The Transformation of Things (8 page)

He nodded and then kissed the top of my head. As he leaned in toward me, the smell of his pine aftershave invaded all my senses, and made the tingling in my legs from the dream return. I put my hand on his shoulder, and his skin felt smooth and warm from the shower.
I would totally fuck you,
I thought, and then felt almost alarmed by the sound of Kat’s voice, Kat’s words in my head. “I better get dressed,” he said, pulling away. “I don’t want to be late.”

“Do you want some coffee?” I asked, unwilling to let him, to let the moment go. “I’m going to make some.”

He met my eyes and smiled, and it looked like a real smile, the kind of smile you could see in his whole face, in the crinkly
lines around his perfect blue eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Coffee would be great.”

As I made coffee, I thought about our life in the city, in Will’s apartment that so quickly became our apartment after we got engaged and I officially moved in. We’d had coffee together every morning, no matter what. Will usually had to leave for work earlier than me, but still I got up and went into the kitchen to have my coffee with him before I even showered.

We had this thing that we did. Will started it. He’d said, “Tell me one thing you want.”

The first time he’d said it was the first morning after I’d officially moved in. I’d looked at him, smiled coyly, ran my foot against his calf, and then Will was late to work because we ended up having sex on the couch.

But after a while, after we were used to being together, he said it, and I said something back, sometimes something silly, sometimes something real.
Tell me one thing you want.

A good assignment from Hank.

Tell me one thing you want.

Another hour with my mother.

Yes.
He’d nodded and reached for my hand, and I knew that he would want that, too, with his own mother. I knew it, just from looking at him, at the way he seemed both sad and surprised by my response—his eyes used to say it all, everything, so I knew exactly what he’d been thinking just by looking into them.

But this morning Will ran downstairs, looking something close to nervous in his khakis and golf shirt. I thought about asking him what it was he wanted. Just one thing. I thought about trying to see it in there, in his eyes, or about trying to
run my foot against his leg under the table as I had that first morning. But as he took a quick sip of his coffee he didn’t even look at me. Then he ran toward the garage. “I’m going to be late,” he called out behind him, as if he owed it to me, some sort of explanation for not sticking around.

Nine

W
alking back into
City Style
magazine, I almost felt as if I’d never left. Except my office was now occupied by the man who could shit gold, and Kat’s office was right next to Hank’s. Her new office was bigger and airier than her old one, with a window that looked out over the city.

“Very fancy,” I said, when I walked in.

She sighed. “It’s not bad, huh?

“Here,” she said, pointing toward the doorway, “meet GS.” I automatically assumed that GS stood for “gold shitter,” but it turned out his name was Grant Stevens. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I shook his hand and told him it was very nice to meet him.

Grant Stevens was extraordinarily attractive, not what I’d pictured at all after hearing Kat talk about him. He was young, maybe only a few years out of college, late twenties at most, muscular enough to be an underwear model, and he had sandy blond hair that fell into his eyes a little bit. There
was something about him that struck me as familiar, very familiar. “Have we met before?” I asked him.

“No.” He smiled. “Definitely not.” He looked me up and down. “I definitely would’ve remembered.”

“Oh.” I blushed. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about him, something I knew.

“You didn’t tell me he was so hot,” I whispered when he retreated back to my—his—office.

“Is he? I haven’t noticed,” Kat lied.

I rolled my eyes at her, and I realized that I had missed this. Even Lisa—who I suspected was only a shadow of her former prosecutorial self—had been no replacement for Kat. “Maybe you’re right,” I said, looking around. “Maybe the suburbs are shit.”

“Jen, I’m always right,” she said. “But this place is shit, too.”

“Even your swanky office?” I raised my eyebrows.

She sighed. “Especially my swanky office.”

“I don’t know,” I said, staring longingly at the stacks of papers on her desk and all that I knew came with it: goals, responsibilities, deadlines. “I think you’ve got it pretty good here.”

She leaned back against her desk and cleared her throat. “Okay, so I feel like a total asshole for dragging you down here, but Hank doesn’t have anything real for you right now.”

“Oh. Okay.” I nodded, but I felt a little disappointed. No matter what Kat said about this place, it would have been nice to get back here, get out of my life, throw myself into the real world again.

“But”—she held up her hand—“he said you can compile the marriages, write ‘em up real pretty and stuff the way those dumb brides like.” She rolled her eyes.

I remembered that an intern had written up the weddings
when I’d worked here before. It was work that a monkey could do, with its eyes closed. But I smiled and told her I would love to.

“Here.” She handed me the packet of handwritten notes from the brides. “I’m going to keep my eye on something better for you, okay?”

“I know you will,” I said. I smiled at her, and then I felt it again, the feeling from the dream, the slow tingle in my leg, my body. “Kat,” I said. “Is everything okay, with you and Danny?”

“What?” She laughed. “Why would you ask?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just a feeling.”

“Oh, hon, don’t worry about us. You’ve got enough stuff on your mind already.”

“You would tell me,” I said, “if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you?”

Her phone rang. “I have to get this,” she said, and she turned so I couldn’t see her face. “But seriously, no worries, okay? We’ll be fine.”

