Getting Over Jack Wagner (17 page)

Saturday!
I heard inside my head, a combination of screams and laughter.
Ha! By Saturday I'll be gone! Long gone! Ha ha ha ha ha!

On the outside, I said: “Okay then.”

As Jordan leaned forward to kiss me, a feather from his plumed hat tickled my cheek. I gave him a quick peck and grabbed for the door.

“Wait,” Jordan said. “Just a second.” I looked back over my shoulder and, too late, saw something dangling from his hand. Something soft. Long. Horribly yellow. “Before you go, do you think you could help me with this cummerbund?”

I
t's rare that I have multiple weekend plans. By plans, I mean concrete. Social. Arranged in advance. Sitting in a corner of The Blue Room doesn't count, nor does watching an episode of
Boy Meets World.
Not that there's anything wrong with weekend TV. There was a time when the Saturday night lineup of
Diff'rent Strokes
and
Silver Spoons
was the highlight of my week. Shortly after, of course, the prospect of not going out on a weekend became the most painful social death I could possibly imagine. Friday and Saturday nights were booked weeks in advance with malls, movies, late-night IHOP runs. Then, by the time I made it to college, plan making became ironically obsolete. Plans hunt you in college, surround you, torment you with keg beer and strobe-lit charity balls and endless tracks of Dave Matthews.

These days, I feel no urgency about filling up my weekends. I consider this a sign of maturity. It just so happens that this Friday, Hannah and Alan have invited me over for dinner; Saturday, I am going on the long-feared, long-awaited date with Donny. Donny and I talked on the phone exactly once. His voice was sufficiently deep, free of bad accents or speech impediments. The date night had already been set (via Beryl) so our conversation went just long enough to choose a restaurant (Anthony's Italiano) and a time (8:00), trade job titles (copywriter, securities analyst), then drown in an awkward silence, chirp something like “can't wait,” and hang up.

But whatever lack of connection I felt talking to Donny has been overshadowed by my new celebrity status at Dreams Come True, Inc. All week, the place has been abuzz. The Travel Agents spend hours debating my outfit. Beryl beams at me approximately two hundred times a day. Amy the Agent recommended her eyebrowist. Kelly the Agent prescribed magenta (apparently I'm a “winter” person). Jenny ripped a paper perfume sample from a magazine, picked up my wrist, and swiped it across like groceries at a checkout counter.

At several points, I found myself double-fisting Diet Coke and cake.

By Friday afternoon, there is not even a pretense of work at the office. The beginnings of “Perfectly Paris!” drift idly on my computer screen. The Agents have surrounded my chair like runners-up around the throne at the Miss America pageant. A ring of Diet Coke cans perch on the lip of my desk. Only Beryl sits alone, answering the phone—“Happy Friday afternoon!” she sings—like the naive mother relaxing upstairs while the slumber party turns intense.

After a week of friendly chatter, the Agents are getting down to the nitty-gritty. They are tapping their long fingernails on my desktop, plucking at the metal tabs on their soda cans, glancing sharply at their thin gold watches. The word “Agent” is starting to sound vaguely militaristic.

Jenny: “So where are you two going?”

Kelly: “So what does he do for a living?”

Tricia: “What kind of car does he drive?”

Aileen: “Does he cook? Does he lift? Does he jog?”

Thanks to Beryl, almost every question I can answer truthfully, even confidently, rather than my usual evasions about “art,” “angst,” and “finding himself.” It feels strangely good, being able to do this. As if my social life is being legitimized somehow, bearing up under professional scrutiny. At the same time, I have the guilty sensation of getting away with something I shouldn't.

“We're going out to dinner,” I report.

They nod.

“To Anthony's Italiano.”

“Oh,” says Jenny. Her tone is ominous. “Italian.”

The others shake their heads, as if recognizing the symptom of an illness.

“Is that bad?”

“Not if you're careful,” Kelly sighs. She puts her soda down, brushes off her palms, and raises one finger in the air, shiny and sharp as a letter opener. “Rule number one,” she quips. “No long pasta.”

“Long pasta?”

“Spaghetti. Linguine. Fettucine,” Maggie elaborates. “Bowties or spirals are fine. But nothing that's going to fall out of your mouth.”

