There are a couple things amiss about Nicholas today. For one, he’s wearing his old glasses instead of his contacts. I like the glasses because they fit his face well and they make him seem sophisticated and down-to-earth at the same time. Whenever I tell him this, he scrunches up his nose and shakes his head self-consciously.
Also, he’s wearing jeans and sneakers, which are outlawed at Rise and Smile.
“Skipped work again?” I surmise.
He just pats me on the head and skirts around to go inside the house. Cool. I have no idea what my fiancé has spent the past couple of days doing. He’s lording his secrets over me like a Scrooge. This is a totally normal, functional relationship we’re in.
I think about Seth and a dental hygienist going at it in the back of his car and my eyes narrow to slits.
Nicholas joins me on the front porch right as the trick-or-treaters start to arrive and doesn’t say a single word in relation to my latest effort to tick him off: I’ve added his business card to every single Ziploc bag of candy with the highest sugar content I could find. Pixy Stix. Sour Patch Kids. Candy corn. Fun Dip.
The concept of a dentist handing out teeth-rotting substances to children will look vulgar to the parents rummaging through their kids’ bags and buckets tonight. What a gross move, they’ll mutter. Turpin Family Dentistry, here I come.
But Nicholas isn’t fazed as he passes candy into tiny hands, bowing to the princesses and pretending to be scared of the monsters. Maybe he doesn’t notice the business cards because he’s too busy remembering a romp in his back seat with a dental hygienist. In my mind she looks like the hot nurse from that old Blink-182 album cover.
I look at him and think I’ll kill you. It shows on my face.
He raises his eyebrows and smiles. I recognize it straight away as his polite liar smile, the one he puts on when we visit my parents twice a year and they ask how well we’re liking living in sin. The smile he gives my brother when Aaron corners him for a presentation of Please Give Me Rent Money; I’ve Spent My Paycheck On Another PlayStation. The smile he gives my sister, Kelly, when she stands too close and stares too long, winding a lock of hair around her finger in a way she imagines is seductive.
I want to hiss Where were you all day. I grind my teeth together to keep the words trapped. Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask. It’s what he’s waiting for, lounging in jeans and glasses, hands interlocked behind his head. That’s the beginning and end of his focus right now: Ask, ask, ask. I hear the telepathic chant.
Children come and go in thin herds, makeup smeared, half their costumes covered up with coats and hats. The temperature drops with the sun, and I go inside to get myself a throw blanket. As I pass him, traces of some aroma I’ve smelled before greet me. The answer to my déjà vu sits in a locked drawer, just vague and faded enough that I can’t pinpoint where I’ve come across it in the past. I wouldn’t ask him even if he tortured me. When I return, he exhales loudly, then goes inside for his own blanket.
What’d you do with the Maserati.
Where in the hell have you been.
We ignore each other. I take keen stock of every virile man who happens by and wonder what else is out there. I’m surely settling.
I think maybe I’ve won this round, because I’ve decided on my own to hand out candy instead of asking him if he wanted to go to one of his friends’ parties. But he’s so at peace right here next to me in his chair, telling every kid he loves their costume and increasing the odds that their parents will pay him to drill holes in their small mouths, that you’d think this was his plan instead of mine. He has a way of making me feel like that, like I’m just tagging along.
“I have a surprise for you,” he says finally. I look over to see that his eyes are closed. The tips of his ears and nose are red from the cold, and I watch his Adam’s apple work down a swallow.
He’s going to say something nasty next, so I don’t reply.
“Did you hear me?”
“Mm-hmm.” I stand up. I don’t want to hear what his surprise is.