“Has it ever been like it was with us with anyone else?” Rachel asked. “You don’t have to be graphic,” she said hastily, rolling against him and burying her face in his chest, as if he was going to snap his fingers and force her to watch some videos. “I don’t need to know where the rest of those condoms went. I’ll just tell myself that the Condom Fairy came and took them. But I just . . .”
She reached up, letting her fingers graze his cheek, then stroke his neck. They both felt it—it was as if she’d struck a match or turned a strong magnet toward iron filings. For Andy, who lived intimately in his body, in tune with every twinge and flutter, the sensation was akin to being shocked.
He heard Rachel laugh, a little ruefully. “Do you remember when I asked you . . .”
“. . . if it would always be this way?”
“Maybe,” she said, “it’s that we’re each other’s destiny.” She’d made her voice deep and jokey, but Andy wasn’t in a teasing mood.
“Stay with me,” he said. He bent down, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, the tip of her nose, then her lips, at first lightly, then slowly, a lingering kiss, one that told her, in a way his words couldn’t, that he adored her, that he always had, that he always would. “Please,” he said, and kissed her some more, and when he finally lifted his lips from hers, Rachel raised her head, looking at him as she said, “I will.”
Andy
2004
His cell phone hummed on the bedside table, and he reached across Maisie to answer. Maisie slept in the nude, winter or summer, at ease in her body, and justifiably proud . . . but she also slept with her mouth wide open, due to an uncorrected deviated septum that Andy suspected, but had not confirmed, was the result of two separate nose jobs. Also, she snored. But she’d told him that he kicked in his sleep, that his legs churned like he was running at least once a night, which he figured made them even.
He and Maisie had met in a New York Sports Club a little over a year ago. He’d been in New York for the annual USATF Indoor Track & Field Championships, and the hotel’s treadmills were broken, so they’d sent him across the street. There, he’d seen Maisie pacing around an elliptical machine, frowning at the blank display board.
“Hey,” she’d said, sauntering over in skintight black leggings and a white cotton top that was alluringly sheer where she’d sweated through it. Her smile and her gaze, attentive and intimate, made him feel like they were in a bar at closing time instead of at a gym at nine in the morning. “Sorry to bother you, but I can’t figure this out,” she said, and lowered her voice. “I think I broke it.”
Andy found himself whispering back, “What’d you do?”
“I don’t know.” Her pretty lips formed a pout. “Can you come look? I’d be very grateful.”
As it turned out, the only thing wrong with the elliptical machine was that someone had unplugged it. By the time she’d climbed aboard, Andy had learned that her name was Maisie, that she was a model, and that she actually knew who he was. “I recognized you right away from that feature in Runner’s World. I used to run track in high school—nothing like you, of course, not even close—but I still run to stay in shape, and I still get all the magazines.” She gave him a smile and put her hand, gently and briefly, on his forearm. “I’m rooting for you to make it to Athens.”
Andy thanked her. Maisie toyed with the strap of her sports bra and said, “I never, ever do this, but, if you’re free tonight, is there any chance you’d want to have dinner with me? Just, you know, as friends.” And Andy, who’d been traveling solo for two weeks while Rachel helped set up the Family Aid Society’s West Coast office in L.A., surprised himself by telling her, “Sure.”
That night, he’d met her in the hotel lobby in white linen pants and a dark-blue shirt, both borrowed from Mitch, the team’s fashion plate. Maisie had been wearing a blue-and-white sundress. “We match!” she’d said, delighted, and took Andy’s arm. He noticed how the dress left her shoulders bare, along with lots of cleavage, which Rachel never showed, because of her scar. Maisie smelled of white wine and cigarettes, an alluring bad-girl scent . . . and she was stunning, like God had taken a normal girl, pared her down until she was elegantly slim, given her high cheekbones that made her look mysterious, even dangerous, then softened her face with a sweet smile and beautiful lips, and eyes so big they were almost cartoonish.
The restaurant was a place that even he could tell was fashionable, buzzing with conversation, full of gorgeous women with important-looking men (and important-looking women with average-looking men). He felt people’s eyes on them as they walked to their table. Maisie ordered a white-wine spritzer, but when Andy asked for water, she’d asked him, “Is it okay if I drink? It won’t bother you? I know you’ve got a race tomorrow.”
