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part one.
how it ends.
scenario 117. She leaves the next morning more shamefully than any fling’s apartment, leaves after breakfast and a real apology. Dr. Crane’s brother is a bit too eager to act as reference, and Daphne never does find out what he says that gets her placed as fast as she is. It’s not a live-in position, but the pay’s a bit better, and the patient’s wife gives Daphne a discount when she visits her shop, so she doesn’t mind. She finds an apartment on the Hill with a lenient policy on pets and swears off men for just over three years.
scenario 406. Niles doesn’t ask again, even after the divorce. He spends more time with Daphne than he’d ever hoped—he even joins her on a trip to some kind of outlet mall one day—and gets further from telling her with each hour. When he notices what they are now, Dad will give him too much sympathy, and Niles will insist that he prefers it this way, and Frasier will analyze all of it to death. There’s never a proper ending, not one that either of them can point to, but they know that something is over. They only half know what it is.
scenario 421. They’re horrible secret-keepers, and the secrecy was much of the appeal of their arrangement, whatever that arrangement was. Without it, they are Frasier’s pet project and the butt of their friends’—that is, Niles’s friends (few) and Daphne’s friends (many), separate entities, for they have no real friends in common—jokes. They last longer than the heat does, but they break just as suddenly. Eventually, they will confess to feeling the same relief, too.
part two.
the “it” in question.
scenario 117. For the longest time, everything is comfortably quiet. Just the drum of the rain, the occasional crack of the fire. Dr. Crane running his fingertips along her arm. Dr. Crane kissing her. Dr. Crane kissing her more gently than she’s ever been kissed. And it’s strange, if not entirely unexpected, but it’s nice, too, in its way. Nice in the way he’s always been nice, sometimes maybe a bit too eager, and other times maybe a bit too reserved, but so impossibly aware that she can’t help but think there’s a kindness to it. But it’s really that—the awareness—before anything else. Daphne’s sure of it: She knows because he’s mirroring her. And he’s able to mirror her because she’s kissing him. And she’s kissing him because she likes it and probably because she’s a bit on the rebound at the moment but mostly that first one because Eric certainly didn’t ever do what he’s doing now, and it’s hard to call something a rebound when it’s that much better than the real thing. Hard to call something a rebound when you can hardly picture yourself wanting to stop getting closer to him. When your hands are doing everything they can to keep that from happening.
And that’s how she realizes: “This isn’t right.”
“Oh,” he says, and Daphne comes close to forgetting her morals because he’s moving his hand back to hers, as if she hadn’t appreciated (more than appreciated) what he’d chosen to do with his just before. “I can— I suppose I’m so used to—” He stops himself. He’s realized it, too. “Oh, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Of course,” he says.“It was foolish of me to think…”
Daphne assumes, at least at first, that he plans on finishing this thought, but he stays quiet, well after the time it could take anyone to supply the right word. So, he’s staying quiet, and Daphne has just learned what becomes of the quiet between them. She knows that it can’t happen again. “Me too,” she says.
“You?” he asks. They’re not touching at all anymore. His choice this time, not Daphne’s. She wishes she weren’t keeping track.
“Yes,” she says, and her voice is certain even as he goes on over it, because if she doesn’t admit it, there’s really no way she can go on respecting herself.
“How were you—?”
“Well, thought you might’ve noticed in the moment, but I wasn’t exactly stopping you, was I?”
“Of course not,” he says, and it’s like she’s made it worse. “How could you have? You were in my home, in my— In her— And distraught and shocked and I—”
“You were, too,” she says because he was. Those last two, that is. More than she was, even. “Didn’t stop either of us.”
“But I—”
Daphne isn’t listening. She says, “Look at me.”
He doesn’t, but he tells her, “I have been.” And then, like it’s not the fault of Daphne’s third-worst decision about an outfit to date, he adds, “If I hadn’t, we would never have had this problem.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” she says. “I come into your house, and you’re a perfect gentleman to me, and when your wife’s clothes are too small for me, I find this. What else could you have thought?”
“Well, Maris has a very delicate build,” he says. This is a bit on the generous side to all three of them. Daphne can picture them laughing about it, if all of this were different.
“I could have borrowed something of yours if it were such a problem,” she says, already resenting the fact that she’s making excuses like this. “Nothing sexy about that, swimming in a man’s trousers, but I decided to try this on and—”
“No, no, I should have known—” He nearly touches her again when he says this, and Daphne nearly indulges herself in letting him, but he seems to remember what brought them to this point because he draws his hand away at the last possible moment.