“Or get all over your chin,” says Jenny.

“Right.” Kelly nods. She raises a second finger. “Number two: nothing saucy.”

“Marinara,” chimes Maggie. “Alfredo. Bolognese.”

“Pesto,” Tricia adds, as the group collectively shudders.

“Three.” Kelly holds up her ring finger, the one with the big fat diamond on it. It winks in the light, as if to assert her expertise. “Under no terms do you ever eat garlic.”

“No breadsticks,” says Maggie. “No scampi.”

“Definitely no scampi,” from Aileen.

“Nothing that's going to make for a bad first kiss,” Amy explains.

“No matter what you do, Eliza.” Kelly leans forward, gripping my desk edge with her ringed, lacquered, knife-sharp hand. “Always anticipate the kiss.”

When I pack up to leave at 5:30, I feel a combination of excitement and terror. I am cutting the cord, leaving the nest, venturing alone into a world of sculpted eyebrows and dainty pastas and clichés about cords and nests. The Agents exchange somber looks as I turn off “Perfectly Paris!” and head for the door.

“Don't forget,” Kelly hisses. “Magenta!”

Jenny grips my wrist. “Avoid cheese at all costs!”

In an alarming sleight of hand, Maggie slips me a condom. It is neon pink. I stuff it in the bottom of my bookbag, feeling my face burn as I wave good-bye to Beryl, who beams back and says, “You kids have fun now!”

Outside, I walk two muggy blocks to the bus stop. All the things that regularly annoy me about this walk—the honking drivers, the Hare Krishnas, the apostrophe in House of Shoe's—roll right off me. I am in too good a mood. I am actually jittery. The kind of jittery I felt as a teenage girl sitting on the grass after the
Transformations
meeting, or perched by the pool at Judy the clarinetist's band bash/function. This, I realize, is what first dates are supposed to feel like. This is how they are meant to evolve: the awkward phone call, the plan, then the meeting. In the past, mine have gone in reverse: the meeting, the plan, then the awkward phone call. Maybe sequence has been my problem all along.

I reach the corner just in time to catch the lurching arrival of the bus and the finale of a drunk guy singing “La Bamba” and drumming on an empty KFC bucket. As the doors hiss open, I quickly calculate the section with the most women, most elderly, and fewest singing drunk guys. I slip into a plastic seat by a window, clasp my bag in my lap, and fold my hands on top of it.

The bus lumbers forward. I scan the people sitting around me, pretending to be absorbed in their newspapers or shoes. I try to guess their weekend plans—a baby shower? an office party? a round of Scattergories?—and, as the bus picks up speed, feel more determined about my date. I am ready for a real relationship. Ready to be a grown-up. To have Beryl for an in-law. To start my own collection of pins. To honeymoon in the tropics and appear in the Dreams newsletter with the caption “Typist Ties the Knot!” To buy a house with a man who whispers “I love you” in the dark on his cell phone, who replies “definitely, honey” when I offer him dinner, who supports my lower back as I slip into the backseat of his shiny, compact, Japanese car.

The woman beside me speaks. “Do you have the time?”

I check my watch. Feeling bold, I turn and make direct eye contact. She is wearing a paper bag on her head.

“Five forty-five,” I say. “Cool hat.”

 

Hannah is barefoot when she answers the door. Shoes are banned at Hannah and Alan's apartment, along with meat, fish, caffeine, transfats, and accessorizing with leather. It is a spare apartment. “Essentialist,” Hannah calls it. “Life boiled down to the basics.” In theory, I appreciate this concept: me, Leroy, a TV. In practice, however, I still have every birthday card I've ever received stuffed in a Tretorn shoebox in my closet.

“Eliza.” Hannah looks relaxed, as usual. She is wearing an orange-and-red batik skirt that looks hand wrung. Silver beaded earrings nearly graze her shoulders. Her wild hair is secured in a pin at the back of her head. A couple of tendrils sprout around her face, vegetablelike.

“Is this Chez Hannah?” I say.

“More like Chez Alain,” she says, giving me a hug. As we step back, she squints into my face, probably trying to gauge where I am in Karl recovery. I suspect this was the reason behind this dinner invite in the first place.

