Beautiful Illusions (18 page)

Then I called Nick.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Iris, is…”

“Iris is what?” he asked.

“She’s…” I can’t bring myself to say the words. There is a part of me that is in denial that any of this is true. Alexis never made her way over here and made a cruel comment. Iris is still here, in the dark, but here with me. She’s still in love with me. Of course, in reality, I don’t really know if she is in love with me, or ever was. She never tells me how she feels about me. She’s inscrutable, elusive, and I never quite know where I stand. Well, at least that was true.

I know where I stand now, unfortunately, with her.

Nowhere.

“Out with it.” Nick has no patience for this.

“Nothing.” If I don’t say the words, then they aren’t true.

He sighed. “Do I have to ask Alexis about this?”

Hearing the word Alexis snapped me out of my pity party. “Don’t talk to that bitch again,” I said.

“Whoa. I thought you guys were getting along.”

“Were is the operative word here.”

“Okay. So you guys are on the outs again
. I swear to God, over the past 20 years, you guys have hated each other for as many days as you’ve loved each other. It’s just about even.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So what’s the problem now?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. She came over the other night crazier than I’ve seen her in awhile. She had been doing lines of coke and was beyond pissed. She said that she ran into you.”

“Yeah, she did, at the liquor store.”

“What happened to set her off?”

Nick didn’t say anything.

“Well?” I asked.

“We slept together,” he said.

Oh for the love of God.

He went on. “She’s still in love with you, though. Of course. She thinks that you guys will get back together at any time.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t that upset about them sleeping
together. That kind of thing had been going on and off for years. There was a period of time when the three of us were all together, before it all became too much, and jealousy got the better of us. But I still look back on those three months in college, when Alexis, Nick and I all shared a house in the Hamptons one summer, as some of the best times of my life. Before it blew up one morning when Nick brought home Rielle. Three was company, but four would be a crowd, and Alexis wanted no part of it anymore. Which made me wonder if she was into Nick at that time more than she was into me. At any rate, after the summer was over, Alexis went back to Yale, Nick and I stayed at Harvard, and we didn’t get into the threeways anymore. I always suspected, though, that Nick and Alexis were hooking up behind my back. And Rielle’s, because she became a permanent part of Nick’s life from the moment he met her at a clam bake on the beach.

Now he and Alexis were back to hooking up again. But why would that set her off against me?

So, I asked “Ok, so you guys slept together. Why did that piss her off?”

“Because she asked me about you and Iris. She apparently was under the delusion that Iris is just one of your fly by nights. You know, like you used to have before you met her,” he said. “And I set her straight.”

“Don’t remind me of my pre-Iris love life.” Before I met Iris, I was a manwhore with one stunning Victoria’s Secret type after another. None of them made me happy. Not that there was anything wrong with them, but I was always looking for something more than a beautiful face and rocking body.

I wanted my best friend.

I found that with Iris.

I felt comfortable with her, safe with her, from the moment I met her. She just has that nature that put
s me at ease, and I knew immediately that I wanted to tell her everything. But she was so unsure of herself, which only made me like her more.

It made me want to protect her
.

She has no idea has pretty she is. I’ve always been a sucker for redheads, it’s the Irish in me, but it’s more than that. It’s the way that her eyes light up when she looks at the doves at the bird feeder in the backyard. She could watch those doves for hours, a hot cup of Earl Grey tea in her hand, sipping it mildly while she watches the birds, entranced. She bought a book about birds after we got that feeder so she could know the different birds that she would meet every day, and always got excited when she saw a different one.

It’s the way she won’t kill any bugs in the house. She gently puts the bugs on a piece of toilet paper, and sets them free outside.

It’s her hysterical laughter at the silliest things, and usually her laughter is in response to something I say.

It’s the silly songs she sings, off-key, to the dogs every day, making up her own lyrics to familiar tunes.

It’s the smattering of freckles that cross the bridge of her nose, spilling onto both of her perfectly round cheeks.

It’s the way that she looks at me, and how she can read me. I don’t even have to say anything to her. She just knows. Like she has telepathy.

Most of all, I love her because
she wants nothing from me. She just wants me. That’s what I love the most about her. Everybody has always wanted something from me. Not her. She simply wants me.

Or wanted me. Past tense
.

“You still there?” Nick asked.

“Yeah.” I still couldn’t bring myself to tell Nick that Iris was gone. The one woman in my life who got me¸ who really got me, was gone. And it was Nick’s fault. And Alexis’.

No. It was my fault.

“What did you tell Alexis about Iris?”I asked Nick.

“That you’re in love with her.”

“Well, that explains everything. But I can’t imagine why she would think differently – after all, Iris was living with me. Of course she’s my girl.”

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Nick asked.

“She knows,” I said. “Iris.”

“Oh.”

“And she, she, she’s….gone.” Saying the words made them real, and I felt like somebody had taken a sharp knife and flayed my flesh from my body, inch by inch.

“Oh. I’m sorry, buddy.”

I was silent. I couldn’t talk.

“Hey, let’s get a beer, huh?”

“Nah, I don’t feel like a beer.” I felt sick again.

I could hear him audibly breathing on the phone. “Well, you take care, buddy. Call me if you need me. Anytime.” He paused. “I love you, buddy.”

I said nothing for a long time.

“Me too,” I finally said.

Then we hung up.

