The Xylophone

As soon as Roger first lays eyes upon Colette he loses his manners. Normally at a friend’s dinner party he’s Mister Attentive, striking up a conversation with the lonely heart in the corner, nodding along to whatever she’s spouting to make her feel that she’s contributing — but not this time. Now he’s staring at Colette straight over the forehead of the woman he’s talking to. All other radio stations fade out as his antenna tunes to just one new frequency, Colette’s station across the room. He picks up bits and pieces she utters — “just moved here,” “master’s program,” “child psychology,” “Berkeley,” “pilates,” “~Inception~” — that each mark off checkboxes in Roger’s brain. His innards around me flutter like a butterfly.

Let’s see what all this fuss is about… Hmm, cute bob, doll face, little body burritoed by a sweater wrap into a formless bundle. Looks like a prissy package with nothing for me — harrumph! This always happens — Roger gets lit up by some brainiac China doll I have no use for. Meanwhile with all the Scooby snacks I wanna gobble — like that flexy aerial acrobat spread-eagled above our head at SupperClub — he finds some sort of red flag. Like a body piercing or tramp stamp or that she doesn’t know The New Yorker is a magazine. What’s wrong with a little red flag? Charge that red like a toro — ~snort! ~But no, down here I get blue-balled.

Roger, meanwhile, maneuvers for party position to capture his staid queen, even envisioning it in his mind as social chess — the nerd! He severs his current conversation and executes a knight’s L-move past and around two other dudes to land closer to her. Never mind that he’s at the house of his best friend and business partner, Noah, who invited these other esteemed guests he ought not bail on mid-sentence. Roger diagonals over to the dining-room table and back again, like trading bishops, using the round trip to switch his place name with the guy’s who was seated across the table from Colette. Never mind that Noah’s girlfriend Jessica put an hour’s worth of thought into the seating arrangement. He rooks sideways to the guy just across Colette and oh-so-non-chalantly strikes up a conversation — now within striking distance of the queen. From there he can’t help notice in the neckline of her sweater wrap, above the border of her strapless dress, that she’s got a giant red birthmark below her collar bone, like that splotch on Gorbachev’s forehead. It would have been easy to hide – a dress with a higher cut would have covered it — but Colette instead chose to rock her splotch, as if it were a purple flower she’s wearing as a corsage. Like a feature not a bug, marvels Roger in softwarese — another checkbox marked in his mind. He mulls whether she’s been created by a Japanese wabi-sabi artist who purposely puts a flaw in otherwise perfect artwork. Even I have to raise an eyebrow. Never met a splotch I didn’t like.

“Excuse me, ma’am. I’m going to have to see some ID.”

It’s Roger trying to pull off an icebreaker. I’m not even interested in this brain teaser of a girl, but ugh, he’s got to do better than a doorman schtick.

Colette gives a look of mock consternation. “Tight security around here, Mister Doorman.”

“Sorry ma’am — house policy.”

“Haven’t been carded in years — I’m flattered.” Colette flashes her driver’s license from the back of her iPhone pouch.

Roger solidifies an entry into his mental database: Colette Wilkerson. D.O.B 4/16/92.

#Perfect age#

“Thank you, ma’am, but I check a different card. I need identification that shows you’re card-carrying member of humanity. Maybe a singular moment, an insight, a story — something that proves that in your time on this Earth you’ve really lived.”

Sounds like something he stole from a book.

Colette raises an eyebrow. “So no names, no how are you, just a full-on catapult into a life takeaway?”

“We like to get right to the point around here.”

“I appreciate that,” Colette answers with a slow nod. “Well, good thing I experienced one just this week.”

Roger widens his eyes, expectantly.

“My six-year-old niece, Sophie, for years I’ve been taking her out to the park, swooping after her on the monkey bars and tire swings in a never-ending game of follow-the-leader. Afterwards we perch across one another at the picnic table and have a snack, and even though she’s super young I talk to her as if she were a full-fledged person about real things — growing up, what we want to be, where we come from, where we’re going. It’s hard to know if I’m getting through to her because even after all that activity you don’t get much feedback from little ones— just some giggles and ‘oks’.”

