The Nakeds (16 page)

She finished the last few lines of her student’s paper and closed the folder before looking at him. “OK,” she finally said.

“Do you think you might . . . ? Would you ever . . .” he began, hesitant, and then stopped himself.

“Tell me.”

“You’re busy. Finish your schoolwork.”

Nina noticed that her arms were tightly folded against her chest and uncrossed them. She tried to smile. “Come on,” she said.

He picked up the book. “It says here . . . ,” he began. He adjusted himself, turning to her.

“What?” she said.

“Well, they say that a couple might want to, that a couple should . . .” He paused. “There’s a chapter on
rewriting the contract.
There’s one on
living for now.”

She said nothing.

She stared at him and let him talk.

“There’s a group of people from Trinidad and they have an expression.” He opened the book and flipped through its pages until he found what he was looking for. “Here, here,” he said, excited, pointing at the words. “These Trinidadians, they say it’s ‘now for now.’ ”

“Hmm,” she said.

“And what it means is that the immediate moment is all a man has—or a woman. It’s all we have. These sixty seconds in front of you.” He said those last words slowly. He gestured with his forefinger and thumb as if he were measuring a very small penis.

She laughed, sadly. “I’ve been through this before, you know. Asher wanted an open marriage too. He just didn’t call it that.”

“There was nothing
open
about it. He was secretive—he
lied
—and wanted someone else full-time.”

Despite what she knew was coming, she encouraged him to continue. It was only talking. She was only listening. “Keep going,” she said.

“If you don’t make the very most out of those sixty seconds, then you’re dead.”

“You’re not
dead
.”

“Well, you’re almost dead, as good as dead. That’s their point.” He looked at her face and studied her eyes.

“It’s not very profound. Or even new, Azeem.”

“Forget it. I knew you wouldn’t want to talk about this—at least not yet. You’re not ready. I should have known. I should have waited. In a few months it could be your idea. Who knows?” He turned away a second, but then turned back to her. “Nina, you like the nudist camp.”

“So?”

“You can’t say it’s not sexual.”

“I
can
say that, actually.”

“Come on.”

“It
isn’t
sexual to me, Azeem. After a couple weekends of looking at them, it seems . . . normal. And it’s relaxing. There’s certainly nothing relaxing about having sex with other people.”

“Well, the book says . . . ,” he began again.

“I don’t want to know what the book says. Just ask the question.
Your
question—not theirs.” She looked down at the O’Neills and hated them, hated that she shared a first name with Nena O’Neill, and hated the staged photograph. George O’Neill in all black, his shirt unbuttoned, those ridiculous sideburns, and his wife in a red turtleneck and white blazer—the two of them looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. They could be anyone. He could be a real estate agent, she could be a housewife, or, like Nina, a high school teacher. They were frauds, she knew it. They were like those famous marriage counselors she’d seen on Phil Donohue, Dr. and Dr. So-and-So, who spewed out their advice to sad or frustrated couples, and then got a divorce themselves after just one year. All that talk about conciliation—and what had it done for them?

Azeem took a deep breath. He leaned closer. She could smell the garlic they’d had for dinner. “Would you ever consider opening your marriage?” he said.

“I knew this was coming. Of course this was coming,” she said.

“Well?”

“Well, no.”

“Why?”

“We’re
married
.”

“Yes.”

“We have a contract. We’re married,” she said again. “Look, Azeem, we’re not dating. It’s not like we just met and need to make sure. I thought we were sure—that’s why a couple gets married. That and your green card, maybe.”

“It wasn’t my green card, Nina.” His voice was stern, adamant. “It was you. I want to be with you. It’s our little family. It’s you and Hannah,” he said, insulted.

“A man gets married because he’s positive. He doesn’t
want
anyone else.”

She thought of her first husband and the secret girlfriend he’d had for years and felt angry at Asher all over again. “Look, Azeem, if you’re not happy or satisfied—” She paused. She tried not to cry. “When a couple gets married, they’ve made a decision about exclusion. And loyalty. That’s what we did when we stood up there in front of those people and promised each other.”