“No, it’s fine,” he’d said. He couldn’t help but compare Maisie’s attitude with Rachel’s. “Oh, I shouldn’t,” Rachel would say . . . then she’d order some sweet cocktail with maraschino cherries and sometimes an umbrella, eight ounces of booze and liquefied sugar. She’d urge him to take a sip. When he wouldn’t, she would roll her eyes and say, “Is one sip really going to hurt you? It’s calories. You need those, right?” Maybe she didn’t do that all the time—in fact, maybe she’d done it only once or twice—but Andy had to admit that having a girl put his needs so far ahead of her own felt good.
When the menus came, Maisie didn’t even open hers. “Grilled swordfish, no sauce, whatever green veggies you’ve got,” she told the waiter . . . which was exactly what Andy was planning on getting.
“I can’t tell you how much I admire you,” Maisie began.
Andy waved away the compliment. She looked at him, her gaze intent and her drawl entrancingly sweet. “You’re being modest, but you don’t have to be modest with me. I used to run, remember? I know how it feels, when it’s the last lap and every single part of you is burning and it hurts to breathe and you don’t think you can even pick your foot up again and you find a way to do it.” She reached across the table and gave his hand a little squeeze. “I’d love to see you race sometime.”
“You can come tomorrow,” he heard himself say. “Madison Square Garden.”
“I believe I know where that is,” Maisie said, waving away the bread basket and giving him a smile.
He tried asking her about herself. At first she didn’t want to say much, leaving him with the impression that her early years hadn’t been easy, and that they had left her with a determination to work hard, to scoop up all the prizes the world could offer. She had grown up in a tiny town in Georgia, with a single mother, like him. She, too, had been an only child, the repository of her mother’s ambitions, but when he tried to ask her more about her hometown, her modeling, even her high-school track team, she’d turn the conversation back to him. She was a wonderful listener, her eyes always on his face, barely moving, hardly breathing . . . and then when she spoke she would ask some follow-up question that showed how closely she’d been paying attention. It made him feel like the most important person in the world, and he found himself doing some creative editing with his answers. He wasn’t leaving Rachel out of his story entirely—that would have been wrong, and probably impossible—but he was definitely downplaying her importance, in a way he knew would have infuriated Rachel if she’d been there.
“You’ve been dating the same girl since high school?” Maisie’s expression was respectful and, Andy thought, a little amused, the same way some of his teammates looked when he told them that Rachel had been his high school sweetheart. Andy nodded. He couldn’t stop looking at Maisie. It was like she was the next step in female evolution, with her fine bones and tawny skin and long, straight black hair, with a beauty that could have been any kind of ethnic mixture, from Mediterranean to Israeli to Greek to part African American. Eventually, Andy learned that Maisie’s father, like his, was black, that her mother was French-Canadian, that her given name was Marie-Suzanne, a
nd that she’d changed it when she’d shown up at Eileen Ford’s offices when she turned eighteen and found that they already had three Maries and two Marias on the books.
“When I showed up, I told them that I knew where I want to be in five years.”
“Where’s that?”
She gave him a sweet smile, a girlish giggle, and then said, “On the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.”
Andy wondered, briefly, if she thought that dating an athlete would somehow improve her chances. He was deciding that it was paranoid and ridiculous when she said, “I’ve already done a shoot with them. No cover yet, but I’m on their radar, so it’s not completely crazy.”
“What’s your ten-year plan?” he asked. She looked thoughtful, tapping one finger against her perfect lips.
“By then I probably won’t be modeling anymore.” She said this without audible disappointment. “Models have a sell-by date, and even if I get all the work done, thirty is thirty. That’s why I need to concentrate on building out my brand. Figuring out, ‘What does Maisie stand for?’ ”
Beware of people who talk about themselves in the third person, Rachel liked to say. But Andy was fascinated instead of repelled. Maybe referring to themselves that way was something only really, really attractive women could get away with.
