The First Husband Page 4

  “What would make you think that?”

  I didn’t know how to make your eyes for starters sound like a noncreepy answer.

  “Apparently I make up stories,” I said.

  He smiled. “Well, the last time I stepped on a stage was for my fifth-grade class’s production of The Pajama Game.”

  “I love The Pajama Game,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t have liked this version of it. Trust me.”

  I gave him a smile. “And now you’re the chef here?”

  He nodded. “Temporarily, at least. The regular chef, Lisa, is off for the next few months on maternity leave. I’m just filling in. I used to be the chef at their sister restaurant in the Berkshires. A place called Maybelline’s. It’s about twenty miles outside Stockbridge.”

  “I know Stockbridge. I just went there last year. Or pretty close to there, at least. Great Barrington, actually. I was there for work. If I had known, I’d have gone to your restaurant and written about it. I’m a travel writer. I write this column called ‘Checking Out.’ But I was only allowed to write about Great Barrington. That was what the column was about. So I guess I couldn’t have written about you. Not that time. . . .”

  I started to fade out, in spite of myself, and Griffin tilted his head, like he was wondering if he was missing something again.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just a little sleep-deprived these days. It’s making me over . . . talk.”

  He reached over and held his fingers close to my cheek, not touching my cheek but incredibly close to it. “But you have sleep marks,” he said. “Right there.”

  I felt a chill. I felt a chill right where he could have touched me. I reached my hand up, instinctively, covering that side of my face. “Those are complicated,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’m sure they are,” he said.

  “So you’re no longer at Maybelline’s?”

  “No, I’m actually opening my own restaurant in Williamsburg next winter. When I get back to Massachusetts. . . .”

  I looked at him confused, wondering if I’d misheard. “Did you say Williamstown? ” I asked, thinking of the charming town in the Berkshires. Home of the amazing summer theater festival. Home of the Clark Art Institute. Home of one of my first “Checking Out” columns.

  “No, Williamsburg. But everyone hears Williamstown, you’re not alone in that,” he said. “It’s about an hour from there. In the Pioneer Valley. I grew up in Williamsburg, actually, which is why I’m opening the restaurant there.”

  I smiled. “That’s exciting.”

  He smiled back. “Glad to hear you think so. Then you can come back and write about my new place. In exchange for these drinks.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  He reached over the bar top, picked up the bottle of bourbon, and poured each of us some more, placing the bottle on the counter between us when he was done. I couldn’t help but stare at the bottle, which was losing its liquid considerably fast.

  “So,” he said. “Care to elaborate?”

  I looked up at him confused.

  “The sleep marks. Their complications?”

  “Oh.” I shrugged, trying to think of how to say it. “I’m not exactly myself these days,” I said.

  Griffin took a long drink of his bourbon, as if contemplating this. When he did, I noticed a tattoo on his wrist—a tattoo of an anchor, or half of an anchor, the circle tilt at the bottom abruptly cut off.

  And this was the first thing I did, the first thing that proved the point that I wasn’t exactly myself: I touched it. I touched the tattoo, running my fingers along its edges. Why should this have been normal? And yet, somehow, it was. Griffin had no reaction. He just looked down at his wrist, watched how my finger was running along where the tattoo abruptly cut off, the unfinished part. The minus part.

  “There’s a story behind this,” he said. “Though I’m not sure it’s a very good one.”

  “It involves an old girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Yes. It involves an old girlfriend, my eighteenth birthday, and a long night at a tattoo parlor in Canada.”

  “Did you guys think it would be a good idea to share? Kind of like a best friend necklace?”

  He shook his head, pointing at me.

  “See? ” he said. “This is exactly why I have my rule about talking about other women with the one in front of me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I don’t do it.”

  I laughed. “Got it,” I said. “But what happens when a new girlfriend wants to know about an ex? About your relationship history with the girls who came before. How do you cover that territory?”

  “She gets to know two pieces of information. The best thing. And the worst. The rest? People think it makes them closer to know everything, but I’m not sure it’s fair.”

  I poured myself a topper, trying to figure that out. “To the person you used to be with?”

  “To everyone. It’s like living in the past, and not even in an accurate version of it. We only really remember things for five years. After that, what we remember, what’s actually etched in our brain, is our memory of the thing, not the thing itself. And five years after that, what’s left is our memory of the memory. You follow me?”

  “Enough so that I’m getting a little depressed,” I said.

  He smiled, and it occurred to me—it was one objectively true thing—that smile could bring you down to your knees.

  “Okay, so I’ll bite,” I said. “Tell me about the tattoo girlfriend. Tell me the best thing and the worst thing.”

  “Well, the best thing about Gia is . . .”

  I smiled. “I like the name Gia,” I said.

  “Me too,” he said. Then he nodded, as if he were thinking about it, thinking that was true. “The best thing about Gia was probably the tattoo.”

  “What was the worst thing?”

  He picked up his glass of bourbon, held it to his lips for a minute.

  “Same answer,” he said.

  Somehow, we ended up in the kitchen.