“I
am
loyal,” he said. “I don’t want to
marry
anyone but you.”

“Great,” she said. “Thanks for that.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest again, not giving a fuck if it made her look uptight and bitchy, and the student folders fell to the floor. “Damn it,” she said, leaning over the bed to gather them up.

“I didn’t think you’d want to do this yet. I knew you weren’t ready.”

“
Ready?
Do you realize how patronizing that sounds?”

“I knew you wouldn’t want to open your marriage, Nina. At least not without reading the book. The O’Neills give some very interesting points.”

Nina, angrily reorganizing the students’ folders in her lap, corrected him. “
Make
points. They
make
points.” She inched away from him, so that part of her leg and hip and shoulder were just off the bed. She looked at Azeem, thinking about the many ways they might break apart, him moving to his cousin Siad’s apartment in downtown Los Angeles, she and Hannah settling back into their tiny family of two. She’d miss him. Despite this latest idea of his, she’d miss him. And Hannah would miss him too, perhaps even more than Nina would. She held on to the folders tightly so they wouldn’t fall again.

“I thought that maybe it was something you could think about. You know my friend Bernie from school? He’s from New Jersey—a city called Nutley. You remember Bernie?”

She nodded.

“Anyway, he told a group of us at lunch about living in the suburbs and a game the neighbors used to play. These are middle-class people in a middle-class neighborhood. With kids and cars and two-story houses. All that stuff. And on the weekends, they have parties and everyone brings a dish.”

“I know where this is going,” she said.

“Wait, wait,” he said, insisting. “These married couples from Nutley get together and share food. They have a potluck, then they toss their business cards into a bowl, and at the end of the night, they reach into the bowl and pull out a business card.”

She looked at him, irritated.

“That decides who they sleep with. There are winners and losers, of course,” he said.

Nina thought about winners and losers. She thought about board games from her childhood: Operation and Sorry and Monopoly. She thought about rules and instructions and wanting to win. She thought about losing, about making the wrong decisions, clumsily lifting out the wishbone and the horrible buzz that followed, informing you that you killed your imaginary patient; she thought of buying too much property or not enough, running out of those little sheets of colored money. “Makes me sick just to think about it,” she said. “The randomness. The running into whatever jackass you slept with the night before while getting your mail or pulling out of the driveway.”

“If we did something like that—I’m saying
if
—I’d want us to
like
the people we slept with, to have more in common with them than living on the same street.” He was quiet a minute, thinking, and then said, “We go to The Elysium. We take off our clothes with strangers. I wonder what it would be like if they weren’t strangers to us—if we got to know them.”

“We
are
getting to know them.”

“It’s not intimate. It’s, how you say?” he paused, looking around the room for the word, rubbing his fingers together, searching. Then, finally: “Surface. We’re on the surface with them.”

“It’s plenty intimate to me.”

“All I ask is that you read the book, then.” He held the paperback out to her, an offering.

“Azeem.”

“It’s short—you’ll buzz right through it.”

She hesitated.

“Please. For me?”

She looked at him and weighed her options. “I’ll read it,” she said. “But don’t expect me to change my mind.”

“We’re nakeds,” he said, as if being a member of The Elysium were an obvious precursor to swinging.

“Nudists,” she corrected him. “We’re nudists, Azeem, not nakeds. There’s no such thing as
a naked.”

MARTIN HAD
been in Las Vegas for more than seven years and he hadn’t studied restaurant science or business management like he’d planned to because all he really needed to know was how to hold shit above his head and serve people, how to say hello, introduce himself, and listen up. He didn’t need college to teach him how to read body language and understand people. He knew how to make a customer feel like a bigger man or a more attractive woman, and he knew when to stop with the pleasantries and move away from the table with their orders memorized. He had methods, connections he made with a face or body:
The fat one wants the trout steamed, the thin one wants lobster slathered in butter, the old married couple wants their coffee black with extra sugar.

