Auctioneer's Night

Happy anniversary, my ass, I thought, as Anya pulled me through the studio door into darkness.

"Happy anniversary," she whispered into my ear, and then she was pulling me forward into a room so dark I could barely see my own shoes. "Don't turn on any lights. Trust me. Just walk."

I'm Garret, I'm 24, and I talk for a living. Auctioneer. Three hundred words a minute when the money's moving. So believe me when I say my wife rendered me speechless in under four seconds, which is a personal record.

Anya is 23, she sings in a band called Static Halo, and we got married a year ago today. One year. And instead of dinner and a movie, she's dragging me blind through a warehouse district studio at nine at night.

"Anya, what is this?" I asked, bumping my knee on something padded. "Why does everything feel like a gym wall?"

"Acoustic foam. Mind the cable. Two more steps." She stopped and turned, and even in the dark I could see her grin. "Sit. Right there. Chair by the glass. Don't move, don't ask questions, and don't talk fast. For once in your life, honey, be quiet."

"I'm always quiet."

"You narrated our wedding vows at auction pace. The minister had to ask you to slow down."

Fair. That's fair. I sat in the chair and she kissed me, quick, and then she was gone through a door I hadn't even seen.

So there I am, alone in a dark control booth, looking through a big window into a recording space padded wall to wall in gray foam. A couch sits against the wall behind me, worn brown leather, cracked in two places. Somebody's been living on this couch, is all I can say.

The lights came up low in the live room. Not bright, just enough. Greenish, like everything was underwater.

And there was Anya, at a microphone, barefoot, in a dress I'd never seen before. Dark red. Short. The kind of dress that makes a man forget what he was going to bid.

Behind the mixing desk in the booth with me, a guy I recognized from band photos leaned back in his chair. Vince. Sound engineer, session guitarist, 31 years old, been working with Anya's band for two years. He nodded at me like we'd met, which we hadn't.

"That's the husband," he said, more to the room than to me. "Good. Headphones are in front of you if you want them. You don't need them. This mix is for the room."

"What am I listening for?" I asked.

"Whatever you want, man." He hit a key on the board. "Hana! Levels, whenever you're ready."

A second woman walked into the live room. I'd never seen her before. Hana, I'd learn later, 28, backup vocalist, been working with Vince on and off for a couple years. She took the second mic and smiled at Anya, and something about the smile made me sit up straighter in the chair.

"Ready?" Anya asked, and her voice through the monitors was warm and close, like she was sitting in my lap instead of twenty feet away.

"Born ready," Hana said. "Count us in, Vince."

Vince counted them in, four clicks, and then they started singing.

Now. I've been to Anya's shows. I've stood in cramped bars with a beer I didn't want, watching my wife sing covers to a crowd of twelve people and a dog. This was not that.

This was low. This was the two of them trading a line back and forth, breathy, barely above a whisper, and then stacking up into a harmony that hit the middle of my back and stayed there. The room ate every echo. It was just their voices and a slow bass line Vince had queued up, nothing to hide behind.

"Is that original?" I asked.

"Anya wrote it last month," Vince said, eyes on the board. "Never been played live. Tonight's the premiere. Audience of one."

Audience of one. I liked the sound of that, I don't mind telling you.

They ran through the verse once, and Anya's eyes were closed, and Hana was watching her, and I was watching both of them, and the green light made the whole thing look like a dream somebody had about a recording studio instead of the real thing.

Then Anya opened her eyes, looked straight through the glass at me, and sang the second verse directly at me. At me. My wife. In that dress. In that voice.

"You're blushing," Vince observed.

"Auctioneers don't blush."

"Everybody's an auctioneer until their wife sings at them." He turned a knob. "You want to go in there? You can stand by the board in the live room, better sound."

"Can I?"

"It's your anniversary, man. Ask her."

So I leaned toward the talkback mic, and this is the part where I want you to appreciate that I asked, because my mother raised me right. "Anya? Can I come in and watch you close up?"

She laughed, and the laugh came through the monitors and the room at the same time, doubled. "Come on in, birthday boy."

"Anniversary boy."

"That too."

The door between the rooms was heavy and made a great sucking sound when I opened it, very dramatic, like the studio itself had an opinion. Anya held out her hand and I took it and she pulled me to the spot beside her mic.

"This is Hana," she said. "Hana, this is the reason I'm barefoot in a studio on a Tuesday."

"Happy anniversary," Hana said, shaking my hand. Her grip was firm. "Your wife talks about you. All good things. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"She mentions the auction voice a lot." Hana glanced at Anya and they did that thing women do where an entire conversation happens between two people and the man in the room is just standing there holding a drink he doesn't have.

"The auction voice?" I said.

"Sing something, Garret," Anya said, stepping back from the mic and pulling me toward it. "Just one line. Do your thing. Hana hasn't heard it."

"I don't sing. I sell farm equipment."

"Same thing," Hana said. "Rhythm is rhythm."

So there I am, in a green-lit room, my wife on one side and a stranger with a great voice on the other, and I did it. I rattled off thirty seconds of lot numbers and terms, going and going, the whole carnival barker act, and when I stopped they were both laughing, and Anya put her hand flat on my chest.

"He's so proud of himself," she told Hana.

