She flagged down a passing waitress and ordered two Manhattans, one with five brandied cherries. “They rinse the glass with absinthe,” she explained. “Really makes the flavors pop.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t it eat holes in your brain?” William asked.
“Buzzzzzzzzz,” she lifted a pointer finger to the side of William’s skull. Then she ran a hand over the lump on his head.
“So, what, did you get into a fight?”
William smiled. “Actually, yes.”
She seemed — surprised? No. Impressed. He kept looking around, as if someone might see him with her. Not like he was cheating, even if that was how it felt.
“I can’t be out too late,” she announced, withdrawing her hand. “I’ve got a six a.m. flight to Istanbul for a conference.”
Some very loud song thumped its beat on the speakers across the way. She was sort of singing along and shifting her hips. At the chorus she sang along, “‘O… oh… oh. Dreams weave the rose…’ Have you seen this music video? It’s so awful. But I love the song.” She shrugged as if this were one more of life’s unresolvable little mysteries.
“What kind of conference?” William asked. The drinks arrived, and he wondered how fast he could finish his and get the hell out of there. She fished one of her five cherries out and began to nibble on it. “Mifamurtide. It’s this new drug that just finished a phase three trial. They’re approving it soon in Europe. It’s got to go well because we really fucking blew it last month in Copenhagen. It wasn’t my fault, of course. It was this idiot, Parker, who screwed up the goddamn time zones or hit his snooze button or something and didn’t show up, and of course we left all the materials with him. I had to get up there with nothing and do the presentation from memory. I mean, it was the worst thing ever to happen to anyone. You don’t even know.”
William nodded agreeably. He couldn’t decide if he was being polite or pathetic, but either way he sensed he’d regret it.
“I just hate it when people waste my time, you know?”
He couldn’t decide if this was a veiled dig at him, or if she was just too obtuse to realize how it could come across.
“Thank god it all worked out. And my boss was so impressed, he took me on his jet to stay at his villa in Panama. It’s, like, on the top of a private mountain that used to be a volcano. The only way to get there is to, like, take a helicopter? And the whole thing is, like, fucking glass walls so we’d be just, like, sitting in the kitchen, and you can see whales out in the ocean, like, blowing water a hundred feet in the air. Out of those blowholes?”
William tried his hardest to seem impressed and jealous, which he assumed was the point.
“‘Atlantis ROSE,’” she burst out, singing along to the same song. “‘Drums wreathe…’”
“Sounds like things are great then,” William said.
“So great,” she replied, again doing a little dance in her seat to the song as it ended.
“Are things… serious between you and your boss?”
Sung-Lee burst out laughing. “Him? No. He’s, like, married or whatever. It’s not even a thing. And—” Then as if it were a big secret, she leaned in to say, “He’s got the grossest back hair? I had to just tell him at some point — keep your shirt on, you know?”
Last time they’d gone out, she’d been insufferably demure. Now she was like her own evil twin sister, and it was no improvement, except that, he supposed, she did seem much happier. He couldn’t stop watching her fingers fiddling with the edge of her navy lapel.
“You seem different,” he said at last. “I mean, in a good way. I mean, I guess, I’m impressed when people can do that. Just take on a whole new attitude.”
Sung-Lee again leaned in. “I started doing Entrance. Have you heard of it?”
“No. Is it some kind of drug?”
She shook her head and then stared up at the ceiling as if searching there for the words to explain it. “It’s like—so incredible. It’s all about the radical reinvention of your brain’s whole structure through hypnosis. Well, it’s not hypnosis. It’s a semiconscious state induced by rhythmic motion and chanting. At first it’s sort of like yoga almost, but then you go into this full-on trance state. That’s why they call it that. En-Trance. Right? And while you’re in the trance state, you can just unlock all these things. It’s all about realizing what you’re doing to hold yourself back, like through hatred or fear or nihilism or eating gluten. You identify the things you want, and you finally allow yourself to take them—”
William lost the end of her diatribe as a garbage truck rolled by outside, thudding and crashing and beeping and flashing its lights as men in neon vests hopped off to collect black bags of trash that gleamed in the streetlights. He looked back up at Sung-Lee, coaxing the last of the cherries between her lips. Was he a thing that she had decided to allow herself to take? Or was he something to unlock? Some kind of shackle; the gluten of her love life. He watched the men outside throwing bags of trash as if they were nothing but black air. He could see Sung-Lee following his gaze to the door. What did he want?
“Let’s go up onto the bridge,” William said.
• • •
On the very edge he stood with Sung-Lee under a wash of golden light, watching boats cutting through the darkness hundreds of feet below their feet. Her hair blew up into his face, and her arm pressed against his as she pointed excitedly at a pair of helicopters going wing and wing, only feet from each other. Surely it was no accident that she was crushing her butt into his thigh. His hands seemed to remember, as he pressed one against the small of her back. This was what a real body felt like. When he turned to kiss her, she didn’t disappear. Her lips opened, even greedily, at his touch. Tongue behind savage little teeth. Her chest heaving up, and her hands weaving, rising, up his spine. A powerful wind enveloped them, pushing downriver. She smelled like poppies and Earl Grey — had she just bitten his tongue? Yes. He tasted pennies. His hands whipped around her waist and down the back of her skirt. Her hips swayed, danced a little, as she had in the bar. O… oh… oh. Dreams weave the rose.
Her cheekbones were glowing. He stopped, not sure of himself now. Her dark, heavy lashes lifted, and the soft brown pupils beneath studied him, twitching. He’d forgotten, almost, what it was like to really see a person. And to see someone seeing you. She traced a finger along the horn of his nose and the line of his lips.
She shouted over a passing UPS truck, “When the fuck did you learn to kiss like that?”
William watched the corners of her lips rise up into the folds of her cheeks. A smile like a perfect parabola. The tips of her fingers ranging…
“Did she teach you? The girl you left me for. Last time.”
“I’m so sorry about that,” William yelled back. “I know I should have called.”
But she grabbed him and kissed him even harder. There was a lull in the traffic as she whispered now, right into his ear, “Don’t hold grudges. That’s fear and hate, William. And besides I definitely don’t stand in the way of true fucking love.”