I reach my hand across the table, and she takes it and squeezes. “Hey,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Marisa.”
She nods and gives me a tight smile, then relaxes just a bit. We sit there, a thousand feet above the city, gazing at each other and holding hands, until the waiter comes to take our dessert order.
MARISA EXCUSES HERSELF after we finish a shared slice of cheesecake, and when I’ve paid the bill and finished my cup of decaf, she’s still not returned. I’m considering asking for a second cup—and beginning to wonder if she’s actually ditched me—when she suddenly materializes, looking slightly out of breath. “Hey,” I say, surprised. I stand up. “You okay?”
“Come on,” she says, holding out her hand, and I take it. She practically marches me to the elevator. Impatience radiates from her as we wait for the elevator to arrive. When the doors finally slide open, she pulls me into the elevator, stabs the CLOSE DOORS button, and darts a glance at a couple approaching the elevator. “You’ll need to get the next one,” she says to them, and before I can say anything to the startled couple, Marisa turns and kisses me, her tongue darting into my mouth. I embrace her, as much to hold on as out of passion, as the doors shut.
She pulls away, her breathing ragged, and punches a floor button.
“Marisa,” I say, and then she’s kissing me again, her mouth hot, urgent. My hands fall to her hips, slide down to cup her ass and pull her toward me. She sighs, then grasps my shoulders and lifts herself up and onto me, legs around my waist. I nearly stagger against the wall of the elevator, holding her, then lean back in the corner.
“Ethan,” she breathes, kissing my neck.
“Marisa,” I say, and now I’m half laughing. “What are we—”
“Shh,” she says in my ear, squeezing me with her legs.
I’m so distracted I don’t realize the elevator has stopped until it dings and the doors slide open. Startled, I nearly drop Marisa. The doors open onto an empty hotel hallway. Marisa hops down and pulls me out of the elevator.
“What are we doing?” I say.
She smiles, wickedly. “I like hotels,” she says. “As I recall, so do you.” We pause outside a room, and she holds up a key card.
I look at the key card, then at her. “You checked in? That’s where you went?”
In answer, she slides the key card into the slot by the door handle, then removes the card with a flourish. The door to the room cracks open, swinging inward slowly.
Marisa places her fingertips on my chest and steers me into the room, kicking the door shut behind her. We make our way through the dark room to the bed, shedding clothes along the way. Marisa pushes me so I fall onto the bed on my back, and she crawls on top of me, wearing black silk panties and nothing else. “Touch me,” she says, her voice slightly hoarse, and I oblige.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I love showing television ads in class—the smart ones and the off-the-wall ones and the sentimental ones that pluck at our emotions like a guitarist tuning his Fender. Ads are great examples of the power of language and imagery to manipulate an audience. And we fall for the good ones every time, even when we know exactly what they’re doing. The lonely grandmother, the kind young boy, the lost little girl, the dim but good-hearted father—they are such clichés that we forget they actual work.
The stern but caring teacher, that’s another one. My mother played that role quite effectively. Actually, that’s not fair; it wasn’t a role she played as much as it was honest self-expression. Most kids are great detectors of bullshit and will quickly write off teachers who strike them as fake or insincere. But they loved my mother, at first because she was pretty and witty and spoke with an Irish accent, later because she was compassionate and clever and devoted to her students. Whenever I see an old greeting card ad involving a teacher, it’s usually a mawkish affair involving piano music, sunlight streaming through classroom windows, a simple expression of thanks from a student, and the teacher blinking back a tear. And yet I always think of my mother when I see those ads, because she was that teacher, the kind who cared and could always turn things around, no matter what was wrong.
Except my father, perhaps, but I’ll never know for sure. She wasn’t given enough time on this earth to do that.
One Christmas Eve when I was ten years old, I was helping Mom make sugar cookies to set out for Santa. This was something I had always done with Mom. In Ireland, Mom told us, they had left out a mince pie and a bottle of Guinness, along with a carrot for Rudolph, but in America we should leave out cookies and milk. Susannah always wanted to help, but then she would get bored and wander off, trailing flour and candy sprinkles. That particular Christmas Eve, Dad had come home early from the bank—this was the last Christmas before he was sent to Iraq—and gone out in the cul-de-sac with Susannah, where he was watching her ride her bike while Mom and I made the cookies. I’d been wanting to talk with Mom for a couple of days, but I hadn’t had the chance to do it without Susannah being around, so I decided to strike while the iron was hot.
“Mom?”
“Hmm?” Mom said, dusting a collection of snowman-shaped cookies with green sugar.
“Is Santa real?”
Mom looked up from the cookies. “Why do you ask?” she said.
I shrugged. “Horace says Santa isn’t real and
