Perfect Fifths (2 page)

Marcus waits until she stands up before he takes a chance. "Jessica?"

It's the voice that reaches her first, not the correct first name uttered by the voice. Her head bolts up, and when her eyes corroborate with her ears, her breath

catches and her hands fly up to her face. She breathes in and out through her palms, once, twice, before taking them away. Miraculously, he's still there. She is

perfectly still for the first time since vaulting out of bed this morning.

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"Marcus!"

He nods to confirm what should be obvious but is still too unbelievable.

"Marcus," she repeats, softer.

He nods again.

"I..." she begins. "I'm ..."

They are standing inches apart, not touching. Jessica clutches her ergonomic teardrop-shaped carry-on bag to her chest, sensing that the moment to embrace has passed. A spontaneous show of emotion now would be too conspicuous, too much, too late.

"Late!" Jessica blurts. "I'm too late."

Hundreds of passengers swirl around and away from them, like so many snowflakes in a blizzard.

"Oh," Marcus says. He's contemplating whether he could get away with playfully swatting her arm in what he hopes is a neutral zone, between her shoulder and

elbow. Behind her flashes the sign. The gold-foil box of gourmet chocolates. missing HER. The string of black South Sea pearls, missing her like crazy. The sign. The Sign. He wants to make contact when he makes his confession, that he'd heard her name, and how he had hoped for the illogical, the impossible, to be true: that it was really her. And today of all days. He's about to touch her, then deliver the befitting wishes, when she casts a nervous sidelong glance at his turned-out palm, the part of him that dares to come too close. He drops the offending hand and stuffs it deep into the front pocket of his corduroys, knowing there's no time for such intimacies.

He says nothing.

"We should—" Jessica starts. She's rocking from side to side now, an anxious, joyless dance. "You should—" The pronoun change doesn't go unnoticed by either of them. "E-mail. Or, I don't know. Text. Something ..."

"Something," he says simply.

Marcus musters the courage to look Jessica right in the face. She still wears her hair like an afterthought, pulled back with a few quick twists of a rubber band. If she removed the elastic and shook it out, he would breathe in the fruity scent of shampoo, certain that the chestnut tresses resting against her neck are still damp from her morning shower. He finds some comfort in this knowledge, as well as in the overall familiarity of her features, which haven't changed that much since he last saw her.

But he must admit to himself—only to himself, never to her, even if she'd had the time or the temerity to ask—that her casual loveliness is more than a little washed-out.

Her eyes are tired, tinged pink, and buffered by puffy purple undereye circles. Her lips are crackled dry, her nostrils chapped and flaking around the corners, perhaps from too many rubs with a paper towel, a wool coat sleeve, or some other rough tissue substitute. He hopes that her careworn appearance is an aberration, that her immune system is down but she's not. He wants her to be sick or tired, but not sick and tired, or just plain sad.

"I'd catch up if..." Her cheeks glow an embarrassed red, and her pale complexion is better for it.

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"If you had time," Marcus finishes for her, trying to determine from her voice whether she's suffering from a cold or something worse.

"If—" she starts again, but doesn't finish.

She can't look up at him. If she looks up at him, she will see him. And if she sees him, she'll be compelled to ask questions she doesn't have time for. Instead, she concentrates on her own familiar Converses, but even that fails to bring her relief. That they both still wear their same favorite brands of sneakers after all these years is only a minor revelation, and yet even this tiny glimpse of his world going on without her—and hers without him—is almost too much for Jessica to bear. What else hasn't changed? Does he still meditate for hours on the floor of his closet? Jessica braces herself with a deep breath. Would he still smell like smoldering leaves if she leaned in close enough? Does he still compose elliptical, poetic songs on his acoustic guitar?

Derelict lyrics force themselves to the front of her consciousness, a ballad softly sung when they were still teenagers, the only one Marcus ever wrote or sang for her:

I confess, yes, our fall was all my fault

If you kissed my eyes, your lips would taste salt...

