. She lived alone; there was no one there but the cats to nose through it.

  “Nonsense. I’m making you go to a Halloween party. It’s my job to buy this.”

  “You’re not making me go. I want to go,” he said, surprising himself by meaning it. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted to do anything like go to a party.

  She touched the top of his hand and took the badges to the cash register; he insisted on carrying the slick orange bag out of the store.

  * * *

  “Y’know, you can be honest with me. About anything,” Tallie said.

  They’d stopped at Poodle Skirt, a ’50s-themed hamburger joint at the end of the outlet mall. It was all lit up, an oasis for the shoppers who could make it that far without killing themselves. Bravo.

  “Weird. I was going to say the same thing to you,” he said, smirking.

  “I’m serious, okay?” she said in a kind of whine he found endearing. She gooped her french fry with ketchup before eating it.

  “I’m serious, too. You tell me something honest, and I’ll do the same. Right now,” he lied.

  “You want to go first?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll go first. We could’ve passed each other on the street or at the grocery store or whatever so many times…and now…here we are,” Emmett said. He looked around, noticed the family in the booth diagonally across from them.

  (An older couple with their adult son, his small children. They have their food already. The older woman orders a milkshake from the waiter. Chocolate. The children drink from plastic cartoon cups with bright red lids. An Elvis clock swings its glittery hips on the wall. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.)

  “You come to Louisville a lot?” Tallie asked.

  “Enough.”

  “Well, I would’ve remembered you.”

  “Remembered what?”

  “Your face and hair and eyes. Your whole thing,” she said in between bites of food. She pointed a limp fry at him. “You’re striking.”

  He loved looking at her but refrained from saying it for fear of making her uncomfortable. Her listening face was pretty and consistently reassuring, like a familiar character from a pleasant, uneventful dream.

  The waiter stopped by their table, refilled their drinks.

  (The waiter’s name is Greg. Greg has short brown hair. Greg is wearing blue-and-yellow running shoes, jeans, a white T-shirt, a red half apron with buttons on it. One of the buttons reads ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT. Another button is a fluffy pink poodle drinking a milkshake against a black-and-white checkered background. Another: ASK ME ABOUT POODLE SKIRT REWARDS POINTS.)

  “Can we get two beers and two shots of bourbon?” Emmett asked the waiter before promising Tallie he’d give her money as soon as they got back to her place.

  “Uh…um. Okay, look. Swear you’re not an alcoholic?” she asked after the waiter was gone.

  “I’m not an alcoholic, Tallie. Are you an alcoholic?”

  “No. I’m not. But day drinking is rarely a supergood idea.”

  “I’m breaking all the rules,” he said.

  “Mmm-hmm…and you had the nerve to ‘Easy, tiger’ me last night. Oh, wait! You’ve never been here before, right?” Tallie asked.

  Emmett told her no, he hadn’t.

  “Then you have to try their dipping sauce. Sometimes you have to ask for it…I’ll get it for us. It’s so good. I almost forgot! You have to try it,” she said, politely waving the waiter back over.

  Tallie doing something small like that made him feel loved. The costumes, the food—someone else was taking control, even about tiny decisions. For so long with Christine he had to make every decision, check every lock, pay every bill, make every breakfast, every lunch and dinner. All of it had wrung him out, but he didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

  Christine: a bucket filled to the top that he’d been asked to carry through a war zone, over fiery coals, in a hot air balloon, on a shaky roller coaster. Their relationship, doomed from the start. She spilled out and over, and there was nothing he could do about it. The inevitability of it had borne down and crushed him. But now, Christine was gone, and none of that mattered. He missed her. And the mere pinch of any kind of forgiveness or mercy flooded his heart with watery light.

  TALLIE

  Emmett began to cry and used the paper napkin to wipe his nose. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and left them there.

  “Did I say something that upset you?”
she asked as his chin shook.

  Client cries easily, is tenderhearted. Demeanor quicksilvers.

  Too many questions? Or was he thinking of the letters, those women? Or his parents, the letter he’d written them? Guilt? Remorse? It could’ve been anything. On the drive to the outlet mall, she’d asked him again if he wanted to try to intercept the letter and he’d shrugged, said he didn’t think so. She couldn’t persuade him otherwise. His poor parents. Once they got that letter, they would think there was nothing they could do. She hated imagining the depthless doom of it. But there he was in front of her, perfectly alive and safe.

