CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jason called at nine a.m. I still had my EarFone deactivated, but Jason has the emergency override code, so I knew who it was before I even answered.

“Do you know what time it is?” I demanded without opening my eyes.

“Yeah, do you?” came Jason’s voice. “I tried calling you till about two in the morning. What’s your alibi?”

I was too tired to play this game. “Um—I was rescuing kittens that someone had thrown in the Chicago River.”

“That is so lame. How was your date?”

I turned on my side and snuggled deeper under the covers. I felt as if my body had been partially dismantled during the night and bits of my bones and muscles had not yet been snapped back in place. “How do you know about my date?”

“Marika told me. She said you were supposed to text her when you got in. She was worried when she didn’t hear from you, so I said I’d call.”

I yawned noisily. Begin the new day as you ended the old one. “When did you talk to Marika?”

“Well, we just got off the phone right now. But we went to the ballgame last night, which is when she told me about your evening plans.”

“You went to the ballgame with Mareek? Here?”

“Nope. Atlanta.”

I yawned again. “Domenic go, too?”

“Nope. Just us.”

“Who won?”

“Braves, five to three. What are you doing tonight? I’m spending the weekend at Mom’s, if you want to hang out.”

“Sounds good. Nice quiet evening is what I need right now. See you later.”

“Call me when you wake up.”

I managed to fall back asleep and didn’t actually get up until about one in the afternoon. When I turned the phone back on, I found that Marika had left me three voicemails and six texts.

“Good, you’re finally awake!” she exclaimed when I called. “Tell me, tell me, what happened?”

“We went to Hawaii.”

“Hawaii! That is so romant—wait. You went to Hawaii when? I thought he was picking you up at seven.”

I started giggling. “You got it.”

She snorted with laughter. “Kind of an uncool way to start the date. But that’s good, then you get to see how he handles setbacks.”

“He was chagrined but game. We had lunch, then we walked on the beach, then we went for a sailboat ride—my whole body is completely encrusted in salt, I have to take a shower—and then to dinner. The food was incredible. But it was past three when we got in.”

“So did he spend the night?”

“Marika!”

“Well, did he?”

“No. He kissed me goodnight. He said we’d go back to Hawaii next week. He did not stay over. It wasn’t an option.”

“It’s always an option. But you have plans for next week already? That’s good, that shows he’s definitely interested.”

“That shows he has no other social life, but yeah, it’s good.”

“And you had fun? You like him?”

“I had fun,” I repeated quietly. “I like him.”

*

Dinner at Mom’s Saturday night was less exotic but more relaxed. Of course, I had to endure Jason’s mockery about my new facial adornment (“Hey, Tay, looks like you got a big ol’ zit there right by your mouth”), but my mother told me it was pretty. After the meal, we played Scrabble for a couple of hours. I’m such a word person, you’d think I’d be a whiz at Scrabble, but Jason and my mom are both such cutthroat competitors that I lose about ninety percent of the time. I had to be satisfied with small victories like playing equinox on a double word.

“What would you like to do for your birthday, Tay?” Mom asked after she won the third consecutive game. “I was thinking of having your Aunt Jennifer and your cousin Azolay over for dinner. And you can invite Marika and Domenic if you like.”

Jason gave me a smile of unholy amusement. Domenic absolutely hates Azolay. “That would be fun,” he said in dulcet tones. “Let’s do that.”

Conveniently enough, my birthday fell on a Saturday night two weeks from now, so it was simple to make plans. Jason and I promised to issue the invitations to our friends. “This will be great,” I said. “Something to look forward to.”

*

The following two weeks went by at a languorous, indolent pace. I love having summers off, though I’m often teaching summer school or tutoring private students. This year, all I had were my sessions with Quentin, so I filled the rest of my days with hedonism. I read, watched movies, hung out at Marika’s, had late dinners with Domenic, and went to ballgames with Jason. He had paused his studies for the summer and had returned to Chicago for the season, moving in with our mom. She was in heaven, making him full breakfasts every morning and feast-day dinners every night. I joined them every couple of days and wondered how long it would take me to put on ten pounds.

I enjoyed having him around, though, available to me in two minutes instead of the hour or so it took for him to come in from Colorado if we decided to get together on the spur of the moment. Teleport between cities is instantaneous, of course, but you have to factor in the time it takes to walk to your local booth, wait in line, make your way through O’Hare or Olympic, find the gate to your destination, and finally end up where you want to be. I’ve never managed it in less than forty-five minutes.

