"What were you wrong about?" I asked, cautiously, moving into the situation with the same caution I'd take when approaching a new playbook.
"I thought this headache was the worst part of the morning. It isn't." Maya rubbed at her temples.
"What's the worst part?" I asked.
"That you're actually suggesting we stay married." She gestured to me. "You're sitting there with your brown eyes, and that beard that I don't even get to remember playing with, telling me you want to stay married when we absolutely cannot do that. And we used up all of our one-night-stand time totally inebriated. So, even if I was entertaining the idea of staying married—which I'm not—I don't even know if we're good together in… that way. That's an important thing to know, you know?"
"We were good together," I said confidently. I remembered little, only a few minor details. Details I really liked… "I don't have to remember it to know we were good together." A memory of Maya's lips around my?—
"There's no way to know." She threw her hands in the air. "And we can't do it again."
Hold up. Exactly why couldn't we?—
"Here's the thing. Let me illustrate." She set out the salt and the pepper on the table between us. Nudging them close together. "Do you want to be Salt or Pepper?"
I didn't really care but decided on the fly, "Pepper."
"I sort of thought I'd be Pepper." Maya frowned, thought entirely too hard about it before saying, "Whatever, I can be Salt."
I'd never been in this situation before, but I figured it'd be best to keep my trap shut.
"This is Salt." She held up the salt shaker. "She has been avoiding all things Las Vegas for years because the last time she was here, she made some bad choices. She's finally ready to get back to her favorite town when she meets Pepper." She walked the pepper shaker over to Salt. "They have fun together. Drink too much. And then Pepper proposes to Salt." She did a puppet show, with Pepper pretending to nudge up against Salt.
Salt acted as surprised as an inanimate object could act.
"They're both compromised because of drinks. So, they get married," Maya said.
I didn't know where she was going with this puppet show, but there was one point I needed to correct.
"Hold on." I reached for the shakers. "Can I try?"
She let me take the props. "By all means."
"Pepper is minding his own business, playing football, when he makes an offhand comment about the sugar content of electrolyte drinks in front of a reporter. That one comment pisses off lots of people, so he has to get out of town. His buddies tell him they're all going to Vegas." I set down Pepper and lifted a jam packet and butter packet, walking them toward the minding-his-own-business Pepper. "'If you're gonna leave town, make it someplace fun.'" I did a shit job mimicking Finn and Elliott. "So, Pepper agrees to a Vegas weekend to get Butter and Jam off his ass." That didn't quite sound the way I'd hoped. "Pepper meets a pretty woman named Salt." I pushed the jam and butter away, moving the pepper shaker to Salt. "They drink margaritas, and Pepper pleases Salt and gives her a mind-blowing time in the bedroom because that's what Pepper does." I gave her a look I hoped punctuated that point. "Then Salt asks Pepper to marry her." I pushed the shakers back to Maya. "You can continue now."
"Salt would never do that."
"But Salt did that."
"Pepper and Salt both said they remember nothing about the night before, so how does Pepper know if he or Salt did the asking?" Maya's chest was turning pink as she spoke, splotches of red dotting along her neck to her fair-skinned collarbone.
The last thing I wanted to do was go backward in our negotiations when we hadn't even moved forward.
"You don't have any bits of memory that are coming back? But when you showed me the wedding photos this morning, I distinctly remembered your suggestion that we get married."
"That's impossible because it didn't happen."
"We were in bed. We were naked. We were both drunk as snot from the tequila. I sounded like I was talking in cursive, and you took a header into the pillow when you tried to sit up."
"Oh." She scrunched her face up. "Then I talked about how bad I want a solo career. Then?—"
"You suggested we get married. Look at us, remembering." I used Pepper to do a high-five with Salt.
"But we don't even know if we're compatible because we know next to nothing about each other. So, it makes sense that we move on with our lives. I know, from experience, that if you don't get an annulment quickly, it can be an entire problem with the legal system." Maya held Salt and pretended she spoke to Pepper. "Act on the annulment train fast, or it can get complex." She continued miming a conversation. "Sometimes, you have to go the divorce route. No one wants to go the divorce route. There's tons more paperwork with that option."
I reached for Pepper. "May I?"
She nodded. "Yes."