Iris

I arrived at my mother’s house, Madison in tow. I really didn’t have any plans at that time for what I would do. I’d sold everything before moving in with Ryan – well, by “everything,” I mean an old-school (non -flat screen) television, a couch and love seat, a bed, a dresser, a nightstand and a coffee table. It didn’t fit in with Ryan’s elegant décor, so I put an ad out on Craig’s list and was fortunate enough to get some bites. Which is why I only had clothes over there.

I let the cat out of her carrier, and she scurried to hide underneath a bed. Poor Madison. I knew how cats hate to travel and how they hate carriers. They aren’t like dogs, who like carriers, because dogs lived in caves long ago. Cats don’t really have that evolutionary gene with rega
rds to carriers, so they hate them. Madison was no exception.

My mother was sitting at the dining-room table, looking over some offers for prizes that she hoped to win from some fly-by-night outfit or another. She was forever trying to win a big jackpot from some shady organization. I felt badly for her, being so gullible. She reasoned that somebody has to win, but I was always explaining to her that, for the prizes that she was shooting for, nobody won them. They were frauds.

But she kept trying.

“What’re you doing here?” She was actually very happy to see me.

My boyfriend, the wonderful, perfect guy? Yeah, he’s bisexual.
“I wanted to come and visit for awhile.”

“Uh, oh. Did you an
d nutso have a fight?” “Nutso” was her term for all my boyfriends.

“No, no fight.” I lied. “I just missed you guys, that’s all.”

I went up the stairs with my bag in hand, and laid down on the rickety bed. This room was maybe 50 square feet, and that was pushing it. There was just enough room for a wire shelf, a desk with a computer, and a double bed. Before we painted this room, there were very strange drawings on the wall that my nephew and his rather odd friends drew. Some of the drawings looked like the dark dreams of a psychotic inmate. Some literally looked like these fever dreams, as they depicted a man with  a knife, chopping off somebody’s head. Others just figuratively looked like a psycho’s dreams. I stayed here, from time to time, and those drawings always creeped me out. So, one weekend, we got some Kilz and painted over the walls. Now the room looked nice. Threadbare, tiny, but nice. The carpet could use some work, though.

I came back down the stairs. “What’s for dinner?”

“Well, you know, Michael and me don’t usually eat that much.”

“So that means…you at least have a frozen pizza in there, don’t you?”

“Well, no. Maybe I can get Michael to pick up some fried chicken from the KFC.” At this, she phoned my dad, who was visiting a friend, asking him to pick up a bucket of chicken with all the trimmings on his way home.

That night, after my mother and I watched some reality TV together –
X-Factor
was on that night, and poor Britney looked rode hard and put away wet – I lay in the upstairs bed, trying to figure out what to do. OK, so you’re kicked out. You didn’t qualify for an apartment because of your record. So, now what? I was surprised that my mind went there, first, before thinking about the Ryan situation. I just figured that it was a moot point now, and Ryan would soon be with some other unsuspecting female. I really didn’t figure that we would get back together.

Why wasn’t I more upset about this? Then, I figured that, once you get your heart broken once, I mean truly broken, the heart won’t break again. And I suffered the massive heartbreak of my life about 8 years before
. This was going to be cake.

Except it wasn’t
.

About three days into my visit, I couldn’t get out of bed
. I had never felt so depressed in my life. By then I had to admit to my mother that Ryan and I had broken up. And that was when it hit me like a flood. All the memories of us making love, hanging out, cooking together, laughing together, skiing and mountain biking, cooking for friends – all of this was now gone.

More than this, the idea of him was gone
. The idea of being happy, of being with somebody I loved, who loved me, somebody who would never leave me – that was gone. And I couldn’t bring myself to meet anybody else on my Match account, even though everybody always told me that the best way to get over somebody was to meet somebody else.

Yeah, I tried that once, during my last heartbreak
. At that time, the new guy that I met for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory simply asked me about any trips I had taken recently. The last trip I had taken at that time was to DC, to meet my then-boyfriends parents. I said that I had recently been to Washington DC, then started crying, right there at the table.

The guy couldn’t end the date fast enough.

At this point, my life was in upheaval. My on-going struggle with the fact that I hated my job had never resolved itself, and it didn’t look likely to. I was not the kind of person who likes to try to look for a job, so, when I fell into having my own practice, I thought that it was where I should be. I didn’t anticipate how it all would make me so miserable – the paperwork, the chasing down money, the constant phone calls and e-mails and whining. 20% of my clients made 80% of my work, and this was enough. Plus, I wasn’t good about bookkeeping, so the IRS was like a wolf at the door, constantly.

I also saw little hope on the romantic front
. Ryan was nuts about me – why, I would never know, but he was. Everything about him was perfect – his beauty, his kindness, his sexual prowess, his thoughtfulness, his sense of humor, his intelligence, his manners…I could go on and on. That he was rich was a bonus, but it was far from the only thing, and it wasn’t even in the top 10, to be honest. So, now I am supposed to be happy with an ordinary schlub?

Oh, Ryan, you ruined me for the ordinary.

Of course, I knew that I would, soon enough, be ready to date the schlub down the block. I just would have to give him a chance, and realize that nobody would ever compare to Ryan.

One good thing was, my sister and I were bonding again
. We would hang out in her room, talking politics or watching silly movies.

“Paul Ryan’s the devil
. He’s a Nazi.”

My sister was obsessed with Nazis
. “Please don’t start with the Nazis. Not everybody is going to be a Nazi.” One thing about my sister – you get her talking about Nazis and serial killers, and you would never get her to stop.

“Well he is.”