The Odds by Stewart O'Nan

Author:Stewart O'Nan [O’Nan, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

Odds of a marriage proposal being accepted:

1 in 1.001

The sideshow delights of Clifton Hill would have to wait. By the time they rode the glass elevator up the stalk of the Skylon Tower, the sun was setting. The gorge lay in blue shadow, the escarpment stretching to the west a shimmering gold. Their camera wouldn’t capture its lambent brilliance or the sheer scale, but he took a couple of shots anyway. Below, as with the flick of a switch, the string of lights that defined the parkway came on. Traffic was stopped on the Rainbow Bridge, everyone trying to get home, the buses stuck at customs.

He’d planned on them enjoying a leisurely lunch in the revolving restaurant as they had as newlyweds, but it was almost five. They only had time for a quick drink. At the hostess stand, Marion handed him her rose and asked him to order her a glass of Chardonnay, leaving him to secure a window table. The few available faced north, away from the Falls. The room took an hour to do a complete revolution. He chose the table that would come around the soonest, hoping there’d be some sunset left.

He saved her the chair that would have the best view. Once he was settled, a waitress materialized at his side, as if she’d been watching him. He ordered and looked out over the neon theme park architecture of Clifton Hill and the snowy grid of the city, in the distance the dark expanse of Lake Ontario. The motion of the room was subtly disorienting, the windowsill inching past, as though he were standing still. To the east, night was already falling, and he felt a twinge of urgency.

All day he’d been carrying the box in his pocket, alert for the perfect moment. Now he pulled it out, opening it below the tabletop like a cellphone. He could place it beside her rose so she’d find it when she returned, but thought that too passive. He needed to give it to her, to formally ask her to be his again. If he was too sudden, the element of surprise might work against him, especially after what happened in the tunnels. He didn’t want her to feel ambushed. She’d say the ring was too much, that they couldn’t afford it—objections more practical than emotional, as if their life now was just about money, or the lack of it.

The first time he’d asked her he was making two hundred a week working for a nonprofit and living in a roach-infested studio over a TV repair shop in Slavic Village. They’d been dating nearly a year, but she had a nice apartment in University Circle with her old college roommates, trust fund babies who called in sick to their temp jobs, cruised the clubs for older men, and considered him boring and unworthy of her, the best-looking of the three. He wanted to ask her to move in with him to show her he was serious and get her away from them.

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