#Good with children!#

*Don’t you be shopping for mamas! We’ve got fun to do first!*

Don’t get me wrong. I love kids. They’re perfect for 2.5 hours at a barbecue.

“Then Tuesday was my birthday…”

“Well happy birthday.”

“Why thank you. So at snack time, Sophie hands me this little package wrapped in crumpled newspaper. Super sweet, but I’m preparing myself to act grateful for something random like a little plastic pencil sharpener or a broken-off Barbie head. I mean, what gift could a six-year-old possibly get for me that I’d actually like? But then I open it and find this.”

Colette holds up her wrist, where a thin bracelet dangles a small shiny dolphin.

“Just like you,” she tells me, “smart, sleek, deep. Never take it off — then we’ll always be together.”

“It hits me that this whole time, she’s been been getting it all. Tiny or not, ~she sees me~, like I see her. I burst out crying on the spot. It’s the best gift I’ve ever received in my life. I’m like, ~never~ going to take it off.”

Colette’s welling up just from telling the story, and Roger’s feeling nerd love-at-first-insight. And he’s stunned by how the sheen of her tears accentuates her green eyes and makes them sparkle even more. He wants to wrap her up in his long arms right then and there. But before he can even say Awww she shoots right back at him:

“OK, Your turn.”

“My turn?”

“Your turn to show some ID.”

“Ah yes, my life takeaway…” Roger rifles for one of his well-worn yarns.

“No, I also check a different card.”

“A different card?”

“A different question. Mine is… What about you would you be most terrified if anyone else knew?”

“But…” Roger racks his brain — but no answers are good. He thought he was in the power position but is now stunned silent. Finally he blurts out, “That’s the WMD of Questions!”

“We like to get right to the point around here.”

Touché! You’re not my type, but anyone who tortures Roger is a-ok!

“But…”

*Tell her you harbor all your life’s desires as an internal prisoner who you torture!*

“But…”

*Tell her you’ve been living your family’s idea of a life and don’t even know what you yourself want.*

After some more stammering, Roger spins out a yarn about a climactic swim race in college where he and the rest of his team was cheering by the side of the pool for the team captain to win the final race. But really he was jealous of him over an ex-girlfriend and, though outwardly he was cheering for him, deep down wanted him to lose even if it meant his whole team losing the meet.”

It’s only vaguely true and gets across the brag that he swam competitively in college.

*Yet another idea of what another person would find terrifying to share.*

At dinner Roger’s doing more of the same, broadcasting a projection of what he thinks Colette’s idea of a stellar boyfriend would be. He’s describing this socially-responsible company he worked for right after college. mentoring inner-city youth to learn to code and get high-paying jobs.

#Chicks love that double-bottom-line ESG stuff.#

He’s not so brazen as to broadcast this to Colette directly. Rather he’s describing it diagonally across the table to the woman seated next to her in a way that he’s sure Colette’s picking it up.

The guy on the other side of Colette, meanwhile, strikes up a conversation with her. Roger quickly sizes him up.

#Mid-forties, wedding ring — not a threat.#

Still, Roger tracks every word of their conversation in parallel with the one he’s having — easy when you’ve had a lifetime of practice running a multi-track mind. The guy’s telling her about his recent trip to Hawaii.

Colette listens patiently, then tells him how she’s never quite been able to fully enjoy Hawaii, how she feels places very intensely, even their long-ago history, so places that have a painful history, that weight hangs over her experience even in the present.

“I get the weight of history looming over the slave docks of Charleston, but even Hawaii?”

“Even Hawaii.”

The guy mulls Colette’s oversized empathy, and then himself starts to fall into it. He spills to her how professionally he’s in a lull between tech jobs, which has happened before, but this time it feels different. He finds himself interviewing with ever-younger bosses, now almost two decades his junior, so he’s started dying the gray out of his sideburns before interviews.