“What does Maisie stand for?” As soon as he’d said it, he realized how flirty it sounded. Oh, well.
“That’s the question,” she said. “Is it swimwear? Soft goods? Lingerie? Cindy Crawford designs furniture. Kathy Ireland’s line for Kmart sells more than Martha Stewart’s.” Andy, who’d thought that models past their sell-by dates mostly hung on to fame and fortune by marrying rock stars or getting bit parts in movies, was impressed as he listened to Maisie parse her post-modeling future, touching on Christie Brinkley’s line of hair extensions, Iman’s cosmetics, and Tyra Banks’s and Heidi Klum’s respective efforts in television. Andy found that he was nodding, mouthing the words Yes and I know and I get it as she spoke, thinking he’d never met anyone so equipped to understand him, to understand that he had two lives to plan for, his current existence and his second life, the one you’d be stuck with after the life that you’d always wanted was over.
Andy learned that Maisie lived in New York, sharing an apartment with three other girls on the Upper East Side, but wasn’t romantic about the city, the way Rachel was. “The truth is, I could be anywhere. It’s embarrassing. Everyone from home wants to hear about the museums and the theater, but honestly I just don’t have time, and even if I did, I’d never spend two hundred dollars to watch a band or a show. I’d rather just download the music.” She tilted her head, smiling, like she was imagining music, or maybe the money she’d saved by not paying for concert tickets.
He nodded, agreeing completely, thinking about how it bugged him the way Rachel went on and on about the city, always comparing Oregon with New York, complaining about how there was no good Indian food and how you couldn’t even get a pizza delivered after ten o’clock. “I know it’s beautiful here,” she’d said, pointing out a particular shade of the sky or describing the way the air tasted, as if air had a taste. He knew she wasn’t happy, that she was always trying to convince herself that Oregon was fine, even though she still subscribed to New York magazine, and sometimes he’d catch her reading the listings, sighing over some gallery show or performance that she wouldn’t be there to see.
As diners came and went, they discussed their workouts, their diets, and which airport of all the ones they’d flown in and out of was the least terrible. When the food arrived, Maisie didn’t take a bite and then close her eyes and sigh in ecstasy, as Rachel sometimes did, or demand to know whether his own dinner was good, and glare when he failed to be sufficiently appreciative. Maisie simply cut her swordfish in half and pushed one portion, untouched, off to the side of her plate, then ate the rest in small, methodical bites.
Eventually, Andy got her to tell him a few stories—how she’d taught herself to smile with her lips pressed together because her teeth were terrible until the agency paid for veneers, about how she’d had no friends and no one had asked her to junior or senior prom. Andy nodded and made sympathetic noises, but he wasn’t sure he believed her. Her anecdotes had a polished quality, like she had read a book on what could possibly make a beautiful girl sound sympathetic and memorized the answers. When the talent scout had spotted her in a mall’s food court when she was seventeen, she said, she’d assumed the guy was playing a trick on her, right up until he’d handed her his business card. She’d been gawky and flat-chested; she’d towered six inches above the tallest boys, and she’d been skeletally thin—an advantage for runway work, but a look that had done her no favors with the guys in Valdosta.
“And none of the girls in school liked me,” she said. This at least sounded like it might have been true.
“I bet they just hated you because you’re . . . you know,” said Andy, unsure of the words to express Maisie’s beauty, or whether he was even supposed to mention it explicitly, whether it was somehow gauche or rude. Even though it wasn’t fair, he couldn’t stop comparing her with Rachel, whose face, in his memory, was pretty but not stunning, whose hair was nice, but nothing like Maisie’s shiny mane, and who, if he was being honest, had gained a few pounds since she’d moved in with him. Everyone else in his world was so fitness-minded. Even the civilians he’d meet in the sneaker shop or at the diner were all in training for a sprint-distance triathlon or an ultramarathon or an Ironman . . . and there was Rachel, content with a two-mile hike followed by a picnic, followed by her complaining all the way back about how she was stuffed and how her boots were giving her blisters and why couldn’t they just take a nap.
