“His brain works too quickly,” Frankie explained to Joni, as if he weren’t there. “And then, sometimes, it just stops. Like being on a treadmill, you know? It just stops suddenly, and you’re flattened on the ground behind it.” She looked down at Ezra and pointed. “That’s his brain. And that’s probably what happened last night—he just got too caught up in the moment, went blank.”
Ezra stared at the ceiling and thought of the time when, shortly after Frankie had come home with him the first time for Christmas of their junior year, his mother called him in his third-floor dorm room to tell him that they’d found lesions on her liver. How Frankie had lumbered to his room from a skating lesson at Abel, how her cheeks were pink and she was bubbling about a spin she’d managed to master—just one rotation, but still, she’d said—when she noticed he was catatonic on the floor. How she sat with him and sang “Summer of ’69” to distract him, which she said they were playing at the rink, and how her voice sounded like a miracle. How she kept going until he was ready to ease into sitting. Then she kissed his cheeks and pulled him to his feet and suggested they breakinto the pool at the athletic center because she thought he needed to be reckless for a night, to be anyone other than Responsible Ezra Jones With a Very Sick Mom. He was surprised, back then, that he agreed, and he was further surprised by how much it had helped, even if for just a few hours.
“It’s nice that you guys understand each other so well,” Joni said, as if Frankie were recounting some goddamned fairy tale in which she was the hero.
I am the hero!Ezra wanted to shout.I was going to propose to my beautiful girlfriend in an unforgettable display of romantic chivalry tonight. I am a knight in shining armor!
Frankie squatted down, then plopped on the floor.
“Ezra, you’re going to close your eyes, and you’re going to breathe in and count to five and breathe out and count to five. And we’re going to do that seven times, and then I’m going to heave you up.” Just like she used to.
Ezra pressed his still-swollen eyes shut as best he could. But now, he didn’t want Frankie’s help. He didn’t want to be pancaked on the floor of this cozy café while the snow dumped down on his college campus and while Mimi was stranded in Kansas City with her four brothers and nieces and nephews and mom and dad who would spend the holiday watching football and drinking beers with three-layer dip. (Ezra could not imagine Mimi eating three-layer dip or drinking long-necked Bud Lights because, despite checking off “adventurous eater” on her original questionnaire, she was quite meticulous about her calories and also her taste in alcohol, which started at chardonnay and ended at sauvignon blanc.) He didn’t want to consider that he had won almost a grand last night in cards, a sum that despite Ezra’s now comfortable lifestyle stillshocked him. And how Mimi would feel about all of it because she didn’t understand that part of him, just like she might not understand his previous panic attacks and breathing exercises and inability to turn off his brain when he needed to most.
Maybe she would; Ezra didn’t know. He’d stitched himself together just enough by the time they met that he hadn’t had to find out, and besides, Mimi liked their seamless life, one uninterrupted by drama. So too did Ezra. Which was why he gave up the poker and the blackjack and the online gambling when she tutted about it. He really did stop cold, but it wasn’t his fault that his brain was wired for formulas and gaming the system and winning betting pots as easily as some people won Go Fish. He didn’t even know why he was at Waverly’s in the first place! He certainly didn’t know that they had a back room with a card table, or else he’d probably have failed out of Middleton when he’d attended, rather than graduating summa cum laude without even trying. Then he wondered if maybe it were for the best that Mimi hadn’t made it this morning. Which furthered his despair. He’d never been the guy who was relieved not to have his girlfriend show up. He was the guy who always wanted his girlfriend to show up! He didn’t understand this new dichotomy, but he felt, deep in his bones, that he could blame it on Frankie Harriman’s resurrection in his life.
Ezra groaned as Frankie counted slowly and aloud. “One... two... three... four... five. And now exhale: five... four... three... two... one.”
The three of them breathed in and out in sync, as if they weren’t a band of misfits who were trying to find their way out of a crisis that none of them understood. Then Ezra felt Frankie’s palms on his back, and he was sitting upright, theblood draining quickly from his brain, the floor tilting ever so slightly until his mind settled.
“I think your swelling’s going down a little,” Joni offered. “I mean, your eyes.”
Frankie stood and extended her hands toward him for the second time this morning, much as she had so many years back. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”
Ezra winced and declined. Instead, he sort of rolled forward and over and onto all fours, then grasped a nearby chair.
“So,” Frankie said. “Do you remember a scavenger hunt, like Joni said?”
Ezra did not.
“Of course not.” Frankie sighed. “Look, I have a hideous taffeta dress waiting for me at the hotel, so I sort of need to speed things along. We need to start at Lemonhead.”
“I was never at Lemonhead.”
“You have no clue where you were.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Joni asked. “That’s how they do it in the movies.”
Ezra dug in. He remembered checking into the hotel. He remembered trying Mimi’s cell, but reception was spotty in both Western Mass and her Missouri suburb, so he logged on to his laptop and paid for the hotel dial-up to send her an email. She planned to fly to Chicago that evening, then was on the first flight out to Hartford, and a car would take her from there. He intended to send her the itinerary one more time because Ezra was the type of boyfriend who did that sort of thing.
He remembered right as he was about to send the email, Gregory knocked on his door and showed up with some home-brewed vodka that, when Ezra thought about it now, was probably the beginning of his problems. How he wobbled down the hallway to the elevator. How, after he saw Frankie with her yellow headphones and her Doc Martens, all his trouble began.
Now, on the floor of the café, he realized that he had no memory of what came next. Maybe hewasat Lemonhead with Frankie and Laila. Maybe they were fucking married. Maybe he’d stolen someone’s car with those keys. They could have done anything. They could have robbed a bank; they could have torched the library. He didn’t know.
He reached for the leg of a chair and hoisted himself up. He needed to get his wits together, get his brain involved. Ezra had always been a whiz kid, a bit of a logical genius, which was why everyone had pushed him toward law and why he’d gotten a full ride at Middleton. He could, at least on paper, outsmart anyone. There’s no reason why he couldn’t methodically piece together their night. If he had to do it with Frankie, so be it. It would probably be easier to do without her, mostly because she knew exactly which buttons to push to send him skyrocketing to the penthouse of frustration, but still, he could do it if it meant proposing to Mimi at midnight and putting Frankie behind him once and for all.
“I think we need to work backward,” he said, once he had settled himself in the chair.
“And I think we should start at the beginning,” Frankie countered, sitting opposite him back at the table.
Ezra sighed. Long. Slow. Exhausted.
“I’m just saying!” she snapped. “I remember being at Lemonhead. The only solid info we have is that you were then atWaverly’s, and we inexplicably slept together at Homer. So why wouldn’t we start at the one place we’re sure of?”
“We didn’t sleep together!” Ezra barked.
“Semantics,” Frankie said.
“Well, what about the rehearsal dinner at Burton?” Ezra lobbed back.
