Eligible (37 page)

“WOW,” JASPER SAID
when Liz answered her cellphone. “I’m pleasantly surprised you picked up.”

It was evening, and Liz was lying in her hotel room bed in Houston, watching a mediocre movie she’d seen in the theater in high school and thinking,
I’m in love with you. I can’t stop thinking about you.

She said to Jasper, “Did you pee on your writing professor’s desk?”

The silence that followed—it lasted for more time than would have been necessary to express reflexive bewilderment. At last, Jasper said, “I assume Darcy has been putting poison in your ear again.”

“I have a right to know what really happened.”

“If I could go back in time, are there things I’d do differently? Without question.”

“What made you think that was okay?”

“Besides ten beers?” Jasper seemed to be waiting for her to laugh, and when she didn’t, he said, “It was stupid and juvenile. There’s no denying that. But I swear it wasn’t racist. Tricia Randolph could have been blue, green, or polka-dotted, and I would have disliked her just the same.”

Jasper was reminding her of someone, Liz thought, and after a second, she realized it was her mother. She said, “Did you ruin the professor’s computer? You must have.” Jasper said nothing, and Liz added, “I can’t believe you peed on a writer’s computer.”

“Don’t tell me you never did anything dumb when you were twenty-two.”

“I loved you so much.” Liz didn’t raise her voice; she felt more sad than outraged. “From the time we met—I would have done anything for you. I thought you were so smart and cute and funny, and I was so flattered that you respected me and wanted to be friends. But how could you have strung me along all these years? If my excuse is a misguided crush, what’s yours?”

“Nin—” Jasper said, and his pained tone was a reminder that, however he had transgressed, he hadn’t done so entirely callously. His affection for her was not fake; it just was partial. Or perhaps it
was
fake, he was faking emotion now, and he had a personality disorder; but between these possibilities, she preferred to see him as inadequate rather than clinically diagnosable. “I’m going to do better,” he said. “Starting now, I’m getting my act together. Don’t give up on me.”

“Oh, Jasper,” Liz said. “I already have.”

SHE HAD BEEN
asleep for less than an hour when her cellphone rang again, and the sound of it in the dark, in a hotel room, late at night, was sufficiently unsettling that she answered before even looking at the caller ID to make sure it wasn’t Jasper again.

“I woke you up,” said a female voice. “Sorry. I’ll call back tomorrow.”

It wasn’t Jane; that was the fact Liz was certain of first, but several additional seconds passed before her brain determined who it was.

“Charlotte,” she said. “Hi. It’s fine. I’m awake.”

And then Charlotte Lucas began to sob, and between gulps, she said, “You told me so. You told me, but I moved here anyway, like an idiot.”

“Hold on,” Liz said. “Slow down. Where are you?”

“I’m at the house.
His
house.”

“You’re not—he isn’t, like, abusive, is he?”

Charlotte sniffled lavishly. “No, he’s not abusive. Willie’s a sweet, self-centered dork.”

“Is he with you right now?”

“He’s at work, where he always is.” Liz could hear Charlotte swallow, and she sounded slightly calmer when she next spoke. “I’m so dumb.”

“Did something happen?”

“I moved to a state where I don’t know anyone,” Charlotte said. “Including my own boyfriend. That’s what happened.”

“But did something specific happen? Have you been feeling this way all along?”

“I got a job offer,” Charlotte said, and Liz said, “That’s great!”

“You’d think. It’s a good job, too, with a data analytics company that expects to triple in size in the next year. I’d had a bunch of interviews, but nothing panned out until I got the offer this afternoon. And somehow it made it all real. I’ve been taking it easy, like going to the gym for an hour and a half in the middle of the day and cooking fancy recipes that we eat at ten o’clock at night. But if I take this job, it means I’m no longer playing house, impersonating a good little 1950s homemaker. I’ll really live out here, long-term, with Willie.”

“Do you not want that?”

“I don’t know what I want!” Charlotte wailed. “Maybe instead of taking the job, I should get pregnant now, and that way, even if Willie and I break up, I’ll still be a mom.”

“I can see how this feels overwhelming,” Liz said, “but I think you’re conflating separate issues.”

“Have I mentioned that Willie snores like a freight train? And I lie there, thinking, Okay, if I’d dated him for two years before we moved in together, like normal people do—or even for six months—I’d have gotten used to this. Or I’d be deeply in love with him and be like,
Oh, the endearing foibles of my darling boyfriend.
Instead, I feel like I’m a mail-order bride, and he’s an annoying stranger robbing me of sleep.”

“Nobody thinks snoring is endearing,” Liz said. “Does he know he does it?”

“I have no idea!”

“Ask him. If he doesn’t know, he should see a doctor in case he has breathing problems. And aren’t there special pillows you can buy? But the bigger question is whether you want to make it work. If you’d rather get on a plane and go back to Cincinnati, you’re allowed to. I’ll bet Procter would hire you again in a heartbeat.”

