Baby Proof (18 page)

“No. I don’t,” he says. “I say only what I mean.”

I smile because I believe him. There is nothing gratuitous about Richard.

We both come, seconds apart, but do not cuddle in the aftermath. I already sensed that Richard is not the cuddling kind, and that is fine with me. I can skip the cuddling as long as there is some sense of lingering connection, physical or otherwise.

Richard and I have both. We sit side by side, leaning against his pillows and leather headboard. We are still undressed, but covered up to our waists with his taupe sheets. His arm is draped over mine, his fingers resting on my wrist, occasionally tapping my skin.

We talk about work, but not in a “we have nothing else to talk about” sort of a way. More in the “tell me what I don’t already know” kind of way. He asks me if I love what I do, and I tell him yes.

“What do you like the best about your job?” he says.

I consider all the standard answers that editors give, stuff about loving books and the written word and escaping to a different world. Of course that’s all true, but that’s not what I love most about editing. There’s something else, something that has more to do with discovering a fresh talent.

“It’s hard to explain,” I say. “But I guess it’s that rush I get when I read something and feel hooked. When I think, ‘This person can really, really write,’ and I just have to work with her.”

Richard smiles and takes my hand as if to say, Go on .

So I do. I say, “You know that almost smug feeling you have in high school when you listen to a band before they get really big and then you can say, ‘Oh, Depeche Mode? I’ve been listening to them forever . I just love their old stuff?”

Richard laughs and nods.

“Well, that’s what it’s like to uncover a new author,” I say. “Like you were in on the secret first .” I suddenly feel self-conscious, like I’ve exposed too much of myself.

“So what about you?” I say. “What do you like best about your job?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Richard says. “I guess I like that it’s personality-driven And I like contributing to a book’s success that feeling when everything is clicking for a book and an author and you’re getting a whole bunch of reviews But sometimes it feels so all-or-nothing. Like, ‘what have you done for me lately?’ You know how that goes.”

I nod. I know exactly how that goes.

He continues, “And there are many more times when you can’t get shit for a book. Which really sucks when you like the book and like the author”

I nod again. It’s heartbreaking when you love a book that fails. And it always seems to happen to the nicest authors.

Richard says, “And I don’t know publicity tends to breed a certain kind of person who feels the need to try to take credit for everything and who can’t seem to ever quite turn off that publicist persona. It’s like they’re perpetually in schmooze mode and in a rush to get into the spotlight all the time.”

“You’re not that way,” I say, thinking that Richard is just naturally in the spotlight. He’s not rushing to get there.

“God. I sure hope not. Because I’ll tell you, Parr, there is nothing that makes me loathe my job more than heading to some sort of industry cocktail party and watching all the hyper publicists chase around media folks to introduce themselves while not-that-subtly trying to pitch their projects and doing the whole nametag surfing thing. It’s brutal.”

“Nametag surfing?”

“You know, when someone starts talking to you like they’re your new best friend. Then, when they think you’re not looking, they glance down at your nametag really quickly to see who you are. And if they deem you worthy and important enough—they’ll keep talking to you. It’s sort of like peeking at someone’s cleavage. And man, if there is someone from the Times or something at one of those things, it’s like a feeding frenzy. I can’t imagine why those guys even show up to those things, unless they just need some sort of cheap ego boost.”

I laugh and say, “Yeah, but nobody has to read your nametag, Richard.”

“That’s true,” he says with feigned bravado.

His phone rings, but he doesn’t even glance in its direction. I return the gesture when my cell spits out Jess’s personal ring tone, The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” But then she rings again. And again.

“I better get that,” I say. “It’s Jess. Sounds important.”

Richard knows that Jess is my best friend and roommate. He leans over, kisses my cheek, and says, “Go ahead. Call her back.”

I retrieve my underwear on the floor next to the bed, put it on as quickly as possible, and walk the five or six steps over to Richard’s ottoman where I dropped my purse. I find my phone and call Jess at home.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“I’m with Richard,” I say, liking the way those words sound. I hope that I’ll be saying them for a while. “What’s going on?”

“He dumped me,” she says. Her voice cracks as if she’s been crying or is about to. “He says he still loves his wife. He wants to make it work with her.”

“I’ll be right home,” I say, snapping my phone shut.

I cast Richard an apologetic look as I finish dressing. “I’m really sorry, but I gotta go.”

