So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,18

with every part of my body. Hoping he’d leave Shay. Feeling the weight of the wait. The carmine-hot wanting. I would’ve heard him if he hadn’t said a word.

We were fixing to get on the elevators and I didn’t even turn around. I was thinking I could be as fast as he was—knowing someday Tuck’d write a song about this. Knowing I’d finally planted a seed back there somewhere and now all I had to do was sun it and water it and be as patient as patient could be. I looked down at Emmylou and said, “Say thank you, Daddy.” Then I said it too, like a good girl. Kind of slow. Meant it.

Thank you, Daddy.

Chateau Marmont, Champagne, Chanel

He is no mystery to me, we are no mystery to us. He travels, I travel, we travel but not always together. When I am home alone, he writes to me: Miss K. Huff, traveling. Stiff, washy office-blue envelopes, perfect squares. Typewritten letters on expensive paper, gentle-sweetly barking at me in all caps spaced cleanly down the middle of the page. This time it reads:

CHATEAU MARMONT, CHAMPAGNE, CHANEL

UPCOMING FRIDAY BEFORE DINNER UNTIL SUNDAY AFTER BREAKFAST

x

M

And that’s what I always call him, M. Spoken aloud, written down, zip-whispered in little blue electric bursts from my beeping phone to his vibrating one. I send him a text on a Tuesday.

Dear M, I will be there.

Promise?

Have I ever lied to you?

No. I don’t think so? Maybe?

No!

I pack my moisturizer and tingle-foaming face wash, toothbrush and toothpaste. A thin dress and two pairs of white lace panties. A long, light sweater and two pairs of leggings. A white triangle bikini. My hard pink suitcase. I put my big, clear-plastic sunglasses on my face like two black eye-moons. My little bottle of allergy pills rattles around, making music in my purse with my lipglosses. I pack a book, although last time I packed a book I didn’t take it out of my bag. It is the same snaky Joan Didion I always take to California, but never read.

* * *

M is already there, hogging a whole couch to himself. M is already there, hogging California to himself. M is already there because M is always early, never late and M is particular, but not impatient. M is my James Bond in his pressed white dress shirt and slim blue tie, with his flat-front navy pant legs crossed, the thin-striped socks I’d given him, slipping into one acorn-colored cap-toe Oxford shoe resting upon his knee, the other flat and still on the floor. A sculpture. M is reading the newspaper like it is the sixties or seventies or eighties or nineties. M has gifted me diamond earring chunks the size of thumbtacks and I am wearing them for him. I wear everything for him. Cool touches of perfume on my neck and my wrists and the backs of my knees. A breezy white dress with pockets, white Birkenstocks. I’ve painted my toenails the softest pink I could find. A whisper. I sit close to him so our thighs touch and he puts his arm around me.

“We were here only three months ago?” he asks after saying hello and kissing my mouth.

“Yes,” I say.

“You look smashing.”

“Thank you.”

“Where were we last month?” he asks. He sniffs my neck.

“Mountains,” I hint.

“Ah, mountains,” he says, before standing and offering me his arm. He bends to get my suitcase. “Drinks in the room?”

“Chateau Marmont, champagne, Chanel,” I say, nodding.

“Chateau Marmont and Chanel,” he says, looking around. He takes my wrist, turns it over and puts his nose there.

“Champagne,” I say, wanting.

* * *

I slip off my sandals, leave them by the door. He sits on the edge of the bed and unties his shoes. His brown leather bag has beat us to the room. We order in the charcuterie, a smoked trout salad, an aged strip steak bourguignonne and fries, the prime filet mignon with oregano butter and asparagus.

But before we eat! Glitter in a glass, the ice of his peppermint breath.

“Isn’t it so pretty how they say a flight of wines?” I ask him when we are full. I am bubble-drunk, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to him, knowing full-well he can see my panties. He’s taken his shirt and tie off so he won’t stain them, his pants too. Hungrily, I watched him loosen his tie. I love watching him loosen his tie. Now he is in his white undershirt and underwear and I am still in my white