The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (24 page)

Claire pressed pound.

35

The worst thing was the yawning chasm of time from point A—a wonderful, sweet weekend with a boy, the kind that made Claire think of butterscotch Life Savers—to point B, an undetermined, and maybe completely nonexistent point in the future. The few days following the weekend were upbeat and hopeful. He’ll call, she’ll see him again. Or, she supposed, she could call, she thought, but she didn’t know how to call—she’d already botched that once. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be in the business.

*   *   *

T
HERE WAS A
wedding three weeks after Charleston: Emily’s. Emily was a photographer Claire had worked with on and off for years on different freelance assignments. Now Emily was producing a reality show and marrying an ex-priest. Everything was going according to plan for her. Claire, on the other hand, had a dead husband, lost weekends with Jack Huxley, a diviner and a soothsayer, and too many shrinks.

Claire couldn’t bear to go to the wedding alone, so she made Ethan her plus one. He was coming from Miami. His new boyfriend, Kevin, was a flight attendant, which made flying much more fun, first class all the time. So Ethan came from the airport looking relaxed as one only can when they’ve been served warm hand towels and chocolate cookies with their champagne. Claire, on the other hand, had taken a crowded subway and tromped through puddles of gray, melting snow; she was frazzled.

At Le Cirque, she was seated between a much younger photographer—“He’s single and totally hot,” Emily had told her—and a new mother. Across from her, Ethan was wedged between the new mother’s mother and a middle-aged cousin from Seattle. Emily was right, the photographer was gorgeous, but he said, “Oh, like Kevin Spacey,” when Claire said she’d recently been to Charleston. “Remember, in
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
?” And Claire said, “Yes, although that was Savannah,” and picked at her salad.

Sooner or later, as it always seemed to in a group susceptible to idle celebrity gossip. Jack Huxley came up.

“He’s into strippers. It’s an open secret.” This from the Seattle cousin who was on her third vodka.

Claire had missed how this started but now her ears were attuned. She affected disinterest.

“That sounds right,” the new mother next to her said. “He says in every single interview he’s just waiting for the one. He was on
Entertainment Tonight
and they asked about his love life. He squirmed around in his chair like a child.”

Claire doubted this. Jack never squirmed.

“He always gives the ‘I’m at a good place, happy, making movies I like.’” The new mother snorted. “Are you kidding me? He sounds like he just pledged a fraternity.”

“I hope he’s gay,” the gay man at the table said.

“He’s forty-one, never married,” the new mother’s mother said.

Claire tried to hold her peace.

“Maybe he likes to screw around.” This from Ethan. He smiled mischievously. Claire glared back.

“Who wouldn’t, if you could?” the photographer said, and laughed. “The only reason men get married is that most of them can’t live that life.” It was good he wasn’t giving the toast.

“Maybe he’s old-fashioned,” Claire said. A table of people who had forgotten she was there now all turned to her at once. “Maybe he takes commitment seriously.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” the new mother said with derision, looking at Claire like she was crazy. “He’s just another gorgeous jerk who wants to have his cake and eat it, too.”

“Maybe he’s just misunderstood,” Claire went on.

Ethan gave Claire the cut sign across his neck.

“Maybe he’s waited so long because he wants to make sure it’s the real thing, maybe he’s looking for that but hasn’t found it yet. I mean, he could have been married five times by now. Maybe he’s more sincere than all of us. Maybe he’s just not settling.”

The wordless round of glances among them continued. The new mother took the reins and moved on.

“Well, whatever the case,” she said, “there is obviously something wrong with him, and it will surface eventually. It always does. Did you see who Emily sat at the head table?” She addressed this to her mother. And then the lot of them moved on.

RULE #15
: The secret to marriage—separate bedrooms, and blow jobs.

36

“You would not
believe
what a bastard he turned out to be!” Sasha swore. She swept through the doors of Nico’s in an ermine cape. Claire followed in wool plaid. They’d met up on the sidewalk outside. February had roared into New York like a wet, shaggy lion.

Sasha lowered her oversized sunglasses and peered into the dimly lit restaurant. The maître d’ stepped back from his podium, startled.

