“And so you drink your drinks, and how does it get to where it gets?”
“We drink our drinks. She seems to have come alone, like me. She—”
“Was she blonde?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“You’re so weird with that.”
“Was she?”
“She was…like that, I guess.” Will pointed to a woman in the dining room. “Mostly blonde, dark at the roots.”
“And supersmart too, I bet.”
Will leaned back on his stool and sat up straight, bared his teeth like the grimace of the grimace emoji. “Look, I know this is weird, and if you don’t want to do it this way…”
“No, I know.…What can I say? I knew I would be bad at it. I’m jealous of hair color. I’m jealous of the conversation as much as the fact that you went home and fucked her.”
Will’s eyes tracked to the bartender to see if he’d noticed. Nothing. The staff wouldn’t be bothered even if they understood. “And I was funny that night,” he said, looking back at Whitney.
“Oh yeah?”
“Funniest I’ve been in a while. It’s interesting how everyone thinks I’m funnier than you do. I’m the ‘funny guy’ at the office.”
“I think that says more about your office.”
“Point is, she’s having a good old time with me.”
“You talk about defamation lawsuits. You talk about libel and IP.”
“TV, movies, music.”
“You don’t even listen to music,” she said.
“Not true.”
“You listen to legal podcasts when you run…”
“I know new bands. I’ve gotten into some deejays at—”
“Some deejays? I was only out of town for a month.”
“I know it’s been seven years, but I remember what it’s like to talk to girls, all right? I did okay before I met you.”
“So you impress her with your CD binder from high school?”
“With tales of concerts in Hollywood. With the names of venues. The Roxy, the Troub—” He registered her nausea and cut himself off. “Whatever, it worked.”
Whitney picked at a cuticle. She reached for her wine. “So you, what, close out and hop in a cab?…”
“We go to another bar.”
“Oh! Another drink.”
“Another couple drinks,” he said.
“What a lush. So you wind up canoodling in a booth with sexy candlelight.”
“We avoid the darts flying over our heads and laugh about an obnoxious Australian woman shooting pool.”
“And she takes you to the bathroom right then and there because she can’t resist.”
“Do you want me to tell it, or do you want to?”
She opened her hands, an invitation to proceed freely.
“We finish our drinks, hit the street. I think that’s basically it.”
“So, what, you just start heading home? You think you’ve struck out?”
“We exchange phone numbers. I start walking toward the subway. I hear a voice and look up and she’s in a cab and asks me if I need a ride to her neighborhood.”
“Smooth.”
“I guess it was an unnecessary step. There was a straighter line.”
“But she wasn’t gonna risk you judging her by making her move at the bar.”
“Anyway, I get in the cab.”
“You get in the cab.”
“And take her straight to our place,” Will said.
“No you didn’t…”
“Right to bed. Let her root around in your closet. Let her admire the photos of us on vacation.”
“It was a good rule,” Whitney said. “I’m glad we made it. I couldn’t have dealt with someone at the apartment.”
“You had it so much easier,” Will said, finding her wandering eyes. “A month on the road. A month in a strange city. A month of being able to bring them back to your hotel.…All while I’m forced to take cabs to Brooklyn.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Where?”
“I don’t know, not far.”
“Bushwick,” she said.
“South Williamsburg.”
“By the bridge…” she said, smiling again now.
“Nice place by the bridge,” he said, smiling back in confirmation.
“So she leans into you in the cab.”
“She leans in. She grabs my wrist. She places my hand on her leg.”
“Oh-kay, then.…Stockings? Skirt?”
“I don’t know—skin, shaved.”
“Bare legs,” she said. “A warm night.”
“Not that warm…” he said.
“So bare legs for Young Lawyers Night. Man, being a girl is hard.”
“We eventually get there. We head upstairs.”
“No pretense of dropping you off somewhere else.”
“Pretense gone after the bare legs.”
“And so she walks you past the first of three roommates…”
Will smiled again. He loved her. The precision cuts. The smothering judgment.
“Two roommates,” he said. “But both supposedly at work. Another lawyer. A hospital resident.”
“No wonder the bare legs, then. A rare night with the place to herself.”
“They’re way up in a big building. They have a narrow balcony and a nice view. She dumps some ice in a couple glasses and makes two vodka sodas.”
“Of course,” she said, chewing on some bread now, feeling lighter. “Perfect.”
“You love this,” he said. “Every detail is everything you’d hoped.”
“Don’t stop now. You’re on the balcony…”
“We look at the view of the bridge, and then I guess it just happened from there.”
“Nope,” Whitney said. “The whole thing.”
“We don’t need to do the whole thing.”
“Step-by-step.”
“Well, when it’s your turn, you don’t need to go step-by-step.”
“So you’re on the balcony, you’re making her laugh—the funny guy—and she looks up at you with her wet bovine eyes and begs you to kiss her.”
He tapped the tip of his nose and swirled his wine.
“The poorly colored hair dried out from a brutal winter,” she continued. “Bounced up with some heat tools. A little too much makeup concealing lines she swears weren’t there yesterday. Maybe from overdosing on Netflix and Ben & Jerry’s in bed…”
“Nah,” Will said, “way too young for wrinkles.”
Whitney shifted on her stool. She knew his buttons and he knew hers. Younger, smoother. It halted her momentum, even though what he’d said wasn’t true and he could tell that she could tell. Whitney lifted her glass and then dug in deeper.
“She can’t figure out what about her isn’t fully lovable,” she said. “Why dragging home a strange man from a cheesy networking event and giving it up after three hours and four drinks might not be girlfriend material.”
“I think she’d been in a long relationship. Something left over from college.”
“And what about you—what had
