“You’re not going to want to live in Brooklyn, are you? Because I do not see myself as a city guy, and I didn’t think you wanted that either.” He laughs a short little laugh.
“Jeremy. Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody’s talking about moving to Brooklyn. I’m going to look at the building, most likely put it on the market, and come right back. You know . . .” I lean forward and lower my voice. “This could be really good for me. I could sell it and get some money and that could give me a fresh start here. Some money for a house here. You know?”
“Okay,” he says. His face softens a little, goes back to its nonparanoid state. “Well. So listen.” He swallows. “Along those same lines. I’ve been thinking about this, and I really didn’t prepare any speech or anything. But . . .” He reaches for my hand across the table, nearly knocking over the ketchup bottle. “But, well, when you come back and everything, what would you think about us getting engaged? I know it’s soon and all—” His face is so full of fear and trepidation that it stops my heart.
“Oh, Jeremy! Really? Are you serious?”
He blanches, as if I’ve just turned him down. “Well, I don’t know, it just seemed like everything is going in the right direction, and I just thought maybe . . .”
But then he has to stop talking because I am coming over to his side of the booth, and when I get there, I put my mouth on his, hard. He tastes like salt and fries and hamburger. When I finally let go of him, my heart is hammering away, and his face is shining and he’s smiling so big, and I see my life figured out just as I’d hoped, gloriously unfolding like a movie in front of me. We’ll work together every day in his office, and we’ll come home together weeknights to our own place, kick off our shoes, put music on, smile while we cook dinner together, and on weekends we’ll go biking and eat brunch with my family, and I’ll tend to his mother, and he’ll drink beers with my father and Brian, and wow, it’s a whole built-in, secure life and all I have to say is yes.
So I say it. “Yes.” He’s laughing as I keep my arms around his neck, kissing him on both cheeks.
“Holy shit,” he says. He kisses my nose and my eyelashes. And finally I settle down and go back over to my side of the booth, and he mops his forehead, grinning at me, and he says, “I did not expect that kind of reaction. Whew!” Then after we sit and smile at each other for a while, basking in this new decision, he says, “So you’ll go to Brooklyn and then when you come back, what do you say we tell our families we’re getting married and then we’ll find a place? Move in together? Give it the old trial run?”
“Okay! Yes! The old trial run!” I can’t seem to stop myself.
“So . . . are we engaged? We’re engaged. Is that what this means?”
“I think it means we’re engaged,” I say. “This is how it happens.”
“Wow,” he says. “Who knew it was that easy?”
It is so very, very easy when it’s right. I sit there smiling and holding his hand, and the one thing I know for sure is that everything is going to be all right.
TWENTY
MARNIE
My family is not at all pleased to hear about my newfound building in Brooklyn, or my trip there. They’re so upset that I don’t even tell them the part that would make them happy—that Jeremy and I are now engaged.
Instead, I just listen as they point out that I don’t know anything about real estate, that I haven’t ever even seen Brooklyn, that this bequeathment is from a woman who at best had shown herself to be a possible crackpot (this was from Natalie, who saw Blix’s mind meld while we were waiting for Noah to arrive for the wedding) and at worst, was a psychopathic meddler who is trying to involve innocent people in her shadowy real estate deals (this from my father, who said he knows the ways of the world).
But I stand my ground with them, and here I am three days later, landing at JFK International Airport, waiting for a shuttle to take me to the subway, then trying to use an app on my phone to figure out which subway would get me to Park Slope, Brooklyn. Apparently I am supposed to find Grand Army Plaza. Which I totally will do. I can do this city thing when I have to. I have been to San Francisco many times, thank you very much, so I can certainly find my way around a city that has a grid. And no crazy hills.
My mother keeps texting me:
Did u land yet?
R u keeping safe?
Do NOT ride the subway!!!!!!!! My friend Helen Brown says it’s VERY dangerous.
