Marie Adeline - Secret Shared

“We wouldn’t want to speak or make eye contact over food. That would be weird.”

“And awkward,” I continued. “Not to mention rude.”

“Disgusting.”

“The way people eat together and talk to each other. Over meals!” I added with a shudder.

There was a beat, and then we both broke character, laughing.

“I’m Cassie,” I said, extending my hand. The thought occurred to me that I never would have been capable of such banter just a few months earlier, before I’d been introduced to S.E.C.R.E.T. I had changed.

“Mark. Mark Drury.”

Flaky hipsters have never been my type. But this one had a nice smile and a great Cajun accent. Add those blue eyes and strong, lean hands …

“Lunch break?” he asked, folding his long legs under the table.

“Kind of. You?”

“Breakfast time for me.”

“Late night?”

“Occupational hazard. I’m a musician.”

“Get out! In New Orleans?”

“Strange, I know. And you?”

“I’m a waitress.”

“What are the odds?”

There was that smile again.

Naturally, easily, we carried on the conversation, about the instruments he played (he was a singer, played bass, taught a little piano on the side) and the Café, where I worked (he knew it, hadn’t been in a while). The next stage when talking to someone who relies on tourism in this town was to discuss the awful necessity of the awful tourists, before exchanging information about the places these awful tourists don’t really know about. We accomplished that in about twenty minutes, enough time for Mark, who looked a little younger than me, maybe thirty on account of his messy brown hair and his beige leather Vans and his fitted jeans and his faded red T-shirt with the name and number of an auto body shop, to eat his sandwich and drink half his coffee, then wipe his hands on his napkin and get up to leave. Musicians do have the nicest hands. I’ve heard it said that the hand is part of the instrument …

“Wait,” I said, “do you want to try having lunch together sometime? We can do like today, no talking, no eye contact, just two strangers not eating a meal together.” Holy shit. Did I say those words?

“Um. Sure,” he said, laughing. “You seem harmless enough.”

Yes, harmless, unless you count the fact that almost two months ago I danced nearly naked on a stage for strangers, had sex with my boss, was gut-checked in the morning by his pregnant girlfriend, then joined a secret organization dedicated to helping women realize their sex fantasies with total strangers. Yes. Harmless.

“Okay, well … give me your number,” I said, digging in my purse for my phone. He took it from me and punched in his number.

“Okay. Nice not really meeting you, Cassie, and not eating lunch with you or talking to or knowing anything about you,” he said, extending a hand towards me.

I laughed as he turned to leave, glancing at me over his shoulder once. Wow. That was so … easy. Is this what recruiting is like? I basked for a moment in my newfound courage. I did that. I actually asked a man out for the first time in my life, a cute one at that. But why was that almost as hard as half the things I did last year, naked, in front of men I’d never met before? This is the sort of thing—men, dating, sex—that required practice. My year of fantasies had helped me understand that, though it might also have been the fantasy I was having when Mark sat down that prompted me to do what I did.

I was leaning back in my chair feeling proud, when I heard murmuring next to me. I looked around to see a red-haired young woman, wearing giant bug-eyed sunglasses, staring at me from the next table.

“What happened to me? Where did I go?” she mumbled, looking completely stunned.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Maybe she was having a stroke, I thought, picking up a glass of water and making a motion to join her. She nodded, rubbing the back of her neck. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, but she was wearing a heavy blue dress, despite the heat, and it made her look older.

“Here,” I said, placing the glass in front of her.

She gulped the water back and wiped her mouth, regaining her composure.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s never happened to me before. Maybe it’s the heat.”

“It is quite hot for early April,” I said.

“Maybe.” She took another gulp of water. “Sorry, I don’t mean to intrude, but that thing you did with that guy—asking him out? Very impressive.”

“You saw that?”

“I swear I am never this nosy. But that was hard to ignore.”

A strange compliment from a strange … stranger, but I’d take it.

“It was impressive, wasn’t it?” I said, sounding surprisingly pleased with myself.

“Well … thank you for the water and for your concern. But I’m feeling better. So I’ll just head back to work.”

She pushed up her sunglasses, grabbed her purse, and just at the moment she stood to leave, Matilda arrived. They awkwardly engaged in the “you first, no, you first” dance around the crowded patio table. The woman smashed into Matilda’s left shoulder, then her right. Finally free, it seemed she couldn’t get away from us fast enough.

Matilda and I watched her as she headed into the Funky Monkey next door. Matilda lowered herself into her chair, patting down her hair as though she’d just survived a small tornado.

“Who was that? Or what was that?”

My eyes stayed glued to the door of the store.

“I don’t know. Just a woman … I thought she was ill, so I checked on her,” I said. “But guess what?” I changed the subject with a grin. “I just asked a guy out. And the best part? He said yes!”

“Well, Happy Birthday to you, indeed!”

“Yeah, and that woman, she treated me like I was some kind of celebrity just for asking a guy for his number. It was weird. She looks nothing like me, yet she reminded me a little of me last year. Kind of timid. Kind of sad. Anyway, I feel like my confidence is really growing. I think I am ready to be a Guide. Here,” I said, reaching in my bag for my pledge. “Signed, sealed and delivered.”

“Thank you for this,” she said, putting away my pledge. Her expression was suddenly thoughtful. “I wonder if perhaps we’re looking at a possible S.E.C.R.E.T. candidate.”

