Marlowe sidles up next to him, huffing and tugging the damp neck of her white cut-off t shirt. She falls silent at the sight of the seven inch figurine, her second but most cherished gift from this man who, by degrees like an oven slowly warming, has become a gift himself. "You know what she's singing, don't you?"
"Singing?"
"'I loves you, Porgy," Marlowe croaks in a voice hoarse with shouting out of her third floor windows to the street. "Her name's Marian, like Marian Anderson. She's an opera singer."
"Who's Porgy?"
"Porgy, you know—"
"Ex? Where does he live?"
"—Gershwin," Marlowe informs over a dry tickle of amusement. "Musicals?"
"Gershwin," Lucas repeats, circling his gray irises to the ceiling. "Cover any Aerosmith songs?"
"No—'Porgy and Bess'. 'I loves you, Porgy. . .'"
"'I love you 'cause your deuces are wild, girl'," Lucas crows over her, looping his arm around her neck and dragging her into the concave of his belly.
"Aerosmith, huh?"
"'I love to look into your big brown eyes'," he continues, dragging his vowels. "'They talk to me and seem to hypnotize. They say the things nobody dares to SAY. . .'" Lucas crescendos into a girdle-busting warble, tightening his arm around Marlowe's chuckling throat, planting a kiss on her earlobe. "Aerosmith rocks."
"Yeah, well, thank god you moved out of that cave you lived in. On Mars. I gotta get you cultured, boy."
"I don't need any culture," he murmurs, sampling the soft flesh in the curve of her collarbone. "I just need you."
Her reply, soft and metered, sways in time to the slow turn of their bodies side to side, back and forth, learning rhythm. "When are you coming back? For good?"
"I thought you were tired of me 'junking up your place'."
"When?"
"I have a couple of things to do before I can officially move in, but by next week, you won't be able to get rid of me." He sands off his tone with a wing tip brush of a kiss. "You ready?"
"Gotta be since you're about homeless." The constriction of his forearm is milder than last week, than seven weeks of Saturday night arrivals and Sunday departures and boxes three at a time, the slow stitching together of two lives. Marlowe turns her nose into the soft spice of his grey t shirt, not dank with effort like hers, but clean and comfortable and too familiar. "Is that my detergent?"
"Marlowe—"
"You stealing my stuff already?"
"—are you ready for me?"
"Been ready," she blurts over a labored sigh, over his squeeze, his nose on her nape, the slow trek of fingers into the collar of her shirt. "Don't you gotta go?"
"The only thing I 'gotta' do is keep my woman happy, and kill the competition. Sure you don't know any Porgys?"
My woman — a heavy, pressing phrase that has turned sand to glass. She turns in his arms, and in his clear orbs, the heat and inertia of two suns is there for the taking, for the cost of three little words, or a single simpler one. "No. I don't. I know a Mario though."
"What's his address?"
"I ain't telling. I don't put up convicted felons."
Lucas nods. "Roderick won't go for that."
"He'll come around."
"I'll make sure of it," he whispers against her lips.
Marlowe turns from his departure and leans against the door, taking in the five o'clock light rolling over to a sleepy August evening; the four tapestry-sized windows in the far wall rustle potted plants on the sills with a breath that she sucks in and blows out hard, as though it is her last. Silence has become a spy in his absence, has taken on his stare and his deep stillness; it watches her tug the hem of her denim shorts as she flip-flops across the sparse loft, scratching her scalp, peering over her shoulder, before squatting down to the latest and last box ominously marked 'Personal'. In a nest of shredded newsprint, a single white cylinder the size of a perfume box waits for her, bearing a yellow sticky note that reads, "For you, Nosy." Chuckling, she removes the container; a man stands in the base, in a shiny black porcelain tux and bow tie, his left hand reaching for a waist, his right hand reaching for his Eve.
Marlowe's knees pop as she scrambles through the archway into the bedroom. There on the headboard, a blonde man and a black woman take the first step of a dance that will last a lifetime. She collapses on the comforter, on the phone in her back pocket which she withdraws, flips, and dials. "I am not nosy."
"You've snooped through all of my boxes. Admit it."
"No," she croaks, her voice thick and timid. "Are they—"
"Getting married? Yes."
Her brain tips her forward to the mattress from which she digs out a plastic zipper bag containing two cigarettes and a pack of matches. Silence simmers while she exhales every last vapor of smoke. "You trying to tell me something?"
