Marlowe
Ross twists the slender black leather band of her watch and checks the time again. Six minutes have passed since she last checked the time, and yet her wine glass is already empty. "Eight fifteen," she mumbles. She takes a quick drag from the remains of what was a long elegant cigarette and scrubs the filter against the bottom of the ashtray.
If it weren't her one and only brother, she would have exited stage left and hustled to her car immediately after the wedding ceremony. Instead, she has spent the evening faking smiles for strangers, exchanging hugs and kisses like cheap party favors with overdressed women drenched in perfume. Her own plain black silk dress now stinks of twelve different floral scents.
Her brother, Roderick, frowned when she walked into his dressing room before the ceremony. He looked her up and down, examining her attire, and then gave his judgment with a sour smirk. "This ain't a funeral, Mo."
He stood as she walked toward him to pin a white tulip on the lapel of his tuxedo. The fabric was incredibly smooth beneath her fingertips. Hugo Boss, if she remembered his tastes. "You wouldn't let me wear a suit, and this was the only dress hanging in my closet." That was a lie; she had several frou frou ensembles in her closet that she could have worn, dresses and after five suits that her friend Caris had forced her to purchase. But she preferred her simple black silk sheath because it clung to her like a suit of armor. And whenever she returned to her home in Atlanta, she felt that she needed the protection.
"You're a woman. Accept it."
"I thought I was your best man," Marlowe replied smartly, chucking her brother under the chin.
"Best woman," he corrected warmly, gathering her into his arms for a hug. "And you look fierce in a dress, especially when you smile and show a little leg."
At six feet four inches, he hovered over Marlowe's five foot seven frame like a majestic tree. "Baby bro," Marlowe said affectionately. "Ease up; you're squashing me."
"You're getting skinny," Roderick commented, releasing her. "You on a diet or something?"
"Boy, I've never dieted a day in my life. You're the vain one in the family." A pregnant silence fell between them at the mention of the word 'family'. They smiled uneasily at each other and busied themselves by fidgeting with their clothes and accessories, rushing over the pause as though it didn't exist. Each of them was all the other had left of family, and four months was not enough time to forget the loss of their parents and their younger sister, Yvonne. A lifetime wouldn't be enough.
"Well, this is it, right? You ready? I parked in the back in case we need to dip."
Roderick grinned, his teeth as white as porcelain in the rich chocolate landscape of his face. "Ain't gonna be none of that. She's the one, Mo."
"I know," Marlowe replied softly, letting a smile flow out from her eyes.
"Okay. Let's do this." Roderick placed his hand on the small of his sister's back and lead her out of the room and into his future.
Marlowe sighs, carefully framing that moment in her mind like a cherished photograph. She wasn't so sentimental, before. But she didn't worry about loss before; she always thought there would be more moments with her folks. She expected to see them at this reception, sitting quietly at the head table, her father sipping champagne and her mother fretting about his blood pressure. Yvonne was supposed to be there, in a too tight sequined dress with pink highlights in her hair, shining like a diamond. She should have graduated college last month. She should have been headed to graduate school at Georgia Tech, a math geek with a wild streak and a silver stud in her tongue that would have shocked all the professors. Instead, their souls were hovering over the Pacific Ocean after the plane that should have carried them to Hawaii for Yvonne's birthday trip fell out of the sky.
That is the moment that Marlowe returns to again and again, even though a psychotherapist and an expensive bottle of antidepressants begged her not to. After a month of living in a numb emotionless haze, Marlowe fired the shrink, flushed the pills, and decided to live with the grief. She prefers to hold on to whatever feelings she has left. The real head trip is feeling that they are missing; her heart won't hold on to the fact that they are gone. She finds herself pulling funky hats from the rack in the department store, plotting to ship them to Yvonne, and then suddenly the fact pierces her heart like a sharp needle. Instead of blood, tears well up behind her eyes like a damn about to burst.
"Ten more minutes," she mumbles, tearing her mind away from that dangerous ledge. "Ten more minutes and nobody will notice if I'm gone."
She is oblivious to the fact that she has already been noticed; a tall man uncomfortably perched on a short stool by the bar is watching her. He isn't drinking; he's toying with the stem of a flute of champagne that was pressed into his hand a half hour ago. His other hand is clicking a set of gold cufflinks, borrowed from Roderick, against the polished walnut surface of the bar. His mind is focused on one thing: working up the nerve to ask his best friend's sister for a dance.
"Chicken shit," Lucas murmurs under his breath. But no one who knew him would describe him as timid. At six foot one, 187 pounds, he looks intimidating. And he can't afford to be timid in the military. In fact, it was the piercing silent gaze that turns his gray eyes to steel, and the 'don't fuck with me' frown that turns his full lips to stone, that had distracted attention from his good looks and garnered him the nickname "Arctic." The nickname is emblazoned on the helmet he wears every time he fires up his chopper. If it didn't fit his personality at first, he has certainly grown into it over the course of his ten years in the Army.
