The Kissing List (13 page)

“Don’t worry. You’ll get your turn,” Hayley says as she gets out of the driver’s seat to let Peter in. Alex jumps out, and
we watch the two of them arrange themselves, Hayley in the
V
of Peter’s legs with Peter’s chin just skimming the top of her head. It reminds me of when my dad used to let me sit in his lap and steer the truck down our gravel driveway when I was a child.

“This wouldn’t work if you were taller than Peter,” I say.

“No, it’s really better if the driver’s shorter than the director. When Geoff and I do it, I always drive.”

Hayley grips the steering wheel, and Peter clamps a hand over each of her eyes. “No peeking,” he says.

“Okay, Peter,” Hayley says. “It’s easy. You just tell me to go left or right, a little more or a lot. You’ll also tell me when I need to slow down or speed up. For now, we’ll stick to the basics: no U-turns, no passing other cars, or things like that.”

She wiggles between Peter’s legs. He flips up the sun visor, then replaces his hands over Hayley’s eyes. “Comfy?” he asks.

“Yep,” she answers. “And I can’t see a thing.”

“Okay, you’re going to turn slightly to the left,” Peter says. “You’ll go up a little bump to get back on the road. Take it slow. There’s nobody coming.”

Those are the last words we hear before the Wagoneer goes rolling away from us. Alex looks longingly after them.

“This is crazy,” I say.

He grins. “Hayley’s so crazy. She’s something else.”

After looking both ways, I dash across the road and walk slowly in the direction Hayley and Peter have driven. Several cars speed by, bulldozing air toward me, blowing my clothes against my body. Each time this happens, I slow down and hug
the shoulder a bit more. In the distance, I spot what I think is the green Wagoneer—the blind driver and the director—returning.

The car’s about a half mile away when I step into the lane of oncoming traffic.

“What are you doing?” Alex calls. “Sylvie!”

The car comes toward me until I imagine I can see Peter, wrapped around Hayley, and Peter can see me, standing in their path. I don’t move because I know Hayley wouldn’t if she were in my position. Then I shut my eyes, just like Hayley, and wonder whether Peter will tell her, “Time to brake.”

The low hum of the car grows louder. In the abstract, it’s a beautiful sound, like nighthawks diving from a high eddy of air for insects far below, but in practical terms, it means the car is coming closer. I know how little resistance my body offers, how easily I will be thrown into the air, how quickly I will drop. “Sylvie!” Alex shouts. “Jesus Christ, Sylvie!”

Then something shrieks, and the air fills with the acrid smell of burning rubber. I open my eyes; the car is about ten feet in front of me. The door jerks open, and Hayley falls out of the car and onto the pavement. She rises, brushing off her hands. “What the fuck, Peter? Why didn’t you tell me to stop?”

Peter says something that I can’t hear, or at least I think he does because Hayley takes a step toward the car and yells some more: “What? That’s no excuse.”

He gets out. “I was going to,” he insists. “There was still space.” He reaches for her. “Are you okay?”

Hayley snatches her hand away from him. “I cheated. I peeked. I felt your fucking body tense, and I waited for you to
give me something, you know, like ‘Stop. Sylvie’s in the middle of the road,’ and I waited, and Jesus Christ, you just sat there saying nothing.”

She kicks the front tire, hard. “What the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Peter stands there, his hands at his sides like useless things. Alex is still on the shoulder. The only person who moves is Hayley. She strides toward me, taking purposeful steps. I expect her to begin screaming, but she doesn’t. A car approaches from the opposite direction, slows down, and from the window, a man calls out, “Everything all right there?” Hayley hugs me, and I wonder how the man must see us, the four of us standing in a constellation around the car in the road, how differently he must see us from the way we see ourselves, how differently I see Hayley and even myself since she stopped the car. She is squeezing me so tight, I can feel her heart hammering against my chest, and for the first time in what seems like ages, I feel my own.

To: Philip

Fr: Anna

Dt: July 12, 2011

Re: Why We Didn’t

The purpose of this memo is to—

Never mind.

You know, by now, that the memo is a form I like, one that
we often use in my business for thinking through the hierarchy of effect (how to move consumers from awareness of a product to the conviction to buy it). A disclaimer: I am not trying to sell you anything. I am not even trying to sell you my version of the truth. I know you will find holes in my argument, illogical conclusions—we may even disagree upon the facts. My mind is far from your brief-drafting machine, a brain capable of producing meticulous legal arguments just as soon as you’ve sucked down your morning coffee. I know, I know: it doesn’t come easy, and such assumption-making about your intelligence and all your accomplishments is unfair. I’ve learned (not without practice, correction, nagging, even machine-gun bursts of impatience) that the last thing you want to hear is “You’re so brilliant and accomplished, et cetera, et cetera, I know you’ll get it done.” Instead, as instructed, I have tried my best to say the following:

I hear that you are stressed out, and I hear that things are very difficult for you right now. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.

