Dumping Billy (9 page)

“Bina, don’t be silly. This isn’t about manicures. So what happened next? Did you pitch a fit?”

Bina began to cry again. “That’s the worst part,” she said, gulping back her tears. “I didn’t do anything. It was Jack, Jack who—”

The phone rang again. Kate stepped over and looked at the handset and saw that it was Elliot’s cell. “Wait a minute,” she told Bina, who ignored her anyway. Kate picked up the phone.

“Okay. Don’t worry about a thing,” came Elliot’s voice. “We’ve got the situation under control. Brice and I are on our way with bagels, cream cheese, and lox. We also have two pints of hand-packed Häagen-Dazs,” he added. “Rocky Road and Concession Obsession. And that’s not all. I have a couple of ten-milligram Valium that Brice ‘borrowed’ from his mother’s medicine cabinet. We’re the rescue squad. Don’t try to get in our way. Besides, we’re practically at your door.”

“Elliot, this is serious,” Kate admonished.

“That’s why Brice and I took half a day off from work. Well, that and intense curiosity.”

“The two of you are gossipmongers,” Kate said.

“You betcha. Don’t let Bina say another word until we get there, because even though I’m a social idiot, Brice knows how to fix up anything that’s interpersonal. I hang the shelves.”

Kate found herself holding a dead phone and looking at her almost dead friend. Maybe some food, ice cream, muscle relaxants, and diversions were just what she needed. But first she had to get the rest of the story.

“Was that Jack?” Bina asked.

“No,” Kate admitted. She sat down again. “Tell me what happened next.” And then the doorbell rang.

Chapter Nine

I
t’s Jack!” Bina shouted, and virtually levitated off the sofa. “Oh, my God! It’s Jack and look what I look like!”

“It isn’t Jack,” Kate told her, and watched Bina struggle with both relief and disappointment simultaneously. “It’s Elliot. He’s the only one who can get into the building without my having to buzz. He has a key to the downstairs door.”

Kate went to the tiny foyer and looked through the safety peephole. There was Elliot, smiling and gesturing to Brice, who was beside him and holding up the promised goodie bag. Reluctantly, Kate turned the knob and opened the door. If she didn’t do it, the guys would come in anyway—Elliot had a spare set of keys for emergency purposes (like the time Kate locked her purse in the office and got halfway home before she noticed), and he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

Kate opened the door, and Elliot and Brice almost tumbled in. “Is she okay?” Elliot whispered.

“No,” Kate told him.

“Well, is she better?” Brice asked.

“No,” Kate repeated.

“Then it’s a good thing we came,” Elliot said.

“I told you,” Brice responded, and then the three of them stepped into the living room, like all those clowns emerging from a tiny car at the circus. At least it felt like a circus to Kate.

“Oh, Bina! You poor girl,” Elliot said, and flew across the living room to sit beside her in Kate’s one good chair.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Brice said, and began unpacking the shopping bag onto Kate’s coffee table. “What’s the last thing you ate? And when was it?”

Bina, a bit dazed, tried to answer him. “Well, I thought I was going to eat last night with Jack, but then I never finished the meal. I was too upset. Then I couldn’t find Kate. I remember having some vodka. . . .”

“Well, you need one of these,” Elliot said, and took out a waxed-paper parcel and handed it to her.

She opened it up. Kate winced at the poppy seeds that went rolling off the bagel, and onto the sofa, the floor, the rug, and places that wouldn’t be found for months to come. “Oh, I can’t eat,” Bina said.

“You have to keep up your strength,” Elliot told her.

Kate nodded. “It would be good for you to have some breakfast,” she coaxed. “Just take a bite.”

Brice nodded, moved to the foot of the sofa, sat down, and rearranged Bina’s feet so they were on his lap and covered with the quilt. “Now, just tell Uncle Brice all about it,” he said, his voice a combination of mockery and sincerity.

“I can’t believe yesterday was supposed to be your big night and nothing happened,” Elliot said. “You must be so distraught.” At that point Kate realized she was fairly distraught herself; she took a throw pillow from the sofa and sank to the floor on it beside the coffee table.

“Tell me about it! I thought Jack was nervous. Like he was making sure the ring was still safe. Jack Weintraub was finally going to propose to me, and he was nervous. You know, he’s such a perfectionist—Barbie said he insisted on a perfect stone: flawless D color.”

