Neurotica (34 page)

“No, it feels fine to me. Are you okay?”

“Oh. Yes, yes. Just hot,” I said gaily, shrugging off my jacket, no longer caring about the stain on my top.

Eric had a strange look on his face. “What were you going to say?” he asked again.

“I was going to say   .   .   . well, I
don't
think we should move in together,” I said weakly.

“You don't? Why not?”

Why not indeed. If I had been incapable of a brisk “It's over. Let's be friends,” before, now, in the face of his proposal, I had no idea where to start. “Well   .   .   . I was thinking that maybe we should think about, well, you know   .   .   . maybe think about taking it a little more slowly.”

“Slowly. But I thought this is what you wanted, to get engaged, to move forward. I thought you'd be happy,” Eric said.

“Um,” I said.

“What do you mean by taking it slower? I mean, you still want to see each other, don't you?” he continued.

“Er,” I said.

“You don't want to see other people, do you?” he asked in an incredulous tone.

This was just the break I was looking for. I nodded eagerly, and said, “Well, yes, we could do that. See other people. That might be a good idea,” I said, as though it was his idea, and I was just going along with it. Encouraging his sound judgment.

But I don't think Eric bought it. Instead, he looked startled, with that deer-in-the-headlights expression people always talk about (although since I don't commune with nature, I've never come that close to running over Bambi).

“See other people,” he repeated, and as he absorbed my words his face fell like a child who's just been told that there's no such thing as Santa. “You mean, instead of being exclusive. But you don't want to break up, do you? Not entirely? I mean, you still want us to see each other, right?”

Again, typical male reaction—complete and utter shock at the very suggestion that they somehow fall short of your ideal. And it's not just the smart, handsome, successful, rich men—the stupid, ugly, losers are equally flabbergasted that a woman could find them anything less than highly desirable. But when a woman gets dumped, she immediately starts moaning about how if only her thighs were thinner or if she had only been more willing to engage in nightly fellatio, if she could only have been more perfect, then he wouldn't have left. This is a universal female reaction, no matter how brilliant and smart and wonderful the woman in question happens to be, nor how much of a reject the boyfriend is.

“Oh, no. No. Well, I mean, we could see each other,” I hastened to say, and then, remembering my resolve about Band-Aids, whispered, “As friends.”

Eric just sat there, holding his martini, his head bowed forward. He looked   .   .   . sick. I felt sick. This wasn't going well at all. Why did I do this? Why hadn't I gone first, said my peace, and avoided the whole engagement/move-in-together thing? Why?
Why?

Eric still didn't say anything. He just got all droopy, and sniffly, and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to cry. He looked at me with wide, wet, dog-being-dumped-in-the-country-because-he's-no-longer-a-cute-fluffy-puppy eyes. And I felt dreadful, worse than a dog deserter—more like a monster who'd just finished gleefully decapitating a nest of fuzzy baby bunnies.

I couldn't bear the silence any longer. “I'm so sorry. I had no idea that you thought   .   .   . that you'd been thinking   .   .   . I didn't know,” I finished lamely.

“I noticed that you'd been distant. At first I thought it was just your work or something, but then you never wanted to get together, so then I thought that you were getting annoyed that we weren't making plans for the future. I thought that you wanted a commitment. But I guess that wasn't it at all,” Eric said, shooting me another reproachful, teary look. “I thought that we were in love.”

And just like that, my resolve wavered. He thought that I loved him. It was such a terrible, terrible thing to tell someone who thinks that he is loved that no, sorry, you aren't. I didn't want to be that person, the one who takes what's all warm and cozy—winter afternoon mugs of cocoa, Saturday night video rentals, Sunday morning crossword puzzles over pancakes—and rips it to shreds. And the part of me that didn't want to be the heartbreaker was pulling way ahead of the side of me that wanted to shake Eric out of my life. I couldn't stand his desolate, reproachful gaze. I was willing to do anything—maybe even go ring shopping—to make it end.

“Oh, Eric,” I said, my will collapsing. If at that moment he had said one more word about love, or wanting to give it another try, I would have done it. Knowing all the while that five years later when we'd married and had babies, and I was having lustful fantasies about the neighbor's teenage son who cut our grass, we'd be able to trace all of the marital discord right back to this very moment.

But thankfully, it didn't come to that. Eric pulled himself together. He took a deep breath, drew his shoulders up and his chest in, lifted his chin, and moved from lovelorn victim to Gloria Gaynor singing “I Will Survive.” He smiled bravely and stood up, thrusting his balled-up fists into the pockets of his wool Brooks Brothers suit pants with a certain resolute dignity, and stood for a minute at the edge of the table.

“Well. Bye. Maybe I'll call you later?” he asked.

I nodded encouragingly and said, “Oh, yes, please do,” while my conscience was screaming,
No! Tell him not to call! Like the Band-Aid! Tell him about ripping off the Band-Aid, and how even if it seems worse now it's actually much, much better in the long run.

After Eric left, I sat in the bar and finished my wine, which felt like battery acid churning around in my stomach. When I was sure that he'd had enough time to get a taxi, so I wouldn't have to bump into him on the street, I dug my cell phone out of my bag and called my best friend, Nina, and asked her if I could come over.

“I need to talk. It's an emergency,” I said.

And then, before leaving McCormick & Schmick's, I went to the ladies' room and managed to make it to a stall just before I puked up all of the hummus and pita bread.

