“Who calls it that? Surely not our magical soothsayer, Carol. Anyway, I’d say we’re champion glampers. We should go back. We could start an annual tradition—a yurt a year.”
“I’d like that,” I say. I picture the trip as a refrain to look forward to, next year, next decade, and so on. It feels like a promise.
Gabe offers to drop me off at home and return the rental car on his own, but I’m eager to keep him by my side. I slip into this clingy mood sometimes on Sunday nights, anticipating a week of days spent apart. When we’re both finally back home, unpacked and in pajamas, I flop myself across Gabe on the couch. We relax into our routine: wine, laptops, and reliable Wi-Fi. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I wake with a jolt from a dream: I’d followed that scrap of red back in the woods, and discovered a cherry Ring Pop. I sucked it to its nub, and then Gabe appeared, in a panic about a lost engagement ring. I pressed my sticky lips to his, the sugary syrup swirling in my belly, and told him not to worry, the ring was safe inside of me.
I sit upright. I’m in bed—I guess Gabe carried me here. I hear something—snatches of song through the cracked window. I get up to peek down at the street, and I see three girls in slip dresses standing under the streetlight. They’re holding hands, entertaining each other with a manic rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off.” My mind goes to Kirsten and Sam, my best friends of more than a decade, the longest relationships of my adult life. Why are anniversaries reserved for romantic relationships, I wonder; why don’t we celebrate friend-iversaries? It’s a fleeting middle-of-the-night thought. So is the urge to fling open the front door, run outside, and join those happy drunken girls in song. The bedside clock blinks 4:11, less than two hours until my alarm will signal the start of the workweek. I know I need to sleep. I turn over, place a pillow over my ear, and nuzzle up to Gabe.
“Hello, my good girl,” he murmurs in his sleep, and tucks me snug under his arm, where I feel safe and happy.
Chapter 2
IF IT WEREN’T for her steady barrage of calls, I’d say my mom has a sixth sense for when I’m free to talk; in truth, she’s just persistent. I’m circling Bryant Park, a midday break from the computer screen and canned office air, weighing my lunch options, when my phone rings again. “Hi Mom.” To a background hum of her concern—no word from me all weekend, she worried a bear might’ve smelled my menstrual blood and eaten me alive, et cetera—I decide on a burrito, and order via pantomime from a man in a truck. “I didn’t have cell service, remember? I’m fine. We had fun!”
My mother barrels ahead into her run-on commentary of news and non-sequiturs, which I let wash over me, soothed by her voice but only half-listening: “You should switch to Verizon. And please talk to your brother about his birthday plans. Find out what he wants, or I'll assume it's train tickets to visit me, ha! Did you brown-bag your lunch, or are you treating yourself to one of those clever new grain bowls, or—what do they call it?—pokey? poke-eye? I can tell whatever you’re eating is messy—I hope you’re not wearing silk.” I chew more quietly, and dab my mouth with a napkin. “I’ll send you some Shout wipes. Costco practically paid me for a tub of them.”
“Not necessary, Mom” I reply, flicking a black bean from my sleeve that is indeed silk, and noting with annoyance the oval of grease left behind.
“The woods must’ve been a nice break from the city’s concrete and filth,” she says. I don’t respond. Since the moment my NYU diploma was in hand, my mom has alternated between demonizing New York and evangelizing the bliss of my hometown, trying not so subtly to lure me back home. She’s right, though; the trip was a nice break, and I happily relate little moments from the weekend—picking wild blackberries, cannonballing off the dock into the lake, stargazing at night.
Then she’s on to neighbor gossip, and I’m interested enough to hear about the people I grew up with moving on to new life stages, to promotions and home ownership and marriage and babies. As my mom tells it, her life is a constant stream of wishing Mazel Tov to friends on becoming mothers-of-the-bride and grandmothers. “But what a pain to have to slim down for a wedding,” she says. “Or to baby-proof a house—the den alone with all those sharp edges!” I almost laugh at how clearly she’s trying not to pressure me to marry or reproduce; it sends a stronger message than if she were direct about her wishes. Mostly I’m just relieved to hear that my mom is seeing enough friends for her to stack up her life (and mine) against theirs.