“Flawless D!” Brice said approvingly.

“Right. See? I love him for a reason. He knows things. He wants things right. And I thought he wanted me to be happy. So I was happy, and I decided to forget about Tokyo Rose.”

“Oh, forget the hostess,” Kate pressed. “Unless he asked
her
to marry him. You didn’t fight over her, did you?”

“We didn’t fight at all,” Bina protested. “I was a little upset about the dragon lady—it just isn’t like Jack to flirt with strange women—but I couldn’t have loved him more. Anyway, he raised his glass of champagne, and I think he was about to make a toast when he realized I didn’t have a glass. So he tried to get a waiter or a waitress, and they were nowhere to be seen. So Jack says he has to go to the men’s room and on the way he’ll order me a drink. But I think he might have been looking for the hostess. . . .”

“Her and many like her, the man-whore,” said a heated Brice. “I just hate it when a man—”

“Hey. Don’t make this personal,” Elliot said, cutting him off with a meaningful look.

“Focus, darling,” Kate said, touching Bina’s face. Kate was quickly losing hope that a simple phone call before Jack got on the plane might put things right.

“Okay. So he excused himself and headed for the men’s room. I watched him walk away from the table. I couldn’t help thinking he was so handsome.”

“I know. Men are so cute from behind,” said Brice.

Bina nodded solemnly. “I mean, people are like ‘Jack is just ordinary,’ but that’s what I like about him,” she continued, either ignoring or oblivious to the sexual connotation of Brice’s comment. It seemed to Kate as though Bina were bonding with Brice the way she did with her girlfriends. “Jack reminds me of the Goldilocks story,” Bina went on. “He’s not too tall or too short, he isn’t too skinny or too fat, he isn’t too handsome or too ugly. He’s just right,” she said. “At least just right for me.” Then she realized anew where she was and what had happened. “He
was
just right, but I wasn’t just right for him. Maybe it’s me that’s ordinary.”

“Oh, Bina,” Kate said, and put her arm around her friend, squeezing tightly. “You’re not ordinary.” That might not have been totally true, but that she was at the very least Jack’s equal was a sure thing. Kate had never met anyone more ordinary than Jack. “What happened then?”

“Jack was gone for a little while. So finally that stupid hostess came back and asked me if I wanted a drink. I told her that my boyfriend was getting me something, and she said, ‘Your boyfriend? He said this was a business meeting. Otherwise I would have given him a more private table.’”

“The bitch!” Elliot and Brice said simultaneously.

“Yeah. The beautiful, thin, exotic bitch,” Bina agreed bitterly.

“This is not productive,” Kate said. No matter what the story was, she was going to be sure they didn’t criticize Jack too much, because when he and Bina patched things up—and they would—Bina would forever remember any criticism. Kate had learned that lesson the hard way with Bev, before she married Johnny. “Bina, you are so beautiful. Any guy in the world would be lucky to share the same air as you,” she told her friend, and meant it. Every bit of Bina’s soul was generous and giving. Her heart was loyal and loving. And she had an adorable, round little face and a curvy figure. Kate stroked Bina’s dark, shiny hair. What the hell was wrong with Jack? It must have been a panic attack. Commitment was a very frightening prospect. “Didn’t you tell me just last week that Jack said he found you beautiful in so many ways?”

“Honey,” Brice said with a tilt of his head, “greeting cards can tell you that.”

“No, he said I was too beautiful and too good for him,” Bina corrected.

“Uh-oh,” Brice and Elliot said again in unison, and exchanged a look.

Kate gestured to them behind Bina’s head. “Well, anyway, Bina, you
are
beautiful, and I am sure Jack still feels the same way.”

“Yeah? You haven’t heard the end of the story,” Bina said.

“We’re trying to,” Kate told her, attempting not to snap.

“Go on. Get it all out,” Elliot advised.

“Well, of course I was hating this . . . woman.” Bina paused, and Kate was pleased that she didn’t stoop to any slur. “So I told her to go away. Jack finally came back with my drink and said—and you won’t believe this.” Bina mimicked Jack’s deep Brooklyn baritone voice: “‘I looked at you from across the room. You looked good from over there.’ Was that a compliment or a diss?”

Kate pursed her lips but refrained from speaking. It seemed clear that her theory was right—Jack needed distance in both senses to see Bina. But up close and intimate, his anxiety paralyzed him. If only he could have stayed at the bar and proposed by cell phone, Kate thought ruefully.