  Tallie was an empath. She closed her eyes, put her hands out, read the braille of her clients’ hearts. It was a gift she had; she’d made an entire career out of it! She was soul-connected to Emmett already, instantly. He’d cried easily but was surprisingly not needy, not in the way so many of her clients were. Not like the ones who craved constant reassurance and coddling. A part of Emmett seemed confidently depressed, resigned to it, but he also had clear instances of buoyancy and boyishness that led her to believe there was still a lot to work with.

  The waiter brought their drinks and the sauce for Emmett. He downed his shot immediately, chased it with two big draining gulps of his blond beer. And although she wasn’t sure exactly why, Tallie did the same thing to keep up with him. The waiter had only just made it to the next table when Emmett motioned for two more shots of bourbon.

  “It wasn’t anything you said. I’m all right,” Emmett said. He dipped a bit of his burger into the special sauce and ate it. Told Tallie how delicious it was before turning his attention back to his beer.

  “Um. You…we shouldn’t drink too much. It’s bad news,” Tallie warned. She’d never go to lunch with a client or let a client spend the night at her house. And of course she would never drink with a client. Even the thought was absurd. It would’ve been unprofessional, borderline unethical! She always held herself to such strict boundaries of living, but really…what had it gotten her in her relationships? Hadn’t it left her feeling alone? No one else seemed to follow the rules, so why should she? What was the harm in a teeny-tiny act of rebellion? What right did she have to tell a grown man what to do? “I mean…no more after this. That’s enough, don’t you think?” she tacked on the end.

  “Sure. I gotcha. I’m going to step outside and smoke. I think that would make me feel better,” he said, like he was asking for her permission. And something about him doing that made him seem so small in the moment, even though he wasn’t.

  Coping mechanism: aha! Cigarettes, as suspected.

  He stood and touched his pocket, went in and found the treasure of an almost-empty soft pack.

  “Okay. Whatever you need. I didn’t know you smoked. I thought, maybe, but you didn’t smell like it, and you haven’t smoked since we met. Have you? Maybe you smoked while I was sleeping?” she asked. She looked up at him, awash with the absurdity of having her feelings hurt because she didn’t know this one specific thing about him. She knew absolutely nothing about him outside of the little he’d told her. And those could’ve been lies. But the purloined letters—which he hadn’t noticed were missing yet, or at least hadn’t mentioned—those weren’t lies.

  Before she fell asleep the night before, she’d tried Google again. Searched for his name alongside Clementine, Kentucky, but found nothing about him. She’d tried Emmett and Christine and Brenna. Tried them all together, paired up—it didn’t matter. With no last names to search for, there were no hits, no news, no websites, no social media.

  Emmett shook a cigarette out of the pack. “No. I didn’t smoke while you were sleeping,” he said, teary and sniffing, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth.

  “Do you mind if I smoke with you?”

  “Do you smoke?”

  She shook her head; she hadn’t had a cigarette since college.

  He motioned for her to follow him, and the waiter returned with their shots. Emmett stepped to the table again, slipped the cigarette behind his ear, and downed the gold as if it were water. Tallie downed hers, too, feeling enormously guilty and irresponsible but also loving the burn.

  * * *

  Outside, Emmett lit the cigarette and took a drag before he held it out for her. He French-inhaled as he leaned against the restaurant brick. The French inhale was a luxury, although nothing about the afternoon was fancy.

  The sky: hoary and mizzling.

  The air: apple, tinged with grilled beef and onions.

  The cider aroma was from the coffee shop next to the restaurant and smelled like that from the middle of September until the day after Thanksgiving, when it was swapped for pepperminty Christmas coffee.

  Tallie could’ve told Emmett she was a licensed therapist, that TLC Counseling Services had been her forever dream, how proud she was of it, how it would soon grow to house two more therapists. But knowing that would change how he interacted with her. She made a living keeping other people’s secrets, and it was exhausting. Isolating. She had secrets like everyone else, and Joel had kept his. Emmett was keeping his, too, so why shouldn’t she? It was finally her turn.

  The danger: a frothing aphrodisiac.

