Roomies(56)

I’m starving. The problem is we’re both hungover and terrified of exiting the apartment. It’s not that he’s recognizable yet; it’s that, from my living room window, we can see three photographers lazily wandering back and forth in front of my building.

Calvin’s Twitter account went from a paltry twenty-two followers yesterday to over sixty thousand this morning, and every time we look it’s higher. He’s tweeted three times in two years, and the third one—which he tweeted this morning and is a photo I took of him and Ramón after their first rehearsal together when they’re shaking hands and laughing incredulously (because, really, the two of them together are magic)—has been retweeted over seven thousand times.

So, there’s that. Also, apparently Lin-Manuel Miranda was there last night, as was Amy Schumer. I’m not sure I can rally my meager cerebral resources to comprehend this while at the same time calculating the true contrast of his talent to my meh.

I think I’m in some sort of shock. I can’t interact like a reasonable adult even when Calvin is asking me direct questions. We had sex. We are married. He’s a trending topic on Twitter. I honestly—truly—do not know how to proceed here.

On the one hand, I could just ask him: “Be honest: how much do you regret the sex last night?” The worst thing he could say is a little, which of course I would understand, and then we wouldn’t even bother to pick up the pieces—we have a matter of months of required marriage left—and instead, we’d figure out how to move past them down the road.

On the other hand, it might be better for both of us if we just keep on joking and move past it without any serious conversation. His making light of it makes me think—

“Hollllllllland.”

I startle as Calvin leans into my field of vision. “Are you alive?”

Based on the playfully exasperated look on his face, I’ve missed something. “Sorry. What?”

He shakes his hair out of his eyes, and I get the full impact of both of them, smiling over at me. “I asked you whether you wanted eggs. And when you didn’t answer, I decided you would want eggs, but then asked whether you wanted the bollocks American bacon in the fridge, or something greasier, like delivery burgers.”

“When did you say all this?”

“When you were mouthing your thoughts at the bookcases.”

I frown. “I was mouthing my thoughts?”

He nods.

“What was I . . . mouthing?”

A grin flirts with the corner of his mouth. “I dunno. You tell me. I bet it was something about sex.”

I don’t even know what to say right now, so I just throw out: “Let’s get burgers.”

He seems to like this answer, snapping his fingers decisively and walking to the counter to get his phone.

I want to say something, not only to pull my brain out of the frantic recollection of every savory detail from last night, but because I’m not sure how to feel about how easily he seems to rebound from having emotionally murky drunk sex. “You have a performance tonight,” I blurt. As if he could forget. It’s a rare week without a matinee, but they had planned for Luis’s departure, and the schedule is a little light as a result.

Looking around into the kitchen to the clock on the stove, he says, “Robert said I need to be there at five.”

He’s still wearing only boxers. I hear him on the phone, ordering our lunch—burgers and “chips, no—sorry—fries”—and I’m happily staring at him unobstructed—Oh my God, we had sex—when my own phone buzzes on the coffee table.

It’s Jeff.

My heart slams against my sternum. Jeff doesn’t often call; he’s a texter. If he’s calling . . . if something has gone wrong over at the immigration offices . . .

“Hello?”

“Hey, sweetie,” Jeff says. He sounds happy. This is good.

“Hey, Jeffie, what’s up?”

“Good news,” he says, and then laughs. “I think.”

Time slows. It’s like I know what he’s going to say, but I need him to say it anyway. “Yeah?”

“Your interview is scheduled.”

I look up at Calvin, who’s finished ordering and is headed back to the couch. The pleasure I take from him being in only underwear and the stress of what Jeff has just said are brewing a strange concoction in my belly.

“Our interview is scheduled,” I whisper to him.

His eyebrows shoot up, and I swear his boxers slide another inch down his happy trail.

“But here’s the bad news,” Jeff says, and my stomach drops. “Sam had an opening, and he worked some magic for you to be penciled in.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, “when is it?”

Calvin watches my face to gauge my reaction.

Jeff clears his throat. “Monday at ten.”



We have two hours before we need to leave for the theater, and we’ll have tomorrow to talk, but it’s not enough. We expected we’d have at least a couple more weeks to prepare for the interview.

The internet is a godsend when it comes to sample questions, and Jeff assured me before he hung up that Sam Dougherty is really nice, and this meeting isn’t something we should be worried about. But . . . how is that possible? We only have to lie convincingly to a nice person about our sham of a marriage? I don’t want to be busted for this! I’m not a hardened woman; I would decay quickly in prison.