“Everything okay?” he asks, swinging his legs over the side of his bed and pulling on his boxers.

“A crisis of the heart,” I tell him.

“I’m not familiar,” he says.

Must be nice , I think.

He walks me to the door and kisses me good-bye.

I pause for a second as I think of something appropriate to say. I settle on, “Thanks for tonight.”

It sounds a little formal, so I smile and add, “I enjoyed it.”

“Anytime,” he says. “And I mean that.”

Jess is a mess when I return to her place. She is sitting cross-legged in the corner of her room and there are at least a dozen cigarette butts in one of her white saucers on the floor beside her. She quit smoking a few years ago, but picks the habit back up whenever she’s in the middle of a stressful deal or an emotional crisis. She looks fragile, vulnerable. To see her now, you’d never guess that she can buy and sell companies worth billions of dollars.

I hug her and say that I’m sorry. That I know how badly she wanted things to work out with Trey. I refrain from calling him a lying bastard. For now.

She says, “I really believed in him,” and then starts to cry. It’s heartbreaking to watch. Another reason not to have a child. The thought of watching your child suffer feels unbearable. Still, as I listen to Jess romanticize her relationship with Trey, I can’t help feeling the way I do when friends lose pets and grieve as if a person died. Yes, it’s sad, but it’s not that sad, I always think. I know you loved Flash, but he was a basset hound, for God’s sake, not your son. But maybe that’s because I never had a dog growing up (my mother is allergic to them). I feel sort of the same way about Trey. I’ve never been with a married man, but I want to say to Jess, “Yes, you liked him, and you loved having sex with him. But how could you love him ? He is married to another woman. With children. He is emotionally unavailable to you. He is a fraud. You were never, even at your peak romantic moment, really together. So you haven’t really lost anything.”

I might say all of this at some point, but now is not the time. I just let her cry. I remember that she did the same for me. Not that Ben and Trey should ever be compared.

“I know you couldn’t possibly understand this,” Jess says after a long silent stretch. “But I thought he was going to be the father of my children. I’ve invested two years in him. Two years. I feel too old to start looking again.”

“You’re not too old,” I say. “That’s ludicrous.”

“I’m almost thirty- five ,” she says. “I’m running out of time. I’m running out of eggs.”

“You have plenty of good eggs left,” I say. I am trying hard to be a supportive friend, but I can’t help fixating on the other part of her statement. The part about me not understanding. I don’t want to make her angst about me, as my mother does whenever someone else is experiencing trauma, but I can’t help asking, “Why do you think I can’t understand this?”

Jess and I never argue, so she has no experience in detecting the edge in my voice now. She has no way of knowing how annoyed I am. How much I am regretting calling her back at all. I could still be at Richard’s. I wish I were. Almost. Actually, I’m not sure about that, in some ways it was nice to get the natural out. Much easier than deciding for myself whether I should spend the night.

But what I do know is that a man like Trey should not have the power to infiltrate my romantic life. It’s bad enough that he has impacted my best friend’s.

I look at Jess, waiting for an answer. She lights another cigarette as she says, “Because you don’t want kids.”

Right , I think to myself. And I guess that means that I also have no imagination, no empathy, no feelings. I can’t possibly fathom how another woman feels when I don’t want to be a mother myself. After all, what kind of a woman doesn’t want to be a mother?

fifteen

The next day Daphne calls me from the waiting room of her fertility clinic. I’m about to go into our weekly editorial meeting, and I want to take the time to either review my notes or say good morning to Richard or both. I called him back last night, after my conversation with Jess, but I still feel strange about leaving so quickly after we slept together for the first time. I tell Daphne that I can’t talk and will call her back after my meeting.

“But it’s nine-twelve,” she says.

“Yeah. So?”

“So your meeting doesn’t start at nine-fifteen, does it?”

I know precisely where she’s going with her line of questioning, but I still fall into her trap and say, “No. It starts at nine-thirty.”

“You have a few minutes then, right?”

I shake my head and sigh. Daphne seems to think that because I have my own office and phone, I should always be able to talk. But instead of delving into the details of my meeting or anything of my evening with Richard, I say, “Okay, Daph. I have about three minutes. What’s up?”

I can feel her victory smile over the phone. “So,” she says, “we’re here at the doctor’s office. Tony is getting his tests. You know, to see if something is wrong with him.”