“Customers aren’t your friends,” his dad used to say. Flattery was fine, even necessary, he’d tell Martin, but knowing when enough was enough was just as important as getting their soup out quickly.

Martin had left Manhattan Beach, his studio above the garage, his job, his surprised parents, sister, and Penny, who he probably loved; he gave his car to a grateful Tony and bought a bus ticket east. He’d intended to make it to New York City or at least New Jersey, but he hadn’t even made it past Nevada.

It wasn’t that he liked Las Vegas, but early on, the city liked him and those first months all he did was win. Poker, craps, blackjack, and the nickel machines: He went between them, and always, at the end of the night or the beginning of a morning, a man in a white vest would be counting bills into Martin’s palm or the machines would spit out so many heavy coins that he’d need a bucket to collect them. The stickmen and the boxmen knew him by name, and even the pit bosses at Harrah’s and Caesars Palace patted him on the back or shook his hand hello. He felt important, like a big man, and by the end of the first month, up a couple thousand dollars, he moved into a two-bedroom apartment, bought a waterbed and a corduroy couch that wrapped around the living room. He bought pots and pans, a coffeemaker, a broom and a mop. He bought a clock radio and a color television. He adopted a four-year-old cat from the animal shelter downtown that he named Sadie.

When the two thousand dollars was down to eight hundred, Martin got a job waiting tables at one of the best restaurants in town, right in the center of the strip. He wore a dark blue uniform and kept his shoes shiny and his face clean-shaven. He was polite, reserved even, and didn’t joke around at the tables too much, which was usually fine. Once in a while, though, he’d get scolded for his moodiness and he’d miss his secure position back home, the restaurants his parents owned, where he could have an off day without worrying about losing his job.

He told his mom and dad that he was getting a kind of experience he couldn’t get with them, a fair and tough experience, no special treatment, and that he’d return to California one day a better man, ready to work hard and manage their restaurants, if they still wanted him to do so.

Initially his parents were angry that he’d missed the grand opening of their third restaurant, but eventually they got over it. Now that he was living in another state, they seemed to like him more. Even his sister had matured and seemed to like him.

On the phone, he told Sandy about his cat. “Four years old?” she said, sweet and concerned. “She must have been abandoned. You know you saved her life?”

He told his mom about his couch and apartment, described them in detail, which was what she wanted. He told her what he saw when he looked out the window: big hotels, orange and yellow lights, a movie theater marquee, and a liquor store.

He told his dad how good he was at blackjack and poker, how even the machines loved him, and he could almost see the pride on his father’s face.

“Lucky, like me,” he said. “Did I ever tell you about the time I won a hundred bucks in Atlantic City?”

“Yeah.”

“A hundred bucks was a lot of money back then.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“Could have paid your rent
and
car payment.” His dad paused. “You don’t need a car there Marty? I hear you don’t need a car in Vegas,” he said, answering his own question. “You know you’ll need one when you come back home. You
will
come back home someday, won’t you?”

NINA AND
Azeem were on their way to the grocery store and she knew there were things he wanted at the store, yes, but there was also the thing that didn’t cost money but was still very expensive. She was certain it would break them. He was driving and she was staring at his profile, his strong nose and good chin, and she felt his request in the car with them, to open her marriage. It was with them wherever they went, gas station and mall and dinner table. It was there when Nina sat on a beach chair in the backyard, getting some sun, while Azeem watered the lawn. It would be with them at the market, where he’d look at various women, and then at Nina with a dumb pathetic plea on his face, a plea she’d return with a shaking head. It made her feel like a strict, unyielding mother keeping her little boy from the sugar cereal.

If Nina so much as glanced at another man, Azeem nudged her and winked, conspiratorially, as if they were in this big wide world together with their secrets and every stranger was some ripe opportunity. Sometimes it was almost funny, but mostly it was irritating. “Enough,” she’d usually snap. And what was especially
not funny
was how openly he looked at other women now, in front of her, like she was one of the boys.