Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [89]
Mark smiled at her when she came out of the bathroom, and waited for her to climb into bed before he turned off the light. She felt his lips on her neck, and then he positioned himself over her while he softly sucked on her clavicle. No, she decided. He is not a killer.
Lauren waited for Mark to get less weird, but it didn’t happen. He changed his pillowcases every other night and left porn magazines in plain view in his bathroom. He had certain ties that he wore only to meetings, and he wouldn’t let Lauren sit on his bed when she was wearing clothes she had worn outside. But hands down, the weirdest thing about Mark was this: His favorite food was macaroni and cheese.
He didn’t like the fancy kind of macaroni and cheese that was retro-trendy and served in pricey restaurants, with Gruyère and lobster. He didn’t even like the homemade kind that was gooey and comforting. No, Mark favored the fluorescent noodles that were created from powder, milk, and butter—the kind that came in a box for $1.79.
At least once a week, Mark made a box of macaroni and sat down in front of the TV to shovel it into his mouth. He didn’t share. He ate straight from the pot. He ate the whole thing.
If he were a different person, maybe this wouldn’t have been so shocking. But he wasn’t. He was Mark. He wore suits that Lauren was pretty sure cost more than the rent for her apartment. He sent back bottles of wine at restaurants after he’d tasted them and declared them “off.” She’d never met his family, but she was sure that they would be horrified to learn what Mark did with his macaroni. Could she date someone who attacked pasta like this? She watched him closely each time he did it, sure that she was witnessing something deeply personal and telling. It was like watching him masturbate, but Lauren couldn’t turn away. It was fascinating, disgusting, and delightful all at once.
“Do you like him?” her friend Mary asked after their seventh date. Lauren shrugged. She didn’t feel like talking about whether or not she liked a boy with her friends. It made her feel like a child they were all entertaining.
When they were younger, Lauren and her friends talked about boys constantly. They told each other every detail and dissected each sentence. But as the years went by and they moved into separate apartments, it changed. These weren’t just random boys they were going to date and then break up with. These were boys they might end up marrying. And so, they stopped sharing so many details without even realizing it. Well, most of them did. Their friend Annie was slow to catch on, got drunk on red wine, and told all of them that her boyfriend Mitchell had a tiny penis. At their wedding, it was all Lauren could think about.
Lauren wanted to tell Mary about the macaroni and cheese, and how when Mark had met her one-year-old niece, Lily, he had taken her hand without smiling and said, “Hello. Hello, Lily.” She wanted to ask Mary if it was bizarre to like a guy who’d brought you a fish. She wanted Mary to help her decide if Mark was a sociopath or just a little strange.
Mary looked at her expectantly, rubbing her stomach and groaning at fake contractions. Her little boy, Henry, bopped around the room, and Lauren knew she couldn’t do it. It was too odd to sit there and tell Mary these things, too strange to talk about Mark bringing her a fish, while Mary toddled after her toddler. So Lauren just said, “Yeah, I do. I do like him.” It was the truth, she thought. Just not all of it.
The day that Rudy died, Lauren went to feed her before school and found her belly-up and completely white. She let out a little scream and her parents came running. Her dad looked shocked, and her mom looked as though she had opened a Tupperware full of mold.
“We’ll have to flush him,” her dad said.
“Rudy’s a she,” Lauren said.
“Of course