I'm So Happy for You (7 page)

“That was pretty obvious,” said Adam.

“How did you know?!” asked Wendy, an octave higher than normal. Just like Daphne. (She was still shocked by how well her husband
could tell what she was thinking, even when he didn’t appear to know she was alive.)

“Because you’ve been moping around the house ever since you woke up,” he answered. “And now you’re upset that Daphne found
another married guy to buy her some heinous ankle bracelet from Tiffany’s.”

“It was a regular bracelet, not an ankle bracelet!”

“Same thing.”

“You’re such a Mr. Potato Head,” declared Wendy. But now she was laughing, too—laughing and dabbing at her eyes with the backs
of her hands and nestling into the crook of Adam’s arm, and thinking that things weren’t so bad after all. Daphne Uberoff
wasn’t such a bad friend. Adam Schwartz wasn’t such a bad husband, either. (She loved their private, nonsensical language,
too.) And if there wasn’t much romance left to their romance—and he didn’t currently earn a living wage—he had a special talent
for making upsetting things seem amusing. And that was something—really, more than something.

And when she woke before dawn, as she frequently did, her mind agitating preemptively with the dread of being unable to fall
back asleep—moreover, of feeling that she’d never make up the hours, never catch up—she’d press her chest and belly into the
back of his T-shirt, letting his body warm hers and his heartbeat reset her own.

“And you’re my special Pope Wen,” said Adam with a quick squeeze. “But can we talk about it in a few minutes?” (The show was
back on.)

The news of Daphne’s burgeoning romance spread rapidly through the social circle that she and Wendy shared, with reactions
ranging from cautious optimism to outright euphoria. The general feeling was that Jonathan, whoever he turned out to be, couldn’t
be any worse than Mitch. Wendy took no small measure of pride in knowing that she’d be the first to meet him. The four of
them (Wendy, Daphne, Adam, and Jonathan) had made plans to meet for dinner the following Thursday, at a bistro in Fort Greene.

The restaurant had been Wendy’s idea. She and Maura had eaten there several times over the summer—or at least Wendy had eaten
and Maura had watched her do so. The food was casual French. The decor was funky. The lighting was dim but not too dim. Most
significantly to Wendy, the prices were reasonable. It was also loud enough in there to fill any gaps that arose in the conversation.
(Wendy expected there might be a few.) She was further hoping that Adam would get a kick out of the waitstaff, which was composed
of extremely attractive Quebecois lesbians. Adam preferred diners to restaurants, and eating at home on the sofa while watching
TV to both. He’d also expressed “zero interest” in meeting Jonathan. And Wendy was always feeling guilty about dragging him
places, even though it seemed to her that they never went anywhere. “I really owe you one for this,” she told him as they
took their seats on what appeared to be a church pew, beneath a vintage poster for Courvoisier depicting a cancan girl in
a fur stole and nothing else.

“You can pay me back in sexual favors,” said Adam.

“There’s something in your hair,” said Wendy, ignoring the provocation.

“What?” He ran a hand through his curly mop. Several seconds later, it emerged with the crumbling remnants of a maple leaf.

“Did you and Poll go to the park today?” she asked.

“The park?” He wrinkled his brow. “No. Why?”

“I was just wondering how the leaf got there,” Wendy said, shrugging.

Adam shrugged, too, as he ground the remains of the leaf into his hand. “Must have fallen from the sky,” he said. He took
a sip from his water glass. He looked around. Then he said, “Damn, the waitresses are really hot here. Are you sure they’re
lesbians?”

“You’re turning into a dirty old man,” said Wendy.

“Turning?” he said.

Wendy flashed back to their first date, if you could call it that. The two of them had met at his favorite coffee shop, a
hole in the wall on Thompson Street in Manhattan, where they’d sat on a bench out front, smoking cigarettes that Adam had
rolled for them in tissue-thin Drum papers and talking about their jobs (Wendy was an editorial assistant at
The Village Voice;
Adam was a production assistant at
i.Guide.com
) and their childhoods (from what Wendy could gather, Adam’s had been happier than hers). After their first kiss—later in
the hour, on that same bench—he’d turned to her and said, “It’s cool hanging out with you.” Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic
line ever uttered.

Somehow, Wendy had been touched. Somehow, she still was.

Maybe it was the distinctive way Daphne walked or, really, slinked, her hips forward, her back straight, her shoulders slightly
rounded—the lower half of her body seemed to move without the assistance of the top—but as soon as she entered any room, Wendy
had always been able to spot her. That evening was no exception. “Here they are,” she said, as the brown velvet curtain that
separated the dining room from the door billowed behind two slim figures.