“I just gave him a look,” Bina continued.

“And what did he do?”

“Well, I think he saw my reaction. He asked if something was wrong. He sounded so sincere, so concerned, that I felt bad, and I figured I had to let up on the poor guy. I thought he was a nervous wreck about proposing. Also, to tell the truth, Jack has never been . . . well, let’s just say he’s careful with his money.”

“Oh, hell,” Brice said. “Let’s say he’s cheap.” Bina opened her eyes wide, and for a moment Kate thought her friend was going to giggle.

“Go on,” Kate said.

“Well, I just shook my head and suggested that we make a toast. And all he said was, ‘To us.’ I waited for more, you know, like ‘And to our future as Mr. and Mrs. Jack Weintraub, the perfect married couple,’ but there was nothing more.” A tear slid down her cheek, and Brice took her hand.

“So?” Kate prompted. She wondered what time Jack’s plane was actually taking off, whether he planned to be on it, whether he had called the Horowitz household, whether he had called his cousin Max across the hall.

“Then he said he really wished he didn’t have to take this trip, but said some of that stuff about markets misbehaving. So I suggested that in the future maybe we’d make the trips together.”

“What did he say to that?” Kate asked.

“Well, of course then the waitress shows up before he can answer. Just my luck. And you know it takes Jack a long time to order. And then he has to make sure none of the things on his plate are going to touch any of the others.”

Kate had forgotten about that phobia. She nodded to Bina.

“So we had our drink, and it seemed that the dinner was going fine until I told him how much I was going to miss him. I mean, that’s okay to say, right? The guy is going away for months and it’s halfway around the world. Jack and I haven’t been separated by more than ten miles since we first started dating.”

“Really?” Brice asked. “That’s so romantic!”

“It’s true, right, Kate? She was there the night Max—you know, Kate’s neighbor who now lives across the hall—had the party where I met Jack.”

Kate rolled her eyes. Bina had a habit of playing what her friends called “Jewish geography.” Kate had gotten her apartment because Bina’s brother knew Jason, the building owner’s son, from summer camp and he had told Bina, who had told Kate about it. Kate got the place. Later she and Bina had been invited to a Manhattan party by Bina’s brother, which had been thrown by Max at his old apartment. And Bina—on one of her infrequent trips across the East River—met Jack, Max’s cousin, there. . . . Well, it could go on endlessly, between Hebrew schools, summer camps, bar mitzvahs, weddings, cousins, and on and on and on.

“The weird thing is we had grown up together in Brooklyn just six blocks from each other, but we were introduced for the first time that night, and we haven’t been apart since. I mean, he took me out for a drink after the party and asked me out for the next night. And that weekend he came over for dinner with my parents and brother and . . . well, there we were, saying good-bye to each other for a very long time. So I thought it was appropriate to say I would miss him. And I thought it would be good to kind of, you know, get him started. I mean, we were finished with our appetizers and entrées. Did I have to wait until he popped the question?”

“Men spook easily,” Brice offered. “I remember the time when Ethan Housholder told me—”

“Not now, Brice,” Kate interjected.

“Right, sorry. Continue, honey.”

Kate had to admit that Bina couldn’t have two more sympathetic listeners than Brice and Elliot. And sometimes simply talking was the best therapy. But then, just when she thought they had gotten safely out of the water, Bina began to cry again. Elliot’s soft pats and Brice’s coos of sympathy only made it worse.

“Well, it was like all the color drained out of his face. And then he said, ‘Bina, you know I have to be in Hong Kong for almost five months, and that’s not going to be easy.’ He kept touching his breast pocket, and the tension was almost overwhelming. I couldn’t help but think, Here it comes. Then he just sat there. I wanted to scream,
Why don’t you just take the damn thing out of there and ask me to marry you?
But, nothing. The man just sat there and then looked down and finished eating his fucking chicken Rangoon.”

Chapter Ten

W
hat did you do?” Elliot asked.

Kate was afraid that she would hear that Bina had become hysterical, attacked Jack physically, made a huge scene, or something even more dramatic. But Bina surprised her.

“I went to the ladies’ room, of course.”

“Of course,” Brice agreed. “I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could go there myself.”

“So, anyway . . . ,” Bina continued. She opened her eyes wide and they glazed over, as if she could see the scene replaying itself.