Lauren Takes Leave (14 page)

From: [email protected]

Yeah, moneymaker is pretty cheesy. I prefer the term
“booty.” Also, there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned “ass” now and
then. Yours, for example, I remember it being a good old-fashioned, nice little
ass.

From: [email protected]

Not true. I have a terrible ass. In fact, you once
criticized my ass in high school for not being as round and perky as Lila Cummings’
was, like I could just go to the mall and buy a better J-Lo. FYI.

Actually, I saw Lila recently. Two kids later, and she still
has a fabulous behind. It’s not natural.

What kind of a moron debunks a myth in a guy’s head about
the shapeliness of her ass?
Really, Lauren,
I scold myself.
Flirt
wiser. He can’t see you, so what’s the difference?
Honest at all the wrong
times, I swear.

I surf through Amazon while waiting for Lenny’s response and
order a new thriller about this guy who stalks women through Facebook.

From: [email protected]

Lovely image of you with Lila’s ass. Did you touch it at
all? Maybe rub up against it accidentally on purpose with your arm or
something? Could you at least just pretend for me? Give a lonely guy something
to work with?

Hey—are you going to be up for a while? I have something I’d
like to show you.

From: [email protected]

I’m not sure I want to see that.

From: [email protected]

It’s my new video, douche.

From: [email protected]

You didn’t just call me that, did you?

From: [email protected]

What? Great ’80s term. I’m bringing it back.

From: [email protected]

Okay, but I think it’s like totally grody to the max to call
a woman a douche bag. Maybe this is why you don’t have a girlfriend. Just a
guess.

From: [email protected]

Speaking of which, it’s too bad you and I never dated. Could
have been hot, going south of the border together.

Where was this offer in 1988, I want to know? I get up from
the computer and stretch, digging through the cupboards. There is solace in
chocolate-covered gummy bears.

I chew through a few potential responses before deciding on
one that doesn’t make me sound like my inner wounded, prom-dateless teenager.

From: [email protected]

Yes, tres mal. I often wonder how my life might have turned
out if only I had let you into my pants.

From: [email protected]

I detect sarcasm.

From: [email protected]

Really? Can’t imagine why.

From: [email protected]

Lauren. Maybe I’m being serious.

I physically pull away from the computer, my face flushed. I
need to remember where this is coming from. Lenny Katzenberg, awarded Biggest
Flirt honors in high school, who has been engaged twice and gotten cold feet
both times. Lenny, who used to scan the room at high school keg parties,
looking bored, while I tried to make him laugh and he ignored me.

From: [email protected]

You only want what you can’t have.

From: [email protected]

Debatable. But in any case, I need your help with my latest
project. I need your Aegean blue—I mean, honest and insightful—eyes to critique
it before I post. Will you do that for me, no strings attached?

From: [email protected]

What if I hate it?

From: [email protected]

You won’t. It’s awesome, like I am in all things.

From: [email protected]

Hubris: look it up. You are not supposed to declare
greatness at anything, lest the gods smite you with their wrath.

From: [email protected]

I thought if I came on strong with machismo, you’d fall at
my feet. No?

Next time, I will go for sensitive, poet-type come-on.

Video’s going to be ready for viewing in two hours. You up
for that? What’s your ETS?

From: [email protected]

Not up for it. Estimated time to sleep is in about 10
minutes, max. Too bad we’re not in the same place. Then I could roll over and
go to sleep and you could nudge me awake when you’re ready for an audience.

From: [email protected]

Don’t even put that image in my mind. How am I going to work
now?

From: [email protected]

Alone, I guess.

I erase and destroy all the e-mails from tonight, then log
off, slightly embarrassed that I could be so forward. My online persona just
kind of took over there. I’m like some kind of modern-day Cyrano, whispering
all the great lines from behind my computer screen. If faced with flirting with
Lenny face-to-face, I’d turn about a thousand shades of purple and choke on my
own tongue.

Still another hour before Doug gets home.