"Just. . . asking something. If you can see us like that one day. Roderick might stop glaring at me," Lucas says, conjuring a trickle of laughter more easily than a few weeks ago. "It's a story about us. Can you see it?"
"Yeah, I can see it—it's right in front of my face."
"Marlowe—"
"Yeah."
"Good."
"Lucas? HELLO?"
Lucas pulls his shoulders away from Tamara's and Caris' petting claws, snaps a black lapel into place, and shakes his head at a bow tie. "Seven o'clock," he grins, rippling the tide of their smiles. "I need a few hours to talk her into it." He crosses the hall with a dress bag in one hand and a newly minted key in the other. Marlowe's wild exaggerated expression meets him at the archway.
"Oh my god!" Her eyes track the dropping dress bag, his dropping to one knee. "Oh my—"
"Marry me." Two words, two hands closing over her hands, two lips pressing to the inside of her wrist before drawing her fingers up to his stubble-roughened jaw. "Please," he breathes against her palm.
"Lucas, what—why—" She snatches back her sentences like her hands from his faster grasp, from his grip dragging her forward. "Why? You're just about to move in! I mean—"
"Because it's the right thing to do, because I love you and we're about to make a life together. For good. Not 'only if'."
"No, this is—no."
"Slo Mo—"
"I can't say yes right now," she blurts, eyes shut. "But I can talk to you about it."
A grim smile forms over her heavily modulated monotone, a speech that he taught her to say so he would have a chance to understand before she accused him of not being able to. "Marlowe, I'm not here to be your roommate," Lucas murmurs, drawing her down over his tuxedo clad thighs, eye to eye. "I need you to know that. I need this," he insists against her mouth, swallowing her next words. "We can have a long engagement," he continues over the slide of fabric and the snap of straps. "Just say yes."
Lucas doesn't wait for the word; he takes it a particle at a time, in a bead of sweat, a seeded nipple, the sharp sink of five nails into the flesh over his missing rib. He pushes her heart rate erratic, her breath hollow and raw like a melon cracked and gutted, his own groans against the sweet rind of her mouth louder than a drum pound. Over the smack of his palm against the thick carpet runner, the flex of his arm gathering her limbs closer, tighter, he wheezes, "Please, God, please. Please," he repeats with each of her pulses, "Please," as their hearts synch and their eyes meet in that oblivion outside time. "Honey, please—"
"You didn't—"
"Marlowe." He surges, jaw clenched and seething, eyes blind to the slow slide of her lashes. "Say you'll marry me," Lucas heaves against her neck, his teeth grinding like his hips. "Say yes."
"Oh, yeah—"
"Yes," he insists, driving, waiting. "Yes?"
"Yes!"
"Yes," Lucas echoes, a single word simpler than any other, a doorway pried open, propped open with a ring.
"Did you—" Marlowe's sentence, like her eyes, stop on her hand covering his hand on Caris' doorknob; a ring, a classic solitaire in an antique setting, winks at her. "Did you ask for my hand?"
"Yes. I'm doing everything I can to put a smile on Roderick's face."
"What did he say?"
"He said he'd be here," Lucas replies, shucking his head toward the door. "Actually he said, 'I'll believe it when I see it'."
"Hold up—Tamara's here too?"
"And my aunt and uncle."
"You said—" Marlowe looks down at the seashell chiffon she wore not the first time she laid eyes on him, but the first time she saw him. "I'm sick of you using sex to get your way."
"I wouldn't have to if you didn't take so long to decide things."
"What's the rush, boy?"
"I don't want to wait."
"Lucas." His gaze comes to her from a great distance, from a mountaintop where his thoughts are too vaporous to grasp. "For life?" she croaks in a soft whisper that slices a frown into her brow, her fingers clutching the fragile bodice of the dress. "I don't know. . . how to know that."
"All you have to do is stay, one day at a time. It's a choice. You just do it." He squeezes her hand, securing the ring between his fingers, and throws open the door.
Love is a brass bell ringing off the muted blue tile of Caris' kitchen, clamoring congratulations, clanging approval. Marlowe shrugs, sighs, smiles, winces, laughs into Tamara's hair-sprayed coif, into Caris' Chanel-scented neck, against Roderick's blue pin-striped shoulder.
"Let me see it," he demands, holding her at an arm's length. His gaze lingers on hers before briefly dropping to the ring; he smiles slightly. "You done good, bro," he declares, clapping Lucas hard on the back.