I pitch my burrito ends into the trash, and park myself on a bench. The sun is seductive, and the park sparse for summertime, and I’m not eager to return to my office.
The shift in our phone call is inevitable, occurring when my mom mentions Carol: “That yurt owner, she calls herself a ‘life coach fortune teller.’ Tell me, what on earth is that? Her web site mentions no professional training. She’s a snake oil salesman, if you ask me, convincing vulnerable people that she can predict their futures. Shameful!”
Rice and beans churn in my stomach, along with a blend of pity and pique. I picture my mother, alone late at night in the house that’s far too big for her but that she refuses to sell. She’s straight-backed at the computer, clutching a mug of Splenda-spiked tea as she deep-dives into Internet research about my trip—every detail of where we stayed, all the local amenities, perhaps even the traffic patterns back to Brooklyn. “I have to go,” I snap, cutting her off.
I’m left pondering Carol’s prognosis, wondering if she really could intuit something significant about Gabe and me. But I quickly excise the thought from my head. As much as my mom irritates me for being the world’s most determined busybody, she’s right: It’s this kind of irrational musing that lets Carol prey on people for profit. I get up and hurry back to work.
It’s a relief to be back in my office, with its cool air and sleek lines, and the clean slab of my desk. I text Gabe a heart. No response—he turns off his phone while he writes. But what if there was an emergency? I once asked him. Like what, he wanted to know, a lackluster rebranding of one of my company’s products? He wore his irresistible smile; otherwise I would’ve clocked him. “Ah, a dig at my ignoble job,” I replied, donning my own charming smile, “the one that so handily pays all of our bills.” Not heat or cable, Gabe pointed out. True, although Gabe is the one at home all day using said heat, and how should I have known if “writing” didn’t really mean binge-watching Game of Thrones? I’m reminded with a jolt: Gabe finished his novel. Three hours later, he texts me back:
Kiss kiss. Off to the grind.
Most days, our schedules barely overlap. Gabe starts prepping at four for the Nonno dinner rush, and I’m freed from my office by five-thirty. Which means dinner for one, if I’m staying in, or waiting until midnight to eat whatever Gabe doggie-bags—spaghetti carbonara, eggplant parmesan, Caesar salad and garlic bread. Nonno specializes in comfort food made with big blocks of butter and cream, which then sits brick-like in the stomach.
Entering our apartment tonight, I sense a strange presence. In a snap, I’m transported back to being six years old, in the months after my father’s death, when I suddenly grew terrified of monsters. I sensed them everywhere—under the bed, behind shower curtains, in the backs of closets. My mother would dial up the monsters’ mommies to tattle on them for being out past their bedtimes, then she’d shoo them away from our home and back to their own. I never really got over that fear of monsters, I’m ashamed to admit; I just buried it under a will to be brave. “Hello!” I holler now to the bedroom, “Hello!” to the bathroom, and the kitchen galley, and the closet. I finally spot it on the coffee table. I approach it timidly. Gabe’s novel.
I pick up the bulk of it, and run my fingers over the cover page, a sea of white with several small words stamped in the center: “The Charms of Dahlia, by Gabriel Dover.” Curiosity courses through me. Here is physical evidence of Gabe’s inner thoughts, and I realize I have absolutely no idea what they might be. My heart starts pounding, my skin grows goosebumps. I replace the m
anuscript on the table and carefully straighten its pages. I make myself grilled cheese, drink a glass of wine, and immerse myself in a bubble bath, until I hear Gabe’s key in the lock.
We trade our Monday run-downs over more wine and penne with vodka sauce, the slippery noodles a salve down my throat. Gabe impersonates his patrons table by table, a variety show that still entertains me months into its run, and I describe an interview with a job candidate who mispronounced every brand she mentioned: Uniqlo, LaCroix, Fage, even Adobe. (I don’t admit that I echoed the mispronunciations back to her so she wouldn’t feel bad.) When we finally slip into bed, it’s past one a.m. I’m half-asleep as Gabe nudges me and, with a tentative voice, asks, “So, did you start reading my novel?”
“Not yet,” I say. “Too much work tonight.” The lie slips out easily, and I roll over, pulsing with guilt. “Good night, love.”
But I do start reading, the next evening.