As Colette listens, she nods and looks him in the eye attentively while remaining silent, which only seems to get him to spill more.

“I feel like a pro baseball pitcher with a tiny window of throwing years in which to make an entire career worth of earnings before I get put out to pasture. I’m icing my sore shoulder and hiding the scars of my Tommy John Surgery so I can get drafted by one last team.”

When the guy gets up to go to the bathroom, Roger leans across the table toward Colette. “Do you always take confession?”

She leans in toward him. “I don’t mean to, but for some reason people offload their deepest fears to me — even people I’ve just met.”

“Strange. I would think men would put on their boldest face to impress you.”

Colette considers this. “Maybe they think owning their vulnerability is impressive?”

*Maybe they can’t help it.*

#In her vulnerability they sense she’s truly authentic and accessible.#

Colette continues, “Maybe because I’m petite they don’t feel threatened. Like I’m a safe space.”

“Well it worked on me. I told you about my twisted swim meet.”

“Meh — I had to dig for that one.” Colette squints down her doll nose at him. “And I’m still not sure that’s your deepest-darkest…”

Roger knows she’s right, doesn’t have a comeback, so he just stays silent. She doesn’t say anything either. The two of them just sit hunched forward across the table bisecting the dinner party looking each other in the eye. After a few seconds, Roger wants to look away and jump to one of the flitting topics of table conversation, but she’s still quietly looking straight at him. He feels naked, exposed, as if she’s turning him inside out.

#Is this face-off what women do when they process?#

Yeah… we guys don’t do this. We sit together side by side and look off in the same direction, watch the game, skip rocks across the pond, stare out at the horizon hunting for wooly mammoths.

But Roger doesn’t want to appear shifty and look away — he’s read enough chick bibles to know the worst thing he could be is not present — so he holds on to this eye contact. She seems perfectly comfortable letting the moment stretch, locked in quiet gaze. It goes on for what feels like eons.

#Maybe it’s a test.#

Roger widens his eyes and plows through the urge to look away. The lively din of the table conversation around them fades out of his perception, forming a cone of silence. He zones out on the symmetry of her green eyes.

#Even more stunning than I imagined. Intelligence made visual.#

*Intelligence made visual — what does that even mean?*

As the long moment continues, Roger’s eyes begin to tire, and that’s when the weirdness begins. Colette’s facial features surrounding her eyes fade into shadow. The shadows reform back into a face, but this time that of a wondrous child. Then another face — a Viking matriarch with a long braid. Then a dark-haired man with furrowed brow — like a morphing sequence revealing Colette’s catalog of past ancestors. Without breaking eye contact Colette playfully raises an eyebrow and sets it back down. She’s so comfortable in this space she can fuck with it, like purposefully shifting a bead in a kaleidoscope. Indeed it changes Roger’s entire view. The morphing faces fall away, leaving just the two gleaming green eyes like beacons now surrounded by color. The colors coalesce into geometric shapes and jagged fractals like a Picasso painting of vibrating triangles jutting into one another, throwing off glowing shards that zing off the edge of his vision like sparklers. The colors flit past him as he speeds toward her horizon like charging into a vanishing point of infinity. Then out from this green-eyed horizon extends a playful glint snaking out toward him, as if coming out to dance with him.

Roger looks away and blinks hard. But even though he had to tap out, their first Gaze Meld has done its work, revealing the infinite wonder that’s in there for him. Even if he couldn’t yet fully embrace it, Roger knows he wants it, never again wants to be without it. He resets the whole freaking internal calendar of his life around this moment zero, with all time before it fading into B.C. — Before Colette — and all time afterwards forming the new era of A.C. — After Colette.

*Don’t get too cozy — remember I’m having none of this!*

But even I have to admit that face-off was quite something. Reminds me of what a lesbian once told me about sex being more than pistons penetrating, that it also includes all the bases, everything from gentle caresses on the forearm to even just a conversation if it’s juicy enough — it’s ~all~ ~sex~, she’d said. I’d scoffed at the time. Now I wonder whether she might be right after all, because I just witnessed the visual equivalent of raunchy fucking upon the dining room table in the middle of a dinner party.