“But you couldn’t have,” Daphne says. It’s too quiet. She’s supposed to be angry. At someone. Preferably Dr. Crane. “I didn’t even know until it happened, and it felt… I thought—” She sighs, and the anger’s here at last. “Well, I didn’t think, did I? I just put my—”
Daphne’s put a few too many things a few too many places, but Dr. Crane isn’t listening, so it hardly matters if she says hands or tongue or dignity because he just says, “I’m a psychiatrist,” before she can even decide which the worst of them is.
“Did you know, then?” Daphne asks.
And then he says, “I should have.”
“No, I mean…” It’s embarrassing now, knowing that he’s convinced that she’s the vulnerable one in all this, but she does need that answer. For some reason. A reason that is definitely rational. “Did you know that we…?”
“Oh, I…” He hums like he’s searching for a diplomatic answer to the question. “Only when you… and I…”
“So it was my fault.”
“Not at all. I was—”
“Didn’t think you were the type of man to… Then, suppose I did think, or I wouldn’t’ve…” She tilts her head back, resting it on the seat of the chair behind her, partly from exhaustion and partly from a fear of what would happen if she looked him in the eye.
“And now?” he asks.
“I’m not sure.”
“Of course.” He’s being too kind, maybe because he’s a gentleman or maybe (most likely, Daphne decides on the basis of recent events) because he thinks she’s not as smart as he is, but he’s being kind, and Daphne wishes more than anything that he’d stop.
She says, “We really didn’t do anything.” Vaguely, Daphne recognizes his interruption (“Daphne, I—”), then goes on anyway. “You know, a kiss between friends. Bit more involved than I’m used to, but what else? Hands may’ve gotten a bit off track, but whose haven’t?”
“Mine haven’t.”
“Don’t know if you’d still want to say that, Dr. Crane.”
“Of course,” he says again. “They hadn’t. Past tense. And now they have, and my marriage is in shambles, and I certainly can’t tell Frasier or Dad or— I won’t be able to come to his apartment. How do I explain that? You spend one night in my home and suddenly— They’ll know in an instant.”
Daphne can’t help but look up. “This a pattern for you?” she asks, and she’s almost hoping the answer is yes. No, scratch almost. She’s really hoping the answer is yes. Because she can’t be interested in a man with a wandering eye. Not a wandering eye with a passport filled up faster than Mrs. Crane’s, anyhow. And she doesn’t want to be interested in Dr. Crane, no matter how much she liked kissing him.
“No, no, oh, God, no,” he says, because tonight clearly isn’t Daphne’s night. He seems ready to say more, which Daphne hopes will be something unforgivable. But tonight, again, is not Daphne’s night. He looks outside and takes off his jacket. “Would you wear this?” he asks, bringing up a number of unfortunate realities.
“And didn’t I say—”
“No, no, I didn’t—” Dr. Crane seems to regret this choice of words. “It’s cold here,” he revises, “in the house, um, particularly when it rains, and with you in so little...”
“Seems a bit like you’re implying something.”
“Oh. No, I— That was—”
“Just having some fun,” Daphne says, not entirely sure that she is. “Too fresh?”
“No, ah—Hm.” He pauses, and Daphne is forced to spend the intervening seconds guessing whether he’ll actually keep talking this time. He does: “No, I think we’ve passed the point of forwardness.”
“Soon, I mean.”
“Even better. Ten minutes?” A weak laugh. Hideously weak. “Lifetimes away.”
“All right, then,” she says. He hesitates. Daphne nods. And just like this, they are near each other again. He could lay the jacket over her shoulders. Could even hold it out for her, the way he’s done before, so that she could slip her arms inside. He doesn’t. Not this time. Daphne takes it by the collar and puts it on herself. Dr. Crane folds his hands.
It’s quiet, the way it was before, and Daphne refuses to be surprised again. She says, “I don’t have to keep working for your father.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Well, you may remember where you—”
“I remember. I mean—“ He frowns. “No, that is what I mean. You know, you really should—”
And there’s plenty that Daphne knows she should do, but she doesn’t care to be reminded, so she says, “I suppose you’re right. But that’s just the point, isn’t it? I’m going to be walking around your brother’s place, and you’ll stop by, and we’ll say hello and all that, but then what? I—” She considers redirecting the thought, then decides against it. “I don’t mean to imply anything by this, Dr. Crane, but I was getting to appreciate your company.”
“Were you?”
“Wouldn’t have come here tonight if I wasn’t,” she says. Whispers, really, if she’s honest with herself, but she’d really rather not be because, being honest, she has to admit that it’s hard to take something like that platonically.
“Ah,” he says, and Daphne swears he heard it too, because he’s nearly smiling now. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“I just don’t think it would be wise to hang about where you’re likely to drop in, after something so…” There isn't a word she can use here that doesn't mean admitting that she knew what she was doing. She doesn't use any.
“Yes?” he asks, which feels a bit hypocritical given his history. She hadn’t asked him what he’d meant after all, and not for lack of wanting.