“My God,” Claire said when Sasha turned her head. “What happened?” Beneath her left eye was a large and misshapen dark bruise.

Sasha returned the sunglasses to her nose and said to the maître d’, “Wyse. Reservation,” then turned back to Claire. She shook her head slightly, as if gathering courage, and Claire was certain she could hear tears in her voice. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? I can barely leave the house!”

They followed the maître d’ past white-clothed tables decorated with amaryllis, to a table near the window that looked out on Lexington.

“I have to get away from him,” Sasha continued. “I can’t let him do this to me. And my God, I can’t trust that it won’t happen again. How can I go back there?”

They removed capes and gloves, set purses near their feet. The maître d’ pulled out their chairs. He lingered a moment longer than necessary. With his burly build, slicked hair, and expensive suit, he looked like he was answering a casting call for
The Sopranos
.

Claire scanned the wine list. As soon as they were alone, she leaned across the table. “Thom did this?” she said, in a low, horrified voice.

“Honey. No, not
Thom
. Dr. Struck!” Sasha sniffled. Claire had never seen her so upset.

“Dr. Struck
hit
you? Oh shit, please don’t tell me you’re having an affair with him.”

Sasha shook her head. “I wish! He was supposed to inject a tiny bit of Juvéderm to smooth my undereyes, and
this—this
is what I end up with!”

“Oh,” Claire said, exhaling with relief. “Well, thank God. I thought…”

But Sasha started sobbing into her linen napkin. “I think—I think I have cancer. It’s my ovaries…”

“What? Oh, sweetie.” Claire reached a hand across the table. “No luck with Riva?”

Sasha shook her head.

“What did she say?”

Sasha waved a hand. “She went through the whole thing—speculum, swabbing, prodding. ‘Dere ees no cancer.’” Sasha imitated Dr. Riva’s stodgy German accent. “‘You don’t vant babies. Vhat they do to your body! Vee are meant to have baby at sixteen, not thirty-five.’”

This made them both laugh. Claire wondered, not for the first time, why Dr. Riva had chosen gynecology.

“I left there feeling worse than before, so I squeezed in a last-minute appointment with Dr. Struck. Life’s just not fair,” Sasha said. “
You
, at least, have the chance to find a man who will fall in love with your personality”—Claire’s brows arched;
Thanks, Sasha
, she thought—“not someone who expects you to look like you did at twenty, forever. God, I wish Thom were dead.”

The maître d’, approaching their table, stopped in his tracks. Around their table, silence descended. Sasha had spoken a bit louder than she’d intended.

Claire couldn’t help it—she laughed again. Then Sasha laughed, too. “
You’re crazy, honey!
” Claire whispered.

“We’ll never have Paris together,” Sasha deadpanned. “You stayed; I went and look what good it did. It got me an impotent husband and you a dead one.”

They were laughing so hard now, they gasped for breath. “Stop it, people are looking!”

The maître d’ smiled in relief; the din of innocuous conversation resumed. They ordered wine, then cassoulet. By the time they got to coffee, the conversation had turned to Claire. And, inevitably, to Jack.

“He was filming. I went down to Charleston for a weekend. We went to dinner with his friends. You know what he did?”

“What?” Sasha looked like she’d been anticipating something slightly more scandalous.

“He intercepted for me. God I forgot how nice it is. To have a buffer.”

“What did he buff?”

“Twice he did it. In the lobby, there was a big group of us just having drinks and someone asked me who I was. ‘Who are you?’ this woman asked. I can’t remember if the emphasis was on ‘are’ or ‘you,’ but you know. She probably just wanted to know what film I was in or what I was doing there. Anyway, he was standing next to me, talking to someone else and he intercepted. I love the intercept.”

“What’d he say?”

“‘Claire’s a writer. She’s
extremely
talented.’ I mean, who says that? And then he introduced me, and then he stayed there. He stayed in the conversation. You know, like he sensed hostility, something to protect me from, and he wasn’t going to let this snotty person have a shot at me alone, so he didn’t let himself get pulled into something else. Which is impressive in itself—everyone around him claws at him nonstop. I can’t tell you how nice that buffer is—it’s like sinking into a soft, feathery pillow bed.”

“How gallant.”

