Starting from Square Two (9 page)

“I know,” Hallie said.

“You could always ask,” Gert said.

“I'm afraid of making you feel worse.”

Gert knew that this was what everyone feared. But it was more hurtful to not take the risk.

“Not everything has to be funny all the time,” Gert said. “Sometimes it's
okay
to be sad, or serious, if it's the right thing.”

“I know,” Hallie said. “I don't mean to always make jokes.”

“We used to talk in college,” Gert said. “A lot.”

“We had
time
in college,” Hallie said, her voice partially drowned out by a passing truck.

“I know,” Gert said.

“What happened?” Hallie asked.

“We both realized we were becoming adults and needed to find someone to spend the rest of our lives with,” Gert said.

“That becomes the priority, doesn't it?” Hallie said. “It's your number-one job as soon as you graduate. Once you've found someone, everything else falls into place. But until we do, it has to be top priority.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute.

“So are you going?” Hallie asked.

“Where?”

“To Michael's wedding.”

Hallie was going to talk about this. Gert was glad. “I think so,” she said. “Maybe it won't be so bad. It's a happy occasion, right?”

“Right,” Hallie said. “They'll all be thrilled to see you. I'm sure they will. Hey, I have to get on the subway now. Let's talk about this more when I see you. You're still going with us to the reading tomorrow night, right?”

Hallie and Erika were going to a reading by a guy they'd gone to high school with, although they'd hardly talked to him back then. He had just self-published his book and placed his own ads for it in
Harper's.
Gert thought it was sad that someone thought he had so much to say and couldn't find a publisher. But Roddy Brown had gotten lucky. His self-arranged readings in Manhattan were starting to draw crowds.

“I'll be there,” Gert said.

“If the reading goes too late,” Hallie said, “we'll talk on the weekend. We'll have to compare notes after your date with Todd anyway.”

“You'll be out with Bugs Bunny Boy, right?”

“Ugh,” Hallie said. “Don't remind me.”

“Well,” Gert said, “I think you should really give him a chance. You might be surprised.”

There. Gert could be helpful, too. Despite her paltry dating experience.

“I will,” Hallie said. “And thanks.”

 

Gert had joined a gym a month ago, and already she was sure that the guy who worked there had it in for her.

She'd be sitting on the bike, pedaling furiously, listening to music, and he would come over and say something to her really low. She'd take off her headphones, and he'd say, “I just wanted to make sure your seat's comfortable.”

He never did that to anyone else. At least, it didn't seem like it.

“It's fine,” she'd say.

Then she'd be running on the treadmill, and he'd come over and say, “Are you sure those are good shoes for you? They don't look like running shoes.”

Gert didn't want to talk to anyone while she was working out. Working out was personal. It was like someone talking to you while you were on the toilet. Which an annoying girl named Dawn at work always did. Dawn would come into the rest room, and if she saw someone's feet under a stall, she'd say, “Who's in theaahh?”

“My shoes are fine,” Gert told the guy at the gym.

It was Hallie who had first suggested joining a gym. Hallie had told Gert it was a great way to work out aggression. Gert didn't really believe that that was Hallie's main motivation for going to the gym, though—Hallie went, like everyone else, because she thought it made her more attractive. No sense lying about it. When Gert had been married, neither she nor Marc had joined a gym. They both had had better things to do.

But now Gert had free time, and she was sinking into the realm of the rest of the world—the world that worried too much about how it looked.

The more Gert thought about her new place in this universe, the more aggression she had to get out. Which made the gym perfect.

Now, as she engaged in the monotony of the StairMaster,
the annoying gym guy was on her back again. “Do you want to know how to do that better?” he asked her.

“I know how to climb stairs,” she said evenly.

The man was clueless-looking, with tight, curly hair and oversize glasses. He was in his forties. He didn't look built, but he was lean, and she figured he'd studied about training more than he'd actually done it.

“Okay, ma'am,” he said simply, and walked away.