Upon closer inspection, Daphne was wearing a low-cut beige tunic sweater and a pair of off-white jeans that hugged her thighs.
Her hair was dark, her skin was pale to the point of translucent, her eyes were the same color as Windex. After all these
years, her beauty still startled.

Jonathan Sonnenberg turned out to be an equally handsome specimen of Homo sapiens. He had bright brown eyes, a sculpted chin,
the same glossy black hair as Daphne, and the smooth, tan complexion of someone who’d been well taken care of in life. He
was wearing an expensive-looking navy blue suit jacket over a crisp white oxford shirt with French cuffs. His hair was parted
on the side and formed a swoosh over his forehead. As he approached the table, his mouth was raised in a smile that suggested
amusement at some larger irony to which the rest of them were unlikely ever to be privy.

“I’m so, so sorry we’re late,” Daphne began breathlessly. “We literally couldn’t find a cab anywhere!”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Wendy. She stood up to hug Daphne hello. Then she turned to Jonathan. “Hi, I’m Wendy,” she said.
“It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Jonathan Sonnenberg,” he replied while making slippery contact with her right hand. “And a pleasure it is.”

“And this is my husband, Adam Schwartz.” Wendy motioned to her right.

“Hello, and I like the T-shirt,” said Jonathan in a mocking tone.

“Thank you,” said Adam with an exaggerated smile that clearly belied offense.

Wendy felt embarrassed and vindicated in equal parts. Before dinner, she and Adam had argued over his choice of garb. Wendy
had suggested he wear a collared shirt; Adam had insisted on donning his favorite faded blue T-shirt that read “Women Love
Me, Fish Fear Me,” a memento from the summer he’d spent in Alaska after college, working on a salmon boat. The previous year,
Wendy had hid the shirt in the linen closet between two towels—with any luck, a first stop on the road to Goodwill. But Adam
had ransacked the apartment until he’d found it.

“Well, I am so happy we’re all here!” Daphne announced with her usual effusiveness. “And Wen—you look so great. I swear you
get younger looking every year.”

“Oh, please,” said Wendy, waving away the compliment even as she basked in its aura.

“I understand you’re turning twenty-eight this month,” said Jonathan.

Wendy couldn’t tell if he was flattering her or making fun of her. “Twenty-seven—please,” she answered gamely, willing to
give him the benefit of her doubt.

In time, a small woman with long bangs appeared with menus. “To drink?” she asked brusquely before they’d even had a chance
to open them.

“I’ll have a glass of the sauvignon,” said Wendy, after confirming that it was the cheapest selection on the white-wines-by-the-glass
list.

“That sounds perfect! One of those for me, too,” said Daphne—to Wendy’s relief. (Wendy had expected Daphne to order the eleven-dollar
glass of Sancerre, oblivious as she’d always been to the cost of living.)

“And I’ll have a Heineken,” said Adam.

It was Jonathan’s turn. His lips pressed together as if he were about to whistle, he reviewed the menu while Bangs lowered
her lids over her eyes—or at least what was visible of them—as if she were about to fall asleep from boredom. Finally, he
looked up and asked, “Do you have any American beer?”

“This is a French restaurant,” the waitress answered tartly. “We have no American beer.”

“But you have German beer,” Jonathan pointed out.

“I tell you—we have no American beer!” Bangs said again, this time in a shrill tone.

“No need to get hysterical, woman,” said Jonathan, slapping his menu down on the table. “I’ll just have water.”

“Perrier?”

“No, the kind that comes out of the
goddamn
faucet and I don’t have to pay for!”

“Jesus Cristo,” Adam muttered in a bad Spanish accent.

Again, Wendy felt her allegiances divided. Clearly, Jonathan was acting like a jerk. But the skinflint part of her was delighted
to hear that he was failing to add to the dinner bill. At the same time, she felt an overwhelming urge to please Daphne—if
necessary by pleasing her new boyfriend. “Don’t you guys have Sam Adams?” she asked.

“Sam Who-is-this?” Bangs squinted at her.

“Sam Adams,” Wendy said again. “The beer. I know I’ve had it here. Isn’t it on tap at the bar?”

“I will have to check.” The woman sniffed before stomping away.

After she’d gone, Wendy expected Jonathan to thank her for calling the waitress’s bluff. But he said nothing. His eyes drifted
away from the table. “So, Daphne tells me you’re a lawyer,” said Wendy, trying to draw them back.

“That is correct,” he said.

“Wills and estates?” she blurted out, for no particular reason.

“I’m a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.”

