Something Borrowed (27 page)

along in a slow jog, her elbows jutting out awkwardly.

Otherwise,

we have the usually populated path to ourselves. I listen to the

gravel crunching beneath our sneakers as we walk in perfect

rhythm. I am content. The reservoir, the views, the city, and the

world belong to Dex and me.

Dark clouds are rolling in when we finally leave the park. We

decide not to change for dinner, heading straight for Atlantic Grill,

a restaurant near my apartment. Both of us are in the mood for

fish and white wine and vanilla ice cream. After dinner, we dash

back to my apartment in a downpour, laughing as we cross the

streets midblock, splashing our way through the puddles formed

on the sidewalks. Back inside, we strip off our wet clothes and

towel each other off, still laughing. Dex puts on a pair of boxers. I

wear one of his T-shirts. Then we play a Billie Holiday CD and

open another bottle of wine, red this time. We stretch out on my

sofa where we talk for hours, only getting up to brush our teeth

and transfer to my bed for another satisfying sleep together.

Then suddenly, as it always happens, time accelerates.

And just as

being with Dex on our first night felt like the start of the summer,

fearing the end of our time together reminds me of late August,

when those daunting back-to-school commercials for Trapper

Keepers would replace the ones featuring gleeful towheaded kids

sipping Capri-Sun poolside. I remember the feeling well a

mixture of sadness and panic. This is how I feel now as we sit on

my sofa on Saturday while afternoon bleeds into evening. I keep

telling myself not to ruin the last night by being sad. I tell myself

that the best is yet to come. He loves me.

As if reading my mind, Dex looks at me and says, "I meant what I

said."

It is the first reference to our sacred exchange.

"I did too." I am filled with a deep longing, and am sure that our

talk is coming. Our Post-Independence Day Talk. We are going to

discuss ways to make this crazy thing work. How we can't bear to

hurt Darcy, but that we must. I wait for his lead. It is his

conversation to begin.

That's when he says, "No matter what happens, I meant that."

His words are like the sound of a needle dragging across a record.

A sinking, sickening feeling washes over me. This is why you

should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see

the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren't

as devastated. I want to cry, but I keep my face placid, give myself

a psychological shot of Botox. I can't cry, for several reasons, not

the least of which is that if he asks why I'm crying, I won't be able

to articulate an answer.

I fight to salvage the night, bring the golden cast back.

He loves

me, he loves me, he loves me, I tell myself. But it is not helping.

He looks at me worriedly. "What's wrong?"

I shake my head, and he asks again, his voice gentle.

"Hey, hey, hey" He lifts my chin, looks into my eyes.

"What is

it?"

"I'm just sad." My voice trembles tellingly. "It's our last night."

"It's not our last night."

I take a deep breath. "It's not?"

"No."

But that doesn't really explain much. What does "no"

mean? That

we will continue in this fashion for a few more weeks?

Until the

night before their rehearsal dinner? Or does he mean that this is

only our beginning? Why can't he be more specific? I can't bring

myself to ask. I am afraid of his answer.

"Rachel, I love you."

His lips stay curled up at the end of the last word, until I lean over

to kiss him. A kiss is my response. I won't say it back until we have

our talk. Way to take a stand!

We are kissing on my couch, followed by the unzipping and

unbuttoning and attempting to gracefully slide out of denim,

which is impossible. We move various sections of the Times out of

our way and onto the floor. The sure fix, I think the panacea. We

are making love, but I am not in the moment. I am thinking,

thinking, thinking. I can feel the dials of my brain whirring and

rotating like the inside of a Swiss watch. What is he going to do?

What is going to happen?

The next morning, when I wake up beside Dex, I hear him saying

"no matter what happens." But during sleep my mind reprocessed

the meaning of his words, landing on a perfectly logical

explanation: Dexter just meant that whatever shit hits the fan, no

matter what Darcy says or does, if we need some time apart in the

aftermath of blood and guts, he will be waiting to love me and it

will all be fixed in the end. That is what he must have meant. But

still. I want him to tell me this. Surely he will say something more

before he returns to the Upper West Side.

We get up, shower together, and go to Starbucks.

Already we have

a routine. It is eleven. Darcy and the others will be home soon. We

are down to minutes and still no conversation, no conclusions. We

finish our coffee and then stop at a toy store. Dex needs to buy a

baby present for one of his work friends. Just a small token, he

says. I can't decide whether I enjoy the feeling of being such an

established couple that we run errands together, or whether I

resent wasting our dwindling moments on this random task. It's

more the latter. I just want to get back so that we have a few

moments together. Time for him to share his plan.

But Dex lingers over various toys and books, asking me my

opinion, laboring over a decision that doesn't matter one bit in the

scheme of things. He finally decides on a stuffed, green triceratops

with a cartoon-ish expression. It's not what I would choose for a

newborn, but I admire his conviction. I hope he will have similar

conviction about us.

"It's cute. Don't you think?" he asks, cocking its small head.

"Adorable."

Then, as he's about to pay for the dinosaur, he spots a plastic bin

full of wooden dice. He picks out two red ones with gold-painted

dots and holds them up in an open palm. "How much for a pair of

dice?"

"Forty-nine cents per die," the man at the register says.

"A bargain. I'll take 'em."

We leave the store and walk toward my apartment.

People are

returning to the city in droves; traffic has resumed its normal

pace. We are almost at my block. Dex is holding the bag with the

dinosaur in his right hand and the dice in his left. He has been

shaking them along the way. I wonder if his stomach hurts as

much as mine does.