Gert felt bad. It wasn't his fault that he was a pest. He was only trying to help. But really, she wished he would leave her alone. She didn't want to be at the gym. She wanted to be at home talking to Marc. Or just listening to him breathe.

 

The reading was packed that night. It was on the second floor of a chain bookstore in Chelsea. That floor was so crowded that a store employee stood at the foot of the stairs, refusing to let anyone else up. He was wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard. Above him, on the balcony, a similarly attired employee was handling crowd control, his buttocks pressed back into the green metal bars that prevented people from falling.

Gert had agreed to meet the girls after her workout. Erika was dolled up in heavy makeup and a skirt. So were most of the women there. Everyone had seen Roddy Brown's handsome jacket photo. It wasn't only the photo that had lured them. The text beneath it said, “Roddy Brown lives in Manhattan with his dog, Rufus. He eats Frosted Flakes for dinner.” Single male writer + New York + lives with dog = personal ad.

“But I
know
Roddy,” Erika told the guard. “We went to high school together.”

“He knows you're coming?”

“He'll be surprised. I haven't seen him in forever.”

“Well, he'll come this way when he's finished,” the guard said. “You can see him then.”

A girl in a pink jacket pushed forward. “I'll be out of your hair in one second,” she told the guard, “but can you please give him this?”

It was the girl's business card, and she'd written on it, “Roddy—Love the book! Call me.”

“Let's get out of here,” Erika said to Gert and Hallie. “He's not worth this kind of trouble.”

 

At Kafé Krunch, the girls sat in the back room in a dark corner on a pair of orange couches, waving marshmallows over a flaming Sterno can. They had bought the “s'more-gasbord” from the counter, and in order to make it worth the eleven dollar price, they had snuck in their own extra ingredients from the Food Emporium—an extra Hershey bar, marshmallows, graham crackers—and planned to stay an hour.

Hallie stared into the flame, which was the only bright thing in the back room. She poked a half-melted Hershey bar into the fire and drew it out.

“Who needs men when you can have chocolate?” Hallie said.

“Yeah, right,” Erika said, bringing her knees to her chin. She sucked at the singed husk of a marshmallow. The small flame made her face glow, but it also made it look a little contorted.

Gert relaxed on the soft couch. She enjoyed the quiet back rooms of New York dessert cafés. They were definitely better than bars. There were comfy chairs, enough darkness for anonymity, and plenty of slackers trying to figure out what to do later. She stared at the ceiling. There was a pencil sticking out of it. She didn't know if it was a prank or decoration.

Erika was facing Gert and Hallie. Her makeup was on perfect, but it hadn't helped her get to her target, Roddy.

“Why do I do it?” she asked, putting her face in her hands. “Why did all 700 women at the event have the same exact idea I had? Why aren't there any decent men left who don't have a fan club a mile wide?”

Hallie shook her head, poking a piece of Hershey bar into the flame. “I know,” she said.

“In high school, hardly anyone talked to Roddy Brown,”
Erika said, her face glowing orange and yellow. “He was a geek. I bet he never kissed a girl until he was twenty-one.”

“You should have gone for him
then,
” Hallie said.

“Who you tellin'?” Erika said. “I thought he'd be happy to see me tonight. But any remotely normal guy in this city ends up with a line of girls waiting to meet him that's longer than the one for Space Mountain. They were leaving him their business cards. And I was almost just as bad.”

“I'll bet if
I
self-published a book, there wouldn't be a crowd of guys at a reading waiting for
me,
” Hallie said.

“Damn straight,” Erika said. “We need to fix the criteria. How can we make guys pursue women for their literary aspirations, and women only pick men after the men spend three hours on their appearance?”

“I know what to do,” Hallie said. “We'll pay half the single women here to move to Alaska. Then the rest of us might start being treated with respect.”

“I know who I'd pay to go to Alaska,” Erika said. “Challa.”

Next topic,
Gert thought. Erika's obsession with Challa was really worrying her.