“It doesn’t matter. I just— You know I would never mean any offense, but you can be a bit sensitive sometimes.”
For a moment, he sounds like himself again, which means that he sounds like his brother, and Daphne thinks it's over. “I’d hardly—” he says, but he doesn't continue. “No, no, you’re right, of course. I can. But to think of you... giving up your life over one indiscretion…”
“I’d say it was more than one.”
“Of course, yes, I…” He hums again, and Daphne’s back to waiting for him to say something, even if it’s not honest. Maybe especially. He doesn’t.
She says, “You think I should keep working with your father, then?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“It sounded like you were trying to convince me—”
“Daphne?”
“What?”
“Do you plan on staying?”
“Tonight?” she asks, not sure if this is the question she’d like it to be. “I haven’t got much of a choice, have I?”
“No, no, I mean…”
“Forever,” Daphne suggests.
Dr. Crane presses his lips together. He looks painfully like himself like this. Then, he’s been himself the whole night, and Daphne knows that, she really knows that, but it’s harder like this. No way to maintain the illusion now. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t see how I could.”
“It would be difficult, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s not that I… I just think— With you…”
“With me, yes. Could I—?” He adjusts his posture so that it almost looks relaxed, except for the way it happens—almost spasmodically. “There’s been something on my mind recently.”
“Yes?”
“When I— When you came here, tonight, and you…” He frowns, like he doesn’t quite know what to say. “Daphne,” he decides. “You have a lovely name. Do you hear that often? Daphne. A naiad, wasn’t she? Daphne. Then, maybe I’ve been a bit on the Dionysian side tonight.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s the first time either of them have said it since. Daphne doesn’t know what it means. Doesn’t know if he’s apologizing for more than a misunderstanding. “I’m avoiding the point,” he says and runs a hand through his hair. The gesture lends a sort of exhaustion to his appearance, so that his exhale feels heavier than it is.”You really don’t suppose we’ll be able to forget this?” he asks.
“It’d be easier if we didn’t see each other as much, but…”
“You said, before I… Before we… This… You said that you wanted—” And, God, she finally knows where this is going, and she hates every bit of it, because she still feels so terribly close to him. Still wants someone to love her the way she thought he loved Mrs. Crane but can’t possibly love Mrs. Crane because if he did he wouldn’t have done what they’ve done, wouldn’t be saying what he’s saying. And the part of her that’s still crashing from the breakup believes him. Believes that it could be him. Wants it to be, even.
But Daphne isn’t stupid and certainly not as stupid as he must think she is, so she says, “You shouldn’t.”
“I know that, but I—” and she can feel him saying it now, and she can feel herself believing him even though she shouldn’t. And it’s not just the part of her that’s been broken up with, or the part of her that hasn’t had decent sex in six months, or the part of her that’s stuck in some childish romantic daydream. It’s just Daphne. Wanting him to tell her what he can’t possibly mean. He stops himself. He looks at her for too long, with the eyes she never noticed until tonight. He sighs. “You know,” he says, and Daphne knows the moment has passed, “you’re right. I shouldn’t. It’s late, and I’ve embarrassed myself quite enough, so… Our rooms aren’t the most comfortably furnished, I’m afraid, and, under present circumstance, I can hardly imagine… Where would you like to sleep?”
Daphne doesn’t let herself answer foolishly.
scenario 406. Here is everything that goes better than Niles predicted: Daphne is not horrified. She does not immediately flee the scene, does not reach for the phone to book the next flight back to Manchester, does not so much as flinch when he asks her. She just looks at him with the eyes about which Niles has sworn to himself he will no longer wax poetic, presses together the lips about which Niles has sworn to himself he will no longer fantasize, and nods. It could almost pass for assent.
And then she says, “You’re married.”
And this is technically true, but he says, “Separated,” because there isn’t much else he can say with the potential to right this minor detail.
“Still married,” she says, and, really, she’s right, but, really, there is very little Niles can do about this at the moment, and he doubts Daphne will still be available the next.
So he says,“I suppose I am, aren’t I?” and waits for what is probably not entirely enough time before continuing. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“You are.” She exhales in a way that almost sounds like a laugh.
“I know. I meant the other question.”
“I thought I did,” she says. There’s no way for Niles to convince himself that she’s laughing this time.
But he’s committed to his optimistic streak, even as he watches her settle onto the arm of the couch, back toward him, so he says, “Oh?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. Her voice is clear even though he can’t see her face. Insistent. “You’re married.”
“Separated,” he corrects.
“And married.”
“And married, yes But, if, hypothetically, I were no longer married—“
Daphne turns back to face him. “You’re going to divorce your wife?”
“It’s a possibility. That’s why we’re speaking hypothetically.”