"What are you thinking?" I ask him. I want a long answer,

articulating everything I am thinking. I want reassurance, some

small nugget of hope.

He shrugs, licks his lips. "Nothing much."

ARE YOU MARRYING DARCY? The words roar in

my head. But I

say nothing, worrying that pressuring him is not strategically

wise. As if what I say or don't say in the final minutes of our

togetherness might make a difference. Maybe it is that tenuous the fate of three people hanging in the balance like the

cradle in the nursery rhyme.

"You like to gamble?" Dex asks, examining his dice while still

walking.

"No," I say. Surprise, surprise. Rachel playing it safe.

"Do you?"

"Yeah," he says. "I like craps. My lucky number is six a four and a

two. You have a lucky roll?"

"No Well, I like double sixes," I answer, trying to mask my

feelings of desperation. Desperate women are not attractive.

Desperate women lose.

"Why double sixes?"

"I don't know," I say. I don't feel like explaining that it stems from

playing backgammon with my father when I was little.

I'd chant

for double sixes and whenever I rolled them he'd call me Boxcar

Willy. I still don't know who Boxcar Willy is, but I loved it when

he called me that.

"Want me to roll you some double sixes?"

"Yeah," I say, pointing down at the filthy sidewalk, humoring him.

"Go ahead."

We stop on the corner of Seventieth and Third. A bus lurches past

us, and a woman with a baby nearly runs her stroller into Dex. He

seems to ignore everyone and everything around him, shaking the

dice with both hands, an expression of intense concentration on

his face. If I saw him exactly like this, but in Atlantic City wearing

polyester and a gold chain, I would wonder if he had his house

and life savings on the line.

"What are we betting?" I ask.

"Betting? We're on the same team, baby," he says in a Queens

accent, and then blows hard on his dice, his smooth cheeks

puffing out like a little boy blowing the candles out on his birthday

cake.

"Roll me double sixes right now."

"And if I do?"

I think to myself, You roll double sixes, we end up together. No

wedding with Darcy. But instead I say, "It will mean good luck for

us."

"All righty then. Double sixes coming right up for ya."

He licks his

lips and shakes his dice more vigorously.

The sun shines in my eyes as he tosses the dice in the air, catches

them easily, and then dramatically lowers his arm toward the

ground as if he's about to roll a bowling ball. He opens his hand,

fingers splayed, as the cubes clatter to the concrete right at the

busy Manhattan intersection.

One red die lands on six immediately. My heart skips with the

thought,

What iff We are crouched over the landed die and its spinning

twin, rotating on its axis for what seems like forever. If you tried

to make a die go that long, you couldn't do it. But there it is,

turning on its corner, a blur of gold dots and red background. And

then it slows, slows, slows, and lands neatly beside the first one.

Two rows of three dots on the second die.

Double sixes.

Boxcar Willy.

Holy shit, I think No wedding with Darcy! He wanted to talk

about "no matter what happens" as if someone were steering from

up above; well, here you go. Here you have it. Double sixes. Our

fate.

I look up from the dice at Dex, debating whether to tell him what

the roll had really been for. He looks at me with his mouth slightly

open. Our eyes return to the dice as if maybe we got it wrong.

What are the chances?

Urn, that would be precisely one in thirty-six. Just under three

percent.

So we aren't talking one-in-a-million odds. But those statistics are

misleading when removed from our context. We have reached the

end of a pivotal, meaningful weekend together. Right as we are

minutes from parting ways (for the day? forever?), Dexter buys

the dice on a whim, plays with them instead of putting them in the

bag with his stuffed dinosaur, and adopts his boyish gambling

persona. I play along, even though I'm in no mood for games.

Then I decide, albeit silently, the terms of the roll. And he rolls

double sixes! As if to say, we are foolproof, baby.

I look at his ninety-eight-cent (plus tax) dice with the reverence

you would have for a crystal ball in a richly upholstered room with

the world's greatest fortune-teller, wrinkled by the Persian sun,

who has just told you how it was, how it is, and how it is going to

be. Even Dex, who doesn't know what he just sealed for us, is

impressed, telling me that he needs to take me to Atlantic City,

Vegas, that we'd make a hell of a team.

Exactly.

He smiles at me and says, "There's your good luck, baby."

I say nothing, just pick up the dice and wedge them into the front

pocket of my shorts.

"You stealing my dice?"

Our dice.

"I need them," I say.

We return to my apartment, where he collects his things and says

good-bye.

"Thanks for an awesome weekend," he says, his face now

mirroring mine. He is sad too.

"Yeah. It was great. Thank you." I strike the pose of a confident

girl.

He bites his lower lip. "I better head back. As much as I don't want

to."

"Yeah. You better go."

"I'll call you soon. Whenever I can. As soon as I can."

"Okay." I nod.

"Okay. Bye."

After one final kiss, he is gone.

I sit on my sofa, clutching my dice. They are a comfort the roll is

almost as good as a talk. Maybe better. We didn't have a talk

because it is all so obvious. We are in love and meant to be

together, and the dice confirmed everything. I place them

reverently in his empty cinnamon Altoids container, nestled in the

white paper liner with the sixes still facing up. I touch the rows of

dots, like reverse Braille. They tell me that we will be together. It

is our destiny. All of me believes it. I close the lid of the tin and

push it against the base of my vase filled with lilies that are still

clinging on. The dice, the tin, the lilies I have created a shrine to

our love.

I glance around my prim, orderly studio, perfectly neat except for

my unmade bed. The sheets have molded against the mattress,

revealing a vague outline of our bodies. I want to be there again,

to feel closer to him. I slip off my sandals and walk over to the