We Won't Feel a Thing (11 page)

Peter (Pierre) returned with a plate of fresh strawberries and a pot of locally roasted Extra-Bold Black Magic Silk Truffle coffee. He poured it in two china cups, letting the deep toasty chocolate-and-tobacco smells of their favorite coffee shop fill the nook, and crouched beside their table.

“This was a success, I see.” He took the tartlet plate from Riley. “What’s the story?”

They relayed the Papa D’s anecdote in a jubilant rush, their sentences overlapping and tangling together. He listened, smiling, his head whipping from Rachel to Riley. At the punchline, he let out a reflective sigh that smelled faintly of garlic butter.

“Did you know,” he said, “that scent is our most powerful memory trigger? And that seventy-five percent of our sense of taste is actually smell?”

Rachel gripped the waiter’s vest. “Did you know,” she said, “that if you hooked my brain up with his brain, you’d be able to watch one long continuous movie of our life?”

“How beautiful.”

“I remember all the details he forgets. He remembers mine.”

“You’re fortunate. Both of you.”

“We are not. No no
no
.” Rachel shook him by the lapels. “We’re extremely
un
fortunate. You have no idea.”

“What’ll we do this year?” Riley gulped the last of his coffee and poured another cup. “Who’re we going to be without each other?”

Peter (Pierre) pointed heavenward. “You don’t believe you’ll be…reunited?”

His eyes went to the tubes.

“We’re not sure of anything,” said Riley. Which was the truth.

Their waiter stood up. He took the folded white towel from across his arm and draped it around his neck.

“Let me do something for you,” he said. “Before fate rips you apart. Before you journey beyond the veil.”

“What,” said Rachel.

“Let me give you a happy ending.” He opened MUSINGS OF A DROWNING MAN to a page marked with a pink sticky note.
“Let me marry you.”

Riley looked at Rachel. The room tilted. In their narcotic after-dinner haze, this seemed like the most brilliant and logical idea that had ever been proposed. They had told 1,354 Bob and Athena stories since the night in Suite 7B, all of them with happy endings. Now they wanted their own. A faint message from a corner of their brains told them there might be something objectionable about this plan, but they couldn’t recall what it was.

“We,” said Riley, pointing at nothing in particular, “should
totally get married.”

“Yes.” Rachel nodded. “We totally should.”

“We don’t have a license,” Riley said.

“That’s all right!” Peter (Pierre) laughed. “Neither do I.”

The waiter worked fast. He fashioned a wedding tiara from their napkin rings, twists of gold-wire branches studded with pearl beads. He stuck a blue rosebud in Riley’s shirt pocket and gave the rest of the roses in the vase to Rachel. Then he whistled, and the frizzy-haired L’Amour Food! violinist clomped into the curtained nook. She wore a black beret, an ill-fitting blue dress with witchy chiffon sleeves, and a nametag that said BONJOUR! JE M’APPELLE CLARA (CLAIRE).

“These brave young lovers have
armoritis—
something,” Peter (Pierre) told Clara (Claire). “They have chosen this evening to stand before us and pledge their infinite love before they face the great beyond.”

The violinist unwrapped a stick of gum and shoved it in her mouth. “Any requests?”

Riley reached out and touched one of her slippery sleeves. It was like dangling his fingers in a current, catching a rush of cool water on its way to somewhere else.

“Something that smells like the ocean,” he said.

The violinist made an
okay, weirdo
face. She obliged with the romantic theme from a cruise-ship-disaster movie.

The music swelled, a procession of swoons. Peter (Pierre) rattled his notebook and began to chant. He chanted soft verses about
infinite adhesiveness
and
the deathless bloom of rapture
and Rachel and Riley seized each other’s hands as uninvited words fell from their lips,
I promise
and
forever
and
until we are parted
. All the smells from dinner began to take form. Rachel and Riley saw ribbons of liquid color swirling around them, tangling in their hair, tying them together. Everything was possible. They would sew New York and California together. They would invent a new planet. They would live on the moon, at the bottom of the sea, on an island in a castle of rocks and sticks and sand.

“BY THE LIMITED POWER INVESTED IN ME,” boomed Peter (Pierre), “I now pronounce you married in the sovereign state of L’Amour Food!”

