Hidden Hands, Open Hearts

Valentina tunes her cello in the empty event hall and thinks about strangers. Not the harmless kind, the ones who file past her stage to the buffet, but the dangerous kind, the imagined kind, the kind who would watch a woman play for two hours and think filthy, flattering things about her hands.

She is twenty-nine, and she has been Mrs. Curtis Harlow for five years now, married at twenty-four right out of college, and she has never, not once in her whole life, been touched by anyone but him.

Does that sound ungrateful? It kind of sounds ungrateful. Curtis is a good man, a sound engineer with steady hands and a steady paycheck, and he still kisses her goodbye every morning. But somewhere in the last couple of years their bedroom has gone quiet in a way that has nothing to do with noise. They have a rhythm. Rhythms are her job, and she knows what happens when a rhythm gets too comfortable. Nothing. Nothing happens forever.

Her bow hovers over the strings. The hall smells like lilies and folding-table linen, and a caterer's crew is wheeling in chairs two stories below her rehearsal platform. One of the caterers waves up at her. She waves back, and the wave takes half a second, and she spends the next ten minutes thinking about how it felt to be waved at by a man who does not know her name, does not know her mortgage, does not know she bites her nails when a movement goes badly.

God, that is so small. That is the smallest thing in the world, and it lit her up like a footlight.

She sees him later, the caterer, when she packs up. He is fortyish, silver at the temples, efficient and cheerful, bossing a tray of canapés with total confidence. "Great sound up there tonight," he calls. "Really great."

"Thanks! It's a nice room," she says, and her voice comes out bright and flirty and completely on its own, and she walks to her car with her heart drumming like an audience before curtain.

This is the part she has never told anybody, not even Emily, not even in the dark of a girls' night after the second bottle. She loves her husband. She also wants, just once, just somehow, to be wanted by someone who doesn't already know how she takes her coffee. She wants to be a stranger. She wants the version of herself that only exists in lobbies and hotel bars and the first ten minutes of meeting someone, the version with no history and no chore chart and no opinion on the dishwasher.

She wants to feel she has been with somebody. Anybody. A woman with stories.

Instead she has a husband, a cello, and a Saturday dress fitting for the charity gala, which is how she ends up standing on a velvet pedestal in Emily's shop with her arms out like a scarecrow while three pins migrate toward her ribs.

"Hold still, sweetheart, this seam is fighting me," Emily says. Emily is thirty-five, six years older, and has been Valentina's best friend since grad school, back when they survived theory exams on vending machine crackers. She owns this boutique now and has strong fingers and stronger opinions.

"Ouch! Sorry. Twitchy."

"You're always twitchy lately. What's going on with you?" Emily squints up from the hem. "And don't say nothing, because nothing doesn't make a woman wiggle on my pedestal."

Valentina laughs, which is dangerous, because laughing moves the seam. "It's nothing. I'm fine. Marriage is fine."

"Uh huh. 'Fine.' The most depressing word in the English language. Turn."

She turns. The green gown swirls. It is a gorgeous dress and she feels nothing in it, and that is the whole problem in one sentence, isn't it? She says so, sort of. "Em, can I ask you something dumb?"

"Nothing you ask me is dumb. Ask."

"Do you ever wonder... I mean, you were married before, so you'd know. Do you ever wonder about other men? Just, like, wonder. Hypothetically."

Emily sits back on her heels and looks genuinely delighted, like Valentina has finally ordered dessert. "Oh, honey, constantly! When I was married to what's-his-name I wondered so hard I nearly sprained something." She stands, brushes off her knees. "You've only ever been with Curtis, right? Since college?"

"Yeah. Since I was twenty-three. He's it. He's the whole list."

"Wow. Okay, that explains the wiggle." Emily pins the seam, thoughtful. "That's a lot of wondering to have backed up. No wonder you're twitchy."