While Maisie smiled and put her hand on his forearm, he thought about the way Rachel pronounced NFL as “Niffle,” and then laughed, every single time. He considered how disagreeable she could be at parties. “I’m sorry,” she’d say after Andy had asked why she’d change the subject or even walk away every time the conversation swung back to running . . . which, in a room full of runners, was often. “I have limits. There’s only so many times I can hear about whether tempo runs with pickups are better than fartlek intervals, or whether it’s heat, then ice, or ice, then heat, or why the Kenyans are dominating the mile. Is it so bad to ask someone what they’re reading? Except,” she sighed, “it’s always Once a Runner.”
At his prompting, Maisie told him about her Sports Illustrated shoot, how they’d flown six models to a resort off the coast of Croatia in the middle of March. The call time had been 4:00 a.m., the ocean water, crystalline and turquoise, had been freezing, and the shore was so rocky that three of the girls had cut their feet and they’d had to photoshop out the blood.
“So of course I was so nervous that I forgot to pack a brush. I asked one of the hairdressers if she had one that I could borrow, so she gives me a key to her suite, and I get there, and I scream, because it looks like a mass murder, with, like, twelve scalps laid out on the bed . . .” Eventually she’d learned that the hairdressers had packed multiple sets of extensions for each girl. “SI did focus groups. Men are big on hair,” she said. “They also like it when the girls touch each other. That’s a direct quote from some guy’s survey. ‘I like it when they’re touching each other.’ ”
Andy had listened, enchanted: by her beauty, by her stories, by the way people looked at them, how every man in the place seemed to regard him with respect bordering on awe. Across the table, smiling from behind long, lowered eyelashes, Maisie seemed both exotic and familiar, both like him and unlike anyone he’d ever met.
He’d thought that he’d been happy, enjoying the routines of coupled life: simple meals at the little table in the kitchen, the way Rachel’s stuff had blended with his—her framed art posters on the wall, her lotion in the bathroom, her books scattered everywhere, the way the apartment would smell like her shampoo for hours after she got out
of the shower, the sound of her voice rising and falling as she talked her clients through their crisis of the day. But here in this restaurant, on a cool, clear spring night, with a lovely woman across the table and the city glittering outside, he decided that maybe things with Rachel had gotten a little bit stale. He was only twenty-seven. Was he really ready to settle down? Besides, Rachel took him for granted, hanging around in sweatpants, spending entire evenings with a mud mask on her face. A few nights before she’d left for Los Angeles, he’d been doing his laundry and she’d been reading on the couch. He’d gone to kiss her and had noticed that, in addition to the garlic and the spices from the vegetarian chili she’d made, there was another smell in the room. With a pair of clean track pants in his hand, he’d said, “Jesus, was that you?”
“A thousand pardons,” she’d said. Then she’d started giggling . . . and, eventually, he started laughing, too. But was that what their life was going to be like? Was that what he had to look forward to? Mud masks and unannounced farting?
Maisie reached across the table and took his hand, tracing the lines with the tip of a fingernail. “Your love line. It’s very strong.” When she looked up, into his eyes, he felt his heart skip. Andy shifted in his seat. He and Rachel hadn’t had sex before he left, which was their routine. “My stomach’s kind of funny,” she’d said, slipping out of bed to get the Pepto-Bismol right after he’d reached for her, and between that and the farting he’d left her alone. “Your life line,” said Maisie. He could feel her breath on the palms of his hands. “I see lots of success. Blue ribbons. Gold medals.” Andy smiled. Rachel was hundreds of miles away. She’d never find out. And wasn’t he entitled? He’d slept with only seven women in his entire life. He was a world-class runner, an Olympic contender, possessor of one of the longest winning streaks in all of American collegiate track history. He should have been getting, as Mitch liked to say, more ass than a toilet seat at a girls’ school, and he could still tally his conquests on two hands, with fingers left over. If his teammates ever learned he’d had this chance and failed to close the deal, they’d laugh him right off the track. It was like you’d had TV dinners for a year and someone offered you filet mignon; like you’d been riding a bike—a nice one, but a bike, still—and someone handed you the keys to a sports car, something low-slung and beautiful with a motor that purred when you touched your foot to the pedal.
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