Lucas feels like he is in the Arctic now. Every year, he attends one or two of Roderick's affairs, of which there are a numerous and plentiful variety—his best friend thinks that a change of season is a good reason to throw a party. And every time he attends, Lucas finds himself subject to the same routine. He is introduced to the same people that he met the previous year; he is petted and fed and chatted up for about an hour. And then he is relegated to some quiet corner of the room like an odd piece of furniture that doesn't belong anywhere else. "Who's that?" someone inevitably whispers. "Oh, you met him. That's Roderick's friend. You know, the white boy from the Army."
He never gets used to it, the way they talk about him as though he were a house broken puppy that Roderick picked up at a pet store. He can't even find solace in his status as best friend because they always refer to him as just 'a friend' or 'a buddy' or worst of all, just 'the one from the military'. Even Roderick reduces his status amongst his friends and family, introducing Lucas by saying, "Ya'll remember my boy Lucas, right?"
Yet at one time, they had been bound together by the threat of death in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. They were a helicopter pilot and a medic evacuating Air Wing personnel after a terrorist fuel truck exploded and brought down the entire north wall of Khobar Towers where they were stationed. That mission jump-started Lucas' military career and it pushed Roderick through his indecision, on to medical school, and into an orthopedic surgery residency. Perhaps that is why they are growing apart. Maybe the quiet years in Roderick's life are eating at his memories like the sea erodes the shore, and he is forgetting that there was a time of blood, a time of tears, during which they became brothers.
Lucas hasn't forgotten. He can't forget when he wakes up every morning to a razor straight scar on his hip that Roderick's steady hands formed while they stood at the mouth of hell. He can't forget the way Roderick got in his face and snapped him out of his pain so that he could fly the helicopter full of injured airmen out of harm's way. He can't forget the two years they had during Roderick's service, when they met on odd weekends for burgers and beers and phoned each other at four a.m. when the nightmares came to call. That is why he comes at least once a year, sometimes twice. That is why this year, Lucas has traveled three times to be at Roderick's side: once for a birthday, once for a wedding, and once for a funeral.
It was at the funeral that he met Marlowe, the much anticipated older sister. She was always expected at Roderick's parties, but she never appeared. Lucas made a kind of game of thinking about her. He would sit alone in a comfortable chair constructing the ghost of Marlowe Ross from the many bits and pieces of gossip that swirled in the room like confetti. "Girl, I haven't seen Mo in a decade. She stays holed up with those retarded kids at that school." "I heard she got as big as a house sitting around that fancy apartment Roderick bought her in D.C." "She ain't been to a family reunion in four years." "She's gonna end up in a housecoat and a ratty wig with a house full of cats if she don't get her act together. She should have married Nate when she had the chance."
Roderick has an album full of pictures of her from childhood through college, but Lucas has only seen two photographs of her as an adult. In one picture, she has her arms around the thick neck of a handsome man that Lucas assumed was Nate. In the other picture, the one Roderick has in an antique silver frame on his mantle, she is standing on the porch of their family home in Georgia, holding a pink straw sunhat down low over her eyes. All Lucas could see of her was one shoulder, one pixie earlobe pierced with a garnet stud, her stubborn chin, and her mouth.
It is her mouth that draws him back to the photo every time he goes to Roderick's house. Sometimes he stays over in the guest bedroom, and after he rises at the crack of dawn like he always does, and grabs a glass of juice before his morning run, he stops in front of the photo and studies her mouth. She has perfect bee stung lips that float above her small and purposeful chin the way the sun bobs over the horizon. Her lips are two toned; if Marlowe is made of gingerbread, her bottom lip is coated in a fine layer of caramelized pink sugar while her top lip is plain. In the photo, the hat hides most of her face, but she appears to have a smallish almond shaped face to which those incredibly carnal lips do not belong.
When Lucas first saw her coming up the carpeted center aisle of the church to view the bodies of her parents and sister, he found that he was right. The grief that marred her features still didn't diminish that lush mouth. Everything else about her body was slight and even childishly proportioned, as though she never quite ripened into womanhood. Except that mouth.
He hadn't stared at her, but he'd watched her, the same way that he is watching her tonight. She is a ghost finally taking on flesh and substance. As he studies her, his fascination with Marlowe Ross shifts into a more normal, ordinary curiosity. She is no longer a specter; she is a woman. And she is the only other person in the room who is as alone as he.