“Right,” she says. She’s facing the kitchen again, meaning Dad’s chair is the logical place to sit if he hopes to conduct anything resembling a normal human conversation. He sits instead on the cushion nearest her, functionally eliminating the possibility, and Daphne says, “Well, you’d be divorced.”
“Yes, that’s typically how it works.”
“You think I’d date a man right after his divorce?”
“Well, perhaps if he—”
“He needs time,” she says, and this really is better than Niles predicted—not because it’s not a no, and not because it suggests that there is maybe, someday the possibility of a yes, but because she means that she loves him.
But Niles cannot say, “I love you, too,” because she hasn’t actually said that she loves him, and, even if she had, that may be moving at something of a brisk pace given circumstance. So he says, “Yes, I suppose he does,” because this is the nearest he can get. Daphne, evidently, appreciates the gesture, because she shifts properly this time, a full ninety degrees, so that neither of them has to contort to see the other.
“So,” Niles says, “and this is still hypothetical, of course—if we suppose that I—that he—were divorced, and he’d been divorced for some time, and he’s completely over Maris—his wife, I mean… Would you…?”
Daphne grins and it is, for a moment, as if nothing has changed between them. As if they’re still dancing, or talking about her brothers, or watching the last half of The Shop Around the Corner. “You’re asking if I’d ever date a man who’s been married before?”
“Yes.”
“Any man?” she asks. In another, better world, the first half of their conversation has not happened at all, and Daphne is asking this hopefully, longing for Niles to at last say how he feels. But in this world, which naturally is worse, Niles has already said it, and Daphne has already declined. No, not declined. Something softer, enough to make Niles go on.
“Well,” he says, “hypothetically, say it were me.”
Daphne smiles again. “In this hypothetical,” she says, “did this man—did you—did you ask me, while you were married? Say, three hours after I’ve been dumped?”
“Yes,” Niles says, finally as ashamed as expected to be the moment he spoke. “He’s exactly the same person. Purely for the purposes of the hypothetical, of course.”
“Right.” There are roughly forty-three ways the old Niles could describe Daphne’s eyes in this moment before devolving to the shameful-if-accurate “sparkle” and its kind, but he remains set on avoiding this pattern. In any case, it doesn’t keep him from noticing.
“You can say no,” he says, pretending it does.
“I know.”
“It won’t be the first time I’ve been rejected,” he adds.
“I know.”
“I suppose I was asking for that, wasn’t I?”
“A bit,” Daphne says. Then, just as quickly, “You’re in my spot, you know.”
“Your…?”
“I always sit where you’re at now,” she says. “Then you’re the one over. Every time you’re here. Even half an hour ago. Right where you are.”
“You sat down first.”
“Well, I thought you’d be heading out soon. Getting late and all. Wasn’t going to settle back in just for you to leave, was I?”
“Oh, um…” Niles feels suddenly aware of how this all seems, suddenly aware of how out of practice he is. He’s in her home, after all. Looking at it most simply, he has her trapped here. The realization is less than romantic. “Should I?” he asks.
“Depends on whether you’ll be staying where you’re at,” she says, apparently unaware of the gravity of the question.
“You’re kidding.”
Daphne takes on a mock-serious expression. When she speaks, there seems to be a trace of Niles’s own voice in it: “You’re not telling me you’re unschooled in the high-stakes art of couch politics.”
“Couch politics?”
“Come on. You have a brother. You’re telling me you spent all those years in the same house and you didn’t have a spot on the couch?”
Niles considers this. He didn’t. “I had a nook,” he offers.
“A nook?”
“A nook,” he says. “I was never much of a couch child.”
“Oh. Suppose that adds up, really.” She waits—for what Niles is unclear—then seems to hit upon something. “Well, you’ve got a side of the bed, at least.”
“Have I?”
“Had one, then,” Daphne corrects—an insufficient amendment given the nature of Niles’s marriage. “Scoot.”
Niles complies, shifting so that he sits exactly at the center of the cushion. Daphne sits beside him, closer to him than strictly necessary. Niles attempts to dismiss this fact. He says, “We slept apart.”
“Come on,” she says. Her right shoulder bumps up against his left. The action itself is entirely dismissible. Becoming swept up in it is entirely inevitable. “I’m not married, but I’ve got a side.”
“Have you ever considered that you’re simply a particularly territorial person?” he asks.
Daphne laughs. “Coming from the man who’s got a whole separate bedroom from his wife,” she says, and Niles resolves to take the opportunity he’s been given to redirect. “That’s rich.”
“So, ah, if I didn’t have a wife,” he says, “and I hadn’t for some time, and I happened to ask you on a date…”
“Oh.” Her voice sounds as if she has genuinely forgotten. Niles isn’t sure what to make of this, whether there is perhaps some distant possibility of normalcy between them after all. “Right.”
