has to be answered leaving a Grand Canyon of space.
At Melani’s, doing nothing.
He writes that he needs to get the book Freakonomics, and would she like to meet him at Barnes & Noble? It’s a really easy place to bump into each other without looking conspicuous.
This is exactly the same as if he’d extended an invitation to Bermuda for a long weekend. She could smell the salt water and tanning oil.
She pulls into the parking lot on Forty-Second Street and reapplies lip gloss with her small, beautiful hands. There’s a parallel universe where she’s in church right now. That’s where her best friend and her parents think she is. Being a part of something illicit makes Maggie feel important. She is not merely sneaking out of the house to go to a party or make out with a Coors-flavored boyfriend. She feels like an operative.
She walks into the store. She shakes as she stands in front of a table displaying the bestselling children’s books. She tries to concentrate on words.
He walks up behind her and she jumps. This is the first time she’s been in a nonacademic situation with him and it feels anomalous. He’s an adult man, with a wallet.
He looks finer than he usually does in class and is wearing more cologne than usual. He flashes her a fantastic smile, then asks a passing employee where to find Freakonomics. She follows behind them. She knows she has to be a child and a woman all at once and it takes all her energy to satisfy the requirements of each role. She’s already nervous about the end of the excursion. The book will be procured, and they’ll be out the door and he will be left with a boring taste in his mouth and never think to engage again.
He finds the book and reads the back of it, which is enviable behavior. That he can keep other information in his brain beyond the Ahhhh of lovecrush means he is already and forever the alpha of their arrangement. No matter how much her small hands inveigle him, he has brain space for reading books and raising children and interacting with employees in big box stores. That, she decides, is power.
When he gets in line to pay for the book Maggie stands nearby, like a daughter. There are all these point-of-purchase baits. Chocolates and magazines and book lights and mini books. She wants to talk about every single thing with him. She wants to look only at things that he looks at. The things that he doesn’t see don’t exist.
When the card is swiped she feels like her heart has been fed into a meat slicer. She hasn’t been fun enough! She hasn’t been smart enough! She has been quiet and fawnlike, following him through the aisles in not even her best outfit. He will never want to do this again!
He carries his book in a bag and she follows behind him. In the heated vacuum of the foyer he asks if she wants to go for a drive. Lovecrush hisses in her veins. She would forgo winning the lottery or becoming a celebrity to keep mainlining it.
They walk to his car. It’s a dark blue crossover. Actually it’s his wife’s car. He doesn’t open the door for her. She isn’t used to having doors opened for her anyhow. Mateo did it, but maybe this is why Knodel makes her heart thump more—because he doesn’t open the door, because there is a fraction of asshole to him, because he is withholding and less capacious. He starts to drive. She notes that he’s a good driver. She feels there’s nothing about him that isn’t excellent. She inhales the scent in the car and is thankful she is not wearing perfume. She quit wearing it, the pink Lucky bottle, just this year. The scent began to seem childish. She doesn’t want to leave anything behind that might tip off his wife and make him afraid.
In the car he’s cockier than usual. As a teacher, she decides, he’s far nicer. He’s never entirely tender—even at his warmest, he exudes the pale sweetness of a cashew—but now he is armed and cool. Getting into the car has triggered an acute shift; she goes from feeling half woman and half child to feeling like a toddler. They’re talking and there’s no music on. The roads of Fargo are flung ahead like foreign airstrips. Maggie experiences a distinct feeling of doom. It’s normal, when you’re this close