"Good? Icy," Tamara corrects, tackling Marlowe for a third hug. "I picked it out. Lord, I'm so relieved! I knew you would get it done, boo," she twitters, beaming at Lucas and tapping his nose.
"So—when's the wedding?" Caris' eyes like her black sequined halter sparkle and shimmy first at Tamara, then Marlowe.
"We—thank you," Marlowe replies to Margaret's warm whispered congratulations; she opens her arms to Ian and wheezes through his squeezing, "We're having a long engagement."
"Smart," Ian comments.
"Very," Roderick chimes. "How long?"
"Two—"
"Six months."
"—years? Excuse me?"
"Six months?" Tamara cries. "Boy, all the good halls in Atlanta are booked years ahead of time—"
"Atlanta?"
"Married from home. How lovely."
"See? Let me move over here by Margaret; she know what I'm talking about. C'mon girl." Tamara loops her red satin arm through Caris' and crosses the family circle; Margaret makes the third pillar in the great wall of women uncrushed by Marlowe's salty stare. "Don't look at me like that. We ain't having no chips and dip in some tacky ballroom wedding—"
"We had a ballroom," Roderick counters.
"Not at the Holiday Inn! Mo—I am the matron of honor. We got the maid of honor right here—"
"Me! Hiya!" Caris chirps, wiggling her fresh manicure.
"—and the almost-mama matron over here," Tamara continues, clutching Margaret's forearm. "We gonna have some honor and elegance and grace and all that. We're having it all. So get ready."
"Hey; whoa," Roderick calls over Ian's snicker. "I got money to spend on you, girl, but this ain't gon' be no Star Jones wedding. Don't let Tamara—"
"Shut up, Roderick!"
"Marlowe can have whatever she wants." Over the clearing of his throat, Lucas locks eyes with Roderick. "I'm paying for the wedding."
"Love him, love him, love him to pieces," Caris sighs. "So—a year? We must have a year, Marlowe."
"Say it again," Tamara intones.
The duck and dodge of Marlowe's head between their shoulders translates to a nod. "Alright. A year." She squints through the squeals at the men in her life herding together in front of Caris' wall mounted aquarium of jewel cichlids.
"I shouldn't be surprised." Ian winks at his wife, fine-lined with smiles, a tall cool blush in a champagne after-five suit. "They never get tired of this crap."
"Nope," Roderick snorts. "Look at Tam. The rest of our cake ain't even got frostbite on it. Which reminds me—you selling dope?" His smile, once fleeting, is now gone. "You come across a lottery win or something? This wedding is gonna be a plasma TV and a car, if I know Tamara."
"I've got it," Lucas replies to Roderick's steel-bore gaze.
"Margaret and I—"
"No, you won't. I'm not stupid. I can take care of your sister, Rod, and I'm going to."
A grin softens Roderick's hardened mouth. "Okay, Arctic. I hear you."
Lucas nods once, briskly. "As long as we keep the guest list under control, there won't be a problem." His cool gray gaze snaps to his uncle's and then his friend's snickering.
"He'll learn," Ian says dryly, tapping a crystal flute against Roderick's shoulder. "And that reminds me: Eileen called the house Friday. I—"
"Excuse me. Roderick, come talk to your sister. We ain't having no justice of the peace. She don't gotta get married at Antioch, but—"
"Here we go."
"Son," Ian continues in privacy, "is your mother on that guest list or what?"
"Yes."
"What are the chances she'll show up if you don't tell her?"
"Labor Day. When I show up with my fiancé, they'll know. There won't be anything to say then except 'congratulations'."
Ian snorts. "You think?"
"I know," Lucas insists soberly.
"You know, Margaret and I were planning a trip for Thanksgiving. We could move it up, turn this into a family reunion."
"No need; I have everything under control," Lucas murmurs, watching Roderick as he approaches, flicking a glance at Marlowe's frazzled expression. "This is a win-win situation."
"Ya'll ready to go? We have a reservation downtown."
Ian nods. "I was just telling Lucas that I like him with Marlowe, and I can't wait to see what kind of grandkids I get out of this. Grand-nephews? Nieces?" He dips his head toward Roderick's downcast eyes and drawls, "Gentlemen?"
Roderick taps a cough out of his chest. "Uh—"
"What time?" Lucas asks.
"Eight."
"Better get a move on."
