The Perfect Couple(36)
When she gets upstairs, she sends Merritt a text: I blew it.
How? is Merritt’s response. What happened?
Celeste sends a series of question marks. A few seconds later, her phone rings. It’s Merritt, but Celeste declines the call because suddenly she is too sad to speak. She should have canceled the date on Friday, she thinks. Because what she has learned over the course of this weekend is that she is lonely and life is nicer when there’s someone to talk to. To kiss. To bump knees and hold hands with. Celeste was pretty sure from the start that she was an alien species, but it’s disheartening to have it proved true.
He’ll talk to her later. Yeah, right.
On Monday, as she is in her office reviewing the following summer’s special programming—they’re getting a gray-shanked douc langur from Vietnam, which makes Celeste think of Madame Vo’s with Benji across the table—there’s a knock on her door. It’s a quarter after two and Celeste suspects it’s Blair from the World of Reptiles saying she has to go home because she has a migraine setting in and can Celeste please cover her three o’clock snake talk, which also makes Celeste think about Benji.
“Come in,” Celeste says halfheartedly.
It’s Bethany, her assistant, holding a vase of long-stemmed pink roses.
“These are for you,” Bethany says.
The next day, Celeste’s father calls to say that Karen’s MRI came back fine.
“Really?” Celeste says. It’s not beyond her parents to lie to her about this.
“Really,” he says. “Betty is as fit as a fiddle.”
On Thursday night, Benji takes Celeste to a movie at the Paris Theater. The movie is French with subtitles. Celeste falls asleep as soon as it starts and wakes up at the end credits, nestled in Benji’s arm.
On Friday, Benji takes Celeste to dinner at Le Bernardin, which is nine courses of seafood. About half the courses press at Celeste’s boundaries. Sea urchin custard? Kampachi sashimi? She imagines telling her parents that Benji spent nine hundred dollars on a dinner that included sea urchin, kampachi, and sea cucumber, which is not a vegetable but an animal. There is wine with every course and Celeste gets tipsy. That night, she invites him upstairs.
She is nervous. Before Benji, there have been only two other men, one of whom was the TA in her Mechanisms of Animal Behavior class in college.
The next day, Merritt texts: So???????
Celeste deletes the text.
Merritt texts again: Come on, Celeste. How was our Benji in the sack?
Fine, Celeste texts back.
That bad? Merritt says.
Good, Celeste says. Which is true. Benji was very considerate, very aware of Celeste’s desires—what felt good, what she liked. Maybe he was too aware. But that hardly seems like something to complain about.
Uh-oh, Merritt says.
There are dinners in SoHo, the Village, and the Meatpacking District. There is takeout Indian food and sushi and Vietnamese, now a favorite, that they eat at Celeste’s apartment while watching The Americans. There is brunch at Saxon and Parole, where Benji introduces Celeste to the phenomenon of the bloody mary bar. She loads her glass up with a little of everything: celery, carrots, peppers, house-made pickles and pickled onions, bacon, fresh herbs, beef jerky, olives, and spirals of lemon and lime. Then, when her glass is accessorized like an eighty-year-old woman who is wearing every piece of jewelry she owns, she snaps a photo and sends it to Merritt, who responds ten seconds later: Are you at Saxon and Parole?
There’s a reading at the Ninety-Second Street Y by a writer named Wonder Calloway, who reads a story about a woman Celeste’s age who treks to the base camp of Everest with a man she loves but who does not love her in return. The man suffers from altitude sickness and has to turn back. The woman has to decide whether to stop or keep going. Celeste is moved by the story and by the whole idea that literature can be relevant to her life and her feelings. She never felt that way when reading anything in high school. At the end of the reading, Benji buys Celeste a copy of Wonder Calloway’s short stories and Wonder autographs it. She smiles at Celeste and asks her name, then writes To Celeste in the book. Celeste is thrilled but also a little chagrined. The experiences Benji is showing her, while extraordinary, are messing with her head. She knows she is fine just as she is—she has a college education and a good job—but each date shows her all the ways she has yet to grow.
She reads the short stories on her commute to work and by the end of the week, she’s finished and she asks Benji for another book. He gives her The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. She loves it so much she reads it any chance she can get. She reads Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Benji gives her a list of books he’s loved and together they go to Shakespeare and Company.
There’s a new Burmese place on Broome Street that Benji wants to try and Celeste says, “Burmese?” She didn’t even realize Burmese food warranted its own restaurant, but she should know by now that Benji seeks out far-flung cuisines—East African, Peruvian, Basque. He compares it to Celeste’s love of exotic animals. She can talk all day about the Nubian ibex and he can talk about momos.
The Burmese restaurant has only ten seats, all of them taken, so they get their order to go and Benji says, “Since we’re close, we might as well go to my place.”
“You live nearby?” Celeste asks. Benji has referred to his apartment only as being downtown—but everyone lives downtown compared to Celeste. She has wondered why she has never been invited to Benji’s apartment. After she finished reading Jane Eyre, she joked that Benji must be hiding a crazy wife in his apartment. He bristled at this. “It’s nothing special,” he said. “You won’t like it.”