“You could say no,” Niles says, casually if not for the slowness of it, as if it’s the first time he’s saying it.
“Right.”
“So,” he says, decidedly less casually.
“I could say no.”
It isn’t a question, but Niles answers it like one: “Easily.”
“Long time to wait for a rejection, though, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure he’s waited longer.” And then, because the possibility is so strangely beguiling, to think that this could be over—to think that perhaps everything could return to the way it was—he says, “But it would be a no?”
“It could be,” she says, which is consuming in another way.
“But not necessarily?”
Niles watches Daphne study him, withdraws into that world of imagining himself in her place. By the time she answers, she’s directed her gaze toward the television, the pair of them reflected in its black screen, where Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart had stood just before them. “I’d have to think.”
Niles says, “Of course.”
“I’ve known him for years,” she says. Her eyes are still on the television, unfocused now. “What would it be by then? Five?”
“Something like that, yes.”
Daphne hums. The sound of it is excruciatingly mellifluous. “You know,” she says, and this is all it takes to know that what follows will be worse still, “hypothetically, don’t think it’d be a bad idea for him to get divorced.”
“Oh?”
“You know,” she says again, and this time he knows nothing at all. “Deserves someone who cares about him.”
“Ah. And that’s why you wouldn’t…?”
“I might,” she says.
“Of course,” he says.
“If it felt right.”
“That is everything, isn’t it? Feeling right,” he says and, for the first time in recent memory, keeps himself from revising the thought. “The strangest thing. For years, I thought that meant feeling comfortable.”
Daphne finally looks back to him. “You’re still comfortable with her?”
“I would be,” he says, “if this all ended, and we were still married.”
“But you don’t want that.” Her tone is indecipherable, or else Niles is resisting his need to decipher it. He resists his need to decipher the disjunctive.
“Maris doesn’t.”
“Then you do,” she says.
“Maris doesn’t.”
“Well, then it’s like I said,” Daphne tells him. “You deserve someone who cares about you.”
“I suppose I should say, ‘Maris doesn’t,’” he says.
Daphne shrugs. “Be a nice symmetry.”
“It would. I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Dr. Crane”—this is a blow all its own, but Niles supposes he can hardly expect better—“I don’t mean to be rude, but, when you say all this, you have to understand why I said what I did.”
“Of course,” he says, and he does, though he’d easily prefer the alternative. “It would be foolish of us, wouldn’t it?”
“A bit. Doesn’t mean you can’t date other women, though.” And then, with a wink, “Or something other than date, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Oh, well, I suppose so,” he says before realizing that this, perhaps, is not the best of times to ignore a gesture’s possible implications. “Of course, not— That wasn’t why I was asking—“
“You asked me on a date because you didn’t want to have sex with me?” This is fair if unanticipated, and Niles wonders just how visibly warm he’s become. Too visibly, surely.
“Ah, I, well, not— I don’t mean to—“
“Oh, I understand,” Daphne says. “Just having fun. And, speaking of, there’s this bar Roz told me about, just off Pike. She said she’d go with me, but…”
“I wouldn’t want you to cancel your plans.”
Daphne waves away the thought. “Oh, no.” She takes up an exaggerated new expression. ”’Strangest thing,’” she says, now miming the presence of a phone in her hand, as if the point couldn’t have been made without it, “‘but before I even got the chance, someone’s already gone and asked me on a date. Oh, yes, he’s gorgeous.’” (Niles makes the gallant effort to take this for the joke that it is.) “‘Anyway, I told him I was free tomorrow night…’”
scenario 421. Like this, Niles finally has sex with Daphne. And it isn’t particularly good. It isn’t bad, because it couldn’t be bad, but it isn’t good because... Well, it’s Daphne, of course, but it’s also Daphne, and the Daphne that occupies Niles’s fantasies is not quite the Daphne that he knows, and he knew this already, because he willed it to be so, but this means that, for all the years of dreaming of a woman who was nearly her, Niles is entirely unprepared for the real thing.
Of course, the Daphne-who-was-not-Daphne never was quite the same even as herself. One evening, nervous and softer than anything. The next, certain and stopping for nothing. Most recently, for the third time in eight months, speaking to him. Telling him everything he was too afraid to tell her. Everything. So that when they finally did have sex (because that was, admittedly, always the reason for this not-quite-Daphne’s appearance), it was nearly an afterthought. A pleasant afterthought—an exceedingly pleasant afterthought—but an afterthought nonetheless.
Even in all of this, it was never quite so awkward. They were never unused to each other in the fantasies, never hesitated after each first touch (before, perhaps, but never after), never seemed to be three seconds out of sync. And Daphne never kissed him like the real Daphne does. It isn’t bad, necessarily, not first-kiss bad, or even two-too-many-drinks bad (though it is nearly as messy), or, really, bad at all, except that it is, just a bit, if Niles is completely honest with himself. But mostly, and this is really about ninety-five percent of it, it’s surprising. New.
