Spinning (10 page)

“Spring prefers blue and yellow,” Diane said, putting her hand on my back. “Thanks, Dylan.” She kissed my cheek then picked up a box of macaroni to check the nutrition label. “I suppose I could add something to this.”

Spring took her crayons, while Diane and I put some sheets of paper up in the living room. I then sat on the couch, imagining the masterworks that would soon emerge on the walls without requiring me to repaint.

By Thursday night, I’d blown off a cocktail party with the P.R. elite for an organic peanut butter and raspberry
preserve sandwich. I didn’t ask why, but it tasted better than it sounded. I even drank milk from a sippy cup. I didn’t feel a moment’s remorse over missing the party. Over the years, I had attended these events as ambition dictated, loitering with the same faces and smiling and kissing the same chapped asses. Coming home to Diane and the kid felt less superficial, and I kind of enjoyed it. The last few days had surprised me. With the exception of postponing a Laurel rendezvous, I had been content with how things were progressing.

We were sitting at the dinner table when I received the bad news.

“Dylan, guess what?”

“Spring won a scholarship to the Paris Young Artists Club?”

Spring looked confused, then separated the two halves of her sandwich.

“No. I got a job!”

“That’s great.” I could only imagine what she’d been able to drum up in this economy. Maybe an internship with a token stipend? It was fine. Diane and Spring could stay here as long as they needed to.

“Remember Mr. Barnes?”

“The upstairs Mr. Barnes?”

“Yes, from the elevator. You’re looking at the new Deputy Director of Marketing for Barnes, Inc.”

“No way.”

“Yes.”

I’m sure the shock showed on my face, but I think I recovered fairly quickly. “Congratulations, Diane. We need to celebrate!” I stood up to get a bottle of wine. “I believe I have just the thing to bring out the delicate citrus nuances of the jelly.”

Spring scraped the slice of peanut butter bread against her teeth.

“Dylan,” she said, laughing. “There’s more. Barnes, Inc. has their own daycare. It’s part of their benefit package. Apparently, Mr. Barnes really loves children. I could just tell he liked children. Spring can start as soon as I do, and I can check in on her as often as I want.”

I poured the white wine into recently purchased plastic wine glasses, having learned the hard way about glasses and red wine with a kid around. In just a few days, I had three fewer wine glasses and two new purple stains in the grout.

“There’s
more
. Mr. Barnes owns a building over on Walker and he has an apartment available. It isn’t huge and there isn’t a view, but it’s close, furnished and I can move in this Saturday.”

According to my plan, this was exactly what I had wanted and when I wanted it. I wanted to spend some time with Diane, get her in, get her out, and get back to normal.

“So if Mason, Brand and Partners needs to talk with Barnes, Inc. you’d better go through me first.”

I laughed, but I was having a bit of trouble processing everything. “That’s wonderful, Diane. I know you want to get started on your new life, and well, this is a great new start. Wow, Barnes, Inc. It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

She smiled. “I ran into Mr. Barnes a couple of days ago on the elevator. We got to talking and he asked me what I did and why I moved. Before I knew it, he was offering me a job.”

This kind of thing just didn’t happen, especially now. Except it seemed to happen with stunning regularity to Diane and Spring. I thought back again on my time in
Chicago with Diane. She was unquestionably a dynamo in her office. I would have hired her in a second. And those nights we spent together had a breathless quality to them. I was never sure what was going to happen next. After I got back to the City, I even spent a few minutes wondering what would have happened between us had my gig in Chicago run longer.

We clinked the plastic glasses together.

“I found out this afternoon about everything. It’s like winning the lottery!”

Diane held out her glass to clink again, but I reached to hug her, sending wine to the tile. At least this time, it wouldn’t stain. Her hair fell across my cheek and left a tingly sensation that I was beginning to enjoy.

“What’s the matter?” she said, looking at me when I pulled back.

“Nothing. I’m very happy for you...and Spring. ”

Sipping avidly at her third cup of milk through a curly straw, Spring just stared at me. I grabbed some paper towel and blotted up the spilled wine.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Diane said. “You seem a little weird all of a sudden.”

The act of cleaning up the spill had given me a moment to refocus. “I’m not really sure why I feel this way, but it was nice to have someone, you and Spring, depending on me a little. I guess I’m going to miss you.”

“Oh, Dylan.” She hugged me. This was getting a little more intense than I could handle and I was looking for some way to change the mood. Fortunately, Spring took matters into her own hands. I heard her call for her mother and then the unmistakable sound of vomit spattering the tile.

“Whoa, where did that come from?” I exclaimed.

“It’s all right. I just happens sometimes.”

“For no reason?”

“It happens when she drinks too much.”

“Yeah, been there. ”

Diane smirked at me and then said to Spring, “This is why all that juice before dinner wasn’t good for you. I knew I shouldn’t have given you another cup of milk.”

Spring looked contrite.

“It might have been the peanut butter,” I suggested. “I noticed some weird consistency.”

“That was the tofu.”

I bit my lip before I could say anything.

“It’s a good source of vitamin B and iron and mixes well in the peanut butter.”

It
had
tasted pretty good.

