Been There, Done That Page 3

  “And junior year,” she snorted. “You look a hell of a lot better now than you did junior year.”

  Dan, who I’ve known almost as long as I’ve known Marcy, once declared that he’d give anything to hear what Marcy and I said to each other when we thought no one else was listening. I occasionally worried that he would—and that our mystique, such as it was, would be gone forever.

  In truth, I’d been feeling neglected by Marcy of late. For years we spoke at least once a day. Now she forgot to return my phone calls and apologized for not having more time to spend with me, even as she amassed a small army of minivan-driving mommy friends. She had missed my birthday two years running.

  In the end, I picked out a brightly colored scarf to go with a black shirt and stretchy black skirt I already owned. This would draw the eye up to my youthful face. If I chose a dark restaurant for lunch, Tim might not see my body at all.

  I got in line while Marcy went off to the baby section to look for some stretchies. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned. There was Dennis, smiling and holding the shirt of my dreams: pale blue linen, sleeveless with a Chinese collar. “That for you?” I asked after a moment of awkwardness. His face, already ruddy, turned apple red, starting at the neck and working its way up. From his reaction, I wondered for a moment if he actually did enjoy a little cross-dressing.

  “It’s for my sister’s birthday.” He smiled, revealing straight, tiny teeth. I feel bad for red-haired guys. You take one look and think, “Here’s a guy I could never take to the beach.”

  “It’s pretty,” I said, eyeing the blouse and wondering if it would fit me. “Were there, um, any more? Maybe in a smaller size?”

  “No, this was the only one,” he said. Damn. “The scarf you’re buying is nice, too. Is it for you?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Thanks.”

  We smiled at each other. When we’d gone out to dinner the other night, our conversation had run pretty much along the same lines: What looks good to you? I was thinking about the salmon. I love salmon. And you? The pasta special or maybe the steak. Everything looks so delicious. Sure does. Pretty place. Sure is.

  The evening was so pleasant, it made me want to spew profanities and run naked through the street.

  The crazy thing was, we had never run out of things to say to each other before he’d asked me out. He’d call to give me a phone number for an interview, and we’d end up yakking for half an hour about how to remove red wine stains from upholstery or what movies we wanted to see or which celebrities we found most annoying. The minute he’d tried to move our relationship out of the platonic zone, I found myself clamming up in his presence, wishing desperately we could go back to the way things were.

  I checked the girl at the cash register. She appeared to be on sedatives. And there were two people ahead of me in line. “I talked to John about you,” Dennis said. “My boss.”

  “Oh?” My stomach churned. His boss? Was that a trial run for telling his mother that he had a new squeeze? In my head, I began to construct my “Dennis, you’re a really nice guy, but—” speech.

  “He’d like to have you in for an interview.”

  I squinted at him, confused for a moment, then: “Oh! About being a copywriter.” Before our dinner—back when we used to have normal conversations—I’d vented to Dennis about Richard’s cheapness, stupidity and nepotism.

  “I appreciate that, but with my promotion, well, I’m happy at Salad, at least for now. Besides, I’m a writer. I don’t want to do anything else.”

  “You’d still be a writer.”

  “Yes, but it would be—different.” I’d learned long ago that advertising is populated by would-be novelists, and it’s best to avoid touching delicate nerves by stating the obvious: that crafting words to sell, say, foot powder isn’t exactly reaching your literary potential.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “We’ve got a fabric and wall-cover client—you’d be perfect. He wants us to give him some advertorials, you know, ads that look and read just like articles.” His voice grew suddenly lower, more confident, like he was telling me that he could sell the movie rights to my as-yet-unwritten novel for five bazillion dollars.

  “That’s nice, Dennis. But the things I’m writing now really are articles.”

  That stopped him cold. There’s something about a lousy salary. It makes you passionate to defend your career choice (since you’re obviously not in it for the money). It also makes you snotty and mean.

  “Forget it, then,” he said, hunching over and pulling at the blouse. “I didn’t mean to push.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so . . .”

