Beneath the halo of cool white light surrounding the bathroom mirror, Lucas rolls the usual grey Army t shirt down over his honeyed skin, poured from the DC sun, ruddy and rouged with Marlowe's usual assortment of party favors. An unscented stick deodorant skips his leather overnight bag on the sink and finds a spot in the medicine cabinet between her creams and soft cottons. He snaps the top of a long vase shaped bottle and sniffs; cocoa butter, boy shorts and fragile lace camisoles with straps that easily tear. A wide frosted glass jar half full of gritty green goop is responsible for the sea salt steam that billows under the bathroom door during the grooming that he is not allowed to witness. Scratching his chin, Lucas picks up a short aluminum can wrapped in a plain pale yellow label. The custom scent diffusing from the tiny nozzle crosses his eyes, sandbags them shut, while memory mines his dimples and strikes gold - a warm, melted smell of anise and rum-soaked pralines, the edible trail he follows to the hot notch between Marlowe's thighs. His arched brow hooks around the edge of the threshold into the bedroom; "Cheater," he whispers. The engagement ring, looped over the porcelain woman's arm like a diamond pocketbook, winks in reply.
In skin and sleep-drugged dawns, consistent and tangible like the repetitive rap of his worn sneakers along the pavement, Lucas adds five miles to the story of his life one step after another. As he rounds the corner past the Metro stair rail, sweating and slowing onto tree-lined Hawthorne, rattling aluminum panels call him across the street to a newsstand where twenty two dollars purchases Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, Condé Nast Traveler, a Wall Street Journal for Roderick and, from the pastry shop at the end of the block, two euro-crisp chocolate croissants for Tamara. These gifts Lucas leaves on the iron-work coffee table next to Roderick, crumpled into Marlowe's two seat sofa, crooked and alone. Shouldering a leather schoolbag, he skips to the archway and peers into Marlowe's office where Tamara lies starfish-splayed on a green flocked air mattress, her belly bare between the folds of a crop top and Roderick's plaid pajama bottoms. Lucas' freshly-shaved face goes flat; he pulls a rose afghan up over her before checking the time, checking Marlowe, and leaving for work.
"Jim Benningfield; please leave a message." Lucas yanks the spiral cord of his desk phone and keys another button on the panel. "Sergeant King; my office hours are from eight a.m. . ." An irritated glance swoops to the dial of a retro clock slowly sweeping toward a quarter after oh seven hundred, a training hour, a sweat hour now become limbo between work and the routine bureaucracy of a half civilian, half military shoebox office hell. Lucas' thumb zippers along the edge of a stack of purchase orders for French chopper interiors and accessory parts, most of them bearing the blue chicken scratch of his disapproval, all of them awaiting the signature of Sgt. King, due at eight, expected around ten.
From a side drawer packed with sweet and sour trail mix and apple juice boxes, Lucas unearths a photo of him in drenched cargo shorts and Marlowe in a one-shouldered aqua tank suit, having a sand fight at Virginia Beach. He swipes dust from the spot on his desk awaiting a frame she promised him two weeks ago, sighs, and pulls from his back pocket four photos from the booth at the Atlanta Airport. A frame would preserve the matte paper from his hot hands, the round worn corners from his fingertips calloused and shaking slightly with residual tremors of the kiss that saved him from another year alone, another roommate, another field op necessary but not needful as in his too temporary youth before the words 'carnage' and 'control'. A long harsh breath stoppers the juices that gratitude wrings from his heart; Lucas strides to the closet in the far left corner, yanks open the door, and leaps to the pull up bar installed in the vacant space.
"Excuse me, Mr.—oh!"
Lucas drops from the bar, his eyes dropping to the undone buttons of his dress shirt, away from the temp's hard candy stare stuck to the flat, breath-feathering expanse of his abdomen. "Captain. Klein."
"Oh, right. Sir," she intones, affecting a knock-off USO salute. "Captain, uh, wow—"
"You're a civilian," Lucas murmurs, straightening his refastened collar. "You don't have to salute, Miss Cavanaugh."
"Jen. Please," she replies, her knee popping up the hem of a hounds-tooth skirt. "I didn't mean. . . I just had a message. . . your uncle called after you left Friday," Jen blurts over the pauses conjured by his stark silence. "I didn't know—"
"What was the message?"
"Call me."
Nodding, Lucas tweezers the message slip from her pink manicured fingers. "Thank you."
"Anytime. If you need anything, Power Bars, massage, whatever—just call me," she trills, swishing a bottle blonde-body wave back from her face.
Squinting first through one eye and then the other, Lucas back tracks to the desk phone which chirps and blushes at his fingertips.
"Mr. Klein, you have a Miss Delano on line one."
"Captain," Lucas corrects under his breath. "Caris?"
"Hiya, honeymooner! Well, almost honeymooner. How are we feeling today?"
"Fine. You?"
"Hung over. Couldn't sleep. So sad. But I have good news for you, dreamboat," Caris continues over the distant clatter of heels on the floor tile. "I got you on an oversight committee. Fort Benning. Yay me. Well, I made a recommendation, but you're a shoo-in."
