Instant Love (5 page)

Melanie and Doug were slow-dancing on the grass. He was humming to her. He dipped her.

Sarah thought: And she and Danny could dance, too. Did he like to go dancing? Did she like to dance? That’s what people in love do.

DANNY SAW HER
love, but he’d seen it all before, even though he hadn’t been a millionaire that long. At first he was coy about his success when meeting new people (“I’m taking time off from work right now,” he would say when they would ask him what he was doing. Or, wryly, “I’m unemployed.”), but the truth would eventually tumble out of his mouth as if he were a kid excitedly reporting an A on a spelling test over dinner—“I sold my company and now I’m free.” Sometimes it would spill out because he wanted to share his excitement, and other times he knew it was the only way a girl would pay him any attention.

Either way he hated himself when he did it for attention, but he couldn’t help it. He had earned those bragging rights. He had given up most of his senior year of college (There was a girl, then, a nice one who was as smart as he was, but she didn’t have a killer idea like he did, so she couldn’t understand when he began to
prioritize
in a way she found
unempowering
to her and her needs. I’m never dating a psych major again, he had yelled at her, and then found out he had effectively terminated his one opportunity to get laid for the year) to start his company and had turned to speed the last six months before he sold the company, burning himself out, staying up late, all to finish one perfect software application. At the end he was cold, his emotions were like aluminum foil, jagged and shielding him from change, and on the night he met Sarah Lee, he was only starting to return to his former self. Only that self was gone; he would never be the same, now that he was a millionaire.

So when he looked at Sarah Lee, all he saw was a girl with pretty hair and a nice rack, but she had those freakish ears and a sudden greed in her eyes, and that in turn made her seem very, very dull to Danny West. He kept scanning, categorizing, identifying. This is not the woman who is going to help me figure my shit out, he thought. She probably doesn’t even know who she is. And then: Maybe she’d be a good lay. His eyes dropped to her breasts again. Maybe. That kind of thinking never went anywhere for Danny, but it was part of the assessment. Everyone needed to be assessed.

SARAH WAS TRYING
to think of ways to make the millionaire love her. She could offer him comfort, stroke his arm, or let him put his head in her lap. Maybe she should ask him to dance. Maybe she should make him laugh.

She should say the most ridiculous thing in the world that she could think of at that moment, like: “I want to make you pie.” Or: “I like cows better than any other animal because they always seem so happy to be exactly where they are.” Or: “I love you, my millionaire.”

Oh my god, Mom, I married a millionaire. We went to Las Vegas this weekend and he bought me a big ring and we got married in one of those little chapels and then we slept in the fanciest room I’ve ever seen because he is a millionaire and can afford whatever he wants. He says I can be an illustrator if I want or not. I don’t need to do anything but be his wife. And guess where we’re going on our honeymoon? India!

Am I going to need shots?

What about sex? She was good at that. They were actually quite sexually compatible, Sarah and Danny, though she couldn’t know it just by looking at him. Things that girls he’d dated in the past had either been unwilling or not ready to do (certain positions, explicit language, and the occasional tryst in public places like coatrooms or bathrooms in fancy restaurants or late at night on a beach) Sarah had been doing since she was in high school. She and her ex-boyfriend started having sex almost immediately, when they were both fifteen, and their high energy and adventurous spirits, often fueled by a wide of array of illegal substances (mostly marijuana, but sometimes acid or mushrooms, hash if they were lucky, but never heroin or coke, that shit was scary), led them down adventurous paths rivaled only by the static-ridden porn Sarah watched late at night while she was babysitting her next-door neighbor’s twin daughters.

She would have totally done him any way he liked.

Right now he just wanted to be held.

SHE WOULD HAVE
appreciated him, and not just for his money, although it’s true that’s what drew her to him initially. Even though she wasn’t a good student, she always admired people who were. He had drive, and she craved that in her own life. Sarah Lee had the habit of mirroring people around her, and had Danny West been in her life in the past, she would have worked hard in school, she would have made it to the top of her class. (Two years later, though, in the throes of art school, she will at last recognize her own drive. She never needed anyone to inspire her to draw. She was going to do that forever.)

Danny needed to be needed. More than anything he wanted to feel like a man in the most traditional sense of the word, although he would never have uttered those words out loud to anyone, except in some veiled manner in bed. He wasn’t sure why he was ashamed of this fact, but he thought a lot of men around him felt the same way. They’re all just waiting for some girl who will never arrive, a pretty one with a tinkling laugh, who will cling to their shoulder as if she could not stand without its support. But Danny felt he should have something different, and he spends the rest of his life looking for it. Were it, in fact, a different era entirely, perhaps fifty years previous, when people would marry—and stay married—for relatively small reasons, Sarah Lee could have made him happy for the rest of his life.

In any case he had no use for her today.

Instead, after she said, “Wow, India! That sounds so exciting. You sure do lead an interesting life,” he pursed his lips to the left, so that his cheek puffed up slightly, and then sighed. He slapped his hands down on the table, looked to his buddies, nodded at them, and then said, “Right. I’m heading out. Later, guys.” He turned his head to her, “Sarah, a pleasure. Sorry we can’t chat but…”

He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. His head was already somewhere else. He got up from the table, thought he heard the word “pie” from behind him—pie, that sounded good—and kept on walking in a straight line.