“You mean that woman?”

Matilda nodded.

“I don’t even know if she’s single.”

“That’s easy to find out.”

I felt my nerves fire up. “You think I should approach her? What if she thinks I’m crazy?”

“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. You look great, by the way.”

I looked down at my outfit, nothing too “out there”—slim jeans that rested on my hips and a grey tank top under a cream corduroy jacket. I was never going to be one of those dolled-up babes who crammed Frenchmen on a Thursday night, drunkenly navigating the pocked street in treacherous heels. And I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I should put on mascara to go grocery shopping. But a year of being told I was beautiful and desirable by some of the best-looking men I’d ever laid eyes on made me want to put my best face forward.

“After lunch let’s go next door, talk a bit with that woman.”

“Today? Now?—” It was happening so fast. Why was I so nervous?

“Don’t worry, Cassie, I’ll take the lead, you follow,” Matilda said, scanning the menu.

Oh dear. Here we go.

I COULD NOT get away from Ignatius’s fast enough. Back at the store, I darted past Elizabeth to my office and slammed the door behind me, lifting my sunglasses to peer into the makeup mirror on my desk. My cheeks were red from my encounter with that dark-haired woman on the patio. For the first time, I spotted tiny wrinkles forming around my eyes, my mother’s frown lines etching into my cheeks. Was I fading? Was my desirability leaving me for good? Mark had sat with her, not me. He had flirted with her, given his number to her, not me.

“You merely have the ‘sads,’ darling. They’re from your father’s side of the family,” I could hear my mother drawl. This was a particularly Southern take on depression, one that felt more like the burden of inheritance than anything to do with serotonin levels.

I fell into my chair and looked around my office. I had too much stuff, I knew that. But I told myself that because I was obsessively neat and obsessively organized I couldn’t be a hoarder. Everything was in its place, everything had a label, right down to the paper punch. And yet I couldn’t let go of a thing. What if I lost weight and finally fit into that one-of-a-kind purple pantsuit? What if I put together the perfect outfit for a customer but didn’t have that owl pendant that would pull it together? What if I absolutely needed something and it was longer there? Hence the six filing cabinets and wall-length closets, all filled with “marvelous finds” I could neither bring myself to wear nor bear to sell.

Shake it off, Dauphine. Shake it off.

Elizabeth stuck her head into the office.

“Okay. Store’s empty. I quickly threw it on. Be honest,” she said, walking into the frame to reveal her long body in a black jumpsuit and white go-go boots that I had set aside for her anniversary date. “So?”

She was a teenager when I hired her part-time on weekends. She was twenty-four now, studying psychology part-time at Tulane, practicing some of her theories on me. She told me I was fear-based and rigid. I told her, while picking up five sugar grains on the glass countertop with the very tip of my index finger, that she sounded a lot like my mother.

She stood now in front of the mirror looking absolutely lovely, head to toe.

“Amazing,” I said.

“You think?”

“I do. You need a Pucci scarf. And pale lipstick,” I said, fetching both. And I was right. We moved towards the full-length mirror behind the door. I stood behind her, my chin on her shoulder. “Yes. A home run.”

“Are you sure I don’t look like a go-go dancer?”

“No! You’re breathtaking.”

“You should be the one wearing this, Dauphine,” she said, squirming. “You put it away for so long, and you have the curves for it. You keep talking about getting back out there. When is that going to happen?”

“I’m fine. And you are almost set,” I said, pulling out a lint brush from a drawer labeled “Lint Brushes.”

“I’ll wear it for the rest of the day, if that’s okay,” she said, while I finished rolling over her legs.

“Yes. Now go. I’ll be out front in a minute.”

As I watched her trip back to the front of the store I felt a maternal flush of pride. In the years I’d known her, I had helped her polish no less than ten online dating profiles, styling her for most of the pictures and some of the dates. Her current boyfriend, Edward, was no dreamboat, but they were clearly smitten with each other. Elizabeth had a vitality about her that she attributed to incredible sex. She and Edward were celebrating one year together with dinner at Coop’s that night, followed by live music on the patio at Commander’s Palace. Elizabeth, with her short blond hair, too-close eyes and gangly limbs, was not traditionally beautiful, yet she was never single for long. Eight-year gaps between serious boyfriends would be unthinkable for her. Life was too short for that kind of nonsense.

I looked at myself in the mirror, loosening the belt of my blue dress. Maybe I should change too. I could try on that green sundress now hanging from a coat rack, waiting to be labeled and stored. I could have Elizabeth pin the hem. Nah, too much trouble, and I’d never wear it anyway. Then why was I keeping it? I forced myself back out to the floor, passing an overstuffed rolling rack of outfits, some to be sorted, some priced. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, but Elizabeth was occupied with a couple of customers near the display case. As I approached them, I realized she was helping the two women who had been sitting next to me at Ignatius’s, the one who stole Mark Drury from me, and the attractive older woman with red hair a shade or two lighter than mine—the one I had smashed into. The redhead dressed crisply and professionally, like my mother, and didn’t look like the type that scoured second-hand racks. The dark-haired woman dressed a little too plainly to be a Funky Monkey shopper, let alone a musical genius’s future girlfriend.

“There you are!” said Elizabeth, making it difficult for me to duck into the men’s side of the store to avoid them. “These two ladies were gushing about my outfit and I told them you picked it out for my date tonight. They were very impressed.”