  A secret shock of lust ran through her. Inside the restaurant, Emmett had shaken the cigarette out of the pack and put it between his lips with this kind of handsome, loose motion that reminded her of Steve McQueen, and she loved Steve McQueen, found him irresistible. Those hypermasculine old-Hollywood types smoked constantly in the classic movies she loved so much—huffed and puffed like dragons. She wished she could see Emmett shake his cigarette out again. Or that she’d recorded a short video on her phone so she could watch it on a loop before she went to sleep.

  She took an extra breath and let herself imagine being in bed with him. A tonic of flickers, this fantasy. What did he smell like underneath his flannel forest of clothes? Like the flooding autumn river filled with leaves, cut with camphor? White soap, sweat, and one drop of gasoline? Cigarettes braided with wood smoke? She imagined his hot, rhythmic weight on top of her. His face between her legs, hers between his. Him behind her, hairy and grunting as he came and pulsed. The two of them, feverish. Wilding.

  * * *

  It’d been over a year since the last time she and Joel had been together, and a month since she’d been with anyone—she’d had I’m recently divorced and have no clue what I want right now sex with Nicodemus Tate. Nico. They’d dated off and on in college for years. Back then, they’d floated away from each other instead of snapping apart, and in the past, she’d always had excellent, efficient sex with Nico. As excellent and efficient as a Target run—everything she needed in the right place, and occasionally there was an extra treat on clearance, making the whole trip more than worth it. But the post-divorce sex with Nico? Absolute rockets. The kind of orgasms that made her go deaf and dizzy for two full minutes afterward.

  Nico and Tallie were in love in the ’90s. Dave Matthews Band concerts, Lilith Fair, mixtapes. They threw a Y2K party together. Nico had played tennis in college, finishing seventh in collegiate rankings and reaching fortieth in the Association of Tennis Professionals rankings at one point. Tallie and Aisha went to his matches even long after college, when he wasn’t her boyfriend anymore, to drink icy gin and tonics while they—quiet, please—watched Nico sweat and grunt on the green clay. One night after one of those winning matches, they went out for more celebratory drinks, and Tallie had ended up in his bed again, although they didn’t have a name for what they were.

  Three months later, Nico called to let her know—surprise!—he was engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Saskia. Saskia, the attorney. Saskia, her name like scissors slicking wrapping paper; Saskia, the sound one makes after chugging extra-bubbly pop. To her surprise, Tallie drank only a thimbleful of jealousy but had expected to feel more of it. Her strongest feeling was genuine happiness for him, and when he and Saskia got divorced, Tallie and Nico reconnected. But then there was Joel. When Tallie and Joel got serious, she b
egan to feel for him the jealousy and territoriality she hadn’t felt for Nico. Joel inspired urgency. She got drunk quick on the liquor of those new-to-her emotions.

  Over the past summer, she’d bumped into a bearded and single Nico at the gym she’d recently joined, and he asked if she was still married after glancing at her ringless left finger. He showed sweetness and sadness over her divorce. Made her laugh by reminding her that she said she’d never take his name and change hers to Tallie Tate if she married him because it sounded like a bratty children’s book character. She let Nico know everything about Joel’s affair because she couldn’t keep it in. In turn, he told her about Saskia having an early miscarriage and the guilt he felt at being relieved. Angry, Tallie spilled out her struggles with infertility to him for the first time. He apologized profusely, and she found it hard to stay mad at him. Nico was so familiar and safe, a true friend, a sort of accidental constant in her life somehow, even when they didn’t keep in touch. She didn’t know how it worked, but she knew it was a bit of magic. And she could trust Nico, the cool drink of water to put out her fires.

  There were nights when she was feeling low and Nico could detect it in the atmosphere. Knew to bring her flowers or chocolate and wine. Food. He’d stop by her favorite noodle shop without asking, order the spicy pad kee mao with tofu and basil fried rice with shrimp. Calamari and dumplings. He was a proper, much-needed companion in those dizzying mushroom-cloud months after her divorce. She’d lost Joel—her husband, her lover, her partner, her friend, her company—the person she’d shared her entire life with. The person she’d slept next to and gone to the movies with. The person she’d told everything, the person who’d become a part of her family. The person she’d eaten dinner with every night and who went with her to the grocery store on Saturday afternoons. All the big and little things. The stupid, annoying things. The important things. Now she had to do them all alone.