A Clean Slate (17 page)

I helped myself to a few crackers from a tray and fake-laughed along with them, wondering if Timmy was right.

 

That next week at work, I actually began to enjoy myself a little. Cole was still generally a sarcastic “arsehole,” as he would say, but there were some subtle changes, due, I supposed, to him taking my suggestion about William's sweat and the fact that we'd had a drink with Laney. For one thing, he was suddenly using the term “we” very often, as in, “We don't have a shoot until Thursday,” or “We should get some more red gel for the back lights.” He also seemed to trust me more, not hanging over me all the time and shooting me snippy instructions. He even gave me a compliment one day.

I was on the phone making production calls for a shoot that would involve catalog work for a lingerie ad. I'd been surprised to learn that Cole, as the photographer, had to do nearly everything for these shoots, including casting the models, ordering food for the crew, scouting locations if it was in a remote site, obtaining the necessary permits, setting rates for the models and himself, and so many other things. For this particular lingerie shoot, Cole had asked me to arrange for the food, and lacking any other thoughts, I immediately called the caterer that used to stock Bartley Brothers with bagels and fruit for our Friday-morning meetings. The quote they gave me was astronomical. No wonder I'd gotten laid off; Bartley Brothers needed to make room in the budget for three-dollar bagels and fifty-dollar tubs of melon.

Next, I called a number of small restaurants I used to frequent in the Loop, figuring they'd jump for joy at a catering deal. I found a Greek restaurant that would supply us with feta eggs and fruit in the morning and Greek salads and gyros for lunch. It was a tad tricky deciding how much food to order, since so many people at the shoot would be models, and although I knew the whole anorexia thing might be a cliché, I'd starve myself too if I was going to be photographed in a thong. Finally, I secured the amount, the
pricing and the delivery schedule, and I typed the whole thing up for Cole on his computer.

I was on the phone again, this time with a booker from one of the modeling agencies, when Cole walked over to me, reading the printout.

“Great work,” he said when I hung up the phone. “You're so much better at this than I am.”

I was proud despite myself.

Later that day, I could hear Cole on the phone, talking fast and excitedly to someone, although I couldn't make out what he was saying. When he got off the phone, he was more animated than I'd ever seen him.

“What's up?” I said.

He bounced around on his feet, moving from his butcher-block table, where some equipment was lined up with militarylike precision, to where I sat. “Can't say. Don't want to ruin it, if you know what I mean, but soon. Maybe soon.”

That's all I could get out of him, but he was in such a charming mood that he let me leave at three o'clock. When I got home that day, I was feeling good about my new job and wanting to try out some of the photographic techniques I'd picked up by watching Cole. I dug my camera bag out of the closet by the kitchen, making sure that I still had battery power. I checked to see if there was any film. Yes. There were twenty-six pictures left on a roll of thirty-six. But I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken any photos. Had it been this summer? Or even before that? The last time I could actually recall was Christmas at Ben's house, and then my mom's apartment after that. But I'd already developed those. So when had I taken ten pictures and, more importantly, what had I taken them of?

The only way to find out was to finish the roll and get it developed. I headed outside and walked through Lincoln Park up to Fullerton Avenue until I reached the botanical gardens. It used to be a favorite practice site of mine, the
huge greenhouse, its glass bleary with humidity and the oval ring of flowering bushes outside. I started shooting one frame after another, loving the satisfying click of the shutter. I tried out some of Cole's techniques—using a long lens to shoot a single bloom and fuzz out the background, taking the shot a little off center to bring some other element into the picture.

When I was finished with the roll, I walked back to my place, feeling pleased, centered. Taking pictures always did that to me. As I neared my apartment, the sky was hanging low and purple, the way dusk falls in Chicago. The encroaching darkness brought a chill with it, but I was warm inside. Things were finally falling into place. I had a decent job, I was getting over Ben. No, I
was
over Ben. I marched on happily toward my building, crossing the street and walking up my circular drive.

And there he was, as if he'd heard my thoughts, sitting right in front of my building on the rim of the fountain.