Lucas flicks the stem of his champagne flute with his fingernails; the last few bubbles race frantically to the surface. He isn't afraid of rejection; he isn't even afraid of her. He's concerned about them, the people who gave him his status as 'that white boy from the Army'. There is something in the air that is never spoken but often implied: you're welcome to visit, but you're not one of us.
Lucas chalks it up to the fact that he's in Atlanta - this is the South. He is from Montana, where the South is a mythic region that Midwesterners read about but never actually visit. It could just as easily be his imagination, but the realist in him knows better. At certain times in certain places, he is Roderick's best friend. But at other times, like now, he is just Roderick's boy from the Army.
Lucas doesn't know how to translate that knowledge into action. If he thought that it was just a matter of raised eyebrows and amused glances, he wouldn't give a shit. He is the youngest child and only son of a third generation horse ranching family, and he left home after college to fly helicopters in hot zones - he is no stranger to being the odd man out. But he worries that approaching Roderick's sister will be some kind of disrespect to Roderick himself. If he had innocent intentions, he wouldn't worry so much. But of course, his intentions are on the far side innocent. That is the bottom line: he wants to meet Marlowe Ross, not as Roderick's sister, but as a woman. Don't go there, he imagines Roderick saying.
The smartest, safest thing to do is to let it go. But he can't. He's been harboring the idea of this woman in the back of his mind for years. It isn't an obsession, but it is a fantasy that never diminishes; he feels the itch every time he is in Roderick's company. Lucas can't resist the chance to talk to her, if he gets a chance.
As if on cue, opportunity knocks. Marlowe rises from her table, skidding her chair across the parquet with the backs of her knees. The scraping sound irritates her; it is too loud and too prolonged. She turns around to find that the chair has migrated a good two feet away, and it seems to be swaying.
"Good gracious alive," she murmurs, shutting her eyes against her embarrassment. She is swaying; she's drunk. She opens her eyes and examines the table. There are three wine glasses, all of them vibrating slightly like a mirage.
Cab, she thinks. Hail a cab. She could easily get a ride to her hotel from anyone in the room. They all know her; they are all her home folks. But she doesn't want to admit to anyone that she drank too much. That will just be one more thing to add to the list of complaints about her: skinny, single, poor, alcoholic.
"I'm not poor," Marlowe mumbles to herself as she swipes up her plain leather purse from the chair next to her. She opens her purse and peers into it, closing one eye to ease the double vision. "I have cab money," she snickers. Suddenly, she sobers. She has to focus on not looking drunk. "Tipsy," she corrects. "I'm just tipsy." If she looks drunk, someone will stop her before she slips out of the reception. Marlowe lifts her chin a little, throws her shoulders back, and marches rather stiffly towards the small door nearest her.
If anyone had been watching her, instead of carousing on the dance floor and holding intimate conversations at the candlelit dinner tables, someone would have stopped her from entering the stairwell. They had all come in on a private elevator at the other end of the room. Tipsy as she is, Marlowe has forgotten that.
Lucas has not. He gets up from his stool and crosses the room towards the stairwell, weaving his way along the edge of the dance floor where most of the guests are lined up in rows grooving to R. Kelly's "Step in the name of Love." Lucas knew that she was drunk the moment she spun around and looked at her chair like it was a wild dog about to attack. He is just going to help her, that's all, just to make sure that she doesn't take a tumble down the stairs. Someone has to.
When he pushes open the heavy self closing door, he finds her standing in the middle of the first step going up, with a lit cigarette in one hand and her other arm hugged around her waist. She isn't crying, but she is close to it. She glances at him with shuttered eyes and then quickly looks away. "Excuse me," she says, sliding across the step toward the wall. She doesn't recognize him.
It is an awkward beginning, and Lucas isn't exactly sure what to say. "You might want to put that out," he says, looking meaningfully at her cigarette. "There's a smoke alarm right next to your head."
Marlowe looks at him sharply, almost glaring, before looking up at the smoke alarm. "Right." She drops her cigarette on the painted cement step and scrubs it out with her heel. She glances at him again; there is a spark of annoyance in her eyes that suddenly dissolves into confusion. "Hold on—Roderick's friend, right?"
"Yes," Lucas replies, relieved. "From the Army."
"Arctic, right?" She smiles at him as her mind floods with the many warm words her brother has spoken about this man that she took for a stranger.
"Yes. But on leave, I'm just Lucas Klein." He steps up in front of her and extends his hand.
She is drunk—that is the excuse she will cling to later when she tries to explain why, instead of shaking his hand, she laughs at him and grazes the top of his cropped hair with her hand. "Arctic is right. You're Arctic blonde. You're real, real blonde, like white blonde, like from Sweden."
Lucas blinks, and then a startled gasp of a laugh bursts from his lips. "You're wasted," he replies.