But sorry. Back to the matter at hand.

I wish interpretation were as easy as

If
x
= 3, and
x
+
y
= 10, then what is
y
equal to?

Ergo: If we were having so many conflicts over things large (whether to have one child or two, buy a bigger place, invite your best friend to our wedding, given your shared history) and small (organic versus nonorganic produce, the amount of meat in our
diet, the best bicycle route back and forth to the park, allocation of bookshelf space in the living room, and so on), then the bickering and long, hurt silences would not likely diminish after we tied the knot. But future happiness is tricky to predict, especially when your married and partnered friends are counseling that hard work equals long and happy unions while also narrating half-funny, half really fucking seriously alarming stories whereby wedding planning and wedding ceremonies are likened to haunted houses filled with hidden demons and people who give fright merely because you didn’t expect them to appear.

Let’s face it: you and me, Phil, we were hard workers. We’d swallowed that most hallowed American value hook, line, and bait. So much misplaced ambition, so much longing for intimate recognition. We wanted what almost everyone thinks they want: to fall in love and live happily ever after.

August 2009

We were in New York, and you wanted to see a show of male nudes at the kind of midtown gallery where no one speaks above a whisper. This seemed like a strange choice—we’d only been dating for two months, were still working out the kinks of our
own erotic life—and there we were, our shoulders brushing as we looked at naked men lying like logs stretched across roaring streams and naked men making coffee (the ruffled apron a nice touch) and naked men against black backgrounds staring defiantly at the camera, naked men whose nakedness was not the point, and naked men who were decidedly supposed to be naked.

I did know at this point that you were sort of fascinated with nudity, because on our second or third date you’d sat me down at your computer and showed me a video of a shadowy figure dancing and singing haunting songs—sometimes more of the body was visible, sometimes less, but it was still clearly naked.

“Is that you?” I blushed as more of you came into sight. Your hands hovered above my shoulders like moths.

“Yes,” you answered in your very serious way.

I stayed over for the first time that night but slept in the living room. You said you weren’t ready for sex, but we could share a bed, and I said, “Let’s wait. Waiting is more exciting.” Lying on the couch, I imagined you tossing and turning two floors above me, a prince driven senseless by a pea buried under his tower of mattresses.

At the gallery your gaze lingered on a young man who’d just tumbled out of bed, who looked like he was ready for a stack of pancakes. “How does this make you feel?” you asked.

“Weird.” There it is—that terribly vague word that, nevertheless, seems to describe so much of our relationship.

“Does it turn you on?”

“Not really,” I answered.

We walked on to Saks, where you began taking pictures of mannequins. This was another one of your projects when we first met—out-of-focus photographs that made the human form disappear into an abstract arrangement of colors. Though you made your living as a lawyer, you were an exceptionally talented photographer. That’s when I asked you: “Is this what you and your last girlfriend did?” The whole morning had been so odd, I felt like an understudy who’d stepped into another woman’s lead. You closed your eyes. This was your tendency when you were thinking. By the end, this habit could whirl me into a tornado of irritation and even shouting. You hated this—you called me violent—but we weren’t there yet. I still had the patience of an average person. Standing on the busy sidewalk, your camera cradled in your hands, your eyes closed. Your pauses—God, I’d always be imagining the worst—they could go on and on. I’d meant my question to be playful—playful in a way that was also seeking reassurance, wondering, trying to establish a boundary, etc. I realize now this wasn’t the most direct way to ask for what I needed. As you continued standing, I felt the flood of a caffeinated buzz, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just jittery and sharp, and I started to imagine the worst.
⁴

When your eyes finally opened, you spoke with great deliberation. “I don’t know why you’re asking me this question. I don’t know what you want me to say. Does the fact that I’ve
done these things with other women take away from doing them with you? Perhaps you’re setting the bar too high?” I shrank back because what you said was both logical and far worse than I had anticipated. You added: “
You’re
very special to me.” Do you remember? This was the weekend you told me you loved me. And I said I loved you too.

Your friend, his name was Jawara, was having a costume party. It was his forty-fifth birthday, and though he was now a hotshot lawyer whipping around the partner track, you told me in confidence that he had once led a different life as a dancer in the Senegalese Ballet. It was amusing to see pinstripe-suited Jawara baring his beautiful chest, his costume a red grass skirt and matching cap crisscrossed with conch shells. He was usually so grave—and frankly boring when he rattled on about mergers—that it was difficult to imagine him doing anything as light as leaping. It was hard to remember that, yes, of course, he had a life in his body. Everyone does. Jawara was a good man when all was said and done, despite the fact that his Halloween party was probably the beginning of the end.