Something Borrowed by Alexandra Marshall

Author:Alexandra Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

“You two give me hope,” yelled one of the toy salesmen from the bar. The waitress placed two bottles and another pair of frosted glasses on the table and said that this round was on him.

“Hey, thanks,” Gary shouted. “Our son just got married, so we’re celebrating.”

“And may he have just as good luck as you!” That guy wore a wedding ring too, but it had squeezed the life out of his chubby ring finger.

Since she’d become invisible in this dialogue, Gale knew she wouldn’t be missed if she went to the bathroom. While Gary answered the question about where they-all were from, she learned how unsteady her walk was. It wasn’t because of the alcohol in her blood.

As she pushed through the door marked REST ROOMS into an airless corridor, Bob came to mind, unhelpfully, and had to be dismissed rudely. It was more his habit than hers to seek refuge in a bathroom, but wasn’t this her fourth or fifth time in these twenty-four hours? Besides, this one was pine-paneled like a rec room and overbearingly scented with a balsam spray that made her feel she was lost in an artificial forest. Yes, in the mirror she looked lost.

She pressed a cool, damp paper towel against the back of her neck, tossed it away, and left before things could get worse. Perhaps they got worse anyway, but it also felt like everything got better, because Gary was outside the door in that small hallway, waiting. He said her name in order not to startle her when he pressed himself against her, but apparently she felt safe, because she grabbed him with the same possessive force. Like teenagers at the mercy of hormones, they could easily have been mistaken for a pair of cannibals.

They interlocked like stitches in a sweater, their hands flying as fast as a knitting machine. One of them knocked the pay phone receiver out of its cradle, so it swung on its flexible metal cord sounding a shrill alarm for something like half a minute. In the resumed silence the passion was noisy.

Their first sex together, after the concert the very night they met, had been like rolling downhill, influenced by both gravity and the terrain. Because of the Pill, there was no need to stop in order to start over again, so they spun in place like prayer wheels, tossing into the air wishes joined with blessings. At one point she’d joked, “What did you say your name was?” which they both found so funny they could have been stoned.

“Who are you again?” Gale asked him now, remembering that first night.

“I’m your long-lost, long-lost—” and then he silenced them both with his tongue.

“—love?”

The toy salesman must have felt part of the family, because when he opened the door into the corridor he didn’t go back to the bar but said, “Hey, hey, hey! Go for it,” as if he were their personal trainer. “Here, I’ll just hang up the phone for you,” he said as he narrowly squeezed by them.

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