Spring wiped her face with a towel. Blanched just moments earlier, her cheeks had returned to full rosiness. She was obviously fine.

“Spring, go get the zoo pictures from the bedroom, okay?”

Spring left the room and Diane spoke to me softly. “Dylan, I’ve really enjoyed seeing you and spending time with you. Spring really likes you. I was hoping, if it would work out, that maybe we could, you know…”

“… if we could see each other some more?”

I smiled and put my arm on her shoulder. “I really want us to. I know it’s cheesy and all, but I’m going to miss having you two around. Besides, I was starting to like this stuff.” I pointed to the leftover sandwich on Spring’s plate.

At that point, Spring ran into the room with Diane’s camera. For a girl who’d just lost her dinner, she seemed pretty happy. “Here!”

Diane turned on the camera and showed me a picture of Spring next to a penguin. Her eyes and mouth were wide because she’d never seen a real one before. Although she wouldn’t admit it, I think she liked the penguins better than the ducks.

“That’s a good shot,” I said when Diane flipped to the next one. It was a picture of Diane and Spring in front of a curious llama. “Can I have a print of one of these for my office? Maybe another to hang on the fridge?”

“I’ll make prints of the whole set if you want them.”

“Of course I want them.”

She handed me the camera to flip through the rest. This was when things started to get weird. Our fingers touched, and I said, “I’m going to miss you.”

She took my hand and held it to her cheek. And then the strangest thing happened to me.

I was speechless.

The next night, I gave Diane and Spring housewarming presents. For a week, she had been living out of that old suitcase and a bunch of boxes she’d shipped to a UPS store in midtown. If she was going to do any travel for Barnes, she was going to need something a little more durable. For Spring, I thought I would get her something really special, something that would mark our time together. After dinner, we drank chocolate milk slowly and not too much while Diane reviewed the nutritional
value of the elf cookies we were eating. I couldn’t keep the secret any longer. “Close your eyes,” I said.

“What?”

“
Close your eyes
.”

Diane closed her eyes with a smile and Spring put her hands over her face. She peeked through her fingers.

“All the way, you. No peeking. Listen, I wanted to get you something…”

“You let us live here…”

“Doesn’t count. Now open!”

Two presents sat on the floor.

“The big one is for you, Diane. And Spring, you get this one.”

She tore into the small package with fervor.

“It’s a duck!” she said when she pulled the stuffed animal out of its box.

“See the face?” I showed her. “It’s a teddy bear in a duck suit. You don’t have a Teddy and you love ducks… so now you have both.”

She grabbed the Teddy Bear-Duck and hugged it to her chin. I was inordinately thrilled by the response.

Diane opened the package that held the new suitcase I‘d bought her.

“It’s great. You’re just so thoughtful.”

“It’s not just a suitcase.” I said, beginning the demonstration. “It’s an Aspen. Ballistic nylon, ultra heavy gauge solid steel hardware, and a lifetime guarantee.”

“It’s beautiful, Dylan.”

“And it’s purple, well, eggplant, if we go by Spring’s crayons.” I demonstrated how easily it pulled and how the handle recessed into the casing for convenient travel just as the store clerk had done.

Diane took my hands. “I love it.” She kissed me. Not on the cheek, and in front of her daughter. For a moment, I remembered Spring in the room. Then Diane’s hand touched the back of my neck and I felt something scary. It wasn’t the caress of her lips, but the hurt of letting her go.

Feeling her breath on my face, I opened my eyes. “I want to see you again.”

“Me too.”

Spring rolled her eyes and grabbed her new Teddy.

“How about tomorrow?” I said hopefully.

“Great. You can help me carry my stuff.”

The next few weeks were like taking a course in
Everything That Had Been Going On Around Me While I Wasn’t Paying Attention.
Quiet dinners without Spring and antic ones with her, Bayswater Point State Park to show Spring the birds and try some trails, a bookshop tour of New York City, lots and lots of walking and talking and, of course, many soft nights after Spring had gone to sleep. I think this was when I started to fall in love with Diane. It’s so hard to tell when love sneaks up on you especially when you’re not really certain that you know what it means.

About a week after she moved into her new apartment, we made love for the first time since Chicago. It was fabulous, less athletic, and more sensual than I remembered. But that wasn’t what made me think I was falling in love with her.

She bought me this book on Feng Shui. She said my apartment was in conflict with itself and that the vibes were traveling in circles. I had heard of Feng Shui, but I really didn’t know what it was all about, or even how to pronounce it.

“Feng shwing?” I said.

“Not feng shwing. It’s pronounced phung schway and literally means
wind water,
she said, touching my shoulder. “It has to do with living in harmony with our environment.”

“I already do that. See? Chair and TV there, and the beer is in the fridge.” I immediately chided myself for being a smartass. This was obviously important to her.

I flipped through a few pages of the book. Apparently, the art of Feng Shui is about ergonomic placement of energy: doors and windows that open the correct way, a certain fluidity of air around static objects, and taking down naked art.

“Close enough for now, Mr. Hunter.” Diane said when I told her the conclusions I’d drawn from my reading. “But if you’re going to keep your chair in front of the TV, at least you could be open to experimentation.”