Marlowe frowns at him. "What? No, no, no, no—I'm just a little tipsy. But I usually . . . don't usually drink a lot. At all. I am a teacher." She raises her hand and wags her finger in front of his face. "I am not a lonely alcoholic." She pronounces her sentences carefully, trying to make clear distinctions between the words.
Lucas scrubs his hand over his mouth, trying to wipe away his amused grin. Her spiky lashed brown eyes are as wide as a schoolgirl's, and her cheeks are flushed. She is embarrassed. If he didn't already know that she was a teacher, he could have guessed it from the precise and authoritative way in which she tried to explain herself. But the liquor has softened and slowed her tongue, exposing every languid and graceful curve of her native accent. Her protest is too pretty. She's adorable.
Lucas clears his throat before speaking, swallowing a laugh. "What if we go inside and sit down, and you can tell me all about being a teacher."
Marlowe wags her finger in front of his face again. "No, no, no—I am leaving." She purses her lips and shakes her head from side to side.
Instantly, his attention is riveted on her mouth. He flicks his gaze from her eyes to her mouth and back again, and then he takes a step back and shoves his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo pants. "Did you drive here?"
"Yes. I did rent a car. But I can't drive now because I'm drunk."
Lucas quirks an amused brow. "I thought you said you were just a little tipsy."
Marlowe takes a deep breath. "I lied," she replies gravely. "I'm sorry."
Adorable. "What if you give me your keys and I drive you to the hotel?"
"What about the cab?"
Lucas looks puzzled for a second, but then he nods as he fills in the missing information. "What if we skip the cab and I drive you so that you don't have to leave your rental car here?"
"Yes." Marlowe nods her head in agreement. "Good idea."
"You stay here, and I'll be right back."
"Yes."
Lucas leaves her in the stairwell and works his way to the head table where Roderick is regaling his bride, Tamara, and her parents with a story from one of their many adventures during the military.
"Hey man!" Roderick exclaims with a wide smile when Lucas approaches. He pulls Lucas in and claps him on the back. "You having a good time?"
"Great time," Lucas replies, nodding.
Roderick makes a snick of disbelief with his teeth. "You always say that, then I always see you sitting down somewhere, cozying up to a glass of water. This boy don't hardly drink. I was just telling them about the time we were in Panama. Remember?"
Lucas' lip twitches as he recalls himself staggering across a moonlit beach with Roderick, belting out a drunken rendition of Smokey Robinson's "Ooh, Baby, Baby," and wearing nothing but a cowboy hat that he'd stolen from some young private at the bar. "Yeah. That's the last time I let you talk me into a game of quarters. You hustled me."
"Whatever. Smokey," Roderick retorts, grinning.
"I need to talk to you for a second," Lucas says quietly.
Instantly, Roderick's smile vanishes. He knows that soft tone. Lucas always gets quiet when something is wrong. "Tam, mom, pop—ya'll excuse us." He puts his hand on Lucas' shoulder and follows him a short distance away. "What's up bro?"
"Uh, your sister Marlowe is a little drunk. She's in the stairwell right now."
"What? Mo?"
"Don't get excited. I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to drive her to the hotel. She said she rented a car."
Roderick smirks. "Yeah, she always has to have her own shit to drive. I'm surprised at Mo though. She's just like you. She don't really drink either." Roderick's gaze drifts toward the stairwell exit as he contemplates going to his sister. But then he relaxes and looks at Lucas. "Good looking out. You sure you don't mind? Because I can get somebody else to take her."
"No, no problem. I was thinking of leaving anyway. Early flight tomorrow."
Roderick's neck pops back. "Whatchu mean, early flight? I thought you were on leave. You're supposed to be staying a couple of days, remember? All these folks will be out of here by tomorrow afternoon. You said you were gonna come to the house and chill for a minute. Mo too. She's on the early flight with you?"
Lucas chuckles and raises his hands in an innocent gesture. "I don't know, Rod."
"Look—you two go on to the hotel, go to sleep at . . ." Roderick pauses, checking his watch, "eight forty five like the sorry geriatrics ya'll are, but have your butts and your bags on my doorstep tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, dressed and ready for church. I'm serious, man; don't laugh at me," Roderick says, protesting the dubious smile on his friend's face. "You don't have no where to be, and she don't either. Both of ya'll owe me. I'm about to be gone for a week on my honeymoon, and after that I gotta crunch through this fourth year residency—no more get togethers for awhile. The least ya'll can do is give me three days with my family, after all the food I wasted on parties and your sorry asses didn't even show up . . ."
He wanders away, grumbling lightheartedly about Lucas and Marlowe's many transgressions. But Lucas carries a smile with him back to the stairwell exit. Roderick called him family. He will never admit to anyone, not even Roderick himself, how much that means to him.