"Fort Benning?"
"Yes. Oh—no. Don't worry, hon; you don't have to move there. The project's at Benning but they're running the committee from here. New airfield, dignitaries and memorial included! Act now!" she giggles, flipping the prospectus. "Hey hey hey?"
"Hello."
"Why the long face? Err, silence? You say 'promotion'; I say silver platter! There's a four star general attached to this. His feet smell terribly BUT he's on every guest list for every 'yay, I just got my Viagra prescription' yacht party and birthday party and 'just because I can' party in town, and he LOVES apprentices to follow him around, especially with wives and kids, hint hint, and war records. He's going to nitro-boost you up that ladder in no time, then you'll have your own parties! Then I get to take Marlowe shopping. Yay! Not that I need a reason, but she's SO stingy. Did I tell you she took back my dress? Not that I didn't love Tamara's dress; LOVE Tam, TO pieces. But you don't take back Versace on sale, ce ne pas?"
"Right," Lucas replies, snaking around the desk to a hair-stiffening buzz outside the door.
"I'm so excited for this wedding. I found some bridesmaid dresses; I have a file," Caris crows proudly. "I'll bring them by tonight so Tamara—"
"She's leaving with Roderick. I'm taking them to the airport at lunch."
"Oh," Caris mumbles. "I thought she was staying the week?"
"Change of plans. Caris, is there any precedent for a man wearing an engagement ring?"
"Why would you want to?"
"Because I'm taken," he replies, snapping the blinds on the swarm of honey bees lingering at Jen's desk, lips flapping, lashes fluttering toward his office door. "Caris?"
"Hiya. Just. . . taking a moment to feel sorry for myself." Her voice, muffled against the opened file on the desk, abruptly rises like her head bearing the imprint of a paperclip. "You have no brother? Not one? A half-brother? An eagle scout second cousin once removed?"
"On my father's side, but. . . I can introduce—"
"No, no, never mind. The good apple rolled far away from the rotting tree. Fine!" she trills. "It's perfectly fine. Being single is fine. Everything's fine."
Lucas snickers. "Caris—"
"Don't mess up, okay? Not once. At least not more than three or four very minor infractions," she twitters over the vicious snap a strawberry licorice whip between her teeth. "I need to believe in men like you. I'll call when the recommendation comes through. Goodbye."
Platinum tinkles against porcelain on the shrugging ash shoulders of the bed shifted away from the frame, roughly stripped, stared at, then flipped.
"Hey girl."
"Hey," Marlowe wheezes, draped across the full size pillow mattress to stretch a fitted sheet into place. "You sleep good?"
"Alright," Tamara replies, dragging the rose afghan Linus-like to a rattan chair in the corner; she plops down with a white paper sack on her lap. "What time is it?"
"Eleven twenty two."
"Ooh! I love that boy."
"Hmm." Marlowe eyeballs a strip of puff pastry that disappears in Tamara's mouth. "Don't let Roderick see that."
"I don't care if he do."
"Right," Marlowe snorts, snatching up the afghan and doubling it over her arms. At the closet, folding and groaning, she slams the double doors to the left side. "Look at this. Pants together, shirts together, long sleeves, short sleeves, Hawaiian print," she grumbles, flicking a blue and white cotton hem. "He sings country songs. In the shower. Loud."
"So? Roderick watches X-Men cartoons when he think I ain't looking."
"When I said 'Porgy and Bess', he said 'Huh?'"
"Don't everybody like opera, Mo. I don't."
"My daddy would have a field day."
"Well, your daddy ain't here."
Even the sky holds its breath, sucking the linen sheers against the window frame. "Thanks, Tam."
"Huh?" Tamara yawns. "Oh. Look here, your daddy thought I was a ho, so. . ." She shrugs. "As long as you happy, right?"
"Right," Marlowe mumbles, tracing Lucas' heart on the pocket of a navy suit jacket. "I love him, Tamara. I do."
"I know that," Tamara replies, squinting. "You freaking out?"
The thimble of the space between her thumb and index finger expands to a shot glass. "A little bit."
"You'll be alright. Everybody do. Not me, but—"
"How did you know, Tam? I mean, that Roderick was the one?"
"I just did, since the seventh grade," Tamara drawls, stretching. "I just. . . love him. Sometimes."
A fresh sheet, ghost-white, hovers over their bed; Marlowe snatches it down. Hospital corners snap into place like her brows. "Hot Rod," she murmurs, her brother the love of a lifetime, not of two and a half months of a lot of sex and little talking. "He's good for me," she insists at a volume that barely scratches her own eardrums. "He's good to me."
"Huh?"
"Coming out!" Roderick's bellow shudders the bathroom door before he swings it open, snapping wrinkles out of a pale blue polo shirt against the residual steam.
Tamara frowns. "Why you always gotta make an announcement?"
"Because I didn't know what ya'll was doing out here," Roderick retorts, his bugged out eyes dancing to the coarse country tap dance of his speech.
"Why you didn't iron that?"
"Didn't have time."
"It looks tacky."
"Better get dressed if you coming with me. How you feeling, girl?" he croons, drawing Marlowe's forehead to his lips.