"It's not that I don't love him. I do. It's just..." Valentina waves a hand, pins scattering. "There's this whole version of me that never happened. The version with a past, you know? Somebody who's been looked at by a stranger and thought, oh, hello, who are you?"

Emily is quiet for a second. Then she gets a look. Valentina knows that look. That look has talked her into karaoke, thrifting, and one truly regrettable haircut.

"What," Valentina says. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because, sweetheart, you just described the single most fixable problem I have ever heard." Emily grins. "You work venues. Halls, weddings, galas. You wear a gorgeous dress and nobody there knows your name. What if Curtis showed up at one of your gigs as nobody? A stranger in a nice suit? You'd play your set, he'd buy you a drink, and you two would meet for the first time. Again."

"That's insane."

"Right? Isn't it great?"

"It's completely insane, Em."

"And you're gonna do it," Emily says, pinning the last inch of hem with a satisfied little pat. "Look at your face. You're already doing it."

---

That night Valentina lies in bed listening to Curtis breathe and rehearses the sentence about forty times. At two a.m. she gives up and just says it.

"Curtis. Are you awake?"

"Mmf. Now I am. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I had an idea and I can't sleep until I say it, so here it goes." She takes a breath. "I want us to pretend to be strangers. At my gigs. You show up somewhere I'm playing, we don't know each other, you hit on me, and we see what happens."

Silence. Long silence. In the dark she can feel him being very awake now.

"You want to roleplay," he says slowly. "As people who aren't married."

"Basically? Yes. Em gave me the idea at my fitting and I haven't been able to shake it. Curt, I love you, but we've been doing the same Tuesday for five years and I just..." Her voice wobbles and she hates it and pushes on anyway. "I want to feel wanted. By you, even. That's the crazy part. I want you, but the version of you who doesn't know I leave my scores on the counter."

More silence. Then he sits up and turns on the lamp, squinting.

"Okay. First question. Is this a fight?"

"No. God, no, it's the opposite of a fight."

"Second question. Why does it feel like a trap?" He rubs his eyes. "Sorry. That came out wrong. I'm just... give me a second. This is a lot for two a.m."

"Take a second."

He takes several. Then, quietly: "You're bored of me."

"I'm not bored of you, Curt, I'm bored of us being automatic. There's a difference. I miss being nervous about you. Do you remember being nervous? Our first date you spilled an entire beer in your own lap."

"I remember the beer," he admits, and something in his face loosens. "Okay. Okay, say it again. The whole idea."

She says the whole idea. The strangers, the venues, the drinks, the nothing that has to happen but also, maybe, the something that might. He listens with his elbows on his knees, and when she finishes he is quiet again but a different quiet, an interested quiet, she thinks, she hopes.

"Rules," he says finally. "If we do this, we do it with rules, or I'll spiral. One. No phones. Nobody texts, nobody checks in, we're actually strangers for the night. Two. If you want a fake name, take one. I'm a terrible liar, so I'm keeping mine, but nobody at the bar will know it's Harlow."

"Who would I be?"

"That's your problem, stranger." A slow grin creeps onto his face, the old one, the beer-in-the-lap one. "Three. Everything that happens, happens because we both say yes to it, right there in the moment. Stranger me can't assume anything just because husband me has access."

"That's a good rule."

"Four." He turns the lamp off and lies back down, and pulls her against him, and she can feel that he is smiling into her hair. "Rule four is you have to actually flirt with me, or I'm gonna be crushed."

"Oh, I'll flirt with you," Valentina says into the dark, feeling lighter than she has in months. "Stranger me is a menace. You have no idea what's coming."

"A week from Saturday," he murmurs. "Your gala. There's a bar in that hotel, right?"

"Right there in the lobby."

"Then I guess I'll be having a drink there around nine, and if a woman in a green dress happens to walk in, well." His hand finds hers under the blanket. "It would be rude not to say hello."

She falls asleep grinning like an idiot.

The gala is still days and days away. Valentina doesn't think she can wait, and apparently Curtis can't either, because on Wednesday night he texts her one single message: Emily needs you at the shop after close. Fitting emergency.