“Check this out,” Erika said, becoming visibly excited. “I've been writing messages to her as Vicki Vale. Challa's too stupid to recognize the reference. Ben loves Batman. I can just see Challa running into their bedroom, wailing, ‘Ben, this bitch Vicki Vale keeps leaving messages on my Web site!'”

Hallie laughed a little, and steamed skim milk issued from her mouth.

“Ben's so creative,” Erika said. “I
know
him. I can't imagine he's truly happy with their dull life. Sooner or later he's going to get tired of it, and I have to know what the right time is so that I can be there. Otherwise I'll miss out.”

Gert thought that maybe she could subtly help Erika. She still saw some good in her. “Do you have any contact with Ben?” she asked.

Erika's eyebrows narrowed a bit. She looked straight at Gert
for the first time that night. Behind her, at the far end of the room, a group of guys was coming in wearing baseball caps. There were too many overgrown frat boys in town. Gert couldn't imagine dating one of them. Marc actually had been in a fraternity, but at least he didn't act like he was still in one after graduation.

“I find a reason to e-mail him every few months,” Erika said, “just so he knows I still exist. I'm actually due to send another one. There's an exhibit coming to the Whitney that I know he'd like, so I was thinking of e-mailing him about that.”

Gert felt bad for Erika as she listened to her talk about Ben. Erika always became more animated when she talked about him.

“A few months ago,” Erika said, “I bumped into one of his friends, this guy Don, so I e-mailed Ben to tell him. Ben usually writes back after a few days, but he keeps it short and emotionless. It's like a new rejection every time. Last time he was like, ‘Hi. That's great you saw Don. I hope you have a great new year.' The end. There's never any hint that we spent five years together.”

“Maybe he doesn't want to seem like he's leading you on,” Gert said.

Erika's face tightened. “Why does he have to worry about ‘seeming'?” she asked. “We shared five
years.
It's almost as if Challa's looking over his shoulder and might leave him if she caught him showing any emotion toward me. Can't he at least miss me a little bit?”

Gert didn't know what to say.

“Hey,” Erika said, becoming excited again. She looked at Gert and Hallie. “You guys both have dates on Saturday. Gert has Todd and…”

“I have Bugs Bunny Boy,” Hallie said. “
You
can go on the date if you want.”

Gert thought of Todd and felt a bit nervous.

Erika looked at Hallie. “Look on the bright side,” she said. “At least Bugs Bunny Boy isn't half as bad as that guy you went
out with who spent your whole first date talking about why there shouldn't be a Black History Month unless there's a White History Month.”

Hallie laughed. “True,” she said. “But Bugs Bunny Boy is neck and neck with the British guy who I really liked and slept with and then he told me that he was moving back to Britain in two weeks.”

Erika shook her head.

“And at least Bugs Bunny Boy isn't as bad,” Hallie added, “as the guy who, the minute he met me for dinner, pointed at the tiny white spot on my blouse and said, ‘Oh, you got some deodorant on there.'”

“Yeah,” Erika said, “and Bugs Bunny Boy is definitely not as bad as the guy who was annoyed that you had a cough, so every time you coughed, he coughed, because he wanted to show you how irritating it was.”

Gert wondered if they were making all these guys up, or if dating was really this bad.

Suddenly all three heads swung to the left. One of the frat boys, tall and good-looking, was standing next to Hallie.

“Any of you girls have a light?” he asked in an unplaceable accent. His friends were behind him, waiting for him.

Gert looked up. She kept matches in her purse because Marc had always told her to. It seemed a little silly, now that she thought about it. She held out the pack.

“I guess that'll do, right?” the guy said, smiling.

He looked like he was about to leave, but Erika called out, “So, what's your name?”

The guy seemed startled for a second. “Rick,” he said. He had five-o'clock shadow. It was attractive.

“I'm Erika,” Erika said, reaching over the couch to shake his hand. But he shifted a little, still seeming like he wanted to go. Erika continued, “That's Gert, and that's Hallie.”

“Nice to meet you.” He shook their hands, but then turned to walk away.