B
en stood when he saw me. “What did you get?” he said, gesturing to my camera bag.

It was such a familiar question, the one he'd ask whenever I came inside from taking pictures, that I immediately began to answer it, telling him about the botanical gardens and the flowers I'd shot. For a second, I could see us in my town house, Ben sitting at the kitchen table while pasta boiled on the stove, me rambling on about the shots I'd taken.

Ben nodded as I talked, and asked other questions, and before long it began to feel comfortable. Too comfortable.

“Why are you here?” I said suddenly.

He blinked a few times, as if he hadn't expected me to say that. “I, um, forgot to ask you something on Saturday.”

“Yeah, me, too.”
Why didn't you want to marry me?

“Okay, well, should I go first?” he asked.

“Sure.” I set my camera bag down and pulled my jacket tighter around me.

“Should we go inside?”

“No.” I answered quickly. I didn't want him to see my bland apartment, which was such a step down from the town house.

“Okay. It's just that I forgot to ask you about this memory thing.” He waved a vague hand toward my head. “I mean, are you still having problems?”

“It's
not
a problem.”

“Oh. Great. So you can remember everything again?”

“I didn't say that.”

More blinking. “So you still have this memory gap, or whatever you're calling it.”

“I'm not calling it anything, and it's not a problem. It's just…there.”

“Kell, that's not good. I really think you should go to the doctor.”

“Well, you don't get to have an opinion anymore, do you?”

He shook his head, as if refusing to get pulled in by my childish taunt. “It's not healthy, not remembering like that. You need to see someone about it.”

I squirmed. My body was agitated and itchy with the introduction of this issue that I didn't want to think about from someone I didn't want to care about. “I'm not kidding, Ben. You don't get an opinion on this. You wanted out. You're out. So don't come around here telling me what to do.”

A car drove into the circular drive and parked near us. Ben glanced up, then back at me. I could tell he was reining in something else he wanted to say. “Fair enough,” he said finally. “So what was the thing you forgot to ask me this weekend?”

I squirmed again. Why now? Why was this happening now, when I was just starting to feel like I was getting my act together?

“It was nothing,” I said.

“Well, it was
something.
”

“No, it's nothing.”

“You said you forgot to ask me something, so just ask.”

“Why didn't you want to marry me?” I blurted it out, right in the middle of his question, right there in the middle of the driveway.

His mouth hung open a little, and a heavy silence weighed on us, despite the buzz of the city and the cars speeding by on Lake Shore Drive. His face was turning a little pink from the chilly night air, and old instincts made me want to hurry him inside and fix him a cup of coffee.

“I told you,” he said after a few long seconds. “You made it clear that you wanted a ring by your birthday, and I couldn't give you what you wanted.”

“I know that, but you didn't tell me
why.
Why couldn't you give me what I wanted? Why didn't you want to marry me?” I fought back a few tears that seemed to pop into the corners of my eyes. Okay, maybe I wasn't totally over him.

Ben's own eyes looked so sad. “Here's the thing, Kell. I'm not so sure about that anymore.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I think I made a mistake.”

 

I walked Ben around the corner to a little Italian restaurant called Angelina's that I'd spotted recently. I still wouldn't invite him into my new apartment, but we couldn't have this talk in the driveway, either. The dinner rush wasn't on yet and so we were soon seated in a front table by the window with two glasses of Chianti in front of us. To someone on the street who happened to glance inside, we probably looked incredibly romantic, a couple who'd clearly known each other for a long time, tucked into a cozy table, our heads pushed close together as we talked.

In reality, I was feeling about every emotion imaginable
except
cozy and romantic—love, hate, anguish, regret, anger, confusion, you name it.

“Let me start over,” Ben was saying. He put his hands flat on the table for emphasis. I'd seen him do that a million times at Bartley Brothers when he was trying to make a point. “You know I don't like being told what to do.”