Which is a lie, obviously, because Emily is in on it now and thinks the whole thing is the best idea since sliced bread.

Valentina pulls her car into the back lot at seven forty-five. The boutique is dark except for one lamp near the mirrors, and there he is, standing by the rack of dresses in a suit she has literally never seen before, hands in his pockets, looking as though he is trying very hard to look casual.

"Hi," he says. Then he winces. "Sorry. Hi. I mean. I'm Curtis."

She bites her lip to keep from laughing. "Hi, Curtis. I'm... Lena."

"Lena. Nice name. I'm here because, um." He glances at Emily, who is sitting on the fitting stool grinning like a proud coach. "Because Emily said a friend might come by?"

"Oh my god," Emily says, standing up. "Nope. I'm leaving. I'm locking the door behind me and I'm getting a coffee. You two figure it out." And she's gone, jingling her keys, before either of them can protest.

So it's just the two of them in a dim shop full of white dresses, and Valentina realizes with a little jolt that this is the first time in years she's nervous around her own husband. Isn't that something?

"So," she says, leaning against the mirror. "You come here often?"

"I have literally never been here. I don't even know what this store sells." He looks around helplessly. "Wedding stuff?"

"Bridal stuff. Very romantic. You picked a good spot for a first meeting, Curtis."

"Did I?" He steps closer, and she sees his ears going pink, and God, that shouldn't be as charming as it is. "You look... wow. Are you in a wedding? You'd be the best-looking bride at any wedding."

That lands. That lands hard, actually, heat unspooling low in her belly, because when did he last say something like that to her without it being automatic?

"Flatterer," she says, and her voice comes out lower than she planned.

"Is it working?"

"Maybe a little."

He reaches out and touches her waist, careful, asking without asking. "Can I?"

"You already are," she breathes, and then he's kissing her, and it's clumsy and new and she's pressing back into the mirror, and it's good! It's really good!

But then his hand gets stuck somehow in a hanger of veils, and there's this terrible clatter of white tulle everywhere, and he jumps back like the veils are on fire.

"Sorry. Sorry, I didn't, I just..."

Valentina is laughing so hard she has to hold on to the mirror. "You knocked over the veils."

"There were so many of them. They came out of nowhere."

And the mood is sort of broken, but sort of not, and they fumble through another kiss, and his hands are shaking, actually shaking, and she wants him so badly she can hardly stand it. But the whole thing feels like two burglars sneaking around someone else's living room, and when he asks, quietly, "Should we... here?" she looks at the stack of bolted fabric and the fitting stool and the lamp Emily left on, and she just can't.

"Not here," she says, and she sees his face fall, and she takes his hand fast. "No. Not a no, Curt. Not a no. Just... not here. I want to do this right. Somewhere that isn't my best friend's shop with four hundred veils watching us."

"Right. Yes. Of course." He straightens the veils with great dignity. "Rain check?"

"Rain check," she agrees, and kisses him once more, soft and slow this time, and walks out into the parking lot grinning with a foolishness that is absolute, frustrated and happy at the same time, which is a weird combination but a promising one.

The second chance comes sooner than either of them expects.

Friday afternoon, Valentina arrives at the event hall early for her sound check, and that's when she sees the caterer again, the one with the silver temples, maybe forty, doing a walkthrough of the kitchen with a clipboard. And she gets this absolutely wicked idea, and texts Curtis before she can talk herself out of it.

Event hall. Gala walkthrough. Caterer here. Just saying.

She's tuning her cello when the hall doors open and there he is, her husband of five years, wearing a borrowed white server's jacket over his shirt and carrying a bottle of red wine like he knows what to do with it, which he does not, and God help her, it works.

"Mademoiselle," he says, in the worst French accent she has ever heard in her life. "I am the wine steward. I have come to offer you a pairing."

Valentina nearly drops her bow. "A