But there was another reason I liked knowing that he was staying at our mother’s house. There’s something about geographical proximity. You can feel it when someone is ten miles away versus a thousand. The gravitational pull is stronger. The connection is tighter. The resonance hums along your bones.

The true highlight of those two weeks was the second trip to Maui with Bram. If anything, this was more fun than the first visit. I was a little more at ease—still excited, still wanting to appear to my best advantage, but relieved of that bubbling sense of nervousness that had dogged me like a chaperone on our first outing.

“We could go to Hawaii every Friday,” he suggested as we stood just inside the doorway of my darkened apartment, arms wrapped around each other for physical support as much as affection. This time it was four a.m. I had closed my eyes and was resting my forehead against his chest, and I thought it very likely that I would fall asleep standing up.

“No,” I said drowsily. “It makes us too tired to think about doing anything else.”

I could feel the laugh rumble behind his ribs. “What else might we be thinking of doing?”

I blushed and looked up. “That isn’t what I—I mean, I’m not even coherent at this hour—”

He kissed me quickly. “We can think of some other place to have dinner,” he said. “Only not next Friday. I have to go out of town for the weekend. My sister Laney is having a party and she wants me to come down early.”

“That’s sweet,” I said, and then yawned right in his face. “Sorry.”

He laughed again. “But the next week. For sure.”

“For sure,” I said, and kissed him again.

*

Tuesday of the week before my birthday, Bordeaux arranged a picnic lunch out on the broad lawn of the mansion. She had Quentin strapped into his Kevvi braces before I even arrived, and she informed me that she had already asked Francis to pack us a lunch.

“And one of Bram’s security guys will carry it out to the pond for us,” she said, shaking back her short shaggy hair and giving me her trademark smile, “but we won’t let him stay.”

Moving slowly to accommodate Quentin’s halting pace, our little caravan traveled down the elevator, out the back hallways and across the emerald expanse of grass to the ornamental lake situated about an acre from the house. Bordeaux and the guard spread out the blanket and unpacked the goodies while I insisted Quentin lean on me for support, even though he said this made him look like a heezling. But soon enough we had dismissed the guard, dropped to the ground, and started sipping our bottled water. All three of us were smiling.

“Great idea,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like schoolwork.”

“We’ll write essays about our trip to the pond,” Bordeaux said. “Descriptive passages about the greenery we see around us.”

“Descriptive passages that engage all five senses,” I amended. “Sight, sound, smell, texture, taste.”

“I can do that,” Bordeaux said. And I had no doubt she would; she did all the work I assigned Quentin, and she finished it with such flair that I often wished she really was one of my students.

“You might have to help me a little,” Quentin said to her. He was sitting with his skinny legs straight in front of him and his arms behind him to prop up his body. I thought at any minute he might collapse from the unaccustomed strain.

She gave him an affectionate smile. “Don’t I always?” She studied him for a moment, the tension of his wrists and the hunch of his shoulders, and she easily, casually scooted over so she was sitting behind him, spoon fashion. One of her legs went on either side of his; she wrapped her arms around his stomach and pulled him back to lie against her chest. He did so with a small sigh of contentment, closing his eyes and allowing his head to rest against her collarbone. She tilted her head just enough to look down at him, at his innocent, peaceful face, and she brushed the top of his head with her mouth.

They’ve slept together, I realized. Already. She’s managed it . Managed to win his trust, managed to break down his fear and his awkwardness, managed to teach him that simplest and most complicated act—hell, managed to get into the house in stealth or at least maintain some privacy during her acknowledged visits there. I had liked her before; I adored her now.

She looked up and caught me watching her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t nod or give me a thumb’s-up or in any way acknowledge that she had achieved my goal, but I was sure she knew what I was thinking, what I had deduced. And then she closed her eyes and rested her cheek against Quentin’s tousled hair, and I thought, She loves him. And I thought, Sometimes the world is not such a dreadful place.

*

Friday, Bordeaux had to attend a special lecture at Northwestern, so I had Quentin to myself.

“Just you and me, buddy,” I said as I stepped inside the room. “Think you can stand it?”

“Oh, I’m seeing Bordeaux tonight,” he said. “You’ll miss her, but I won’t.”