“If I pay for your ticket, will you come out here and tell me what to do with my life?”

“Now?”

“Do you have plans for Labor Day weekend? You’re still in Cincinnati, right?”

“I’m in Houston. I interviewed Kathy de Bourgh, who was giving a speech here today, and I was planning to go back to New York in the morning.”

“Kathy de Bourgh—oh my God! Was she awesome?”

“Yes,” Liz said. “She actually was.”

“I know I’m asking a lot,” Charlotte said. “But I just need someone else’s perspective, someone who knows me well. We have a guest room.”

The thought of staying in Willie’s house after their last interaction was not enticing to Liz. But she said, “I’ll look at flights after we get off the phone, but promise me one thing: Go to a drugstore right now and get earplugs. Or sleep in a different room tonight.”

“Earplugs aren’t a bad idea,” Charlotte said.

“Sleep deprivation makes other problems so much worse.”

“You’re right. See how crazy I’ve become? I can’t even manage basic self-care.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. Just buy some earplugs, relax, and I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lizzy,” Charlotte said. “I really appreciate this. By the way, if you’re worried about things being awkward with Willie, awkwardness doesn’t register with him.”

“That almost makes me jealous,” Liz said.

“I know,” Charlotte said. “No kidding.”

WAITING IN THE
security line back at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Liz found herself indulging in a pointless and perhaps even masochistic imaginative exercise about what it would be like if Darcy were her boyfriend. Given his job, she would need to move to Cincinnati—a possibility that in theory would have seemed distinctly unappealing if not outright prohibitive but, for the reason in question, struck her as potentially manageable. Indeed, the proximity to her family, were she to establish her own life rather than simply facilitate theirs, might be a boon. She could help her parents settle into a new dwelling, keep a closer eye on their finances, and perhaps develop adult relationships with Mary, Kitty, and Lydia (or maybe that was delusional no matter the circumstances). Convincing Talia to allow her to work permanently from Cincinnati would be a challenge, but presumably a juicy profile of Kathy de Bourgh would put Liz’s editor in a magnanimous mood.

Then, of course, there was the matter of Darcy himself—of sharing his bed not just for fifteen sweaty minutes at a time but for entire nights, of enjoying the confidence that he was glad she was there, which was such an oddly luxurious notion that it made her feel both swoony and heartbroken. The thought of him as the person with whom she partook of ordinary daily activities—eating soup and grilled cheese together for lunch on a winter Saturday, watching TV dramas or political talk shows at night, holding a palm to each other’s forehead or picking up cold medicine when one of them wondered if they were sick—seemed almost inconceivably bizarre. And yet it also filled her with a tender sort of yearning.

If they lived together, she decided as she handed her ticket to the agent at the gate and boarded a plane not to New York but to San Francisco, they’d need to move to a bigger apartment or even a house, so that she could have an office. Though her interest in décor was limited, certainly in comparison to her mother’s, she didn’t think it would hurt to hang a print or two on the walls and acquire a plant.

Except, of course, that none of this would come to pass. Surely she had destroyed any such eventualities by treating him with rash and unrepentant rudeness; surely his attraction to her had been rescinded.

As it happened, she still possessed neither his phone number nor his email nor even his street address; on all the occasions on which she’d visited his apartment, she’d been more preoccupied with impending events than with the numerals by which his building was identified. But in this day and age, it couldn’t be difficult to track him down electronically. She could probably find his email on the University of Cincinnati website. And yet there remained the question of what Liz would say.
I’m sorry
seemed the most obvious option, but perhaps
Hey, how’s it going?
was a more casual opener.

Out Liz’s plane window, the mountains of northwest Utah were snow-peaked and lunar, even in August. Too preoccupied to read, Liz scrutinized them at length, but they offered no sagacity. At last, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

UPON LANDING IN
San Francisco, Liz called Ken Weinrich to find out if the fumigation had concluded successfully, and he confirmed that the sulfuryl fluoride levels inside the house had measured at below five parts per million, he had seen no spiders, and his team had removed the tent and fans. Liz then called Mary’s cellphone, though it was difficult to hear Mary over the sound of their mother shouting in the background; apparently, they were back at the Tudor, in the kitchen.

“That food was all perfectly good!” Mrs. Bennet was declaring. “Why, I hadn’t even opened Bev Wattenberg’s peach marmalade!”

“Tell her I’m sure the Wattenbergs will give us more marmalade at Christmas,” Liz said, and Mary said, “There’s no point.”

“The house doesn’t smell weird at all?” Liz asked.

“It doesn’t smell like anything,” Mary said.

“I’ll tell you who won’t appreciate my tins of smoked trout,” Mrs. Bennet was shouting, “and that’s a hobo at a shelter.”

“I have to go,” Mary said.

“Hang in there,” Liz said, and Mary said in a churlish tone, “Thanks for the long-distance pep talk.”