“Nice job,” Kieran said. “You scared him off.”
As it turned out, Brian had run down the street to a convenience store, because he realized that I should have flowers. He came back with a Cheeto-orange rose glued to a little plastic sign:GET WELL SOON. “It was all they had,” he apologized.
He also got me a scratch ticket.
We had agreed that we would write up something simple—vows that would make this seem a little more special than just signing a piece of paper on a Tuesday afternoon. But when it came time, Brian turned pink from his neck to the tips of his ears. “I didn’t…I didn’t think we were going to say them out loud…”
What else do you do with vows?“That’s okay,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter.”
Really, no one else’s words mattered but my own. I smiled at Kieran, who was juggling Meret in his arms while Brian and I held hands. I looked Brian in the eye and promised to honor and cherish him. When we walked out into the waiting room after the ceremony, people cheered. It was like the DMV of Love.
Afterward, we went to an Italian restaurant. We took turns going to the bathroom so that Kieran wasn’t left alone at the table. In the restroom, I took out the vows I had written but not spoken during the ceremony—in hieroglyphs, and in English. From my Yale class notes I had copied a piece of a New Kingdom poem called “The Flower Song”:
Hearing your voice is sweet as pomegranate wine!
I live but to hear it!
If I could gaze upon you with every glance,
It would be more beneficial to me than eating or drinking.
I threw them out with the towel I used when I washed my hands.
When Brian went to the bathroom, I used a dime to rub off the scratch ticket.
We didn’t win.
That night after Kieran went to bed, Brian touched me as if I were made of glass, as if moving too quickly or holding me too close would make me disappear. Afterward, while he lay on his side and stroked the parabola of my shoulder, he gave me a piece of paper.
“These are my vows,” he said.
“I thought you couldn’t write them.”
“I couldn’tspeakthem,” he corrected.
9x−7i>3(3x−7u)
I was used to Brian talking about scientific concepts way over my head. It didn’t look familiar, like the vector for acceleration or the theory of relativity. “Am I supposed to know what this is?”
“Solve fori.”
I sat up, letting the sheet fall away from me. I rummaged in the nightstand, where I couldn’t find a pen but did manage to unearth a crayon.
9x−7i >3(3x−7u)
9x−7i>9x−21u
“Now what?”
Brian reached over and wrote−9xon each side of the equation.
−7i>−21u
Solve fori, I thought.
Then I smiled.
i<3u