  “Superior?” He was holding his lips tight, standing his ground. It was my turn to blush.

  “I was going to say defensive, but maybe that’s how it sounded.” I scanned the room for Marcy. Where the hell was she? “I’m stressed by my new position, is all. It seems important—it is important—but it’s taking a lot out of me to get up to speed, and I guess it’s making me testy.” I didn’t say that the best part about my job was that Richard had not yet thought to sell ads to Seeing Eye dog trainers.

  Dennis laughed and then—God help me—beamed. “I’m glad you feel comfortable telling me the truth. So tell me this. Will you go shopping with me this weekend?”

  He caught me before I’d had a chance to come up with an excuse. “I’d love to.”

  He smiled, showing me his little teeth once again. “Guess we’ve had our first fight.”

  four

  My new scarf really did look good with my black shirt and skirt. It looked so good, in fact, that when the weatherman declared Thursday “a scorcher,” I wore it anyway, telling myself that I’d be traveling from air-conditioned place to air-conditioned place. For lunch, I’d chosen a bright, airy restaurant that featured potted palms, crisp white tablecloths and California cuisine. By the time I got there, I had completely sweated off my makeup, and my hair, which I’d actually taken time to style, was limp. The scarf stuck to my neck. Had I been meeting anyone else, I would have peeled it off. At least it would help catch the perspiration droplets from behind my ears.

  As I’d hoped, Tim had gotten there first (I was intentionally five minutes late). Either because he forgot how much I detest the heat (he never really cared for me, never paid attention) or because he wanted me to be miserable (heartless bastard), he had chosen a table outside. “The ones with the umbrellas were all taken,” he said, standing up as I approached.

  “Not a problem,” I said, diffusing any memories he may have had of me as a whiner. My heart was pounding. We hugged and kissed in a superficial, “Darling, it’s fabulous to see you” kind of way. For the quickest moment, I thought I could pull it off—I could convince myself (and him) that bygones were bygones. But when our lips touched, I was horrified to recognize his smell and his taste. At least I never bothered spending time and money in therapy; all my work would have been undone in that brief moment. I knew I was blushing and was almost glad to have the heat as an excuse.

  We sat down and I examined him as closely as I could without actually staring. He looked pretty much the same, I was disappointed to see. I’d kind of hoped for a softening middle or at least some grim lines around his mouth, resulting from his newfound unhappiness. But there he was: same wiry build, alert gray eyes, bony hands. The glasses were new, black-rimmed and rectangular. They made him seem artsy. “What happened to your contacts?” I asked. In college, he used to say that only the poor kids wore glasses. He traded in his aviator shades three months after graduation.

  He shrugged. “I never really got used to sticking myself in the eye.”

  The waitress—a vacant-eyed, streaky-haired, nubile type in a khaki skirt that was too short to be tasteful—asked what we’d like to drink. I hoped Tim would order first so I could take his lead in the whole alcoholic/nonalcoholic game. But he nodded to me, and I boldly ordered a white wine, in the hop
e in would neutralize some of my adrenaline. Perhaps the nymphet waitress would card me and Tim could say something like, “You really do look amazing.” But all the waitress said was, “We’re out of chardonnay. White zinfandel okay?” She scratched her thigh with her pen in a way that I found inappropriate. I said yes to the wine even though I detest white zinfandel. Tim ordered a seltzer. I felt like a lush.

  “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Good,” I answered. “Busy,” I lied. I was clutching the sides of the wrought iron chair. I casually picked my cloth napkin off the table and smoothed it on my lap, wiping the sweat off my palms as I did so.

  “You see Marcy much?” A busboy appeared to pour water, and Tim glanced up with an easy smile. Damn it—he looked genuinely calm.

  “Pretty often. She’s pregnant again.”

  “Wow.” His eyebrows shot up. “How many does she have?”

  “Two. Both boys. She’s hoping for a girl.”