I huffed but didn't say anything. It was one of my pet peeves about Ben. If he thought you were ordering him to wash up the kitchen or pick up the dry cleaning, then he would act out like a kid—delaying, pouting, stomping around.

“Look, I know it's not a good trait, but I can't help it sometimes,” he continued. “And when you said that you had to be engaged by your birthday, I felt like you were telling me what to do instead of us making a joint decision.”

“So why didn't you make it into a joint decision? Why didn't you talk to me about it?”

“Kell, you know how you are when you want something, and you made it perfectly clear you wanted a ring or we were done.”

“Fine,” I said, practically spitting the word, because he was right. “What I've been asking you, though, is why you didn't want to marry me. Even if you did feel like I was telling you what to do,
why
couldn't you do it eventually?”

“That's the thing. I felt I did want to marry you. Eventually. But I didn't like that ultimatum you were giving me. I didn't want to be pushed into it, so I finally decided that if I couldn't do it in your time frame, maybe I shouldn't do it at all.”

Was he actually telling me anything new? It didn't feel like it.

“That night of your birthday was one of the worst days of my life,” Ben continued.

“Join the club.” I said it sarcastically before I realized that I couldn't technically remember that night. It angered me
all of a sudden, this memory thing, because although it had delivered me from depression and given me a shot at a new life, it had also stolen from me the right to remember, to revive how fucking pissed off I was at Ben that night.

“I know it wasn't a good day for you, either, and I'm sorry about that, about breaking up with you on that day.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I was a mess after we broke up. I couldn't stop thinking about you and what an ass I'd been, because by breaking up with you, I was actually coming to terms with the fact that I
did
want to marry you someday, and then all of a sudden, I didn't have you at all. It was killing me. But right when I was about to come talk to you about all this, to tell you that I'd made a huge mistake, you started calling me at all hours and stopping by work or my apartment. You didn't seem like yourself anymore.”

“Why? What did I seem like?” Half of me didn't want to know, but I was too curious. I needed to hear Ben's take on what I'd been like during that time.

“You were down.
Very
down. It was almost spooky the way you acted. Kind of like you were on the edge, and if we didn't get back together you were going to lose it. It got pretty creepy for a while, and I called Laney to ask her what in the hell was going on, but she didn't know, either.” He shook his head. “The thing was, once
you
started acting so strange,
I
started feeling better. I know that sounds shitty, but it was like you were reinforcing my decision. Every time I found you sitting on my doorstep or waiting for me by the El after work, it was like a confirmation that we weren't supposed to be together.”

He paused and looked at me for a response. I wanted to scream at him, to call him selfish and shallow and reactionary and shortsighted, but the thing was that I might have acted the same, felt the same, if the person I thought I loved had forced me into a corner. “What did you mean tonight when you said you thought you'd made a mistake?”

He gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “Well, it's all different now, isn't it?”

“What's different?”

“You, for one thing. You're totally different now than you were this summer.”

“How?” I thought I knew what he meant, but some needy part of myself wanted to hear it.

“You're like you used to be before we got so caught up at Bartley and before all this marriage talk. You're confident again and funny and laid-back—and let's face it, you look gorgeous. Every time I see you like this, I realize that I might have made a really, really grave mistake. I miss you, Kell.”

I pulled my glass of Chianti toward me and took a glug of it, my head swirling. On one hand, I hated him for deciding this
now,
for being such an asshole that he couldn't have realized before how awesome I was. On the other hand, I felt fluffed up and proud at his praise, his second thoughts.

“I don't know what to say, Ben. I mean, what do you want from me?”

“Didn't get that far.” He laughed. His nervous laugh. “I guess I just want us to be able to keep talking about this.”

“What about Therese?”

He looked at the table, then back up at me. “I just want to talk to you, Kell, that's all. Maybe in a few days, maybe on the phone, whatever you want. Can we do that?”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off, that he'd already made his one mistake. But I'd made mistakes, too, mistakes that might have been even bigger than his, and sitting across from him like this, our hands almost touching on the table, I missed what we used to have.

“Yeah,” I said, “we can do that.”