"He should be. That's a party trick."

"It's a career," I said.

"It's a party trick you married," Anya said, and she kissed me. Not the quick one from the booth. A real one, slow, her hand sliding up to the back of my neck, and I heard Hana say something low to herself that I chose to interpret as approval.

When we broke apart, Anya looked at Hana, and Hana looked at me, and then Hana looked at Anya, and I stood there like a piece of farm equipment while they had another one of those silent conversations.

"So," Hana said. "Vince told me the plan. But I want to hear it from you two, out loud, in the room. Because I'm in, if you're both in. And I walk back to the lounge and drink wine if you're not. No weirdness either way."

"The plan?" I said.

"The anniversary plan," Anya said, and she was looking at me now, dead serious under all that green light. "Garret. I want to be wanted tonight. Loudly. By more than one person. Vince and Hana have been together on and off for a year, everybody here is grown, and I asked them before I asked you. So the only yes I still need is yours. Do you want this?"

I'm a fast talker by trade. You'd think I'd have something ready. I didn't. I just looked at my wife of one year, in her red dress, in a room full of foam, and said, "Yes. God, yes. Is that even a question?"

"That's a yes," Hana said to Anya, satisfied, like she was logging it. "Okay. Ground rules, because I like ground rules. Anybody says stop, we stop. Anybody says wait, we wait. Nobody touches anybody without asking first. Including you two, and including me. Deal?"

"Deal," Anya said.

"Deal," I said, and my voice cracked on it, which I will deny to my grave.

"And condoms for the new combinations," Hana added. "Vince and I have handled all that between us, but tonight's got new math."

Vince's voice came through the talkback speaker from the booth. "I heard yes from everybody. The lounge is lit and I brought decent wine instead of the stuff from the gig box. Whenever you're ready."

Anya took my hand again. "Anniversary present, honey. I hope you like it."

"Baby," I said, "I already like it."

We filed into the lounge and I have to tell you, whoever lit this place deserves a raise. Low amber light, a couple of floor lamps, and cushions. A lot of cushions. Somebody had planned this, and that somebody was my wife.

"Sit," Anya said, pointing me at the couch in the corner while she poured wine. "Actually, no. Stand. Walk around. Stretch your legs, auction boy."

"I'm not a horse."

"You're pacing like one."

Vince came through the door behind us with his guitar, of all things, and Hana laughed when she saw it. "You brought the guitar? To an anniversary?"

"The guitar is ambiance," Vince said. "Also I never put it down, it's a problem, my girlfriend has raised it."

"You have a girlfriend?" I asked, because apparently my brain wanted to do paperwork right now.

"On and off, one year, that's me," Hana said, raising her glass at him. "Tonight's on."

Anya finished her wine in about two swallows, set the glass down on the side table, and looked at me through the doorway into the live room. She didn't say a word. She just mouthed it: come here.

Reader, I went.

The live room was glowing that weird green, all that foam swallowing every footstep, and the second the door swung shut behind us Anya was on me. She grabbed the front of my shirt and kissed me like she was trying to collect something overdue. I got a hand in her hair and kissed her back and she made this happy little noise against my mouth.

"Hi," she said, pulling back an inch.

"Hi yourself."

"Good anniversary so far?"

"I'm withholding judgment until I see how it ends."

She laughed and turned me by the shoulder, and there was Vince in the doorway with the guitar already off and the strap sliding down his arm. He hung it on the wall hook like he'd done it a thousand times, which, honestly, he probably had.

"Just so we're square," Vince said, "Hana and I talked this morning. We're both glad to be here. And I've had a crush on your wife's voice for two years, so I'm told to keep my hands to myself until asked."

"That's the rule," Anya called through the open door.

"Good rule."

Hana appeared in the doorway next, leaning on the frame, watching us with her arms crossed like she was judging a competition. "For the record, I don't wait long."

"Noted," I said.

Anya reached down and took my hand and put it flat on her stomach, over the red dress, and looked up at me. "Ask me something," she said.

"Can I take this dress off you?"

"Finally. Yes."

The zipper went down easier than any dress I've ever fought, and she stepped out of it and stood there barefoot in the green light and I forgot, briefly, every word in the English language. All three hundred words per minute of me, gone.

"Say something," she said.

"You're," I said. Then: "Wow!"

"Big finish, Garret."

"That's the whole speech."

Hana laughed from the doorway. "Okay, he's mine for a minute. If that's alright with the lady of the evening."

"It's alright with me," Anya said, and she kissed my cheek and stepped back, and Hana walked over slow, unhurried, like she had all night and knew it.

"Hi again," Hana said.

"Hi."

"You okay? Really okay? Because you look a little like a man standing in line at the DMV."

"I'm okay. I'm just aware this is the strangest best anniversary of my life."

"Good answer." She reached up and touched my jaw, just that, just a question with fingers. When I didn't pull away she pulled my face down and kissed me, and it was a good kiss, a confident kiss, the kind of kiss you give when you've been kissing people for a while and gotten great at it. Her other hand found the front of my jeans and I was already hard, embarrassingly, gloriously hard, harder than I'd been in months, and she felt it and smiled into my mouth without breaking the kiss.

"Someone's ready," she murmured.

"Since the booth," I admitted.