* * *

Within just a week of their first Gaze Meld, Roger and Colette have already done two dates — one lunch and one SFMOMA visit — both daytime affairs, his manners returning, much too gentlemanly for my tastes — before the salsa-dancing date on Friday night, when there might finally be something in it for me.

A strapping young Columbian named Fernando leads the group salsa lesson at Club Roccapulco. His maroon shirt is buttoned all the way to the top, which if Roger would do it would come across as extremely uptight. But somehow when Fernando does it with his trapezius muscles flexing through the satin as he flows through his dance moves, it comes off as the opposite, as if the buttons represent the futile last stand to try and hold back the raging toro within. Each time before the music starts, Fernando counts out the beats over his microphone headset — WON-two-sree, FOUR-five-seex — and puts the whole cross-body-lead and twirl routine in motion with the help of a female dance partner he periodically borrows from the clientele. Roger wants none of this Fernando interference nor the instruction. During his consulting stint back in New York he took months of salsa lessons, so determined to succeed that after learning each new move he pulled out his iPhone and meticulously thumbed out in words each of the steps with the correct foot and beat number: “pronate left foot a quarter-turn outward on beat one.” Then he went home and memorized these, until at the end of the summer he’d amassed an arsenal of smooth moves for just such a moment as this. You sly dog, you.

So Roger’s now yearning to get the music going to rock it Rico-Suave style on Colette. Finally, after all too many demonstrations, Fernando cues up a song. It’s got a crescendoing piano-line introduction and the clave on the upbeat counting down to that first moment of passion-in-motion. Roger grasps Colette’s hand, cradles her back in his arm, gazes into her eyes to enrapture her completely as beat one approaches when… BOOM! They knock knees. Ah, how cute, Roger thinks — Colette must not have followed the step instructions. They laugh it off and try again at the start of the next verse. BOOM! That one even hurts. Fernando comes strutting over to save the basket-case couple. But instead of coaching Colette on the right steps, he’s directing his corrections toward Roger. It can’t be. Fernando counts off the steps in exaggerated beginner plodding motions — ~WON-two-sree, FOUR-five-seex! ~— and it strikes Roger that while the steps are entirely familiar, they’re somehow not exactly the same as he’d memorized back in New York. They’re just a little bit off. Roger demonstrates the dance move solo to show he can pull it off no problem, but Fernando shakes his head.

“Noh, noh, noh — zat’s salsa Puerto-Rican-style like in New York — stepping back on zee TWO beat. Everywhere else in zee world we dance Columbian way — zee right way — step back on zee WON beat.”

It’s just a tiny detail of a difference, and any dancer worth his satin shirt would simply feel the old moves into the new rhythm one beat earlier. But Roger memorized his way here. He can’t unlearn the precise step grooving he’d hard-coded into his central nervous system. His palm is getting clammy against Colette’s as he plods through the steps trying to override his past programming. It’d be better if he’d never had any lessons at all — he’s ~worse~ than a beginner! And a salsa pair, unfortunately for Roger, is only as good as the dude can lead. Any reasonably graceful woman can shine when following the lead of a great male partner, but even the best can be dragged down to utter paralysis with a clumsy one, as is happening now. I’m shielding my eyes, embarrassed to be any part of this. The rest of the class glides and swirls around us while Roger swamp-stomps with Colette in his arms, her face inches from his sweating brow. He yearns to execute a tiny algorithm onto his brain to shift all his smooth moves just one beat sooner — ~a single line of Ruby code!~