  He smiled and rolled his eyes as if to say, Reproduction: yuck! “And Dan? Still a workaholic?”

  I grinned. In college and afterwards, we’d snickered at “straight-arrow Dan and his ten-year plan.” Tim and I never had a plan, which I once thought was a good thing. “He’s close to making partner,” I said. “So he’s working around the clock. Marcy never sees him.”

  “She’s gotten pregnant three times, though,” he said. “So I guess they’re still having sex Tuesdays, Fridays, and alternate Sunday mornings.”

  “They had to drop the Sundays,” I said. “The kids get up too early.” I felt a twinge of guilt for ratting out my best friend’s secrets, but I’d always assumed Marcy and Dan whispered about Tim and me, too. When Tim walked out three years ago (a week after my twenty-ninth birthday), I called Marcy immediately, expecting her to be shocked. I longed for her to tell me it was just a phase, that he’d be back. Instead, she was quiet for a moment before finally saying, “He’s not good enough for you, honey. He never was.”

  “Tell me about your job,” Tim said, tantalizing me with the possibility that maybe he did care, just a little.

  “I’m the education editor,” I said. He knew that already, but it sounded impressive, so I wanted to reiterate. “The scope is daunting,” I intoned, figuring that sounded better than “paralyzing.” “But I enjoy the challenge.” A total lie, of course, but I was working my way into Empowered Woman Mode, if only for the hour. I rattled on about lowered educational standards and societal responsibility and the scope of my job.

  I paused for a moment when I realized that even I was no longer listening to my drivel. A drop of sweat slithered down my back. I looked at Tim, his intense gaze, his stiff shoulders. He was listening. For years, he had loved me—at least in his own way—and he knew me as well as anyone. For an instant, I considered spilling it: how I didn’t give a damn about magnet schools or teacher testing or corporate sponsorships for underprivileged students; how my mind still wandered to tumbled-marble bathroom accents and gleaming maple floors.

  But I waited too long, and he filled the silence with proclamations about his own job and the social and political force of New Nation. And then, after talking for a while like a normal person, he said, “With the unprecedented dissemination of information, society is being shaped by the media beyond its own will. So we have a choice. We can either help mold the collective consciousness or we can remain passive and allow our opinions to be shaped according to someone else’s agenda.” I experienced a rare flash of superiority, knowing full well that I had outscored Tim on the verbal SAT. Then I grew despondent. Somehow, it wasn’t the time to start chattering about Ralph Lauren paints. Instead, I smirked in a way that I hoped was patronizing and said, “My, we’ve gotten deep.”

  He leaned back and laughed, sounding human at last. “You always could cut me down to size.” We both knew the opposite was true but left it at that.

  The slutty waitress brought our drinks. “Know what you want?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?” I frowned, feeling violated.

  “I think she wants to take our order, Kath.” Tim grinned at the waitress. “Unless you’re getting existential with us?” The waitress laughed, even though I’d bet money she didn’t even know what “existential” means.

  Between my nerves and the heat, I wasn’t hungry, but I ordered grilled eggplant and goat cheese on focaccia. The portions here were oversized, and a sandwich would hold up better than a salad in a takeout container and save me from having to make dinner. Tim ordered a burger. Tim always orders a burger. He’s one of those people who honest-to-God doesn’t care about food, and a burger is something he doesn’t have to think about.

  When Tim and I lived together, I prepared pastas with sun-dried tomatoes and buttery sole with lemon. I was a freelancer then, writing for home and cooking magazines. On weekends, I’d invite other couples over for wine tastings or “ethnic food experiences,” and I’d spend entire days tracking down obscure ingredients just so I could put asterisks on my recipes with a notation of, say, “available in east African food markets.” Tim didn’t care much about the food, of course, but he liked having people over, his coworkers especially, but Marcy and Dan, too, and he liked seeing how impressed they were by my creations.

