“Fifty-seven dollars a night,” Rae said to Dustin as they lay intertwined in his bed, the Monday dawn trying to break their trance. “That’s how much rent money I waste every night I stay over here.”
In the couple weeks since they’d been boyfriend and girlfriend, Rae had stayed on Perry Street only a couple times.
“You’re notwastingit,” Dustin said. “You’reinvestingit in our future.”
“Is that what you tell your clients to get them to commit to ten-million-dollar trades?”
“Something like that,” he said. “But I can come to the penthouse more if you want.”
“No, the loft is ten times nicer. Thicker walls, specifically,” Rae said with a wicked grin.
The economic argument held up weakly against the romantic argument.
“You know what they say,” Dustin said, drawing abstract shapes on her back, from her neck down to her comfortable underwear. “Investors are as irrational as people in love. That’s why there are so many volatile market swings.”
“I think investors are actuallymoreirrational than lovers,” Rae said. “Because at least love is worth losing your mind for. Investors just get worked up about gaining or losing money—such an empty irrationality.”
“Which is exactly why we should stay in bed all day.”
Rae shook her head as her heart nodded. “We’ve got to get up.” It wasn’t even sevenA.M., and she could already feel the passive-aggressive emails piling up in her inbox.
Dustin groaned and pulled her closer. This was one of Rae’s favorite things about their nights together—how, when it felt like he was already holding her as closely as he could, he somehow pulled her even closer, injecting her body with tactileI love yous that squeezed out all her self-consciousness about how parts of her body were too big or not big enough.
“Did you ever think people were exaggerating it?” Dustin asked.
“Exaggerating what?” Rae asked. “How miserable it is to get up on Mondays? Nope, I think that hyperbole is well deserved.”
“Not that.” He kissed her nose, then her lips. “The love thing. How nothing else matters when you’re wrapped up in it.”
“Oh,” Rae said. “That.” She stopped trying to wiggle out of the covers. “I guess I just thought that all the hype around soul mates was more imagination than memoir. That I’d find someone who was good enough and wouldn’t leave me and we’d make it work.”
“Good enough would never be good enough for a poet like you.”
“Well, yes, I realize that now. You’ve ruined me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Dustin?” she asked. “Do you think peoplehavesouls? Or do you think theyaresouls?” She nearly retracted the question, worried it was too deep for this time of day. But the way Dustin tilted his head to consider it made her keep the question there, suspended in the nongap between them.
“I think it depends on how trapped people are by their humanity,” he finally said.
Rae waited for him to continue.
“If you get bogged down by all the shallowness and selfishness of being mortal, then I think you’re just a person who has a soul,” he said. “But occasionally you meet someone who has this lightness about them”—he gave her a squeeze—“like they’re free from the human part of living. How does Bellini describe it?It’s not so common to find a soul that’s still living in its mortal body. And rarer still, a free soul.And so I think those people—people like you—well, theyaresouls.”
Rae digested the compliment, perhaps the nicest one she’d ever gotten. “You’re giving me too much credit.”
“No, I’m in your debt.”
“Bad finance joke.”
“You’re smiling.”
“Am not.”
“So we’re playing hooky today, right?”
“I wish …”