The Charms of Dahlia, by Gabriel Dover
CHAPTER 1
It had been five weeks, six days, and nine hours since Russell had kissed a girl. [Not a bad first line.] He knew this because it was the longest he’d gone in years without that kind of human contact. And because the moment Colleen confessed she’d slept with her lab partner and then kissed Russell goodbye was still replaying on a loop in his head, causing a thrumming ache in his chest. It was a point of pride for Russell that he and Colleen had dated for five full years, surviving even the supposedly impossible transition from high school to separate colleges. Colleen had stuck with Russell through regrettable haircuts and gruesome bouts of acne. Less to Russell’s credit, he’d witnessed Colleen grow from a gawky high school freshman to a full-fledged woman, her pancake-flat chest transforming to a C-cup, a topographical miracle in his teenage mind.
Yuck. I can’t help it, I roll my eyes.
Russell knew how lucky he’d been.
He hadn’t cared that his frat brothers all heckled him about his relationship with Colleen. They pointed at his framed photo of her in a collared shirt and hair ribbons and asked how much she put out (not at all until senior prom, plenty since then). And when Colleen broke it off, Russell wasn’t ashamed of his heartache, of skipping class for a week to wallow in video games and Bud Light. His buddies’ insistence that now he could finally enjoy college without the dead weight of a long-distance girlfriend didn’t move Russell. He knew they’d simply never been in love the way he had been. They didn’t know what it meant to have a partner and a best friend whom you trusted and respected to the core of your being.
The prose is just like Gabe talking in my ear, fluent and mellow. It’s sort of fun observing him observe this Russell character, who I guess might be a version of himself. The first shock comes on page two:
When Russell first laid eyes on Dahlia, he didn’t feel trust or respect. He felt lust (something which, if he were being honest with himself, he hadn’t felt towards Colleen, not really, for months). The party Russell’s friends dragged him to was shoulder to shoulder with bodies. Dahlia was in the kitchen doorway, moving her body to a song that, like Dahlia herself, Russell recognized but couldn’t have named. She was blocking the way to the keg, although no one was complaining. Her jet-black hair tumbled over narrow shoulders, and when she spun around, she fixed Russell with glinting almond eyes.
Jesus, I think, he barely even changed the name. Because Dahlia is so obviously a version of Gabe’s ex, Talia. Talia with the long dark hair, small frame, and hazel eyes. A flighty sprite, a so-called creative spirit, a vegan with a minor cocaine habit, perennial couch-crasher, all potential but… I’ve heard plenty about Talia over the past two years. “You, Molly, are the polar opposite of Talia, thank god,” Gabe once said, kissing me chastely on the nose, and then praising my reliability and well-adjustedness. I may as well have been a small child or a pet.
I met Talia just once, when Gabe and I were newly dating and she appeared beside me at his friend’s book launch, wrapped in an intoxicating perfume of white wine and lilac shampoo. She introduced herself, and I complimented her shoes: glitter pink jellies, despite the chilly night. I admired the boldness of the choice. My own feet were clad in scuffed Mary Janes. I marveled at how Talia held herself with total confidence. She looked luminous, almost electric, even with a constellation of zits spread across her cheek; I remember thinking she could’ve modeled if she were half a foot taller. But then Gabe spotted us. He marched over, grunted at Talia, and then yanked me to a faraway row of seats, filling me in on who she was with a furious whisper. He insisted we leave right after the reading, skipping the reception. What could be so threatening about an ex-girlfriend? I wondered at the time. How could a casual catch-up pose such a threat?
I keep reading, breath now held:
“What?” As Dahlia said it, her lips’ parting revealed a sliver of a scar on her cheek, a faint comma catching the light. She led with it, which was maybe what possessed Russell to walk right up to her and press the pad of his finger against that scar. It was rough, the one snag in her creamy-white complexion. Russell wanted desperately to know its origins, some past hurt that had stamped itself onto her face, which she now wore bravely for all the world to see. But Dahlia swatted his hand away, her reflexes fleet. “How dare you touch me?” she said, challenge flashing in her eyes. A second later she kissed him, her lips as soft as her tone was fierce. When she pulled away, she poked a finger hard into his chest. “I touch you.”
Ugh. I actually groan aloud.
By the end of the night, Russell had a sense that he would never trust Dahlia. He would never consider her a partner or a best friend. But he was already a little in love, and he knew this was only the beginning.