“Daphne?” he asks, and saying her name is enough to convince him that the sex was not bad or mediocre or even merely good. It was, Niles is now certain, easily the best sex two people have ever had. Not two. Any number. The best sex ever had, period.
But Daphne isn’t looking at him. She isn’t touching him. (How strange for that to be noteworthy!) She seems entirely set on forgetting everything they’ve done—already back in that borrowed dressing gown, half-sitting in his bed since returning to it, head tilted toward the ceiling. She replies anyhow: “Yes?”
“How are you?” This is not necessarily the question Niles had intended to ask, is not necessarily suave or charming—is not necessarily much of anything but strangely melodic, which is not quite the impression Niles had had in mind. But he says it, in the spirit of the day, because he can’t help but to say it with Daphne there, in his bed, looking as she does. More directly, which is to say more honestly, he says it on an impulse.
“All right,” she says. Polite. Noncommittal. “And you?”
“Similarly,” he says. “But I’d really—“
“We’ve really made a choice with this one, haven’t we?” She laughs at this, just barely, and he does, too, allowing them both the diversion.
“Yes, it seems we have.”
“Have to admit I never really thought…” Daphne sighs, and this calls to mind several events Niles expects to sustain him for at least the next decade. “You know. Us.”
“And now that we have…”
“Bit funny, isn’t it?” she says.
Niles considers this. Of all the words he has prepared for this occasion, funny was never among them. Still, it’s preferable to many of the alternatives, particularly given how readily mistake springs to mind. “Yes.”
“Never thought you’d be—” Daphne wrinkles her nose, conveying an emotion Niles can’t quite interpret. “Well, I suppose that means I must’ve thought about how you’d actually be, but… What about you?”
“You’re asking me if I ever thought about—?”
At this, Daphne relaxes slightly and turns to her side, resting her head in her right hand. Relief at her apparent lack of repulsion aside, Niles wishes Daphne would have waited, this being quite easily the moment at which he would least like to face her. Nearly smiling now, she says, “Sex. With me.”
“I don’t—”
“Oh, come on,” she says, still painfully buoyant. (Niles thinks she will touch him again, but her arm stops short of his.) “No reason to be embarrassed now, if you have.”
“Isn’t there?” he asks, for he has come up with fifteen in the time since her asking.
“So you have?”
“Well,” Niles starts, but it’s obviously futile. “Oh, I suppose you’re right. Yes. I have.”
“You always have been a flatterer,” she says. “So, did I measure up?”
And he says, “Oh.”
Daphne echoes him, dropping her voice: “‘Oh.’” She laughs. “Suppose I spoke a bit soon there.”
The answer, most honestly, the thrill of saying her name aside, is no because four years of trying to substitute fantasies of someone for an actual sex life makes for somewhat unrealistic expectations. The answer, somewhat honestly, is that, yes, in terms of his actual sex life with actual women who existed for longer than thirty minutes at a time, Daphne was... Daphne was... “Oh, well, I—”
“It’s all right if I didn’t,” she says before he has the chance to further embarrass them both. “I mean, wouldn’t be the kindest thing for you to say to me after… Do you have any more of that pineapple?”
“Oh, um, let me— Did we finish it?”
“I’m not sure. Got a bit swept up in the moment, I suppose.”
“Right,” he says, but any grasp he had once had on his composure has vanished. “I’ll— Actually, I don’t know that it would still be particularly— You know, sitting out. I could make you something?”
Daphne laughs until it fades into a sigh. “With all due respect,” she says, “I’ve seen the kind of dinner you serve your dates.”
Because now seems an inappropriate time to confess that, in fact, he had never had any intention of inviting anyone else for dinner that night, Niles says nothing, and Daphne accepts the invitation to continue.
“It’s for the best, really. Can’t imagine sitting in this heat with an oven going as well.”
“It doesn’t have to be—“
Daphne stands. “I’m going to take a look,” she says.
“For what?”
“See whether we’ve left any pineapple. Is it all right if I bring it back here?”
Since his separation, Niles has adopted a stricter policy with regard to eating in the bedroom, figuring that, when living alone, such an allowance could only lead to his regression into the worst sort of bachelor. Also, he no longer pays someone to wash his sheets. Both of these points, however, feel increasingly trivial in the context of recent events. “Certainly.”
And with this, Daphne is past the doorway, and Niles is alone, and he supposes he’ll have to get used to that feeling again, once the awkwardness of their own situation outweighs the abrasiveness of the other. And just as quickly, she’s back, and Niles makes an effort to indulge in this more pleasant reality while it lasts.
