to thrall, to worry over losing it. This is nothing like what she felt for Mateo. With Knodel, it’s this thing that’s been building—has it been building since she was a freshman?—so it’s that much more important because of its history. Also, because of the quality of his person. He’s top-shelf. Being with him, she feels her own stock rise. She visualizes an actual accumulation of wealth. At the same time, she feels that she isn’t good enough.
As they pass the new organic market he takes a verbal jab at her. They have always goofed around like this. She reaches across the console and grabs his hand, like, Hey jerk! He snatches his hand away like hers is on fire. He isn’t cold about it. It’s more like she has scared the hell out of him. The only thing that will cool the shamehot is time and distance. The problem is that she doesn’t ever want to get out of the car.
They drive around for a half hour. When they approach her neighborhood she tells him so. He says, Oh, where do you live, I want to see. She starts to give directions and he starts to follow them. She enjoys the rare peace of having some semblance of control. Nearly there, he says, No, forget it. I shouldn’t know where you live because I may have the urge to drive by and check on you.
She slumps in her seat. Maybe this doesn’t happen physically but on the inside she suffers a degradation. She would have eaten a roach to be able to hold his hand. His distance is captivating and awful. He’s trying to control himself and succeeding, and she feels, acutely, how a loved one’s self-control can be cruel to the other person.
The best part of her whole life happens next. He slows to a stop on a quiet street, parks his wife’s car at the curb of a house with no lights on, and just looks at her. He does it for ten seconds, maybe less. In those seconds, every bad thing she has ever thought about herself is erased, and she feels like a supermodel.
But that’s all that happens. He only looks, and then the car is moving again. When his turn signal clicks before the Barnes & Noble entrance, Maggie wants to cry. Their first date lasted the length of a test drive. He asks where her car is and she tells him. He parks near it, but not too close. She waits to get out. She looks straight ahead. She’s hoping he will kiss her. It’s all she wants. She can’t remember a time when she ever wanted anything else. He knows the world. He can do all the things her father can, only he doesn’t drink and he says what he means and does everything he promises. Without him, she will be lost. She will be working at Buffalo Wild Wings in Fargo forever. She’ll smoke Virginia Slims and have an ugly kitchen. Please God, she thinks, please, please let him kiss me!
He looks right at her and says, I’m not going to kiss you, if that’s what you’re waiting for.
He smirks, sort of. But more than that, he is serious. She laughs nervously, feeling like she has a skin disease. She gets out of his wife’s car. She walks to her own and doesn’t look back.
At home, her parents ask about church. She barely eats dinner. She doesn’t think about anything else but everything that happened with him. She goes over each step and wonders at what point she might have fucked it up. When her phone dings later that evening, she is unbelievably grateful, because hearing from him is the only way she will be able to fall asleep.
I checked the car before getting out, he’s written, to make sure you didn’t leave anything behind.
For at least a month he will not kiss her. His mouth becomes the moon. Almost always she can see it, but it remains a mystery of shadows and light. She thinks of his wife, who is allowed to kiss it. That doesn’t bother her yet. She knows several things about Marie. Marie is a parole officer, a brunette with an austere presence. Probably she never once forgot to pack a kid’s lunch. Aaron doesn’t say it explicitly but anyway all married men convey this general idea: their wives at home, their homely Maries, don’t have personal dreams or hopes. They are nice enough nobodies who suckered