Good Time(35)

“Tradesies,” he mutters with a shake of his head, but he’s smiling as he uncorks the wine and pours two glasses.

“So, where do you see yourself in five years, Vince?” Might as well dive in with the talking.

He looks up from rolling back his shirt sleeves, a look of confusion flashing across his face replaced with an amused narrowing of his eyes.

“Excuse me? Is this an interview?” He laughs, placing a pan on my stovetop before rummaging through my cabinets for a bottle of olive oil.

“This is serious. You’ll be old and divorced. Think about that.”

“An annulment doesn’t count as a divorce. It doesn’t count as anything.”

“Try telling that to Britney. She’s gonna have that nineteen-hour marriage on her Wikipedia page until she dies. Wikipedia, Vince. That’s forever.”

“Okay, whoa. Let’s step back a moment here.”

“Do you need a wife with benefits?” I press on, because taking a step back doesn’t sound like it will get me anywhere.

“What exactly does that mean?”

“I have health insurance. Do you need health insurance? I could add you to my plan. It’s very reasonable, adding a spouse only costs like an extra two hundred dollars a month. It’s a really good plan, too. At least that’s what Lydia told me and she works in Human Resources so she would know. I’m no benefits package expert.”

“That’s not what the term ‘with benefits’ means.”

“Listen, in this case I think it’s exactly what that means. Society is the one who turned the word ‘benefit’ into something dirty.”

“So there’d be no sex in this exchange?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course there’d be sex.”

“Did you just talk yourself into a circle?”

“Maybe.” Dammit.

“Hmmm,” Vince murmurs. He’s slicing a tomato. He’s got chicken simmering in a pan and the noodles are cooking. I take a sip of wine and watch him work. He’s got a dishtowel slung over his shoulder, sleeves rolled back to his elbows, and I’d skip dinner and go straight to eating him for dessert if I wasn’t so hungry. Stupid salad.

“What’d you have for lunch today?” I ask, because I really want to know. A cheeseburger? A protein shake? Homemade tuna salad on rye?

“I had a lunch meeting at the Palm and I had the salmon.”

“With like…” I pause, not sure how to pry subtly. “Someone from your staff?” I might as well have asked what she was wearing.

“With a client.”

Oh, a client. A high roller. Or tipper? What do they call a big spender in a gentlemen’s club? Well, whatever they’re called. It’s interesting. I never imagined Vince wining and dining clients during the day.

“What about tax breaks?” I burst out. “Married couples get tax relief, right?”

“So you’re suggesting a marriage of convenience? With sex?”

“Maybe?”

“I can’t imagine anything about you would be convenient for me.”

I mean, he’s not wrong. I huff and run my fingertip around the rim of my wineglass.

“Eloping is kind of a sample though, right?”

“How’s that?”

“Like a free trial? Like when Netflix wants you to try them out so they give you thirty days for free?”

“No.” Vince shakes his head. “Eloping is nothing like that.”

“How about like a sample at the grocery store? Like when they let you taste the cheese before you buy an entire big chunk of it?” I make a motion in the air with my free hand, attempting to indicate picking up a small bit of cheese with a toothpick, but I think it ends up looking more like I’m making a sock puppet.

“What?” Vince tosses something into the pan with the chicken before turning back to face me. “How is a cheese sample like marriage?”

“You know that saying? Why buy the cow when the milk is free? I did offer you the milk for free, if you’ll recall. So really this is all on you.”

Vince stares at me for a long moment then shakes his head. It’s not a little shake though, it’s a full headshake.

“I cannot fathom one single way answering that ends well for me,” he mumbles to himself as he turns off the stove and drains the pasta.

I shrug and get a couple of plates out and set them on the countertop before grabbing two forks and a couple of paper towels that I fold diagonally in half like fancy napkins. Then I move our wineglasses to the table and sit, watching him finish up in the kitchen.

“Maybe eloping is like a test drive, except you’re test-riding your spouse to see if they’re a good fit?”

Vince’s lips tug into a smirk. “I think that’s what dating is for.”

“Sure. Except the majority of marriages end in divorce and the general assumption is that all those couples dated first.”

“Right.” He eyes me between dishing up two plates full of steaming pasta covered in some kind of cheesy chicken concoction with a tomato slice on top. Super fancy pants compared to anything I’d have served.

“Arranged marriages have a much higher rate of success and those couples didn’t date at all! So I think my math-ing would tell us that dating is nearly irrelevant to the statistical odds of a successful marriage.”