"Fine. You alright?" Marlowe giggles.
"Yeah. Although I heard ya'll last night. I didn't hear you, but I heard you," he declares, glaring. "'Bout time you got a real guest room in here, don't you think? That sofa ain't good for nothing."
"Don't talk about my sofa. You ain't slept on it; how you know?"
Roderick's gaze drifts to the framed print over the bed, over her head, away from Tamara loudly popping her joints as she rises from the chair. He kisses his sister again.
"I'm about to get my bath."
"Don't take all day. We leaving at a quarter to noon."
"Yes, drill sergeant," Tamara retorts, her hip switching as loud as her feet shuffling to the bathroom.
"Guest room, Mo," Roderick continues, ironing over the squint in her eyes. "You could extend the kitchen into that empty space on the right side and throw up a little bedroom, a little company bathroom. Think about it. I'm trying to come up with a wedding present."
"Really, Rod?" Marlowe toddles on her feet in the circle of his arms.
"Yeah, really. I know you like your space and all that, but this loft is already half built up. Might as well make a real apartment out of it, since I heard you getting married, even though I ain't paying for it, but that's alright," he chimes. "Your boy wanna be a man? Good. Great."
"You ain't mad, right? Because—"
"About paying? Hell nah!"
"I mean, about. . . I mean, you know what daddy would say, right?"
"Ain't no changing your mind now; I already let the boy move in here. It's done."
"Roderick—"
His arms suddenly tight about her squeeze to trembling; his fist makes a knot of her pale pink pajama shirt, soft as a baby blanket. "If you're sure, I'm sure."
"She's sure."
Sniffing, Roderick turns to the officer in the threshold, his right arm twined around Marlowe's waist. "What's up, bro?" he calls across the distance, a show of teeth masking cavities of unspoken words.
"Shit. You?"
"Still loving that job, huh?"
"No. You guys ready?"
"In a minute. Mo, get Tam out the bathroom. Now. You better get dressed too, if you going. I ain't missing this flight."
"Okay! Dang." A brisk wave herds the men out of the room.
Herding becomes a slow hump to the living room along a three foot wire; faced with the love seat, Roderick snaps and hunkers down. Lucas settles quietly beside him. "Your father wouldn't approve?"
"My pops was real old-fashioned, man, real Cosby Show. He had a leash on all our asses, except Von, but she was. . . wide open," Roderick chuckles. "You probably would've liked her over Mo."
"You think?"
"I don't know," Roderick amends, rubbing his eyes. "Not for real, the way you hang all over that girl. You love her, right? Don't fuck with me."
"How can you ask me that, Roderick?"
"How about the way Mo looked when she came in the door yesterday? Half crazy, in a good way, but still—Nate had her like that too, for a minute."
"I don't want to talk about him."
"You better," Roderick snaps. "That's where most of her crap's coming from, two—no, ten years of crap, if you add in the 'Mo, you crazy' years. That's on me, though. So." His wedding ring twists around his finger, a well-oiled cog, mechanical. "Nate really did you a favor 'cause if I hadn't fucked that one up, I woulda been laid you out, bro. In a potato sack six feet under."
"What happened to the gators?"
"I know you ain't making fun of me."
Almost liquid and light, the moment sags to earth in the deep brown core of Roderick's eyes. "I love her. You know that."
"It ain't about that no more. You're getting married. That's a forever thing in this family. Forever ever? Forever ever ever."
"I'm counting on it."
"I hear you talking. Footing bills and shit around here like you Daddy Warbucks."
"Right," Lucas coughs. "I wanted to talk to you about that. You're paying Marlowe's mortgage out of her investment portfolio, right?"
"Mutual funds, yeah."
"I want to take over the mortgage. Save that money for her nest egg or whatever."
"Say what?"
"Forward the bills to me and I'll take care of it. She doesn't have to know."
"What are you trying to prove, man?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit."
"I live here, Roderick. With my future wife. I'm old fashioned too." A straightened spine shores up the weight of his gaze, but not enough. "I can handle it, and I've got my savings for the wedding."
"What kind of savings we talking about?"
From the coffee table, Lucas pulls a well-thumbed Harley Davidson brochure and places it on Roderick's thigh. "That kind. Marlowe doesn't like motorcycles anyway."
Lips puckered, Roderick thumps the cover. "I gotta think about this one."
"Fine. Let me know after Labor Day."
"That sounds like a two week ultimatum."
"It is."
Roderick nods slowly, staring, smiling slightly. "You got a key to Caris' apartment? I left a pair of shoes over there."
"Marlowe does. I'll get it."
"And tell Tam to hurry the hell up."
"What's going on with you two?" Lucas asks, trading Roderick's silence for a pointed glance at the sofa.
"Marriage," Roderick declares loudly, patting the cushions. "That's why they like these little love seats. Torture."
"Only if you're sleeping on it." The comment dangles over Lucas' shoulder as he drifts toward the soft cackling emanating from the bathroom door. He glances at the freshly made bed, smiles until his sight shifts to the headboard, to an outstretched arm and a pocketbook left dangling, noose round and stone heavy.
