Page 5 of Rookie Mistake
The sentence is true. The sentence is also a lie. The sentence is the control producing a professional justification for cooking for another person at 10:30 PM, because cooking for anotherperson is an act of care, and acts of care are the thing the control is designed to prevent.
I cook. Garlic in oil. Parmesan. Basil. The pasta is simple because simple is what I make when I am not thinking about what I am making and am instead thinking about the man sitting at my counter watching me with an expression I refuse to interpret.
"You know," Mercer says, "most people warm up to me faster."
"I am not most people."
"No. You're not."
The way he says it changes the sentence. "You're not" should be agreement. A neutral confirmation. Instead it carries weight, the tone lower, slower, the grin absent for the first time since I met him. The grin-absent Mercer is a different person. The one underneath. The one looking at me while I cook with an attention that is not performing.
I plate the pasta. He takes a bite. He makes a sound that is involuntary and inappropriate and my hand tightens on the counter.
"That's rude," he says. "To make food this good and then act like your personality is all murder and tax law."
"Eat."
We eat. The conversation turns. He tells me about Tampa. His mother is an ER nurse. His father teaches PE. His sister Ava is in law school and is "smarter than everyone in this building combined, including the coaches." He talks about juniors, about the speed that made scouts notice him and the inconsistency that made them hesitate. He talks about wanting the NHL so badly that the wanting keeps him up at night, and the admission surprises him. I can see the surprise: he did not intend to say that. The grin was supposed to prevent that sentence from escaping.
"You are afraid if you stop performing, people will see you want this too much," I say.
His fork stops.
"Jesus," he says. "You're a lot."
"Yes."
"That's not... I don't mind that you're a lot. I mind that you're accurate."
"You flirt when you are nervous," I say. The observation is automatic. I cannot stop the observations any more than I can stop the control. The watching is my mother's gift. The assessment is my father's. The understanding is mine. This man fills every room because the rooms he grew up in required filling, and the filling is not vanity. The filling is survival.
"I flirt when I'm breathing," he says.
"No. You flirt when the conversation approaches something real. The closer the real thing gets, the louder the performance becomes."
He stares at me. The underneath-stare. The stare of a man who has been profiled with uncomfortable precision and who is deciding whether the precision is an attack or a gift.
"You speak whenever silence becomes too intimate," I say. "That is not a criticism. It is an observation. You are allowed to be quiet in this apartment. The quiet is not a threat."
The sentence lands somewhere in his chest. His posture changes: the performing-upright becomes the actual-upright, and the difference between the two is small and enormous.
"That might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a while," he says. "Which is kind of sad, when you think about it."
"Do not think about it. Eat."
He eats. I wash the plates. He comes up beside me at the sink, too close, reaching for the dish towel, and our arms almost brush.
"You cook for all the disasters the team assigns you?" he asks.
"I am hoping food will make you quieter."
"That's a filthy lie. Carbohydrates only increase my powers."
"I know."
A pause. The pause is the silence I told him was safe, and the silence is safe, and the safety is the problem, because the safe silence is the intimacy and the intimacy is the thing the control cannot accommodate.
He is standing too close. I can smell the soap from my guest bathroom on his skin. The soap is mine. The smell of my soap on another person's body is a sensory input that the control is scrambling to file under "irrelevant."