“Right,” I say, checking my e-mail. I have one from Richard. Just the sight of his name makes my heart flutter. He was so good last night.

She says, “The first step is his semen analysis.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “That makes sense.”

“So they put him in this little room with all these porn videos and girly magazines and stuff.”

I laugh and say, “Poor Tony.”

“Poor Tony ?” Daphne says. “He’s looking at naked women right now. I don’t think you need to feel sorry for him .”

“I’m sure he’s embarrassed, though,” I say as I quietly click open Richard’s e-mail and read, When can I see you again ?

I smile and type back, At 9:30. Aren’t you coming to the editorial meeting ?

Daphne continues, “He’s not embarrassed in the slightest. He thinks the whole thing’s hilarious. He was cracking jokes, asking the nurse if they had any girl-on-girl videos.”

“Tony cracks jokes when he’s embarrassed. Remember when he forgot to put his car in park that one Thanksgiving?” I say, remembering how his new, black Acura rolled backward, causing a four-car pileup. “He made self-deprecating remarks about that maneuver for years. He still brings it up.”

“That’s different,” she says. “That was sort of funny. After the fact, anyway.”

“This will be funny someday, too,” I say as I read Richard’s virtually instantaneous response: See you alone. As I saw you last night .

“So is it totally unreasonable for me to be annoyed?” Daphne asks.

This is her trademark question; Daphne always wants me to gauge the unreasonableness of her emotional reaction to something. I consistently want to tell her that, yes, she’s being unreasonable, an instinct Maura gives in to, but I’ve learned to tread carefully.

“I can see why you would be annoyed,” I say to Daphne as I compose an e-mail back to Richard: As soon as possible .

“I mean, it’s just gross ,” she says. “And it adds another layer of humiliation to this whole process.”

“Try not to think of it that way,” I say. “Just get through it.”

“Well, don’t you think Tony should have told them he didn’t need props? Don’t you think he should be thinking about his wife? Instead of jerking off to porn?”

“I’m sure he is thinking about you. Give him the benefit of the doubt, Daph.”

“Yeah, right,” she says. “Our sex life sucks. Unless I’m ovulating, it’s nonexistent. And when I am ovulating, it’s a total chore.”

“It will get better,” I say, thinking of Richard again. How good last night felt. How I will never have to experience the drudgery of procreational sex. “You guys are just under a lot of pressure.”

I glance at my watch. It is 9:19, and it takes approximately four minutes to take the elevator up three floors and walk to the conference room. Which leaves me only seven minutes to look over my notes.

Just as I’m about to say good-bye, she says, “Do you think this is his fault?”

“Fault? What do you mean?” I ask.

Clearly it’s not Tony’s fault that their clinic, the clinic Daphne researched and selected, keeps pornography on hand.

“You think it’s his problem or mine? The reason we can’t get pregnant?”

Surely Daphne must realize that I have no possible way of knowing an answer that requires extensive diagnostic testing, but this sort of thing never stops her from asking the question; she is a big believer in random speculation and blind guesswork.

I humor her and say, “I think it’s probably his issue. But I also predict that it will be a fixable issue Listen, Daph. I really gotta run. I’ll call you after my meeting. Okay?”

“Okay. But cross your fingers that you’re right and that it is his fault,” she says before we say good-bye.

Her last comment about fault disturbs me so much that I frown at the phone as I hang up, something that people usually only do on badly written television shows. I’m not sure what about it bothers me, but I tell myself I can analyze it later.

For now, I must get in my saleswoman frame of mind. The purpose of the weekly editorial meeting is for editors to pitch manuscripts to the editorial director and heads of other departments who have the opportunity to shoot the proposal down for any number of reasons: this won’t sell; this book is too much like another book released last year; or just a plain old, this manuscript blows . Obviously a lot is at stake for editors so the meetings tend to have a Darwinian feel with plenty of office politics coming into play. Emotions run high, and it’s not uncommon for junior editors, who are desperate to make a name for themselves, to leave the conference room in tears. I have had my share of traumatic meetings as I came through the ranks, but I’m actually six for six for novels pitched this year (which could be a house record), and I’d like nothing better than to keep my perfect track record alive. I also want to impress Richard. It would be a real shame for my streak to be broken on the heels of last night.