salsa_moves.each { | dance_move | dance_move.increment!(:beat) }

*You goober! Hooey the right steps — just dance!*

When Roger’s feet still remain frozen Fernando cuts in between Roger and Colette. “Noh, noh, noh! Here, I show you.” Fernando wraps his arms around Colette, biceps and trapezoids doing their thing. He leads her to groove out the salsa move with ease. And just as Roger’s looking to step back in, Fernando starts in with whole new moves. Now he’s got her entwined and grooving to his hip swivel, changing her twirl direction back and forth with these commanding hand bumps on her hip bones. Oooh, it’s picante! Even just watching I’m doing a little suave shimmy. Then Fernando adds flourishes way beyond what he’d taught in class, beaming all the while. Roger hears the headset microphone pick up something like “Así se conduce a una mujer!” Roger’s fists clench so tight they’re oozing with clamminess. It’s not until the whole song ends that Fernando escorts Colette back to Roger — “Dere, like zat.” — and disappears into the crowd.

“Some fucking instruction…” Roger mutters to himself.

Colette’s all flushed and breathing heavy as if she’d just rolled off the bedroom set of a telenovela. “Whew, salsa’s a workout!” She tries to dismiss her panting as if it were just from physical exertion, but I know she’s been exhilarated by some suave manliness in motion, and Roger does, too. There’s no fucking way he can follow up that dance ravage with his Plodding 101.

“You look beat — let’s take a break. Besides, this song’s a merengue. I just don’t get how the same culture that produced something so rhythmically rich as salsa could also make something as boneheaded as merengue. 1! 2! 1! 2!”

*I’m with ya, dude — merengue sounds like a honking circus carnival, but don’t say that out loud. Makes you look bitter after Fernando showed you up and you’re taking it out on his whole culture. So not sexy.*

Colette doesn’t say anything. She and Roger sit wordlessly sipping on their Corona Light bottles while the rest of the room dances. Yet another merengue song comes on in what seems like a run. Colette excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room. On the wall a neon palm tree “sways” with a back-and-forth flash out of time with the music, reminding Roger just how off the beat he is — and this entire date. He wonders whether Colette’s calling a friend in there. On her way back she stops by the DJ booth and starts chatting.

#Oh great, first the “teacher” with his dance-ravage and now the DJ moving in on my girl. Women can’t resist the DJ -- something about the guy on stage who’s dictating everyone’s rhythm. He could look like a troll and still the women love him.#

Note to self — learn to DJ. But first I’ve got to save this date if I’m going to get anything out of it. Fortunately when Roger’s low like this his guard is down, giving me an opening to shoot up signals to his hypothalamus until his adrenal glands ooze with cortisol. By the time Colette comes back Roger’s repeating my cues.

“I know I’m a step behind, but I don’t care. I just want to dance with you — even to a freakin’ merengue!”

Colette smiles. Roger leads her back out to the floor. And just then, as if by divine intervention, the song does a sudden transition back to salsa — and a slow one at that, sultry and half-time, one you couldn’t mess up even if your step algorithm needed to be incremented by one beat. Colette gives an approving nod and wink to the DJ. Within seconds Roger can not only dance, he’s pretty damn good, leading Colette through playful backs and forths, whole routines of swirls and twirls. By the end of the song their legs are in sync and touching all along their length. Their eyes connect, and while their zingy spirits do their thing I do my thing, cranking adrenaline to full throttle until Roger moves in for a massive dance-floor kiss. The whole club has to dance around us, but I make sure Roger keeps it going for the entire song. On the inside of his closed eyelids Roger sees a million geometric spheres like 20-sided dice from his Dungeons & Dragons youth, they’re flowing to and fro from him like a mainline, as if he has his lips upon a Love Pipe and is taking massive drags in and out. At the thought of this he now sees overlayed streams of emoji hearts, which I want to pop with a pin, but I let them go because I’m finally getting something for me. Intelligence made visual my ass, but I could go for some ass tonight.

When Roger escorts Colette into his apartment, the pipes start hissing down here in the boiler room of the body. That’s my cue. Steam is rising, desire-pressure builds. An impending hookup is one of the few precious times when my power gets to rise, up from Chakra-One base camp up into Chakras Two, Three, Four and up — an all-too-rare moment when base desire overpowers the brain overload. For a short precious while, I no longer flail at backseat driving using roundabout neurotransmitters — finally I’m at the controls and the body’s mine.

