Marta felt as if she’d been slapped. Normally when Dean drank, he became ridiculous and she became surly. She leaned forward at the table to defend herself when she noticed Dean’s flannel shirt was unbuttoned one button more than usual. Right in the center of his chest, just above the first buttoned button, something round surged to get out into the light. Marta pressed her lips together.
“Sure,” Dean said, “my father was a prick. Maybe even a dick. And my mother was—how to say this nicely—habitually unreasonable. Maybe there were some people in my life who even died when I was a kid. Maybe my sister was missing a leg and a teacher touched me where the sun never shined and my dog fell in a well and starved to death.” Dean tossed back the remainder of his water. “But these are not things that I carry around with me. I’m a big boy. What’s gone is gone, Alex and Alex. There is nothing to unload, so to speak. I am a happy person.” Dean jerked a thumb at Marta. “Unless, of course, someone keeps insisting that I’m not a happy person, in which case I may eventually not be one.”
Alex and Alex and Marta didn’t respond. All three of them looked at Dean and then at their plates. “So. Which Alex is the bad Alex and which Alex is the good Alex?”
“Dean,” Marta said.
“No, seriously,” Dean said, flopping his fork left and right. “One of you is the wrong one and one of you is the right one. Tell me which one of you is the wrong one, and I’ll show you how to have some of that fun you don’t know how to have anymore.”
Marta had had enough. “I think what Dean’s saying is,” she interjected, “is that he will introduce you to someone named Mackenzie who has no real opinions or needs. He’ll find you someone blank to bone.”
Alex and Alex both went wide-eyed and Marta felt instantly ashamed. Dean smirked and shook his head. He brought a bottle of what appeared to be spring water out from under the table and untwisted its top. “No,” he said. “What I was going to suggest was that Bad Alex come with me tomorrow. Whichever one of you that is, I’ll walk you over to that remote-control airfield across the street where people still know how to enjoy life.” Dean took a swig. “For what it’s worth, I never boned Mackenzie, Marta. I never boned Mackenzie, Alex and Alex. All I did was talk to her for a while. It was nice to talk to someone who believed me when I said I was happy.”
Marta looked at Dean’s chest. The lump was visibly growing. She searched for what to say to make it finally emerge. “Pfft.” Marta rolled her eyes. “You’re not happy, Dean. Alex and Alex, trust me on this. Dean is not a happy person.”
Dean banged a fist on the table and the four bean cakes gave a startled jump. His chest bulged. Marta went on. “No one drinks like Dean drinks if they’re really happy.”
Dean thumped his other fist. “You’re to blame for that,” he nearly roared.
Marta felt a sharp pain in her heart. “How dare you,” she whispered. “How dare you blame me for your refusal to grow the fuck up.”
Trembling, the two of them rose to face each other. The entire dining room of Forever Together had fallen into a hush, as if Dean and Marta had been hired to put on a show.
“Growing up, Marta,” Dean said, “is not synonymous with growing miserable.”
Marta felt weak. She clutched her waist. “I’m not asking you to be miserable, Dean,” she whispered. “I’m just asking you to be real.”
Alex and Alex clung to one another. Ventura stood off to the side and raked his fingers through his beard, satisfied. Marta gave a cough and fell to one knee. In an unexpected moment of concern, Dean dropped down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder, but Marta removed his hand and put it over her chest. Then she placed her hand on him, right above his first buttoned button and looked him in the eye.
“What’s happening?” Dean asked.
“What’s supposed to,” Marta answered.
For a moment, Dean and Marta simply stared, then without warning, their heads pitched back in violent ecstasy before swinging forward again in unison. With their eyes locked, a noise between groan and moan materialized from Dean. A screech of excruciating pleasure burst from Marta. There was a frozen moment of communal panting, until, frenzied, they plunged their hands into one another’s chests and withdrew two shimmering stones. Dean held up Marta’s and Marta held up Dean’s. His was the size of a grapefruit. Hers was the size of a gumball. Both were the color of polished ebony. Tears poured from Dean and he shook with noiseless sobs. Sweat poured from Marta and she quivered with quiet laughter. Dean handed Marta his stone and he picked her up in his arms. He carried Marta and Marta carried the stones, and glowing they went back to their cabin, followed by the sound of quiet, reverent applause.
The next morning, Marta woke to the far-off sound of a plane. She lay in bed and watched out the window, in the apricot sky, for a plane to rise like a silver X above the silhouetted trees. She imagined planes full of cats and smiled. She imagined planes full of cats full of peanuts and laughed. Last night, she’d given herself to Dean as she always did, but for the first time Dean had realized it was not her body she offered, but her soul. Marta rolled over to face Dean, to show him her joy, but he wasn’t there. Marta called for him. She crawled from the bed and put on her robe and looked in the bathroom. She looked in the closet. She looked in the tiny sitting room. She peered out the window again to the porch. When Marta realized he was gone, she began looking for the stones. She looked for the grapefruit-sized one and the gumball-sized one. She overturned their suitcases, the trash cans, until panic began to form between her breasts, a fear that was brown and round and ready to begin again.
Marta threw on her unlaced sneakers and burst from the cabin. She ran down the gravel driveway of Forever Together, in her robe and loose shoes, clumsy and emotional. “Dean?” she cried. “Dean! Where are you?”
She passed the cabins where couples sipped coffee and stared, the Forgiveness Hall where Ventura raked his beard. She passed Alex and Alex out on a morning walk. Both were dressed in white and both nodded at Marta as she ran and ran and ran. She ran across the damp front meadow, out the front gate of the retreat, and up the small ridge of the airfield. The morning was almost past the moment where anything was possible. Soon the sun would rise, high and bright, to kill the day’s potential. The heat would arrive and things would return to how they always were. Marta crested the small ridge. A plane flew overhead. Marta couldn’t tell if it was a toy or real. Further down, at the edge of the runway, Marta saw Dean in the morning mist, looking up. Marta trudged through the last swath of bluegrass to get to him.
“Dean,” she said, breathless. “What are you doing?”
Dean didn’t look at Marta. He didn’t answer her either. He had on his flannel shirt buttoned back to the top, his boots laced and tied. His left hand was jammed deep into the pocket of his shorts. His right hand shielded his eyes from the early sun as he watched the plane gain altitude.
“Have you seen the stones?” Marta said. “Our stones? Please tell me you know where they are.”
Dean took a moment, then he pointed to the plane. “They’re up there,” he said flatly. “In the plane.”
Marta stood damp and winded and squinted up at the sky. Then she looked around the runway, down one end and then the other, to see if she could see who was flying the plane. “You can’t be serious,” she said.
“I’m serious,” Dean said. “Like you’ve always wanted me to be.”
Marta choked. “But we need the stones, Dean. We can’t get anywhere without them.”
Dean took his right hand down from his face and crammed it deep into his other pocket. He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Marta. Those stones,” he sighed. “We can’t get anywhere with them.”