“Oh!” said Wendy, straining to think of something civil to say, possessed as she was of a deep-seated bias toward public defenders,
those champions of murderers, rapists, turnstile jumpers, and the wrongly accused alike. Finally, she came up with: “Well,
that must be exciting work. Do you get to bust Mafia dons and stuff?”

“Occasionally,” he answered.

“A few years ago I got obsessed with that tabloid story about that old guy who walked around the West Village in his bathrobe,
pretending to be insane so he wouldn’t have to stand trial. Remember him—the ‘Odd Father’?”

“The majority of my work involves the war on terror,” announced Jonathan.

Though Adam was essentially uninterested in politics, he’d found an opening. “War on terror,” he said, shaking his head as
he exhaled through his nose. “I fucking hate that phrase, man.”

Jonathan didn’t hesitate: “Are you denying that the West is engaged in a defining struggle against an international network
of fundamentalist Islamicists who exhibit no respect for human life and who would like nothing more than to wipe us off the
map?” he shot back.

There was an awkward silence. “Ohmygod—Wendy—did I tell you I got carded last week?” said Daphne. She scoped Wendy’s face
for a reaction.

“You’re kidding,” Wendy answered with somewhat less enthusiasm. (She hadn’t been carded in ten years. Which made her think
that Daphne had been lying when she told Wendy she kept getting younger looking.)

“I’m not denying anything but you being a pain in the ass,” said Adam. Wendy cringed. As obnoxious as she found Jonathan,
her fight with Daphne was still too fresh to risk alienating her all over again, if only via Adam. Nor had she forgotten the
reason for their dinner: they were there, after all, to laud Daphne in her long overdue subrogation of Mitchell Kroker for
a man who was apparently, if unfortunately, available. But Adam wasn’t finished. “Though I might also point out that the war
in Iraq has nothing to do with your death-worshipping fundamentalist Islamicists,” he continued, “since, for starts, Saddam
Hussein was a secular leader who, if not a good guy, never threatened a single American interest.”

“Hussein threatened Israel,” said Jonathan.

“So?” said Adam.

“So I told the guy, ‘You have no idea how happy you’re making a thirty-four-year-old woman right now,’ ” said Daphne, as if
her conversation with Wendy were the only one at the table. “So then—get this—I pull out my license, and it’s EXPIRED, and
the guy won’t let me in! I mean it was just BEYOND.”

“Israel’s strategic interests are America’s interests,” said Jonathan.

“Woooooooooeeee.” Adam began to laugh in a staccato-like clip. “According to who?”

“According to me.”

“What are you—the fucking secretary of state or something?”

“God, isn’t it pathetic that neither of us drive?” said Daphne.

“Totally pathetic,” said Wendy.

“Let me guess—you went to Bennington and majored in pottery,” said Jonathan.

“Wesleyan, actually,” said Adam. “And, for the record, I majored in European history.”

“And when the next holocaust comes, remind me which of your favorite
liberal
European democracies you’ll be jetting off to. Sweden? France?” Jonathan laughed knowingly.

“I’m sure as hell not heading to the country you’re living in,” said Adam.

“Jerusalem will miss you,” said Jonathan. “Or, actually, maybe it won’t.”

“Sweetie—come on,” said Daphne, stroking his arm and seemingly mortified, as well. Or was Wendy just projecting?

“Don’t worry, I’ll be in the West Bank, bulldozing some refugee camps. Oh—sorry—that will be you,” said Adam.

“The Palestinians have as much right to the West Bank as the Aborigines—another
nomadic
people, though possibly not as homicidal a one,” said Jonathan.

Daphne kept at it. “So I went to the DMV yesterday to get it renewed,” she said, turning back to Wendy. “And I swear, I stood
there waiting for, like, SIX HOURS. I mean, it was like everyone in the city was having their license renewed on the same
day!”

“That sounds hellish,” said Wendy. But she was no longer listening to Daphne. The Arab-Israeli conflict was one of the few
subjects that made her feel as if she really
was
a politically engaged creature, as opposed to one who cared mainly about celebrity baby gossip. “Honestly?” she said, turning
to Jonathan in a burst of anger and excitement. “I get so tired of people bringing up the Holocaust to justify Israel’s occupation
of the West Bank. Yes, the Palestinians have done some really odious things. But why should they have to pay for the crimes
of the Nazis?” Feeling simultaneously triumphant and terrified, Wendy turned to Adam, who squeezed her thigh approvingly.
Then she glanced back at Jonathan, whose face revealed further amusement. Finally, she looked at Daphne, whose eyes appeared
in danger of popping out of her head. Guilt and embarrassment quickly replacing giddiness, Wendy swatted at the air and announced,
“Anyway, enough politics for the night.”