I don’t take any chances. Before even turning on the lights, before we get hooked on any words about some “fascinating subject,” I hum the refrain from the last salsa song, the summoning call for my hands to hold her body again, guiding her in a cross-body lead across the living-room floor. We dance in the dark except for the fleeting flickers when we step into the glow from the city lights by the window. I send her into a twirl while holding on to her sweater wrap so that it peels off of her as she spins. I twirl her back close and do an overhead arm raise, holding on to her shirt to peel it up and off. She dances her hands upon my shirt, feeling their way through the darkness to unbutton it and peel it off while I’m unsnapping her skirt until it falls down her swiveling legs. I spin her a half turn into me, wrapping my arms around her from behind, my bare chest along her back as we sway our hips in time. How perfect that her high heels elevate her ass to rock right up against my crotch. It’s the hissing pipes around me into a full-out clank. Nothing like the thrill of New Woman to send the pressure gauges surging into the red. Now let’s get a real look at the present we’ve unwrapped here. I clasp her hand and unfurl her twirling out to my side until our arms are outstretched and she’s posed out in front of the window glow in just her bra and panties and heels. OMG she’s got curves – a bombshell-in-miniature – something for me after all, hallelujah! Did not expect that in this brainiac bundle. Now why on earth would she have kept this treasure under wraps under those bundles of clothes?! I’ll figure that out later — time to take this home. I lunge forward to hoist my newfound treasure up by the waist as she wraps her legs around me. I clench my hands upon her luscious peach of an ass and carry her into the bedroom, pipes screaming all around me like an orchestra of trilling flutes.

* * *

Late the next morning, Roger comes back to the bedroom from the kitchen holding a large glass mason jar. He ceremoniously drops seven pennies into it. Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! 

He looks at Colette like a triumphant conspirator. “Each time we have sex, we put a coin in the jar.”

Only Roger could take something as savagely riotous as sex and and turn it into a nebbishy counting thing.

*Whatever — I’ll do the mounting, you do the counting.*

“After the first year of the relationship, each time we have sex we take a coin out of the jar.”

*Whoa whoa whoa! Who said anything about “relationship?” We need more awesome New-Woman romps like this!*

But Colette doesn’t flinch at the sound of “relationship” nor even “after the first year.” Fuck diddly these nerds fall hard and quick — I’m in for it now.

“They say that even after a lifetime, the jar never runs out of coins.”

*A lifetime?!*

Colette wrinkles her face. “That can’t be right. That’d be pathetic. Not us…”

*Not me! If she’s still around in a year I will drive that jar into debt in no time!*

Just to make a point I storm back to the bed and ravage Colette again.

Clink!

* * *

By Sunday morning, thirteen pennies rest in the glass jar atop Roger’s nightstand. I’m so spent I don’t even mind the nerds doing their thing. Colette peruses his entire bookshelf and they spar over their different interpretations of Sapiens and ~The Better Angels of Our Nature~, flexing their vaunted “life of the mind.” Now she’s back on the bed amid the crumple of sheets kneeling forward in an egg position over The New York Times Sunday crossword on the iPad, reading the clues out loud.

“Having three unequal sides, seven letters.”

“Scalene,” answers Roger proudly. It figures he would know all about unequal sides.

“‘At Last’ singer James, that’s Etta. Now using that “t”, noisy disagreement, eleven letters.”

To get a look at the puzzle squares Roger crawls over her tiny egg-shaped crouch from behind until his arms stand astride her torso and his head is right up next to hers. Their brains hum and haw side by side.

Meanwhile the scent from the side of her neck and hair wafts into our nose, recalling the pheromone blasts of the last forty hours and the thrill of New Woman. The pipes around me begin to chug. Don’t know much about crosswords, but I will do my part to jar loose some answers. With my forearm like a bear’s paw I tip over Colette’s crouch to splay her open onto her back.

Clink!