Just before quitting out of the computer, I decide to go
back on Facebook to update my status.

I click into the empty box, and the question “What’s on
your mind?” stares back at me, waiting for an answer.

Everything? Nothing? I don’t know
what
. Fill in the
blank, I guess, like on one of my very own horrendous, multiple-choice grammar
quizzes. I imagine scanning the page for the right answer, increasingly nervous
as the minutes tick by and the correct choice eludes me.

I leave the space blank and log off the computer.

Then I scribble a friendly little Post-it note to Doug,
like he’s my college roommate, and stick it on the fridge. After dumping the
empty chardonnay bottle in the recycling bin and hiding it under some soda
cans, I turn off the lights and make my way to bed.

Only, I can’t sleep.

Thirty minutes later, the mechanical buzz of the garage
door triggers in me a mild but certain dread. Doug parks the car and enters the
house. He moves around the kitchen a bit, and I follow the trail of sounds as
he turns on the faucet for a drink of water, riffles through some papers, and
searches for something to snack on in the cabinets.

Then I hear him set the alarm and climb the stairs.

In the darkness, I picture Lenny. And Dr. Grossman. And
Sweetheart and Brandon.

I picture Doug’s tennis league and wonder if he ever lies
about where he’s going and who he’s with.

“You awake?” he whispers.

I feel him studying me as his vision adjusts to the
darkness.

Playing possum, I keep my eyelids gently shut. I try to
think of dreamlike scenarios the way a method actor would to convincingly
portray deep sleep—I’m on the beach; I’ve won the lottery; someone’s chasing
me, only I can’t run—
No, no, no, not that kind of dream, Lauren,
I scold
myself—stay calm! Shallow intakes of breath, keep the rhythm steady.

“Lauren?”

When I don’t respond, he pads across the carpeting and
into the bathroom, shutting the door gently behind him.

Doug showers and changes into pajamas—boxers and a white
Hanes T-shirt, I know even with my eyes closed—slides into bed next to me and
promptly falls asleep.

Now the only sound in the house is the slight pounding of
my guilt-ridden forehead.

As I am waiting for the Amtrak to arrive, a garbled voice
comes over the speaker, announcing a thirty-minute delay northbound. I take a
seat on a concrete bench and wait it out, hoping this delay isn’t some sign
from God that I shouldn’t be making the trip.

Forehead feels the same, though there is some slight
bruising that I covered with makeup. Don’t know what I expected, but a little
something-something would have been encouraging.

So far, no regrets about yesterday.

Except for the slight pang of remorse I felt this morning
upon waking, recalling last night’s drink-and-flirt session with Lenny. Did I
go too far? I can’t really remember what I said, which might just be for the
best.

Instead of dwelling on anything potentially negative, like
my marital malaise or my tendency to want to stray both physically and
emotionally from all responsibilities—Ha ha! What a mess!—I continue reading
that delicious novel about absolutely nothing. The train eventually comes, and
I move, book open and eyes reading, into a seat, enjoying the cheesy pleasure
of escapism for the better part of the morning.

Getting up to stretch around New Haven is a ritual with
me. I used to ride this train all the time to visit my aunt, who lived outside
Boston. It was an adventure as a teenager to take such a long train ride alone.
I still love the feeling of watching the countryside roll by, glimpsing the New
England towns and clapboard homes along the way. I would put something by Phil
Collins on my Walkman, tilt my head against the glass windowpane, and let my
mind be still. That train ride always felt like a mini vacation, and on this
bright, April morning, it doesn’t disappoint.

I take a walk to the dining car and scroll through a list
of incoming e-mails while waiting in line for a cup of coffee. There are about
ten different messages from Facebook friends commenting on Lenny’s latest
video. Jamie in California has stopped writing about herself and her children
for once, deciding instead to drool over Lenny. I feel a high school–like
emotion rising in me as I read her gushing reports about how Lenny was “always
so creative, bright and clever—not to mention cute!” when we were teenagers.