Claire frowned. “You sound snide.”

“I’m not.” She watched as Sasha
clink-clink-clinked
her spoon against the coffee mug, but she forged on.

“We left after that. I think he wanted to get me out of there. The first sign of danger and it’s like he thought,
She doesn’t need this
, and he took me away.”

“Like I said, how gallant.”

“Don’t make fun. Then we watched a documentary on the History Channel.”

“That’s not hot.”

“It was, though, that’s the thing. But the more I think about it, the more it’s like he’s an opener. This is what he does. He’s got the first act down, dazzles his audience, leaves them rapt. Then he tries with the second act, right? He tries to introduce conflict, some drama, a romantic obstacle. That’s why his calls are arbitrary.”

“I suppose.”

“And me, I’m just a sucker for the opening act. Charlie was an opening act, too.”

They pushed back their chairs and stood, donned their capes, and trailed back past white-clothed tables and coiffed hair.

On their way out of the restaurant, the maître d’ stopped Sasha and discreetly handed her a card.

“Please,” he said, “call this number.”

As they hailed taxis, Sasha preened. “Well, maybe I’ll give Dr. Struck another chance. Have to keep my options open, you know.”

Sasha headed uptown. Claire headed downtown, thinking about Jack Huxley and narcissists, the subjects of Charlie’s book. Narcissists, she reflected, do the best opening act ever. That’s how you can spot them, by their opening act.

How was she supposed to feel, she wondered, as she passed a corner newsstand, when Jack Huxley was on the cover of every tabloid flanked by models. Should she wish him happiness, or wish he’d call?

But she didn’t have long to wrestle with that thought.

A month after Claire flew home from Charleston, Jack Huxley resurfaced, and Claire’s regularly scheduled menstruation did not.

37

When Huxley resurfaced it was two in the morning and Claire was struggling through Edna Ferber. Charlie had always insisted: if you want to be a writer, read a writer you don’t understand. So Claire was reading a portion of the same sentence in a loop:
Selina DeJong, darting expertly about her kitchen, from washtub to baking board, from stove to table, or, if at work in the fields of the truck farm.
Ferber’s long and laborious sentences wore Claire out. All those words to convey one thought:
at work in the fields of the truck farm.
What does that even mean?

And then the bell sounded, loud and clear and startling, on her cell phone.
Dinggg
. It sounded like a promise, like silver striking crystal—she never tired of it.

Dinggg
 …

what r u wearing? Elmer Gantry

It took Claire a few long seconds to process. Then she felt someone was watching her and looked around.
It’s a setup, a trick.
Adrenalin, followed by a nervous but not unpleasant fluttering in her lower abdomen.

Elmer Gantry was the first role Jack Huxley ever played. He told her about it the night they’d met, at the premiere. LaSalle High’s spring production of
Main Street
.

What are you wearing?

The warm little fluttering that crept low.

Oh God
, Claire thought. It was eleven o’clock if he was sitting in L.A. It was some other time if he was not. He didn’t typically stay up late. It was Saturday. Eleven o’clock. What is he doing? Is he home? Bored at dinner?

Dinggg
 …

whatevr it is take it off

Dinggg
 …

ive been thinking about you.

If Claire had not been paralyzed with fear and, at the same time, a base animal lust—if, too, she were the sort of impulsive, carefree girl she wanted to be—she would have grabbed a trench coat and overnight bag and taken a cab to the airport. She would have walked up to the ticket counter at American—no, wait, JetBlue had a better flight to L.A. Oh, but it went to Burbank and American didn’t have food and she’d be hungry. Nothing was open in the airport this late, though, maybe she’d sleep, but then they always woke her on JetBlue. American would have the best red-eye. Regardless, you see, a moot point. She wasn’t that girl.

So here she was with neither spontaneity nor snappy comeback. Her face washed clean, her hair in a ponytail, over here.

And Jack Huxley, with his aw-shucks smile and strong hands, was over there.

Thinking about me …

There was nothing to say. Claire turned off her phone and went to bed.

38

Stendhal syndrome: a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion, and even hallucinations when the individual is exposed to an overdose of beautiful art, paintings, and artistic masterpieces.