Perfect Fifths (33 page)

He cries out, "Jessica!"

Without hesitation, Marcus scrambles out of the shower stall, his sopping feet slip-sliding across the slick tiles. He bursts through the bathroom door and sees

Jessica thrashing around on the bed, choking on agonizing sobs.

He rushes over to her, envelops her entire body in a wet embrace. "What is it?" he pleads. "Tell me!"

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Jessica gasps for air. She takes a ragged, gurgly breath. She's shocked by her body's response to this good news. She had no idea just how much emotion she'd

bottled inside until it all came gushing out. "She's okay!"

"Who's okay?"

"Sunny ... hit by a car... in the hospital... coma ..."

Her half-sentences are horrifying enough. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"

She squirms. "I didn't know how deep you wanted to get."

"Deep," Marcus says without hesitation. "Always deep." He cradles her in his still-wet arms, strokes her hair. "Tell me more."

Jessica obliges. She tells Marcus about Sunny, the only Girl she worked with over the past two years who had become more than just a character in a story, but a complicated person who defied all narrative conventions. This process—from one of many to the One—began, ironically, with the give-and-take exchange of—what else?—stories. Jessica had once told Sunny the story of the decoupage Barry Manilow toilet seat cover.

Sunny had loved that story, had become slightly obsessed

with that story, a story so beautiful and bizarre, unlike anything that she—ever-boyfriendless at sixteen, for whom the delayed loss of virginity was, in her opinion, well-nigh inevitable to go to whatever frat boy was first to get her sufficiently but not prohibitively passed-out drunk during college orientation week—had come close to experiencing herself. To Sunny, this story begged to celebrated and commemorated through—yes!—a ring tone. A ring tone! Ha! What could be a better example of the inane ways that people chose to express themselves through mass consumerism?

"She's why I'm getting my master's in education," Jessica explains. "I liked many of my mentees, but it was Sunny who made me realize that I could be good at this.

That I could inspire young women the way Mac or even Haviland inspired me ... Oh, fuck, I sound so goddamn pageant. I better snark on someone quick!"

Marcus laughs without any sound. It's a distracted laugh. He releases Jessica just enough so he can look her in the face. "There's something I should tell you."

twenty-two

essica nods to encourage this confession. For a split second, she prepares to hear him confirm the worst of the rumors blitzing her brain:

He wants to be just friends.

He doesn't want to be friends or anything else.

He loves another woman.

He doesn't love me.

"I won an Inter-Ivy Fellowship."

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She says nothing, anticipating that there's more to it than that.

"It provides tuition for any graduate school program in the Ivy League."

Jessica nods slowly, almost afraid to acknowledge what this might mean for her.

'That's why I was in New York City a few weeks ago. I was touring Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs."

What it might mean for them.

There is a thoughtful pause. Jessica's eyes spring wide-open, but her lips shut tight.

"What?" Marcus asks. "You look like you want to say something."

Jessica makes a show of looking away. "You're naked."

Marcus looks down as if he himself is just discovering this fact.

The rest is unnecessary.

Jessica wriggles herself from Marcus's embrace and sits up on the bed. He remains kneeling on the floor beside her, then drops face-first into the duvet cover.

Jessica cannot tell if this is a gesture of supplication or defeat, neither of which sits well with her. She grazes the top of his scalp with her fingernails. He moans into the Egyptian cotton.

"I think I've changed my mind," she says simply.

He lifts his head. And when their eyes lock, there is no question what Jessica is referring to. She skims his right bicep with her fingertips, lingering just long enough to acknowledge what mistake was once there but isn't anymore.

She continues, "Strange but true: A woman finds herself on line with the Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club ..."

He brushes his mouth against her closed eyelids. "Strange but true: A man receives a prophecy from The Queen..."

She breathes into his ear. "Marcus Flutie."

He whispers back. "Jessica Darling."

Lips slide across cheeks rough and smooth.

Mouths meet and ...

"Ow!" yelps Jessica. "You bit me! You nipped my lip!"

Marcus smiles knowingly Jessica slides lengthwise across the bed, saying nothing. Marcus waits ... one second ... five seconds ... ten seconds ... a lifetime ... until he can't wait anymore.