After that I really need to sleep. Roger and Colette start a mid-morning nap facing each other in entwined embrace, and when that gets too sticky, Colette turns around and nestles the back of her little-spoon body into Roger’s big spoon. When that gets too warm Roger also turns around, but not wanting any distance between them they nestle their backs together as if their vertebrae were meshed like a zipper. The spine meld makes Roger’s body go limp, like when a puppy gets picked up by its nape and completely surrenders.

“Mmmm,” murmurs Roger.

“Ahh, noopsing,” murmurs Colette.

Roger and I are within seconds of sleep, but a word whose meaning he doesn’t know gnaws at him.

“Noopsing?”

“You know, like spooning, but with the rear utensil flipped so they’re back to back. ‘Spoon’ — ‘noops.’”

Ugh — gag me with a noops!

But Roger thinks it’s hilarious, wriggling his body as if jangling the spoons. “Noopsing!”

“We’re a palindrome at rest,” Colette adds.

With that bit of nerdery Roger’s gets a second wind, dammit.

“You know Plato wrote that men and women started like this, as a single creature connected back-to-back with two faces in opposite directions and four arms and four legs cartwheeling joyously upon the planet.”

Colette tilts her face upward while keeping their backs meshed. “So we started in perfect union.”

“Yes, but then we tried to climb up to heaven to take on the gods, so Zeus cast thunderbolts and struck us apart, scattering us into chaos so we’d forever be in search of our lost other half.”

Colette wriggles her back against Rogers.

“So in a sea of lost ripped souls, I somehow managed to find my other half.”

One, I’m his other half! Two, even if this weekend has been New-Woman awesome 14 different ways, we’re not doing this you-complete-me bullshit.

Roger wriggles his back in return. “And I found mine.”

I will hurl a thunderbolt at you two if you don’t let me sleep off this cum coma.

When we wake up the sun is setting, which feels backwards. Everyone’s starving, realizing that since Friday night we’ve only fueled on each other. I’m not moving from this pillow, but Colette makes her way to Roger’s kitchen and rescues some ice-encased Trader Joe’s gyoza from the bottom of his freezer. Soon the scent of frying dumplings wafts into the bedroom. She appears in the doorway holding a plate of them with a shallow bowl of soy sauce balanced at its middle. She’s stunning even with her hair in a punk-rock frazzle, Roger’s oversized T-shirt adorning her like a mini dress over her braless bare body, her taut legs curving inward from beneath it — a glorious vision, but at this point it's the plate of gyoza in her hand I’m hungering for.

“Should I join you in the kitchen?” asks Roger.

It’s a hollow offer because, 14 pennies spent, I’m not getting up.

“No, we’re doing a bed picnic — we can’t leave the puzzle so close to done!

Enough with the crossword! But to Roger her words are pure nerd bliss, the perfect caption to glorious vision of her. Whatever — just bring that plate over here.

Colette sets it onto the mattress, careful not to rock the little center dish of soy sauce. Roger does a half turn in bed, just enough to reach the gyoza from the plate and dip them in soy. The warm salty comfort oozes into the body core around me — mmmm…

On the other side of the plate, Colette lies upon her stomach, clutching the iPad just under her face and kicking up her bare lower legs ceilingward. Roger’s T-shirt covers her body just to the bottom of her upflexed butt.

“There must be a pattern to these long answers, the theme entries.

Roger pauses his chewing. “What’s the puzzle’s title?”

“Change of Heart.”

Colette wrinkles her face in deep thought. She sets the iPad upon the mattress and reaches both hands up to clench her tussled hair in pensive fistfuls. This makes the T-shirt ride up her body, flashing me with a new vision.

Even before I finish chewing I’m popped up from my recline and wedged between her upturned feet. I thought I was done-done, but from the depths of empty, a shot of steam erupts inside.

Colette wriggles in surprise. “Again? But we’re mid-puzzle — the theme entries!”

“Exactly.”

We tremble the mattress until the soy sauce splotches the bedsheet around the perfect circle of the plate like a corona. But don’t get the wrong idea — I still hate you, remember?