  This part surprised me, almost more than anything that happened later. We ended up in the kitchen, a little after 3:00 A.M., cooking a vat of scrambled eggs. Or, more accurately, Griffin was cooking the eggs in a very large French skillet. Meanwhile, I was sitting cross-legged on the countertop, next to the stove, facing him. Like it was something we knew how to do. Five hours ago, I hadn’t known him. I remember thinking that as I watched him cooking the eggs. I remember thinking that, and thinking that didn’t seem possible.

  “You’re doing those eggs a lot like my mother used to,” I said, watching him add in milk. Watching the way he stirred.

  “These are my specialty,” he said.

  I shrugged. “My mom wasn’t a very good cook.”

  “Ha-ha,” he said.

  He reached into a small refrigerator near the stove and took out some cracked lobster claws, a beautiful block of Gruyère.

  “Okay, she didn’t use those things,” I said.

  “Wait until you taste the final product,” Griffin said.

  He took off his chef’s jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt in a jokey fashion, as though he was really getting down to business. But then something fell out of his jeans pocket: a small red asthma bronchodilator. He bent down to pick it up off the floor, put it back in.

  I pointed at the floor, at the spot where the inhaler had fallen. “You have asthma?”

  He nodded. “Since I was a kid,” he said.

  “Any big problems?”

  He shook his head. “Not since I was a kid.”

  “My second stepfather’s son has asthma. When he’d come to visit, he’d always carry around a blue bronchodilator. I’d steal it and pretend it was mine. I kind of thought it was cool. To suck the air in . . .”

  I made a gesture with my hands, which knocked me a bit off balance—and was my first clue as to how much the bourbon had started affecting me.

  “You need a hand?” he asked. />
  “I’ve got it together,” I said. “Or pretty much together, at least. Which is no small miracle to tell you the truth.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I did something terrible that involves watching a certain movie that I love, and now I’m facing the consequences.”

  “Which movie’s that?”

  “Roman Holiday.”

  He was quiet for a minute, as he finished adding in the lobster and the cheese. “Are you usually this honest?” he asked.

  “No never. Never in the history of my life,” I said. Then I added, “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. I agree with you.”

  “Agree with me about what?” I said.

  “Roman Holiday’s a really great movie,” he said.

  I smiled.

  Griffin took the pan off the still-going burner, and scooped out a large forkful of the eggs, blowing on it, slowly and deliberately, before holding it out for me to take the first bite.

  “You may want to brace yourself,” he said.

  “I’m braced,” I said.

  Then I took a bite of the eggs and realized how unbraced I was.

  They were totally and completely delicious. The single most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. I’d tasted all sorts of things that had competed for that ranking—a mustard-coated prime rib in Salzburg, Germany; blowfish in Kyoto; chocolate-covered crickets in Nova Scotia—but nothing like these eggs. How do you describe something that good? They tasted like cotton candy, but the egg version. They were creamy and rich and melted as soon as they touched my tongue, as soon as I tasted the sea-salty edge of them.

  And maybe it was in part the bourbon, and maybe it was in part that I hadn’t really had an appetite since Nick left. But I don’t think so. I don’t think those parts were the important ones. Not then. The important one was this: if I could have dived right into the pan, I seriously would have considered doing it.

  Instead, I scooped up another enormous bite.

  Griffin smiled, knowing he had me. I attempted a shrug. “Not bad,” I said, my mouth full.

  “Not bad? They are fucking great.”

  I laughed. “They are,” I said. “They are fucking great.”

  “Thank you for that,” he said. “And if you ever do make that trip back to western Mass., I might even go up to Lasse’s Seafood Mart and get us the real deal. You’ve never seen lobster claws so red. Lasse makes you work for them, though. He only sells the really good stuff to the local chefs at three A.M., sometimes later, sometimes closer to four A.M., a little before he goes out lobstering with his son. And even then, he only sells them if he is in a good enough mood. And then, only to the chefs he can stand.”

  “That seems unnecessary.”

  He smiled. “You haven’t tasted those lobster claws,” he said.

  Then he took another fork out of the drawer and jumped up on the countertop so he was sitting cross-legged too, directly in front of me, the pan between us. I tried to move all of the eggs to my side of the pan, breaking off just a small portion for him.

  “Um . . .” I said. “Get your own pan.”

  He fought a smile, that dimple making a final appearance as he waited for me to relent.

  “Fine,” I said, and shuffled one more biteful to his side of the pan. “But you leave me no choice. I’m cutting you off after this.”

  “How generous,” he said. Then he tilted his head, and looked at me. Really looked.

  “So, how are you dealing with it?” he asked.

  “With what?”

  I was smiling, looking down at the eggs, stuffing another less-than-ladylike bite into my mouth.

  “Whatever the movie brought on.”

  I met his eyes and felt myself get serious for a minute—made myself swallow, hard. “I’m trying to be the opposite of myself,” I said.

  I didn’t offer further explanation. I waited for him to ask for one, or compliment me—say that, from the little he knew, I seemed okay the way I was. But he did something better.

  “Anything I can do to help?” he asked.

  This was when I kissed him.