They turned to look at him. Everything blurred, as if they were peering through the puckery plastic of David’s clear umbrella. They blinked fast and squinted. Their hearts clenched. They saw a vast red beard, two gleams of green, a pair of rough tanned hands hoisting the notebook high above his head.

The console popped loudly and set off a spark. Raw tingles shot through their noses. Rachel and Riley ripped out the tubes.

Peter (Pierre) said, “Congratulations,
mes cheres
!” He was himself again. Just a waiter.

A wave of sick damp heat swept over them. They clutched their chairs. On the plate between their coffee cups, the strawberries seemed to throb like little ripped-out hearts.

“Uh, Pete?” Clara (Claire) pointed at them with her violin bow. “They don’t look so good.”

***

The waiter was driving them home.

His car, a stubby two-door painted dark metallic green, scuttled through the back roads like a beetle about to be overturned. The windows were down. He had surrendered his accent so he could sob more efficiently about Chef Antoinette, who had dismissed him from his post when she heard he’d tried to marry two underage customers.

“…I said, ‘Toni, you don’t understand. Love spoke to me with urgency. If I can’t have you, then can I not make the lives of others happy?’ And she said, ‘Frankly, Peter, I think you need to be medicated.’ As if there’s a pill for this!” He turned up the volume on “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” “You don’t know how lucky you are. To have each other truly, even for a short while. That’s why I used the shaker on you…”

Rachel and Riley rode in the backseat, which was cluttered with hamburger wrappers and scribbled-on napkins. They didn’t ask what a shaker was, because love was speaking to them with urgency. Their noses blazed with pain. Familiar Puckatoe smells deviled them at each stop sign and traffic light—all of them romantic now, as if they’d been on separate coasts for months and had just returned for a holiday. The earthy funk of cow pies made them ache inside. Papa D’s special sauce nearly brought them to tears.

“—a drowning man, Toni!” Peter (Pierre) was grumbling. “She has ripped out my bones and spat on them! I am a husk with no eyes, no nose, no consciousness—Where do you live?”

“Here’s good,” said Riley.

The car yanked onto the shoulder of Elmhurst, two streets before Donnybrook Lane. Rachel and Riley got out, muttering thanks. Their waiter looked very small behind the steering wheel, which was covered with imitation tiger fur.

“Where do I go now?” said Peter (Pierre).

“Home,” suggested Rachel.

“Where is home?”

The question felt rhetorical. They gave it a respectful pause of seven seconds, and then Riley gently tipped him five dollars.

“Goodbye, newlyweds,” said Peter (Pierre). “Enjoy your first days—and your last!”

The car screeched away.

Rachel and Riley peered down the long dark street. The console hung heavy on Rachel’s shoulder. Their noses throbbed. Their fingers twitched.

“Rach,” said Riley.

“Yes,” said Rachel.

“The fake-French waiter fake-married us.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Kind of a setback.”

“Just a small one.”

“You think?”

“It’s not legally binding.” She kneaded her fingers. “And we didn’t even kiss.”

“I know.” He ventured a look at her. “I have to be totally honest and tell you that’s pretty much all I can think about now.”

Rachel tightened her grip on the console. “It’s a side effect. It’ll go away.”

“My nose really hurts.”

“That’ll go away too.”

“You look so pretty in your wedding crown.”

Rachel patted the top of her head. Her fingers felt pearls. She tore the napkin-ring tiara from her hair and tossed it in a bush.

“We need water.” She nudged his arm and they started to walk. “Cold water. And strong tea. Let’s—”

A rustle in the bushes interrupted. Riley touched Rachel’s back.

“What was that?” he whispered.

Violins swooned in their stomachs. It felt like someone was watching them.
Hunting
them.

“I don’t know.” Rachel tugged at him. “Come on!”

They ran all the way home. Their feet slapped the damp cracked pavement. The orange moon glared down and the bushes and trees seemed to teem with whispers and teeth and strange questing eyes. They burned for the familiar, for the stiff white couch and the vacuumed carpet and the wallpaper with tasteful vines and berries. Their house approached fast. They didn’t bother sneaking in. They flung the door open and locked it behind them.

They leaned against the door, breathing hard.

“For heaven’s
sake
.” Mrs. Woodlawn’s voice. “What on earth were you two doing outside?”

“We thought you guys were in bed.” Mr. Woodlawn’s voice.

Rachel and Riley froze. The living room was dark and filled with large bulky shapes they couldn’t identify. They smelled an unsettling smell, like scorched cake and fresh meat.