"Are you quiet because you're surprised or because you're repulsed?" Marcus asks.

"Neither," Jessica replies. "I'm quiet because we've done enough talking."

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twenty-three

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twenty-four

Room 2010 is cast in penumbral early-morning light. Jessica's flight leaves in three hours. Marcus can return to campus anytime.

Jessica leans over the bathroom sink, wiping suds out of her eyes with a washcloth. The stubby end of a travel toothbrush juts out of her foamy mouth. Marcus

comes up from behind, wraps his arms around her and nuzzles the nape of her neck.

"You never finished telling me about the happy stories." His voice resonates against her skin like a finely
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tuned bass string.

She blinks open her eyes, takes out the toothbrush, spits. "Happy stories?"

"The significance of happy stories told from a third-person point of view."

She taps the brush three times on the edge of the sink. "Most happy stories are fantasies that never happened. A form of wish fulfillment."

"Surely there are some happy stories that have actually happened."

She rests the toothbrush on the countertop. "Telling happy stories that actually happened lends a sort of fairy-tale quality to real life. They remind the teller and the listener of the magic that can be found in the mundane if you pay close attention."

"Mission statement?" Marcus asks.

Jessica smiles at him in the mirror. "Mission statement." She turns around and presses her lips into that patch of skin at the base of his collarbone that had been

untouchable, uncontemplatable, only eighteen hours ago.

"Well, this will make a good happy story," Marcus says. "Whenever you decide to tell it."

At first Jessica nods in agreement, the top of her ponytail striking his chin with every head bob. But then she corrects herself with a decisive head shake. "We," she says.

"We?"

"Whenever we tell it," she says. "Because it's our story."

Jessica slips through his arms and out of the bathroom. She pulls back the blackout shades one side at a time, filling the room with an orangey-pink glow, the

stunning kind of sunrise that can be seen only in a chemical skyline. She gazes out the window and down below to the hotel parking lot, which is obstructed by a barely navigable maze of plywood and scaffolding, concrete and construction cones. A patriotic red-white-and-blue banner that extends a whole city block, from one end of a temporary wall to another, reads:

EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCES

WE ARE TAKING APART YESTERDAY

TO MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW

Jessica casts a backward glance toward the bathroom. Marcus is hunched over the sink, removing her toothbrush from his mouth. She's thinking about the

toothbrush and how some couples who have been married for decades—like the middle-aged couple who gasped at them in the elevator, or her own parents—might choose to share their lives but not a toothbrush. And that's okay. She's thinking about Bridget and Percy and how happy she is that they are committing themselves to a lifetime of toothbrush sharing. She's thinking about telling Sunny about the toothbrush the next time she talks to her, if only to hear the eighteen-year-old lecture—in the way that only naive know-it-alls can—on how sharing a toothbrush, even with someone you've slept with, even with someone who is your soul mate, crosses the line between intimacy and ickiness.

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Marcus spits, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Jessica is overpowered by love, not just for him but for the life she's living right now. She can't wait to tell Sunny how lucky she is to be awake and alive, how much she has to look forward to in life, that there's nothing more beautiful than choosing to spend that life with someone, sharing everything that is intimate and icky and in between. She can't wait to tell Hope in person about everything that has happened over the last eighteen hours, certain her best friend will understand why she didn't blurt it out over the phone, as best friends understand these things. She can't wait to tell Marin that maybe, just maybe, the breathless answer to her own question will turn out to be true.

/ can't wait! I can't wait! I can't wait! When she looks at Marcus, she feels just like a child bursting with big news, desperate to shout it loud enough for the whole world to hear. He turns his head and returns her goofy grin, a simple gesture that instantly tames the incorrigible mantra bouncing around her brain. / can wait, Jessica thinks. /

have waited. I don't have to wait anymore.

And it's all at once—between thoughts of dental hygiene, devotion, friendship, life, and death—that Jessica becomes convinced that everything that has happened to her and Marcus for the last ten years—whether through strange-but-true coincidence or cosmic design, she doesn't really care—has led them right here.