It was five months to the day before my thirtieth birthday.

by KIM GREEN

on sale November 2003

© 2003 by Kim Green

JANUARY 2001 / SAN FRANCISCO

I
T STARTED WITH AN E-MAIL, AS THINGS OFTEN DO THESE days. You see, I never intended to move to Montana. Or fall in love with a guy who thinks crème brûlée is men's hair gel. Or get caught in flagrante delicto with my ex-boyfriend by, of all people, my parents. Or commit industrial espionage. (Okay, that one had crossed my mind on occasion.)

In fact, the spring of my thirtieth year, getting away from it all was the last thing on my mind. My job as a Web-site editor was going well. I had lots of friends and a nice apartment, and, having been raised in Miami, where the unceasing sunny days and rows of scorched backsides tend to give one a permanent headache, I was looking forward to a typically bracing, fog-shrouded, tourist-lamenting San Francisco summer.

My stats: Name: Jennifer Maya Brenner. Born: Miami. Live: San Francisco. Surrendered virginity: Fort Lauderdale (embarrassing, but true). Provenance: Eastern European Jewish-American with a dash of French Catholic—just enough to cause me to turn up my nose at a youngish Brie, but not sufficient to know how to tie a scarf with panache. Family: Quite mad. Siblings: Karen, 38, and Benjamin, 34. Parents: See
Family.
Age: As I said, 30. State: Relatively, if inconsistently, well preserved. On my best days, I've been known to get carded for buying cigarettes. (Yes, I used to smoke, back when it was socially acceptable in California.) On my worst days, I can sometimes score a senior discount at the movie theater. Therapy: Most definitely. Light therapy: Probably not. Massage therapy: Whenever and wherever. Exes: Too many for sainthood; too few for a memoir. Interests: Writing, editing, drinking red wine, drinking white wine, killing green plants, extracting twenty-dollar bills from ATMs, stalking attractive fellow gym-goers, buying red shoes, yoga, and feeding the poor (okay, once, but I intend to repeat the act next Christmas, so I'm claiming hobby status in advance). Things I would never say in a personal ad, even though I enjoy them: walking on beach, seeing movies, cruising to Mexico, dining at fancy restaurants, watching sunsets, and doing it in hot tubs.

So there I was, in a nutshell.

If not perfect, my life was at least bearable and, on paper, even a little impressive. Okay, I cried on the stair-climber once in a while and ate whole pints of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk in one sitting and dreamed about chucking it all and having tantric sex with my Indian ob-gyn, but basically, life was tolerable.

Then I got the e-mail and everything changed in a heartbeat. Sure, it all worked out great in the end, but it took a lot to get there.

ex marks the spot

Six Months Earlier

T
HE E-MAIL ARRIVED IN MY IN BOX AS I WAS KILLING time adding books and CDs to my Amazon wish list that I would never buy.
Starting a Dialogue with Your Inner Child's Child
and
The Best Latin Dance Party Hits of 1980–1990
ring any bells?

To: Carl Hanson

From: Nancy Teason

Subject: Department changes

C,

I've been giving the changes we talked about some thought, and the topline is, Jen's just not ready for this kind of responsibility. She has tons of talent, and with the right kind of mentoring, I think she could be a managing editor in a year or two. Irregardless [sic] of the current budget freeze, I think we need to look out of house on this one. We can talk about it more but this is really my gut call.

p.s. Steve and I have tickets to the Giants game on Sunday. Interested in making it a foursome?

Nance

Nancy Teason, Director of Product Development

Technology Standard / TechStandard.com

I read it through several more times, heart pounding. My college roommate, who is now a practicing personal coach with two homes (Laguna Beach, California, and Old Saybrook, Connecticut) and two ex-husbands (both in L.A.), says that the important thing in times of stress is to isolate the thought attack and put it away in your “negativity closet.” I have tried this method several times and have found that it is nowhere near as satisfying as imagining backing an SUV slowly over the backstabbing turncoat who has wronged you.

For about six weeks now, I've been going through the humiliating process of applying for my own job. Why do I think it's mine? Well, for one, my former boss, Jem Abbott Pierce (yes, that's really her name—Mayflower forebears) had the temerity to go have a baby and leave me stranded with her work. Not that I mind, since her job is infinitely more interesting than my own, what with the trips to L.A. in spring, New York in fall, and free shwag up the wazoo.

It just stands to reason that I, Jem's Fully Anointed Protégée, am supposed to take her place when she invariably decides that darning pashmina shawls, painting landscapes of rotting barns, and nurturing her blue-blooded progeny are more important than covering high-tech news in Silicon Valley.

One Internet hiccup, and a message I was never intended to see found its way to my in-box. This happens, what, once every five years or so? Twenty? As there was something omenlike about this, I grabbed my spongy carpal-tunnel wrist ball and squeezed obsessively while staring out at the parking lot, hoping for a divine or at least everyday revelation. I considered my options: Forward dreaded message to Carl and cc Nancy Teason (Treason?) with a kind
fyi
at the top, and pretend ongoing ignorance while conducting a quietly dignified job search, which would hopefully offer me 387,000 instantly vesting stock options and an all-straight-male staff? Delete dreaded message and sublimate my rage into therapeutic massage and book club? Reply to dreaded message using colorful expletives, stomp over to Carl's office, urinate on the copier, and fling my meager belongings in a box?

In the end, I did what I always do when I'm panicked—I called Robert.