How dare she act like she really
knows
Lenny? When
was the last time she even spoke to him? I wonder. She didn’t even make it to
our twentieth reunion, thank you very much. There’s a territorial, nauseating,
cheerleaderish feeling mounting in me. I try to push it away, but it just won’t
budge.

I’m jealous.

Ohmigod, I’m such a loser. Who gets jealous about a
woman’s comments about a man who doesn’t belong to either of them? Why does
being around high school friends immediately put me back into high school mode?
It’s like I’ve made absolutely no progress. I might as well be back in
pre-calculus faking stomach cramps to go hang out behind the dumpster and smoke
cigarettes with my best guy friend, Tom. Inhaling deeply, we would dish about
everyone and scheme ways to get alcohol out of his parents’ locked cabinet in
the basement. Then we would go off campus and sit by the duck pond, tossing
stale bread into the water and dreaming about getting out of this little town.

Needless to say, I got a D in precalculus.

And after college, I moved right back to this same little
town, to teach kids who would then cut my class by lying about having stomach
cramps.

Oh, the irony.

So, naturally, I do what any mature woman about to turn
forty and married with two children would do. As the train pulls out of New
Haven and makes its way farther north, I text Lenny.

Looks like the new video is a hit!

It’s just a friendly little hello, like passing notes during
science class, but it makes me feel instantly calmer. I’ve staked my claim on
Lenny, even if Jamie in California doesn’t know.

As I’m deleting spam, Lenny writes back.

Good morning, beautiful. You look lovely today. Got your
beauty rest, I see.

Playful and just slightly too familiar. Either his job is
really dull or I’m the most exciting person in his gravitational pull.

I go with the latter.

Me:
So true. I was mistaken for Gwyneth twice already
this morning. Speaking of fabulous, how’d the video turn out?

Lenny:
Ah. Wouldn’t you like to know?

The compulsively charming bastard. Teasing and tempting me.
My pointer fingers fly from key to key as I try to keep up the volley on my
phone’s small screen.

Me:
Breathless with anticipation. I checked my inbox
when I woke up, but you weren’t there.

Lenny:
I like being in your inbox.

Me:
I was going to respond with “and I like having
you there,” but that just sounds wrong.

Lenny:
But, oh, it sounds so right.

Me:
Yeegads! Sometimes I can’t tell if your tone is
tongue in cheek or molesterish.

Lenny:
Yeegads? With tongue, definitely.

I am about to write back when Lenny interrupts me with
another text.

Hey—just got an update from YouTube. 200,000 hits on my
health care reform video since it premiered yesterday. I think this thing is
gonna go viral!

Going viral? Who talks like that except for Internet
hipsters and their hacker counterpoints? Not being fluent in tech-savvy lingo
makes me feel old. I instinctively touch my forehead for confirmation of my age
and find that the ridge between my brows seems less pronounced.

Me:
Congrats on maybe going viral!

Lenny:
It’s only happened one other time in my life.
Remember when I made out with Karen Zinns after Homecoming and I gave her mononucleosis
and then she kissed some alumni linebacker the next day at the game and gave
him mono, and then he passed it on to Coach Bill?

Me:
Now, that’s a fun way to get sick.

Doug Worthing:
Huh? Is that your response to my text?

Did I just write that…to Doug? Where did he come from? My
heart drops in free-fall and I frantically scroll back to see what I’ve just
done. Then time sort of slows down as I prepare for the impact of this mistake.
It’s the real-life version of the moment in the movie when a kid on a bicycle
is about to get hit by a car and an onlooker runs into the street and screams
“Noooooo…!”

How much has Doug seen? When did he replace Lenny?

I scroll up my phone to check the damage.

Meanwhile, Lenny continues our texting dialogue in ignorant
bliss.

And to think, it could have been you I diseased.

I know this is impossible, but I feel like Doug is suddenly
in the room with me, reading over my shoulder. My cheeks are flushed like they
were last night from the embarrassment of illegal flirtationshiping.