“Look, it got dark, Ed. Turn on the light, Riley.”

Riley felt for the brass lamp and switched it on. All the contents of the basement rec room—the particle-board bookshelves, the ancient television, the blown-glass knick-knacks—had been uprooted and deposited in the living room. Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn sat across from each other: Ed on the white couch he hated, Anne in her husband’s stained brown armchair. Mr. Woodlawn wore his denim shorts, now smeared with chocolate frosting. Mrs. Woodlawn wore her pink silk pants, now hacked off at the knees. They were tearing into cupcakes and hamburger patties with pink middles, and they were eating them off paper plates, which Mrs. Woodlawn often said was a reliable mark of low character.

“What’s going on?” said Rachel.

“Don’t be alarmed.” Mrs. Woodlawn’s mouth was full. An empty box of truth cupcake mix lay demolished on the floor beside her, next to a stained Splatter Session card, a hammer, and a drill. “This is a temporary state. Right, Ed?”

“That’s what the
Pocket Guide
says.”

“I trust you to self-direct your lessons this week. This journey we’re on is extremely important to the future of this family.”

Mr. Woodlawn nodded. “I don’t think you kids know how close we were to splitting up.”

“Yes, we’ve despised each other fairly steadily for years. Both of us planning separate escape routes. But now…”

“Whoooole new era!” Mr. Woodlawn took a big bite of cupcake. “Everything out in the open!”

“It’s a shock at first,” said Mrs. Woodlawn. “But really, once you get past that, it’s so freeing.”

“Why is the downstairs upstairs?” said Riley.

“It’s best you not know details. You’re still imprisoned by emotional etiquette and you’d find it highly disturbing.” Mrs. Woodlawn noticed frosting on her fingers and wiped it off on the chair. “Now, we’re heading into a short period of Extreme Impurification, and then according to the
DERT@Home Pocket Guide
, we should be cycling into a calmer phase of Everyday Honesty within…” She pulled out the guide and thumbed to a page with a yellow sticky note. “…three to six days. In the meantime, you can do the next twelve French worksheets and start those reports on
The Sea, The Sea.
Do you have any other immediate needs?”

Rachel and Riley shook their heads.

“We gotta get back to building, Anne.” Mr. Woodlawn picked up his drill. “You guys okay? You look—odd.”

Riley rubbed his nose. “We’re—”

“Fine! We’re fine,” said Rachel.

Mrs. Woodlawn picked up the hammer and stood. “We’re doing this for you, too, you know. You deserve better. We’ve provided a terrible model for you.” She stepped closer to them, polishing the hammer head with her palm. Her lips shone with hamburger grease, and a cupcake crumb made a false beauty mark on her cheek. They could tell she was about to say something gross.

“We want you both to have a
very
happy marriage someday,” she said.

Riley paled.

“We have to go now,” said Rachel.

Upstairs, their kingdom felt ten degrees hotter than it had when they left. Rachel shoved all the windows open, retrieved two jelly jars from their tub of supplies, and filled them with cold water from their bathroom faucet. Riley scooped up Bob and Athena and sat on Rachel’s bed, holding the ticking clock to his chest as if it were a newborn with a fever. The breeze rustled his hair and clinked Tilly’s glass heart against the windowpane.

“This wasn’t bad. Really.” Rachel bustled over, her hair clipped up in the feather barrette. “I think I might love you about five percent less, which isn’t
great
compared to David’s example, but I bet we’ll catch up with Step Three—here, Ri.”

She handed him a jelly jar. He stared into it as if his fortune were stuck to the bottom.

“Hey.”

He looked up.

“We’re going to be fine,” she said.

He straightened in alarm.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

Rachel touched her upper lip. Her fingertips came away red. She turned away, panicked; she hadn’t had a nosebleed since she lived with her grandfather. Two droplets plinked into her water glass and then Riley was in front of her, standing so close, pressing crumpled toilet tissue to her face and pinching her nose with a finger and thumb. He kept his head down. Blood made him woozy.

“Don’t tilt your head back.” He gazed at her R necklace. “People always do that but it just makes it worse.”

“I’m okay,” said Rachel. “You shouldn’t stand so—”

Riley smelled the Poison Apple lotion she’d dabbed on her neck. He closed his eyes and touched his forehead to hers. Slowly, he circled her waist with his free arm.