  5

  I learned an important lesson from “Checking Out” about how and why people travel far from home—far from where they started. There was, of course, the obvious reason: escape. Escape from the monotony of every day. So many of us chasing what we wished our everyday existence could be instead. But there was a less obvious and perhaps more important reason. Somewhere, often right in the middle of a trip, you got to believe this was your everyday life. You got to believe you were never going home again.

  When I woke up at Griffin’s the next morning, it took me a moment to realize I wasn’t home. It took less than that to realize I didn’t want to go back. Not yet. I didn’t want to go back to how I was feeling there. And so I didn’t move. I stayed lying there, fairly frozen—feigning sleep—in Griffin’s bed.

  He, meanwhile, was walking around the apartment, already in his jeans, no shirt on, trying to get it together before his twelve-hour shift started.

  The hotel had given him very nice digs, a suite on the top floor of the hotel: Ralph Lauren furnished, sandy beach views, ocean views beyond that. But all I was looking at was Griffin, in front of me, still half naked, trying not to reveal that I was thinking of him completely naked. Thinking of him, thinking of me completely naked. I couldn’t help but blush, like a teenager. Worse than a teenager. A tween.

  I looked away, covering my reddening face, pretending to still be asleep. But it was no use. I was caught—and Griffin was on his way over to sit down next to me on the edge of the bed. I pulled the sheets up higher, trying to gauge how weird it would be if I pulled them over my entire head.

  “You’re awake,” he said.

  I nodded, sheet over my chin.

  He squinted his eyes, as if thinking about something. Then, instead of offering it up, he gave me a smile.

  “So I’m off tomorrow, which is the good news,” he said. “What do you say you come surfing with me? I know a great place up near Malibu. A place worth seeing. And if it goes well, I’ll take you dancing after.”

  I couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Oh . . . so I’m being tested now?” I said.

  “What, you think you’re a shoo-in or something?”

  “If not, I’m about to fail,” I said. “I don’t surf.”

  “But you like dancing, right?” he said.

  “Very much . . .” I said. “I like it very much.”

  And my smile disappeared. Because I did. I loved dancing. But Nick never took me. The thought of going made me so happy, and then so sad, almost simultaneously, because I couldn’t help but think that this person I barely knew, he was the one willing to give it to me.

  “Weren’t you saying something about being the opposite of yourself?” he asked, teasing me.

  I was.

  “So surfing and then dancing. Tomato, then tomah-to. Do we have a deal?” he asked.

  We did.

  6

  “It’s just dinner, right?” I said. was looking in the mirror, checking myself out in my little yellow bikini. It was the only bathing suit I could find—and it wasn’t the one I’d wanted to find. While it was decent on the top—it had that Marilyn Monroe–like quality to it, the halter hugging at the right place on my neck—that didn’t, couldn’t, make up for the way it curved up fiercely in the behind region, revealing too much of my backside. Plus, ironically, and not in a good way, it was the same exact shade of yellow as my magic dress.

  “It’s just dinner,” Jordan repeated back to me.

  She was on the other end of the phone, lying on the couch with Simon in Venice, the other Venice. Occasionally I could hear him murmur something in the background, trying to help out—not because he particularly cared, but so she would get off the phone and they could go back to watching their movie for the night. That had been their plan, to watch AFI’s top hundred movies while they were away. Tonight they were on Stagecoach. If
I thought he could hear me, I would’ve told Simon what he already secretly knew: regardless of when Jordan and I got off the phone, it was over for them and that movie.

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s not just dinner. It’s a whole day that includes a beach and . . . travel.”

  “One date. With the rebound guy,” she said. “That’s good for everyone. You’re going.”

  “It involves me wearing a bathing suit.”

  She paused. “That is a little cruel,” she said. “Have you been to YogaHop recently?”

  I could hear Simon in the background, talking: Hasn’t she already been naked with the guy? Isn’t that what you’ve been gabbing about for the last twelve hours?

  And suddenly, Jordan’s voice got distant, further away. I imagined she covered the telephone’s receiver in order to answer him, but I could still make out her muffled voice: That, she said, is a completely different thing than swimwear.

  “Exactly!” I shouted. “Thank you, Jordan! Thank you for getting it.”

  I started to undo the top of my bikini, my fingers working their way through the knot, but then Jordan was back on the phone.

  “You’re going,” she said.

  Griffin picked me up in a 1957 Chevy pickup truck. Bright blue with light-duty wheels. A small white line of visible paint along the doors. I was sitting on the front steps waiting for him when he drove up.

  At first I thought I had imagined it. A 1957 pickup truck was the vehicle I fantasized about. With all the fancy cars in Los Angeles, this was one you’d rarely see, and it was my favorite.

  “This is what you drive?” I said.

  He was wearing faded jeans and a relaxed T-shirt, and as he walked around to my side to open the door for me, he looked like an advertisement standing next to the truck. Like an advertisement for a handsome guy.

  “What, you like it or something?”

  I nodded. “You could say.”

  He kissed me hello, soft and slow, on my lower lip, like he had done it a thousand times. Like he had the right. The way he pulled it off, he almost did.