“Karl? Karl who?” I reassure her, stepping inside.

Hannah and Alan's is not a college apartment. It is a grown-up apartment. There are no plastic crates, tapestries, pennants, or photo montages. Nothing from the beanbag or halogen families. No black-and-white posters, secured with blue tack, of half-bared men cradling babies. Instead, they have vases. Mirrors. African violets. A goldfish named Herb, their vegetarian mascot.

Sure enough, Alan is manning the kitchen. He is in full cooking regalia tonight: oven mitts, chef's hat, full-length apron covered with lemons that says “Squeeze the Chef!” He is also wearing bedroom slippers. I nervously recall what Hannah said about the endearing “thing Alan does with his toes.”

“Cheers, Eliza.” Alan salutes me with a jar of cumin.

“Yo, Alan.”

Hannah says, “You look like you could use some wine,” and skips off to get the glasses.

I leave my shoes by the door and wander into their living room. I love this living room almost as much as I loved the sunporch at the Devines's. The windows are hung with curly ivies. The floors are hardwood, with fringy Mexican rugs. The walls are like a documentary of the last six years of Hannah's life: masks from her junior semester in Africa, Italian-sconces-French-art-and-Spanish-maracas from her three-week spin on the Eurail, photographs from her year in London, and, finally, a photo of her and Alan.

It is a picture of their faces only, poking out from the top of a sleeping bag. Both of them wear knit caps pulled down to their eyebrows. Hannah is smiling up at the camera, Alan is planting a kiss on her cheek. Much as I mock Alan's tweedy Britishisms, I can understand why Hannah loves him. Alan is safe. He is smart. He is kind to animals. Alan isn't going anywhere.

As if to prove me right, Alan peers into the rice cooker. (I note, with amazement, that Hannah is at a stage in her life when she owns a rice cooker.) “Sweetheart,” he says, “do you think the rice is ready?”

She peers into the cooker. He kisses her forehead.

“What's cookin'?” I ask.

Alan steps aside and uncorks the wine as Hannah beckons me to a pot. “Ta da!” she says, lifting the lid.

I squint into the bubbling water. “Albino hot dogs?”

“Lean links.” She pops the lid back on, smothering the steam. “Meatless meat. For you.”

“Gee.”

Alan hands us each a glass of red, giving Hannah another kiss with hers. Hannah and I sit at the table. In the center is a plate piled with healthy beige: pita, hummus, tofu, tahini. A few renegade carrots stalk the rim.

“So,” Hannah says. “What's new with you?”

I start to say “not a thing”—a reflex from years of living predictably—before I realize that this time, something is. Two things, actually: 1) Camilla's pregnancy, and 2) my date with Donny. Part of me is dying to tell Hannah about the Donny-date. Another part likes that the date is still mine, not yet out there to be diced up and discussed.

“Camilla's pregnant.”

“Really!” Hannah's green eyes get wider. Then they get greener, filming over with tears. “That's so wonderful.”

“Brilliant news,” brogues Alan.

“When is she due?” Hannah asks.

“Nine months minus seven weeks.”

“January,” supplies Alan.

“Boy or girl?”

“They want to be surprised.”

“Oh, I would, too.”

“Same,” says Alan.

They exchange a compatible smile, which turns into a gaze, which turns into another kiss. I slather a pita with hummus.

“Don't forget, you guys,” I remind them, as Alan returns to the stove, “if you know the gender ahead of time, you can get a head start on the name.”

“Here we go.” Hannah is familiar with my naming hang-ups.

“What do you mean?” Alan says.

“Naming your kid is critical, Alan,” I explain. “It's like naming a character in a book. It determines everything.”

“Go on.” He drains the links, his glasses fogging up from the steam.

“First, you need to ask yourself: what kind of name can my kid handle? For example.” I pop a cube of tofu. I have given this subject a lot of thought. “Say you're thinking of a name that's funky. A Cody. A Rory. A Dylan. A name like Dylan is a lot to live up to. You have to ask yourself: will my kid be able to pull off Dylan?”

“How can you tell?” Alan looks vaguely concerned.