We’ll be fine,
as if they weren’t right now. But she already had the phone lodged between her shoulder and her ear, and she was yelling at someone about a deadline, so I gave a little wave and walked out, realizing I’d have to take it up again with her later, somewhere quieter.

Out in the hallway, I saw Grant standing by the copier. He turned, caught my eye, and winked, and his face turned light, almost glowing, the sunlight suddenly streaming in through the window, brightening his face into obscurity. I looked down to shield my eyes, and when I looked up again, I could see his face with complete and utter clarity. Then it hit me, where I’d seen him before.
I would totally fuck you.

* * *

Out on the sidewalk I was shaking, and I had to stop and put the bridal folder in my purse to keep it from spilling everywhere.
It’s not possible,
I told myself.
You must be mistaken. You cannot have a dream about a person you’ve never met.

Ethel and her crazy calming herb. What the hell was in that stuff anyway? I took my cell phone out of my purse and scanned my contacts for Ethel’s number, and then when I found it, I hit the send button with my shaking hand.

The phone rang three times, and then I got her machine. “It’s Jennifer Levenworth,” I said. “Call me immediately.”

I’d barely hung up before the phone rang. “Ethel,” I said, not even waiting to look at the caller ID.

There was a pause. “Jen, who’s Ethel?”

It was Will. Will never called me. “Oh, no one you know,” I brushed him off, hoping he’d let it go. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi,” I said softly.

“Hi,” he repeated.

Silence.

“How’s it going?” I finally said.

He didn’t answer. I heard the beep from the other line and looked and saw that this time it was Ethel. “That’s the other line. I should get it,” I said.

“Ethel,” he said. I neither confirmed nor denied. I didn’t have time to go into who Ethel was now, not when she was beeping in and I desperately needed to talk to her. “Jen, I …” He paused. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Jennifer,” Ethel said, as soon as I switched over. “What is it?” It took me a minute to answer, because I felt a little bad about practically hanging up on Will. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my thoughts of Will away and thought about seeing Grant, upstairs in the
City Style
office. I took a deep breath. “That new herb you gave me.”

“Are there side effects?”

“I’ve been having dreams,” I said. “Very vivid dreams.”

“Ahh. Very good. If you’re dreaming then you’re entering into REM sleep. It’s working.”

I cleared my throat. “I don’t think you quite understand,” I said. “I had a dream last night about a person that I met today.”
And I wanted to have sex with him. Or Kat did, and I was her,
I silently added.

“Jennifer, dreams are a representation of our subconscious. You must have seen this person before somewhere, even if your conscious mind didn’t register it.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I did.” But she sounded so sure that I started to doubt myself. Had I seen Grant before?

Grant’s picture must be in the back of the magazine, the same way my picture had been when I’d written for it, and I still got the magazine in the mail each month. I probably
had
seen it, seen him, without even knowing it, even realizing. “I guess you’re right,” I said. “It’s just—it felt so real.”

“This is all good news, Jennifer. Deep sleep is good. Very good. Deep sleep cleanses.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No bother. Keep on sleeping,” she said. “Namaste.”

“Namaste,” I replied. As I hung up, I thought,
Shit, I really do have to Google that word when I get home.

I did some window shopping in the city, and by the time I made my way home it was after six. Will’s car was in the garage, and Will was already on the couch, his shoes and his belt hanging over the armchair, ESPN on the TV. “How was
your day?” I asked, thinking for a moment about his telephone call, and that maybe now everything was going to be different between us.

“Fine,” he said, not looking up.

I waited for a minute, and then said, “Do you want to talk about it?” He didn’t answer. “Will?”

“Jen, I’m trying to watch something here,” he snapped.

“Fine.” I sighed and went into the kitchen to find myself something to eat: more canned soup, a quick dinner for one. I’d been stocking up every day at the grocery store.

As I sat there at the table by myself and ate it, I stared blankly at the newspaper, hearing the sound of the TV buzzing in the distance, a hum of white noise. I spooned soup into my mouth, not even registering the taste, feeling nothing at all like the way I had this morning, tingly and excited, but instead so much like Lisa in my dream, numb and empty.

Ten

W
ith Will at work, I didn’t feel the incessant need to get out of the house, so I started cleaning out closets. I came across some recent copies of
City Style,
and I flipped to the back to look for Grant’s picture. Sure enough, there it was, his handsome, chiseled face smiling back at me.
So Ethel had been right,
I thought. My subconscious was smarter than I’d thought.

After a few days of cleaning and packing up trash bags of old clothes for Goodwill, I started to feel tremendously stircrazy. I missed tennis, as much for the social interaction as the exercise, and I hadn’t been back to Pilates either, because half the women in the class were also in the Ladies Lunch Club. I needed to do something, something to make me breathe hard, to make my blood flow. So one morning, exactly a week after Will had begun work, I decided to go jogging.

I drove to a beautiful wooded park, not too far from Kelly’s house in Oak Glen, that had nice, winding trails. I started out running, slowly at first, my body feeling heavy and out of shape, sluggish, as if I were trying to move through something thick and unyielding. But when I was finished, after I lapped the multitudes of unfamiliar women pushing strollers along the meandering trail, I sat down on a bench and hung my head between my legs. I heard the pumping of my heart echoing in my ears, felt the blood rushing to my face, and then I did feel a little more alive.