Clink!

* * *

Not until 3 a.m. Monday morning — just hours before they have to be at their desks for the workweek — does Roger drive her home across the bridge. As soon as she’s out of his sight he’s feeling like a half Plato-creature ripped open at the spine bleeding out.

Back at his bachelor apartment, even with just the glow from a night light he realizes that everything Colette’s touched has somehow been made better. The bed is made, which it hasn’t been in a long time — not just the sleeping pillows but the throw pillows arrayed in size order against the headboard. Usually he drinks water from a ratty plastic University of Chicago Go Maroons! cup on his night table, but now there’s tall elegant water glass with a thin slice of lemon floating on top with little gleaming bubbles. The crossword puzzle is done with a teacher’s-pet star shining in the middle of the screen. In the bathroom Roger finds the shower towel she used, hanging and perfectly aligned in contrast to its usual musty rumple. He sniffs it. Her lingering scent casts him back to their entwined marathon. Roger ponders the MhT gene, which scientists believe causes us to seek out our mates by scent, sussing out the biochemicals that our individual bodies are lacking to make our next generation whole. He’s imagining little molecule arms bonding, covalent bonds sharing electrons, the shapes fitting back-to-back in a noops.

I’m replaying how she bites her lip when she comes.

Roger wants to send her a text. But how to possibly say everything he’s feeling in a few characters? He’s holding the phone in his hands, wallowing in memory and inaction, when it buzzes on its own. He assumes he must have hit a button by mistake, but sees — to his utter joy — that there’s a new text from Colette. But then he sees amid all of his busy messages, that the one from her is blank.

A cruel hoax? A butt dial? Then he smiles thinking of how even when she says nothing he quiets his frantic world. Only when he opens the blank text can he make out that there actually is a minuscule message:

A single period. He thinks it must be a typo. He waits for the real message to arrive, but it doesn’t. For several minutes, just radio silence. Finally he writes back:

And right away a response:

Roger’s even more confused — he puts the ass in Asperger’s — I have to spell it out for him.

*Don’t read it — feel it. She meant to send you just a period, only it’s not punctuation — it’s a Dot. She, too, wants to tell you everything in the world but can’t, so she sends you nothing, a speck, a seed that encapsulates it all, like that little fairy snowflake in ~The Neverending Story~, porting the entire universe through your phone to regrow inside you. She’s saying you’re her everything like your fucking roly-poly Plato creatures.*

Roger’s wrapping his mind around it in physics terms — the point of infinite density at the center of a black hole. I should have gone there first. Or maybe I should’ve just let him not get it and fuck it all up — if it weren’t for this New Woman bonanza… and that ass!

Though Roger was slow on the uptake, now that he gets the Dot it’s his favorite thing in the world. That little speck of almost nothing makes him feel everything — connected, anchored, loved — the greatest message he could receive, more triumphant than Victory in Europe, the power of a thousand I Love Yous.

From that point on he goes Dot-mad. It becomes their new language. Minutes after saying goodbye, between work meetings or even at boring parts mid-meeting, in line at the deli, before sleep on their seldom nights apart, in the middle of the night waking up to pee, first thing in the morning — a single Dot to say nothing and everything. And she sends him one back, their Dots in equilibrium so long as they’re side by side.

But this period isn’t the end of the story, it’s the beginning… one Dot leads to another Dot... and in Roger’s doting mind I know where this Dot Dot Dot leads to... a one-way street to engagement… vows… bundling home and auto insurance… long-term financial planning… and most of all kids… already he’s gene-mapping their biochemistry… and a Roger with kids would snap right back into his dutiful childhood… double-duty dutiful… going around his Wheel all over again just as I’m about to get off… and Roger would never cheat on her to throw me a bone… so this past weekend would be the last naked New Woman first reveal… and no matter how eye-popping Colette’s undercover curves… after 33 years locked up with barely a peek outside this prison, that just won’t do. Colette’s shaping up to be my cockblock to the world and so must be removed.