Her watery eyes stay fixed on the unraveled seams splitting his mossy V-neck a quarter inch lower than the designer's intentions. This is an expensive-looking

sweater—two-ply cashmere, she guesses—and she doubts Marcus could afford to buy it for himself.

She assumes it was a gift from someone who is very familiar with his face, one who knew how this gray-green shade would shake loose those evasive hues from his multifaceted brown eyes. Definitely a gift. He doesn't even have the cash to care for this item properly with regular dry-cleaning. She imagines him blithely tossing the sweater into one of his college's communal washing machines, along with his T-shirts, jeans, and underwear, the tender cashmere threads coming more and more undone.

"Go," he urges gently, pointing toward Gate C-88. "Don't miss your flight."

She pulls a wad of scrunched-up paper towel out of the front pocket of her hoodie, rubs her nose, and jerks her head in agreement. They offer hasty good-byes but no hugs, not even a handshake, before she takes off for the gate.

"I'm sorry I ran you over," Jessica calls out, barely casting a glance back as she hurtles herself forward.

I should be, too, thinks Marcus. But I'm not.

And then she's gone again.

six

Jessica can't catch her breath, but she won't stop running. Panting, she picks up the pace.

A new mantra: That didn't happen. She runs faster than ever, even with her palms burrowing into her eye sockets to push away tears, memories, perhaps both. That

didn't happen. Part of her wants to remove her hands, look back, and contradict her desperate denials.

That didn't happen. She wants to look behind her and take him in, Marcus Flutie, looking every inch the rumpled grad student in his choice of clothing (the sweater, the
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thin-wale corduroys), hairstyle (the finger-picked brush cut), and eye-wear. (Glasses? She does a mental double take. He was wearing glasses, wasn't he? When did Marcus start wearing glasses?) Only he's not in graduate school, he's still a superannuated undergraduate, a twenty-six-year-old senior. (Is he graduating this semester? On time? Only four years late?)

Time. Late. There's no time to contemplate any of these questions because she is still late late late late for Gate C-88. (They weren't annoying emo glasses, were

they?) She steels herself against the temptation to look back for any reason. An apology, maybe. Or a simple explanation. (No, they were just regular wire-rimmed glasses, I think.) Her face burns still hotter; she's mortified by how she must have looked to him in both appearance and in action. (Oh fuck.) What was he doing just standing there like that in the middle of the airport? Meditating? Seeking inner peace with no regard to his fellow travelers? Marcus Flutie standing still amid the chaos on the concourse was an accident waiting to happen. And it did. It finally did.

Jessica wonders who will be the first to find out about their momentous collision, and when. Such a reunion has been a forgone conclusion among Jessica's best friends since the breakup. They would not only expect a second-by-second reenactment but are exponentially invested to demand one. And on any other day Jessica would have complied. She would have told them everything, starting with how calmly Marcus reacted to being run over by his ex-girlfriend in the middle of Newark Liberty International Airport, as if he'd been expecting it, not in the same "someday" way that Jessica and her friends had expected it to happen, but almost as if he had chosen to wait in that exact spot on the straightaway under the arrivals and departures boards outside the men's restroom because he knew she was on her way.

But not today. No. Even before the crash, she'd already had her reasons for not making today about her. And because it is definitely not about Marcus Flutie, either, she forces him out of her mind. She keeps moving. She must keep moving if there's any hope of her making this flight. (I can't miss this flight.) Bridget and Percy didn't question Jessica's need to make a pit stop in Pineville before traveling to the Virgin Islands, which only makes her feel worse about having bailed on the bridal shower and the bachelorette party. She has little hope of arriving in time for tonight's rehearsal dinner even if the flight (/ won't miss this flight) hasn't already taken off without her. But Jessica must be there for tomorrow's wedding, because she is the ministress of ceremonies, after all.

That didn't happen.

Oh, yes, it did.

