This Close to Okay(55)
The suit was expensive and slim, a bit tight around Emmett’s waist and a little short in the leg. The jacket sleeves stopped perfectly at his wrists but snatched too much when he held his arms out or up. He looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and held his arms straight up above him, like an upside-down diver who would make the tiniest Olympic gold–winning splash. Tallie had given him a white dress shirt and a gas-blue tie, a pair of thin navy-blue socks with small ice-blue polka dots on them. Emmett smoothed his hair and beard, leaned forward, and stared at himself for so long he began depersonalizing. To stop it, he closed his eyes and kept them closed.
Tallie knocked on the door. His heart kicked hard, and he was thankful the beta-blocker would start working soon enough and soften it. He’d always been overly sensitive to his heartbeats, recognizing the smallest of normal electrical adjustments it made throughout the day.
“How’s it look?” she asked.
“You tell me,” Emmett said as he opened the door, his heart marching like an entire troop of soldiers.
“Oh, wow, it works! Suited and booted! It looks great on you!” Tallie said brightly from the hallway. She reached behind her to flick the switch. The bulbs on the ceiling cast wide angles on the walls and the slip of floor beneath their feet. Their bodies painted dramatic shadows in the corners like the darkness and light of a Caravaggio painting. She looked him up and down, stopping at his face to make eye contact and smile.
Emmett took her in. Steel-gray suit jacket and tight matching skirt that stopped at the knee. Pantyhose and a pair of black heels almost bringing her nose-to-nose with him. Scully was full-time sexy. Tallie in that suit in front of him? Equally irresistible.
(Happy and pretty in her pencil skirt. Creamy black makeup on her eyes, flicking up at the corners. Her lips are glossy and auburn. Wolf whistle.)
“You look really nice. Um, is that your pencil skirt? It’s the same color as a pencil. Is that why it’s called a pencil skirt?” he asked.
Tallie laughed at him after thanking him for the compliment.
“What? I’m wrong?” he asked, chuckling along. He really had no clue what a pencil skirt was, and apparently she wasn’t going to tell him.
“Men are ridiculous,” she said, patting his shoulder. She handed him the Mulder FBI badge they’d gotten from the Halloween store. He clipped it on to match hers. “Mulder and Scully wear trench coats a lot, and tonight would be a perfect night for a trench coat, but alas, I do not have two.”
“These badges will do the trick,” he said, holding his badge out so it was parallel to the floor. Mulder’s upside-down face looked back at him.
“Ready?”
“Hold on,” he said. He unclasped his necklace. “Scully wears a cross.”
“Oh, no. Are you sure? It’s precious to you, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”
“No worries,” he said, stepping behind her. She held her hair up for him; he did the clasp. The gold cross flickered like candlelight and dangled just below the hollow of her neck, above the unbuttoned top buttons of her white-as-death blouse.
TALLIE
After they stopped at the coffee shop for a pumpkin spice latte for herself and a black coffee for Emmett, Tallie drove to Lionel’s house with Emmett in her passenger seat. The cake was on the floor in the back; her car smelled like an October dream. Algebraic crackles of light flashed Emmett’s face and hers as they drove the wet roads all lit up with streetlamps. The sun had set gold, and she drove deliberately slow, wary of trick-or-treaters in the autumnal darkness.
“My brother’s house is wild,” Tallie said to him. She had the radio turned down low; Counting Crows faded into Fiona Apple. “He had it built by this waterfall that’s part of the design, and it powers…something. It’s so over-the-top and strange. It’s modeled after the Frank Lloyd Wright in Pennsylvania. The Fallingwater house,” she finished, seeing Emmett’s impressed face in the light. “I don’t mean to sound braggy.”
“You don’t sound braggy.”
“And if at any point you need to talk or you feel anxious tonight, please let me know. What’s most important is your mental health,” she said.
“And yours. I’m not the only person in the world.”
“I know, but it’s okay if we focus on you.”
“I appreciate it, but I’m okay. Right now, I’m okay.”
“You’re sure? Because crowds and unfamiliar spaces can—”
“Tallie, I’m okay,” he said.
She drove through the open gate leading to Lionel’s street, overflowing with cars parked on the sides and in the grass. Costumed partygoers walked on the edge of the road. Two skeletons wearing puffy white wigs, every member of the Village People, a hot-pink Care Bear, and Mario and Luigi.
“I usually park up here, and we can walk over the back way. There’s a gate, but I know the code. And a bridge…a wooden bridge,” Tallie said, speaking carefully. She glanced at him, wanting to be extra sensitive, in case hearing the word bridge could trigger an impulse.
“Your brother’s house has a gate and a bridge?” Emmett asked.
“I’m telling you, it’s like one of Gatsby’s parties,” she said, slowing to a crawl because of the people and parked cars. The rain had stopped, but the rivulets still slipped through the grass and across the pavement, catching in her headlights as they spilled to the sewers, fleeting.