“I meant,” I said dryly, “could you stand being alone with me? I was hoping you would say you’d love the special one-on-one time with me, that you’d missed our private talks, but I see I think too highly of myself.”

He laughed. “How can I have missed you?” he said callously. “You’re here all the time. Now if you went away for a while, I’d miss you.”

“Well, I just might! I’ll take a month’s vacation and see how you like that. You’d be forgetting your rhyme schemes in no time.”

“Yes, Taylor, but I wouldn’t forget you ,” he said in a shamelessly moony voice. I had to laugh again.

“Did you write your excursion essay like you were supposed to?”

“Yep. It’s all ready for you.”

“For your next assignment, I want to you to write a poem.”

“I can’t write a poem! A poem about what?”

“I was going to leave the choice of topic up to you, but since you’re being so mean to me, I’m going to make you write it about me.”

He grinned. “I’m not being mean to you. Anyway, I can’t write a poem about you. Or anyone.”

“Sure you can. The easiest way to learn how to write a poem is to steal somebody else’s.”

“Isn’t there a word for that? Like plagiarism?”

“Not if it’s just for practice, just to get the sense of the rhythm and the rhyme scheme.”

“Give me an example.”

“Okay. You like Housman. How about . . . ‘Oh, when I was in love with you/Then I was clean and brave/And miles around the wonder grew/How well did I behave . . .’ You remember that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So if you’re going to write about me, you change a few words. Like . . . ‘Oh, when you were so mad at me/Then I was scared and shy/And I hung my head— ’” I paused and groped for a rhyme. “‘ So shaggily— ’”

“‘ And asked myself, why, why? ’” Quentin shouted before I could think of a last line.

“Excellent!” I said, clapping. “You see how it’s done? The real verses just give you a template.”

“I might be able to do that.”

“Well, for sure you can, ’cause you’re gonna.”

He giggled. Quentin liked nothing so much as when I used poor grammar. “You want to practice on a couple more examples while I’m here?” I asked. He nodded, so we broke out the Norton’s and tried a few more substitutions. I warned him that, for his actual assignment, he’d have to pick a poem we hadn’t even looked at today. “And Bordeaux can’t write it,” I added. He laughed again.

By this time, he actually seemed intrigued by the idea—and it was the first thing he talked about when Bram and Dennis strolled in together as the hour snapped to a close.

“Guess what, you guys? I have to write a poem! About Taylor!”

They both looked suitably impressed, though now, with a fresh audience, the assignment seemed narcissistic instead of educational. “Really, a poem about Taylor,” Dennis said in a silky voice that instantly made me wary. “I could do that, I think.”

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t even start.”

“And so could Bram,” Dennis added.

I felt my face go hot. “I thought you were supposed to be at your sister’s,” I said to Bram.

“Going over this afternoon. Right after you leave, in fact.”

“There once was a woman named Taylor,” Dennis began. “Who was looking for love with a sailor—”

“Can’t you stop him?” I begged Bram.

He shrugged. “Usually not.”

“She was so fond of stripes—and criminal types—”

“Has he been practicing?” Quentin asked.

“That she settled instead for a jailor.”

Could have been worse, I suppose. “You,” I said to Quentin, “can on no account write a limerick as your poem to me.”

“Maybe we should all write birthday poems for Taylor,” Bram said.

“Hey, that’s right!” Dennis exclaimed. “Your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?”

“Tomorrow,” Bram said.

“I didn’t get you a present!” Quentin wailed. “I would have!”

“Your poem will be your present.”

“But I won’t see you until next week!”

“Email it to me tomorrow. That will be perfect.”

“We’ll all email our poems to you,” Dennis said.

I glared at him. “No, Quentin is the only one I want to complete this assignment.”

“Well, I’m going to send you a poem,” Dennis said. “I suppose if Bram doesn’t like you as much as Quin and I do, he doesn’t have to write you a poem. Or send you any birthday remembrance at all.”

I gathered up my purse and my briefcase. “I’m leaving,” I said. “Bram, have fun with your family. Quentin, you know what you’re supposed to do. Dennis—” I paused at the doorway. “I’ll get back to you.”

I could hear them all laughing as I stepped into the hall to meet Francis. “I’ll probably never understand men,” I observed.

“No?” he said sympathetically. “Well, probably more useful to turn your energies elsewhere, then.”

“Just what I was thinking.”