OVER ON THE GRASS,
Melanie and Douglas rolled around on top of each other, wrestling as play.

“You’re the funniest girl I’ve ever met,” he said.

“No,
you’re
funny,” she said.

Eventually they stopped and stretched out on their backs, looking up at the collection of stars in the sky.

“Also, I think you are beautiful,” said Douglas.

Melanie reached out and held his hand, and they stayed like that until someone called their names. They both sighed. They were happier than everyone else at the party, and they knew they were inspiring jealousy. All those lonely men, and Sarah Lee, who just got blown off by a millionaire.

HE DIDN
’
T EVEN
hear me. I should run after him. Throw him to the ground. Put my hand down his pants. Bite his ear. Give him honey kisses. Tickle his belly. Feed him pie.

M
aggie and Robert were drinking gin and tonics at the patio bar of the most popular restaurant in town. It was their fourth date, and it wasn’t going anywhere, at least as far as Maggie was concerned, but she couldn’t seem to say no when he called. Robert thought they were taking it nice and slow. Maggie had started drinking more on their dates to make them more interesting, or at least to create a tolerable haze, and Robert kept up with her like a puppy running after its new owner. So while she usually had only two drinks in an evening, Maggie was now on her fourth. Robert had gotten there early to secure a good seat before it got too crowded (This really was
the
place in town, he told her. She was new. She needed his help), so he was on his fifth. And now they were both drunk, she more than he.

“I want to tell you about my day,” said Robert. He stopped short of saying, “I want to tell you everything about me.”

“So tell me about your day,” said Maggie. “That’s what I’m here for, to listen. To you. And your day.” She ducked her head down. Her auburn hair—thick and soft to the touch—dangled over her shoulders, which were covered, like her cheeks, with freckles. Then she raised her eyes up, opened and closed them slowly, then brushed her cheek against her bare shoulder, like a cat cleaning itself. It was a move that had brought down many men, a move that said nothing at all, yet had the portent of sexuality. She didn’t know where she had learned it, only that she had been doing it forever. It had started out maybe as a way to hide, eyes downcast. But then she realized people didn’t want her to hide, so she added the upturned eye. I’m still here. I’m in my space, but I’m looking at yours.

OK, that was exhausting, she thought. She pulled her head back, balanced it precariously on her neck, then rested it on the top of her chair and let the last of the setting sun hit her forehead. It made her smile. She thought about taking a nap but decided against it. There should be places where you can nap at bars, she thought. A little nook. A nap nook.

“Well, I was late for work this morning,” he said. Robert was practically yelling. It was noisy on the patio, he forgot how loud it could get. If he was trying for romance he had failed, he thought.

“I was getting coffee at this new place over by the convention center—I got a coupon for it in the mail—and when I was walking out…”

Maggie watched a waitress serve a woman at the next table a frozen purple drink with a straw shaped like a man’s penis, complete with a tiny set of testicles. She had seen the sign for them when she entered. They were called “Purple Pricks,” and they were reportedly ideal for bachelorette parties. I would have made the drink blue and called it “Blue Balls,” she thought. I should put that in the suggestion box on the way out.

“…A truck pulls up right next to mine. It’s a beater, rusted out, chipped paint, the right front fender was down, you know, a real piece of shit. And this guy gets out. He’s only a little younger than me but the way he’s dressed—there was something written on his T-shirt, and his hair, like, was so long it hung down in the front?—it makes me think he’s a kid.”

He sounds kind of sexy, thought Maggie. She missed the scruffy New York boys she used to study at her local bar before she was banished to the suburbs by her employer. (Why didn’t it feel more like a promotion? she often wondered.) Those boys wouldn’t have dated her—she had always been too clean-cut (
Boring,
she thought. I know what I am) for boys like that—but it made her feel sexier just knowing she was near them. And then she remembered she was on a date. Focus.

“I can see your point,” she said. “Bad car, bad hair. Go on.”

“So I notice he’s pulling stuff out of the trunk. I’m not sticking my nose in his business, but he’s just doing it while I’m standing right there, getting my keys out, you know, I had to put the coffee on top of my car, fold up the paper, it takes a while, especially if I”—and with this, he jerked his head back and gave Maggie a playful wink—“haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Of course,” she said. Robert’s fine when he’s not being twitchy, she thought. Why does he have to twitch? One minute he’s this handsome, normal man with really nice teeth and a lot of money, and the next he’s this spazzy kid. Less jerking and whirring and face-making, and more silence. Yes. That would be nice.

“OK, he’s pulling out boxes, a couple of boxes of books, it looked like; there were photo albums in there, too, I could see; and then there’s two suitcases, old-fashioned ones with leather straps around them, and they’re kind of worn. He takes everything out and walks them over to the sidewalk, stacks them up, one by one, next to a bench outside of the 7-Eleven. By now I’m in my car, buckled in, ready to go. You wear your seat belt, don’t you? You should always wear your seat belt. I had a cousin who got rear-ended once, and he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. Went through the windshield, and now he can’t see out of his right eye. He sued the guy, though, and now he never has to work again. I think I’d rather be able to see out of both eyes, though, you know?”

Maggie nodded somberly. She looked to the side and made eye contact with the waitress, motioned for another. “You, too?” she said to Robert, then held up two fingers for the waitress.