  Now, standing at my kitchen counter, I’d eat Triscuits and port wine cheese spread until my stomach stopped gurgling and call it dinner. Sometimes I’d invite friends over not because I was feeling sociable but just so I’d have an excuse to make real food. I’d double the recipe and fill my fridge with Tupperware-encased leftovers. After four straight nights of, say, lamb paprikash, I would usually shove the rest down the disposal and nuke myself a Lean Cuisine.

  Tim gulped his seltzer. I gulped my wine—the heat made me thirsty—and could practically feel my brain cells keeling over from the shock. He cleared his throat. “After our phone call, you’re probably wondering why I came all the way up here instead of just giving you the details on the phone.”

  That’s when it struck me: here I was, sitting across from my first lover, the man I long assumed I would marry, and we were having a business lunch. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said. And it was true: I’d been so nervous about what it would be like to see him again that I hadn’t bothered to wonder about the story he’d alluded to. “I figured you were just up here, anyway,” I said. “Researching that article you mentioned.”

  “It’s bigger than that.” He leaned forward. “I had to see you in person.” He lowered his voice. “This story is huge. I know I don’t have to tell you that this conversation is confidential.”

  “If you know you don’t have to tell me, why are you telling me?”

  “I know I can trust you,” he said.

  I resisted the twenty or so comebacks that jumped in my brain. “I’m listening,” I said.

  The story came from an intern who’d worked for Tim. Deirdre was a climber, he said, always looking for recognition, always expecting to be treated like one of the staff (who, if they were like Tim, had worked years to get to a position in which they could look down on interns). When Tim began covering a story about a politician’s relationship with a call girl, Deirdre kept remarking how the same thing went on at her school, Mercer College. At first, Tim didn’t think much of it. He assumed she was simply referring to the promiscuity and pig-like behavior so prevalent at institutions of higher learning. (He said this almost wistfully, undoubtedly thinking of how much he missed out on by having me as his steady girlfriend for his entire college career.) But when the call girl’s fees came to light, Deirdre remarked, “Wow. That’s a whole lot more than the girls at school make.”

  And this is when he started to listen. “How much do college call girls make these days?”

  Deirdre plopped herself down in a chair and waited for a moment before finally asking, “Do you want to hear about it?”

  He did.

  The call girl operation was a longstanding Mercer College business, Deirdre said. Very entrepreneurial: stude
nt-founded, student-operated, student-owned. It was an open secret, winked at by the faculty and snickered at by non-participating students, who nevertheless were awed by the wicked glamour. No one knew exactly how big an operation it was; most guessed that there were ten or fifteen women on the roster.

  Engrossed in the story, I was vaguely titillated, as if reading a tabloid headline while waiting to buy groceries. Then I remembered that Tim was not telling me this for my entertainment. “I don’t see how—what good would I be on this story?” It was too much to hope that he’d ask me to write a feature on bordello décor.

  “You’ve got the contacts.”

  I felt myself backtracking, trying to undo my bragging. “Just the dean of admissions. And he’s easy to reach—listed in the college directory. I just did one interview. We’re not close.”

  “And you’ve got this whole education thing working,” he said. “You understand the system.”

  “I don’t, though.” I was speaking fast now, in a desperate bid to convey my incompetence. “I understand blind children taking their dogs to school, I understand replacing soda machines with juice dispensers. And anyway, I don’t see how relevant all this is to education. This thing, it sounds like something you’d read in the National Enquirer.”

  “These days, all the big news starts at the National Enquirer—the stuff everyone’s too squeamish to print until it shows up in the grocery store checkout line. Besides, it’s not like this story is without precedent. Don’t you remember, back in the eighties, that big scandal about Ivy League prostitution? It was on the front page of the New York Times.”

  Tim has had a subscription to the Times since he was in the sixth grade.

  “The eighties?” I took a swig of my water. “If it wasn’t in Tiger Beat magazine, I’d have missed it.”

  “Well, it was big, mainstream, national news.” He leaned forward. “And it’s happening again.”

  “I don’t think I’m the right person for the job,” I said.