“See, here I was fishing for the difference between Scandinavian girls and Bavarian girls. But you’re talking the gradations between Lake Forest and, what, Wilmette?”
“Hey, look at you,” he said, smiling, his cheeks flushed more than even a moment ago, out of practice with his drinking. “Definitely can do that. But maybe I can do the other ones, too…” He had a big mouth that stretched wider than his teeth were set. And his head was undersize for his body, for his shoulders and his legs. “Actually, here’s one thing I learned from all my travels, if you really wanna know.”
“I do.”
“After a couple vodkas, after some dancing to remixes of ‘Sorry,’ every girl everywhere apparently wants the same thing.”
“Gelato?” Whitney said. Will shook his head and stared into his soup bowl.
“Even better, though? My best trick? A big bed. A big bed to head back to. Each new place I lived. I never had to say much, just kinda said it because it was true, but it was always good enough.…I’d say, ‘I’m gonna head home because I’ve got practice in the morning. And I especially can’t wait to get home’—and leave you, fill-in-the-blank-beautiful-lady, here at the bar—‘because I’ve got this bed, it’s the most comfortable bed on earth, and it’s calling my name, lo siento, good night, señorita.’ And guess who was interested in checking it out just to, ya know, confirm the claims?”
“You preyed on their exhaustion!” Whitney said, covering her mouth in case there was kale in her teeth, enjoying it all as much as she’d hoped. “On their lust for soft pillows and a downy comforter and a chance to get to sleep an hour earlier than they’d planned.”
“Worked since high school,” Jack said. “These long legs? Those big games? It was the only thing I ever successfully negotiated from my parents. A big bed where my feet didn’t fall off the edge. I’d show them pictures of Jordan’s bed, of Longley’s bed. You ever seen pictures of Shaq’s bed?”
“Round,” Will said, looking up. “Fifteen, twenty feet across.”
“Bingo,” Jack said. “Big bed, doesn’t take much to get girls interested.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that before,” Whitney said. “Are you sure these women didn’t think you were just speaking euphemistically?”
Will flipped to her again, as though she might notice, as though her focus weren’t elsewhere.
“I got a king in eighth grade,” Jack said, missing Whitney’s line entirely. “No one had ever seen anything like it. And our house, we have this big old mess. No one knew where anyone else was most of the time. All six of us could be home, or maybe no one, you couldn’t tell. Even if it was my older brothers’ friends who were around, the girls in their classes? All it took was the curiosity. They just wanted to see what a really big bed looked like in a teenager’s overstuffed little room. To sprawl out and take a breather.”
“I’m picturing a Halloween party at the Pickles’ and a bunch of cute older girls dressed up like Rockford Peaches and Racine Belles.”
He laughed hard. “Pretty much!”
“And you’re sure this wasn’t about something else?” she said. “Maybe, like, the fact that you were the star of the school, on your way to becoming a pro athlete? Might be a causation-correlation mix-up, no?”
“Is that something we were supposed to learn in college? I think they maybe let me skip that class.”
“Then again, the more I think about it, the more I can totally picture it: I’m much more interested in my bed than I am in you, the big man on campus says. A classic Big Bed Neg. Make her feel like dirt—but chosen dirt.”
He shrugged blamelessly. He knew only what he knew. He was getting exhausted, besides.
“Let me ask you this, then…” Whitney said, holding her soup spoon in front of his face like a microphone, like a beat reporter in the locker room. “Norway, Germany, Spain, Chicago: What’s the difference once you get them in the big bed?”
“Hey,” Will said, standing now and shading his body so that his back was to Jack. “Why don’t you have another drink, huh?”
Whitney’s grin faded and Will looked at the sky, the low ceiling dialing darker. Jack sipped what was left of his soup and let the question hang there unanswered.
“Well,” Whitney said, turning back to Jack, “for the first time in my life, I can safely say my interest is piqued, too: How great can a bed really be, anyway?”
Will narrowed his eyes and offered to collect the bowls, snipping the thread before it could unspool further.
“Three whites, then…” It was Leonard again, back down the steps, as Will turned to carry the dishes inside.
“Perfect timing,” Will said, looking at his fiancée looking at Jack.
“Can you take a load off?” Jack said to Leonard. He’d grown looser still. He had nowhere to be in the morning, nothing to be up for ever again.
“But the animals in there are thirsty,” Leonard said.
“It’s wine,” Jack said. “They know how to pour wine.”
Whitney scooted over on the steps and patted the bricks beside her.
Leonard pressed the butt of her robe down, leaned over, and gathered herself into a comfortable-looking assortment on the top stair.
Whitney’s eyes watched Will’s widen as they fell down Leonard’s dress. She made a face at him like a mother makes at a child who’s throwing food. Will returned an expression that said: You would’ve done the same thing.
They’d set the rules. They’d lived their lives apart. They’d come back together and then they’d failed to go home. It was either as simple as flipping a switch off or it wasn’t.
“So,” Leonard said. “What brings you guys here? You couldn’t have come voluntarily…”
Whitney explained. Will filled in the gaps.
“I’m stuck, too,” Leonard said. “There are worse places, obviously. But I’ve never stayed here for more than two nights in a