Alas, the shuttle never comes, and a woman in a brown coat, juggling a toddler and a baby, tells me that I don’t want to take the subway from the airport anyway—“You’ll be on there forever, trust me; you should go stand on the taxi line instead!”—so that’s where I go, and sure enough, all the New Yorkers there seem to be also heading to Brooklyn. Led by a man in a black knit cap who seems to be part of a comedy team and who makes jokes out of the side of his mouth in a gravelly voice, they’re all having fun complaining about the slow service, the fact that it’s starting to rain, and also arguing about whether or not the Mets are going to win the World Series. A woman with a blue streak in her hair lines up behind me, bumping into my arm as she juggles her suitcase, then shoots me a brief apologetic smile.
Just then my mom sends a screaming text, all in capital letters: OH GOD! WATCHING THE NEWS. SOMEBODY GOT STABBED IN A CLUB LAST NITE IN NYC. DO NOT GO TO ANY CLUBS!!!!!!!!!
I turn off my phone quickly and put it back in my coat pocket. And then I do the little concentrating thing I do—the thing that makes stoplights turn green and taxis show up, and suddenly it’s my turn for a cab.
It works everywhere.
Brooklyn, just like San Francisco, is so overcrowded that the cab is forced to meander its way in traffic inch by inch. The driver is practically comatose with indifference, and finally, after he has had to slam on his brakes for three bicycles as well as swerve around another car that suddenly just parks in the middle of the too-narrow street, he drops me off at the address I gave him and tells me that I owe him eighty-seven dollars. He seems quite serious about it. Which is so ridiculous that I can’t think of anything to do except pay it. He says thank you, helps me with my suitcase, and then drives off. For a moment, I stand, dazed, on the sidewalk, looking around me.
Supposedly I’m at the law office of Brockman, Wyatt, and Sanford, but the only signs visible are for City Nails (mani-pedis are twenty-five dollars, a good price) and Brooklyn Burger (now with gluten-free buns). The whole street smells like hamburgers cooking, along with a load of garbage festering near the curb, and the strong perfume of an angry-faced woman who race-walks herself right into me without even bothering to say excuse me.
I square my shoulders and go inside a dingy little hallway. The directory sign is missing all the As, but apparently I’m to go to the fourth floor to see BROCKMN, WYTT, AND SNFORD. When the elevator door creaks open, there’s a magenta-haired receptionist in a black dress who buzzes me in, looking annoyed as hell. A little sign in front of her says her name is LaRue Bennett.
I give her my best Florida smile. “Hello. I’m Marnie MacGraw, and I’m . . .”
“What?” She peers at me. I see that she has a tattoo of a rose on her wrist.
I begin again. “I’m Marnie MacGraw, and I’m here to pick up the keys to Blix Holliday’s apartment, or house, or whatever.”
“Blix Holliday? Do you have any ID?”
“Oh. Sure.” I put down my suitcase and open my purse, which is filled with my boarding pass and my package of gum and my hairbrush and—well, everything except my wallet, which seems to have disappeared. I channel my mother and go immediately into panic mode—the wicked New Yorkers have already stolen my wallet!—but then after I’ve emptied everything onto the counter, with LaRue Bennett watching me, I remember that I put my wallet back in my pocket when I got out of the cab. Sweat is starting to trickle down between my breasts by the time I get out my ID and hand it to her, and she lets out a sigh. Possibly she was on the side of the wallet being gone forever.
She looks it over and then pushes it back to me.
“Okay, well. Charles isn’t here. He’s gone for the weekend. Back Monday.”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh.” I shift my weight to my other foot. “Well, um, I just flew in from Florida. He said I should get here as soon as possible. I’ve apparently inherited Blix Holliday’s house, and I’m supposed to make arrangements, I guess.”
“But he’s gone.”
“Can you reach him? I mean, I was hoping maybe I could at least get the key to the house. I’m to stay there, I think.”
Her face is impassive. “There are stipulations to the will he needs to talk to you about first.”
“Stipulations?”