“Anyway,” she says, settling into the bed with the platter a bit more precariously than Niles had hoped, “back to what I was saying. I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t…”
“Oh.” This is an unfortunate redevelopment, as Niles had hoped that her own diversion had been sufficient in turning the topic of conversation elsewhere. “Are you still—?” he asks.
“Well, when you’re working that hard to keep from answering, can’t help wondering—“
Niles attempts a redirection of his own. “Drawing comparisons is…”
Daphne takes a bite of pineapple, and the silence between this moment and her reply does nothing to conceal the flaccidity of this attempt. “You did, anyway. More than.”
“Oh,” Niles says, deciding to overlook the less-than-complimentary implications of this formulation. This afternoon’s developments aside, he is not a man terribly accustomed to such good fortune; no other reactions are in his repertoire.
“It is all right if I say that, isn’t it?”
“Of course. I— Does that mean you—?” he asks. He means, Does that mean you intend to do this again? but saying it aloud seems to be crossing one too many a boundary, so he refrains.
“Do you?” she asks, presumably meaning the same.
“Well, we’d have to be more—” Careful, he thinks, but they were careful. Particularly him. Particularly in a way he would really rather he hadn’t been. “Today, we were—” Reckless, he thinks, but they weren’t reckless. They progressed in the smallest of steps, and they both knew it, well before it happened, and the real risk of recklessness is whatever he’s about to say knowing that he wants it to happen again. “We shouldn’t—” He reaches for a strawberry.
“But you’d like to,” Daphne says.
Thinking this is dangerous and saying it worse, but Niles does think it. He does want it, and more desperately than before, but more desperately still, he does not want to lose whatever they had that made her want to stay with him. “Only if you would.”
“You can say you’d like to without qualifying it, you know. If you would, that is.”
“I wouldn’t want to overstep,” Niles says, as if he could have reached this point by any other stride. (The strawberry in his hand is still uneaten. There are several versions of Niles that would choose to weave this into a less-than-artful metaphor.)
“All right,” Daphne says. Niles, at this moment, finally takes a bite from the strawberry, and he feels her eyes on her as he does. He hears the way her voice drops when she says, “I think I would.”
“You would?”
She laughs. “What, just being polite?”
“God, no.” This is too much. Niles knows it before he’s finished saying it, but the afternoon has already rewarded his imprudence; he has a streak going. “I— No. I— So… Hm. What would you like? From… this, I mean.”
“Oh, I’m an adult, I can handle—“
“I wouldn’t ask you to handle—”
“All right,” Daphne says. “Usually go on a few dates before sleeping with someone, but I suppose we’re past that, so the next best—“
Niles has imagined a few hundred too many ways of formulating the question to be beaten to asking it. He says, “Would you like to go on a date?”
“I wasn’t asking for that.“
“What were you asking?”
“I wasn’t asking anything.”
“What would you like?”
“Well, I’ve already told you, haven’t I?”
“Would you remind me?”
“I’d like you to stop asking me what I’d like,” she says, and Niles remembers suddenly that it was an argument that brought her here. “I’d like you to tell me what you’d like.”
“Well, if it isn’t overstepping…”
Daphne sounds almost annoyed, replying too soon and too briefly: “It isn’t.”
“I’m afraid my motivations today haven’t been entirely pure.”
“I noticed that when—”
“No, no, after that. I— This isn’t entirely how I planned to tell you…”
Daphne’s face softens. She speaks more slowly than she has in months: “You’ve been wanting to tell me something?”
“Yes. For some time. I just can’t seem to say it.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve been a wonderful friend to me lately.”
“If I was really that bad, you could just tell me.”
“No,” Niles says, the inappropriateness of his long-practiced admission only now occurring to him. “No. It’s— It isn’t that. I couldn’t say it, before, because you had been such a good friend, but we…”
“You can say that we’ve ruined it,” she says.
“We’ve taken a risk.”
“We don’t have to keep doing this.”
“I— Of course not, no. I was— I’d like to go on a date. With you.”
“You really don’t have to do that.”
“I’m not—“
“You know, you’ve always been such a gentleman to me.” Daphne licks the pineapple juice from her fingers, and Niles can imagine nothing further from the truth. Then, his imagination is otherwise occupied. “Even today. Especially, really. But it’s not the same, something like this. Don’t have to ask me just because we’ve had sex.”
“I’m not.”
“Dr. Crane—“
“Please, call me—“
Daphne doesn’t acknowledge his interruption. “I’ve seen the kind of women you date.”
“Who are you—?” Niles tries without success to work through the steps that led her here. “There’s Maris, Adelle…”
“That’s just what I mean, though.” She offers a wry smile and another strawberry. Niles accepts. “No one like me there, is there?”