Dahlia is without a doubt Talia. Only, Talia’s acne has been replaced by Dahlia’s little scar—much cooler, much sexier. Wait. Mining my memory, I recall a news report about a massive fire in a nearby apartment complex. I was so moved by the victims’ burn scars, and the courage it must’ve taken them to face the world each day wearing their traumas right on the surface of their skin. Unlike most of us, they didn’t have the choice to hide their hurts away. I remember noting all of this to Gabe. But I wasn’t talking about a cute little half-moon on the face of an otherwise beautiful girl at a party. And I certainly wasn’t giving him permission to co-opt my observation into his novel—as a way to ogle a fictionalized version of his ex-girlfriend, no less.
I can hear my heartbeat. I can feel my hands shaking. Just a few pages in, and already I’m worn out.
I make sure to be asleep by the time Gabe comes home from work tonight, and in the morning, I’m gone before he’s up. He’s packed me chicken cacciatore for lunch, plus a tea bag whose label contains a question in his miniature handwriting: How do chickens dance? I think about it on and off all morning, before giving up and texting him from my lunch break:
I dunno, how?
Hours later, Gabe responds: Chick to chick!
But by this point, I’ve forgotten the setup to the joke, and I wonder if his message is some oblique attempt at a sext, or a reference to some inside joke I’ve long since forgotten.
• • •
That evening, I flip ahead in The Charms of Dahlia, wondering and worrying about the range of this Dahlia character’s so-called charms. In other words, I’m looking for sex. I come across a few choice phrases: “parting of firm thighs,” “sweet dew,” “cooing.” Jackpot. I scan the scene through a squint, thinking, awful, awful, awful. It’s somehow both treacle and pornographic, our smitten narrator worshipful of Dahlia’s lithe limbs, her—I can barely read it—“honeypot.” Blech. Is this what sex between Gabe and Talia was like, or has Gabe just done a horrendous job of capturing it? I’m not sure which option is worse.
I don’t know how to broach the subject of the novel with Gabe. But it just sort of slips out the next night, at my company’s happy hour. Gabe, who has the night off from Nonno, is a hit at parties, and with the Funhouse Branding crowd in particular. As soon as we enter th
e bar, my boss, Natalie, makes a beeline for him and claps him on the back. “How the hell are you? How’s the creative life treating you?”
“Oh, it’s humming along,” Gabe says. “Most days I marinate in my pajamas till the sun goes down. Then my beautiful patron, Ms. Molly Stone,”—he kisses me on the forehead—“comes home after a day of adulting, and I proudly read aloud the four or five sentences I’ve managed to scribble down in the past eight hours.”
Natalie laughs. “That sounds blissful. Can a corporate sell-out treat a struggling artist to a beer?”
It’s fun to watch Gabe enchant my coworkers with his witty self-deprecation (even if the truth is, never once have I returned home to him proudly reading aloud his day’s work to me). They can bask in his noble dedication to his art while feeling reassured by their own steady paychecks. His intrigue also happens to reflect well on me.
On my way to the bar, I’m ambushed by Melinda Lowe, our grating assistant designer. “Molly,” she squeals, her voice several decibels louder than necessary. “You must tell me about your weekend upstate. My Hamptons share has been a total bust. Mobbed beaches, crazy drama with the girls, and the bars have turned full-on bridge-and-tunnel. It’s been such a nightmare, I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation!”
I’m nodding politely, as a Human Resources associate does. I recount a few details from the yurt trip, to which Melinda responds as if I’m revealing the true meaning of life: Her eyes pop and she gestures with her glass of wine, at one point sloshing a quarter of its contents onto her shirt. “Oops,” she says, examining the patch of fuchsia that’s now stained a deep purple. Her laugh is a honk, but only I seem embarrassed.
“Excuse me,” I say, spotting Gabe across the room. Regrettably, he’s chatting with someone only slightly more tolerable than Melinda. Jonathan Wexler is the type to introduce himself with a bone-crushing handshake and both his first and last names; he’s Funhouse Branding’s self-proclaimed “focus-group guru.” At some point I must’ve mentioned to Gabe that Jonathan is a published author. I approach and drape an arm over Gabe’s shoulder.
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