“Rome. You got this. I gotta go. Love you,” I said, and hung up. I pulled onto the access road of I-10, open road and one step closer to Daisy.
Chapter Six
• • • • •
It had been fiveyears since I’d driven that stretch of highway. Five years since I’d stopped at a Buc-ee’s, billed as the world’s largest gas station, with its rows of bathroom stalls, a barbecue station, and several aisles of Jesus-themed bric-a-brac. I pause a Zadie Smith novel on Audible, fill up the Nissan, and walk inside Buc-ee’s to pay, taking in the seventy-thousand-square-foot rest stop. I toss a brick of Eager Beaver Selection Box of saltwater taffy, the kind that Roman devoured when I brought them back to him when we were dating. The cashier asks if I want to round up for the Voices of Hope Ministries’ boys’ services.
“Why not?”
—
I drove away thinking that Roman would’ve rounded up. I never envisioned myself ending up with someone like Roman, but that is because I never knew someone like Roman. For one, he was employed. And not just employed, but employed in the most sensible of careers—accounting. He had a 401(k) and parents who were still married. He was so normal, it was radical. A tattoo sticking out of a BrooksBrothers button-down. A look of nothing that said everything. It said that he didn’t care about your approval. I’d been so desperate to be this idea of a girl I hardly resembled. But with Roman, I didn’t have to try. We could just be. I am certain there had been men before him, but I can’t remember any of them. Oatmeal for breakfast. Everyone before Roman had become bland mush in my brain.
—
I met him on a Saturday night in March in the living room of a brand-new seven-story condo building in Red Hook that felt held together by Scotch tape and drywall. It had a disco ball and was packed with a dozen or so girls whose midriffs showed under puffer coats. Roman was in a corner talking to one of the midriff girls. I wasn’t one to pursue men, especially not men at a party with a pile of Canada Goose thrown on a Craigslist sectional, but I was bored and he had the alcohol. So I walked over and asked if he was playing bartender. The “bar,” in this case, was a folding table covered with a floral waxed tablecloth by a window that didn’t open. It wobbled and was covered in jugs of lukewarm Jarritos and a couple of bottles of cheap vodka. Limes for the Jose Cuervo, all sucked dry. Glossy lip stains on plastic cups.
“What can I getchya?”
“A Chablis.”
The thing about Australians is that they always know when you’re taking the piss. “I’ve got the finest box of that in the fridge.” He had a crooked smile and smelled like Old Spice and ash. I asked if he had a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You don’t smoke anything?”
Ten minutes later, we were on the roof sharing a joint that I’d just rolled. Pot wasn’t legal yet in New York. Now the entire city smells like a hippy’s armpit, but in those days, it was still like fresh turfburning in the Irish countryside at Christmas. The weed was stronger than I expected, and we weren’t so much talking as sinking into ourselves. There are two types of stoners: the kind who cracks everyone up and the kind who laughs their ass off. Roman and I were instantly compatible.
“What do you do, Chablis? Besides roll an impressive joint.”
“I’m a poet.”
“Well, fuck me, read me a poem.”
“Absolutely not.”
But he begged and pleaded, and I felt the cold March air and the marijuana, so I recited the poem I wrote about the first time I saw snow. “Winter of ’99.”
I know it will only last a day,
but still I build myself a sled,
saw away at a rotting water ski,
and transform the slalom
my oldest cousin fractured her femur on
into something useful.
Roman made a listening face that made me cackle. Heshushedme. When I finished, he was silent. Then, “That’s it? That’s the whole thing?”
“It’s about snow.”
“I got that.”
“You hate it. It’s dumb. I wrote it years ago.”