“That’s certainly true.”
“So, you’re expecting me to believe that, after all that, you’re going to start dating me?”
“Not dating, necessarily,” Niles says, reasoning that it would be in bad taste to detail just why such a departure might be welcome. “We could start with one. You— I seem to remember you having a fondness for first dates.”
“I do,” she says. “You don’t.”
“I don’t. I was hoping that this one might be different.”
“And if it is?”
“A second, maybe.” With an intention that embarrasses him the moment he does it, Niles takes another strawberry as he continues. “A third. Fourth. Fifth…”
“Sounds like we’d be dating.”
“We could,” he says. “Eventually.”
“And until then, what?”
Cautiously (and probably too optimistically), Niles says, “We could keep…”
“We could.”
“Is that—?”
“Yes.”
“Are you—?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” At Daphne’s grin, Niles rushes to amend this. “I don’t usually say— Not that I’m frequently— Being recently separated— But you… I— I’m sorry.”
“I like that,” Daphne says. “’Thank you.’ It’s sweet.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you.”
“Second one’s not quite the same.”
“Ah. I don’t suppose it ever is.”
“Could always get it out of the way now.”
“Oh.” Niles knows he must say more than this, knows that Daphne is already rounding the corners of her mouth to imitate him if he doesn’t. He says the only thing he can both think and bear to say: “You called me Dr. Crane earlier.”
“I’m not doing that while we’re having sex,” Daphne says. “Last time I— Oh, well, never mind that, but—”
“I don’t want you to do that.”
“Too ethical for a bit of roleplay?” This feels like something of a turn, but Niles is still too dazed by Daphne’s earlier suggestion to voice it.
“As it happens,” Niles says instead, then considers this, too. Realistically, he concludes, this is a far more generous interpretation of the request than he deserves and certainly less pathetic than the reality. “Something like that, yes.”
“Well, don’t worry. It’s nothing I’m after.” When Daphne speaks again, her voice has lost its firmness: “Why’d you bring it up, anyway?”
“I— We’re— This isn’t just sex?”
“I think ‘just’ is a bit unfair.”
“No, I mean… No, it doesn’t… Would you call me Niles?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“I’m sorry?” Niles says.
“I mean, when we’re alone, that’s one thing, but if I start doing it then, I’m liable to start slipping it in other places, and, before you know it, it’ll be in front of your father. And how’d I explain that? I know we’ve been a bit friendlier as of late—”
“I think we may have passed by friendly sometime this afternoon.”
“Well, that’s just my point, isn’t it?” she says. “I spend a few evenings alone with you in four years, and all of a sudden I’m calling you by your first name.”
“And you don’t want to tell them?” Niles asks.
“Tell my boss I’ve been sleeping with his brother?”
“Ah,” Niles says, the general configuration of their relationship at last settling in. “I suppose not. Then, I believe your use of the present perfect continuous would imply something of a more extended arrangement, at which point it may be appropriate to use the word ‘dating.’”
“You know, I really don’t know that I’m sure about that.”
“Oh. Of course.” (And it really is what he had expected all along.) “I certainly wouldn’t want to rush— Of course, to some extent we already have, but—”
“It’s just—“ Daphne pauses. Niles watches the movement of her eyes until they meet his. She continues: “It all seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? The two of us. Dating, I mean. Not that I’d planned on this happening either, but I can’t even imagine where we’d go.”
“Where would you like to go?”
part three.
how it starts.
scenario 117. Daphne puts on Mrs. Crane’s negligee because it fits and she’s never touched anything so soft and possibly also because she really needs the reminder that she’s worth something. Beside Dr. Crane, she feels it. Every time he speaks, she feels it more and she likes him more and she comes closer and closer to doing something reckless. He does it first.
scenario 406. It’s just them in the living room again, in spite of Frasier’s best efforts. Daphne had surprised them all, earlier in the evening, and asked if, so long as it’s not too much trouble, Niles might want to stay and chat a bit, and Niles had said no, of course not, it couldn’t possibly be any trouble at all. By the time Niles gets the courage, they are dancing again, the way they haven’t since last winter, not-quite-there but not-quite-drunk on Frasier’s most mediocre wine. Before he speaks, before Daphne can feel his hands shaking, Niles pulls them apart.
scenario 421. The heat wraps them up, and Niles is trying to remember that old letter about summer and lethargy and something else, trying to forget each look that Daphne gives him, but he can’t do either. It’s too much, with the two of them so close, her smelling of his soap, wearing his dressing gown. It’s inevitable. She’s the one who acts first, in the end, the one who finally says it. She says it like it’s something rational, like she’s the one who has to worry about being rejected: “You know, Dr. Crane, if we’re both feeling the same way, and there really is just the one solution…” He finishes the sentence for her.