In Bed

In Bed

Peter lay watching the girl in his bed. Her long black hair, even in the delicate dawn light, shone like obsidian. Her features were ordinary, neither classically beautiful nor out of balance with each other. She lay on her side, facing him; a droplet of drool hung from the lower corner of her mouth. She was snoring quietly. She was wearing one of Peter’s T-shirts. The T-shirt was plenty roomy on her slender, almost scrawny frame. On him the shirt clung to him; Peter needed to lose a few — well, maybe ten or a dozen — pounds.

They had met at a wedding the day before, sitting across from each other at a round table covered in white polyester cloth. They had both opted for the salmon (why was the glaze always the same at any banquet?). And they were mostly hidden from each other by the overly cute (a teddy bear for Chrissakes?) centerpiece. She had barely talked. The neighbor to his left, a wrist-bangled Realtor with a song-belter’s voice and a braying, hiccupping laugh, had trapped him in a constant stream of inanities, occasionally touching his arm for emphasis. He pretended to listen, but it didn’t matter: some people can spew out a volcano of words without needing or even noticing any response from their audience.  

The other five people at the table chatted with their neighbors; a few words and sentence fragments floated through to Peter, but he wasn’t listening any more than he was listening to the Realtor.

It wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Peter was a loner, and he had developed an ability to filter out unwanted noises. And the band, which he did listen to, was pretty good, especially since he was in the distant-cousin part of the tent, so it wasn’t blasting and vibrating the air and folding chairs around him.

The evening wore on; the mandatory wedding dances had been danced; the tearful bride had clung, weeping, to her new husband when the band played their song; the toasts had been toasted; the Best Man had given his borderline pornographic ritual speech; the band had lapsed into ballads from three and four decades ago to let the older folks dance without embarrassing themselves. Peter stayed on; he had no place special to go; apparently neither did the girl. Eventually they were the only two at their table, and they both moved so they could see the dance floor. They now sat next to each other, getting up only to go on a zigzag quest to the open bar.

She was drinking concoctions with paper parasols; Peter counted three of them. He had stuck with straight bourbon shots.

They talked. They talked some more. Nothing very revealing or intimate about their lives, but they learned that they had some things in common: only-children, lived alone, loved good food (not the salmon!) and travel. Left-of-center politics. Mildly hum-drum office jobs with punctuating moments of panic and terror (deadlines!). And on and on. He thought of a blind-date column in the Sunday paper: the paper sent couples out to dinner and then had them rate each other after the date. He would provisionally give the girl at least an A-minus, but the evidence was slim. How would she rate him?

She had come with a girlfriend, a distant relative of the groom, but the girlfriend had left an hour or so before. Peter offered her a ride; she gathered her parasols (now five of them) into her tiny jeweled purse and followed him out past the band, which was now packing itself into large black boxes.

As he was fumbling with the key fob to unlock the car, she touched the back of his hand. A tiny charge zipped through his body, something he recognized but had almost forgotten. They chatted for a long time, not getting into the car, as if neither wanted the evening to end.

Peter heard himself asking if she would like to come over for a nightcap. He was horrified. His unexpected boldness jolted him.

And she said yes.

The apartment was clean; it always was.

They sat on the sofa, each on a cushion with a cushion between, talking and sipping limoncello. One topic blended into another, as it often does, the talk had become more intimate, they ended up sharing a cushion, and now the girl was in Peter’s bed, and now it was just past dawn.

Peter rolled over onto his back. What the hell was her name? Madeleine? Marilyn? Mary Lynn? They the bourbon fog and the limoncello had made his memory mushy. It would be tacky to ask her name when she woke up (which she showed no indication of doing anyway).

He turned his head and looked at her again. She had stopped snoring and had tucked a hand under her cheek. What would it be like when she woke up? Would she just get her clothes on — now neatly piled on the sofa — and go on about her life? (With the old lie, “I’ll call you sometime.”) Did she really like him, as much as she seemed to last night? Was it just the booze?

The girl stirred, rolling a bit back and forth before rolling over to her other side. The T-shirt had ridden up, and Peter stared at moles on her rump; they formed a constellation that seemed to mimic Orion.

Was she awake now? Peter held his breath and listened. No; the snoring was starting a slow crescendo.

He lay there for another few minutes, his mind traversing a terrain of possibilities and impossibilities. And each path, each speculative prediction, about her, about them, led up a blind alley. He concluded that this was most likely a one-night stand, and that they would part amicably and never see each other again. But still he lay there, wondering about the next step.

He could take one obvious next step. Peter rolled off the bed, as gently as he could, and padded into the kitchen. He would make them some breakfast: coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast.

His bustling must have awakened her. He turned when he heard her shuffle into the kitchen, weaving a bit, still half in the thrall of sleep. The T-shirt had slipped off one shoulder. She put an arm around his neck and kissed him with a tenderness that surprised him. Then she did it again. They both took a breath.

I’m really embarrassed, she said. But could you tell me your name again?