Her thoughts ineluctably return to Marcus and the last time they were in the same room together: He was hunched over, bent at the waist on the edge of his bed,

slowly turning two unopened notebooks over and over in his hands. Four sides. Turn, turn, turn, turning.

Pages, pages, pages, binding. He had just listened to Jessica explain that those two black-and-white-speckled composition notebooks contained all the reasons why she couldn't be with him anymore. His callused palms shushed across the pages, pages, pages, binding—the only sound.

He read them and, a week later, returned them. "They belong to you," he said in a letter written on the
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second notebook's final pages. Marcus had vowed to honor

Jessica's request to let her go, and let her be, and he had shocked her by actually making good on that promise. Some might puzzle for years trying to remember the final word exchanged with an ex-lover. But no such ruminations have been necessary for Jessica, because the last word from Marcus was definitively written in ink as the closing to that final communique:

whatever

WHATEVER, as he explained in that letter, was the double-meaning irony that wrapped around his bicep in the form of a poorly executed Chinese-character tattoo, one that Marcus had wanted to spell FOREVER but that had gotten lost in translation. Since the return of those notebooks, since WHATEVER, Jessica hasn't heard

another word from him.

She has, however, heard the gossip.

He got into Princeton's most prestigious secret society.

He failed out.

He won a Rhodes.

He lost his mind.

The most obstreperous rumors were inspired and spread by the usual suspects, Pineville High alumni such as Sara D'Abruzzi-Glazer and Scotty Glazer, whose social orbit barely extended beyond their hometown since the birth of their third kid in as many years. And Manda Powers, who (the last Jessica had heard) was couch-surfing around the world all by herself and had an uncanny knack for bumping backpacks with adventurous nomads who claimed to have met someone who met someone who met someone from her suburban New Jersey hometown, someone whose name is—What was it? Oh, right!—Marcus Flutie.

He's fucking an eighteen-year-old freshgirl.

He's fucking a forty-eight-year-old professor.

He's not fucking anyone.

He's engaged.

He's gay.

The more legitimate updates were always provided by well-intentioned friends and family members who mistakenly believed that Jessica wanted to know what

Marcus Flutie was up to. Like Paul Parlipiano, who e-mailed to express his surprise to find himself hammering alongside Marcus on a neighborhood rebuilding project in the Lower Ninth Ward. Or Cinthia Wallace, who swore she saw him in the audience during the opening-night performance of the off-off-Broadway musical satire of Bubblegum Bimbos and Assembly-Line Meatballers. Or Jessica's niece, Marin, who, apropos of nothing
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other than the fact that she was a child and still begrudged the missed opportunity to be a flower girl, occasionally asked, "Do you think Marcus has proposed to someone else by now?" Or Marin's mother, Jessica's own sister, Bethany, who didn't have the naTvete of youth to account for answering "Oh, I hope not," followed by

"But could you blame him if he has?"

He started drinking again.

He quit speaking again.

He started drugging again.

He quit cold turkey again.

Then there are those who indirectly court conjecture, like Bridget, who sent links toFound.com asking,

"Could this be a page from Marcus's journals that were stolen out of your car?" (To which Jessica always answered no.) Or Percy, responding to the schlub whose NBA half-court halftime marriage proposal was turned down on live TV, asked, "Jessica, you tell me, how's a man supposed to recover from a rejection like that?" before being shoved into silence by Bridget. Or Len Levy, another one of Jessica's lovers (a number best described as threeish, or three and two halves, the halves referring to two separate one-time-only nonpenetrative lapses in judgment

involving two separate men and therefore not equaling a whole lover), who turned everything he thinks he knows about Jessica and Marcus into a song titled "My Song Will Never Mean as Much (As the One He Once Sang for You)." Despite college radio play and its current status as the eighty-seventh-most-downloaded single on iTunes, this other song turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because it is indeed Marcus's song (You, yes, you linger inside my heart /The same you who stopped us before we could start...) that plays in Jessica's head right now.

He looks totally different.