How to Be Single (11 page)

Thomas gently guided me out of my seat. I steadied myself, grabbed my purse, and tried to pull myself together as quickly as possible. As we walked past the many, many rows of seats to the door, I asked Thomas, “Just tell me this—was there a drooling situation going on?”

Thomas laughed and said, “Julie, you don't want to know.” He steadied me out the door of the plane.

Later that afternoon I awoke in a room at some kind of pensione. I was a little disoriented, so I got up and looked out my window onto a piazza with a huge circular building off to one side—the Pantheon. I had no memory of getting there. Thomas told me later that I had gone through customs and been mistaken for a drug addict, had all my bags searched, and then passed out in the cab with my head in his lap. That Lexomil doesn't kid around.

On the desk I found a note: “I am next door at a café with my friend Lorenzo, please come by when you wake up. Kisses, Thomas.” I shakily got into the shower, fixed myself up, and went out to find Thomas.

Next to the hotel was a tiny café, right on the piazza. Thomas was with a man in his early thirties who was speaking animatedly, gesturing wildly. Thomas saw me and stood up, his friend getting up as well.

“How are you feeling, my Sleeping Beauty?” Thomas asked.

“Fine. A little groggy.”

“I'll get you a cappuccino immediately.” Thomas waved over a waitress and we all sat down.

“This is my friend, Lorenzo. He's heartbroken and telling me all about it.”

Lorenzo was a handsome Italian man, with big, tired eyes and long brown hair that he grabbed and pushed back whenever he was exclaiming something, which was often.

“It's awful, Julie, awful. My heart is broken, you don't understand. Crushed. I'm crushed.” He pushed back his hair. “I don't want to live, really. I want to throw myself off a building. She just left me. She told me she doesn't love me anymore. Just like that. Tell me, Julie, you're a woman. Tell me. How is this possible? How can a woman love you one minute and destroy you the next? How can she have no feelings for me overnight?”

Luckily my cappuccino came just then, so I could get a little caffeine into my system.

“Um…I don't know. Was it really that sudden?”

“It was! Three nights ago, we made love, she told me she loved me. That she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. That we should have babies together. Then, yesterday she calls me up and tells me she doesn't want to be with me.”

“How long were you together?” I asked.

“One year. One beautiful year. We both agreed that we have never been in such a good relationship. How is this possible, Julie, tell me. Just three nights ago she told me she loved me. Just three nights ago. I can't sleep. I can't eat. It's terrible.”

I looked at Thomas, wondering what I just stepped into. As if reading my mind, Thomas laughed and said, “Lorenzo's an actor. He's very dramatic.”

“
Ma no,
Thomas, c'mon,” Lorenzo said, offended. “This is no exaggeration. This is a real tragedy.”

“Was your girlfriend an actress as well?”

“No. She's a dancer. You should see her body. The most beautiful body you have ever seen. Perfect breasts. Perfect. And these long legs, like art. Tell me, Julie, tell me. How can this happen?”

Thomas saw the dazed expression on my face and decided to egg him on. “Please, Julie, you must help him.”

I was still a little slow from my drug overdose, but I tried to think as quickly as I could.

“Do you think she met someone else?”

“Impossible! We saw each other all the time.”

“Are you sure? Because that could be—”

“No. It's not possible. I know all her friends. Her dancing partners, too. No.”

“Well, is she psychotic?”

“No. She was perfectly fine. Sane.”

“Maybe,” I said slowly, “she wasn't really in love with you?” Lorenzo banged his hands on the table.

“
Ma no
—how could that be? How?” He was truly looking for me to explain.

“Well, if she's not seeing anyone else, she isn't psychotic, and she just changed her mind about you, then maybe she wasn't really in love with you. Or maybe she just doesn't know what love means.”

This type of American analysis simply didn't compute for Lorenzo. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Or maybe she just fell out of love with me.”

“Do you think that love is so fleeting that it can just go away? Just like that?”

“Of course I do, Julie. It finds you, like magic, like a miracle, and then it can go just as fast.”

“You really think of love as a mysterious emotion that comes and goes like magic?”

“Yes, of course. Of course!”

Thomas said gently, “I believe you would call my friend a romantic.”

Lorenzo threw his arms in the air. “What other way is there to live? Julie, don't you believe this, too?”

“Well, no. I guess I don't,” I said.

“Tell me, then. What
do
you believe?”

Thomas leaned in. “Now this is getting interesting.”

Again, that question. I stalled, sipping my coffee. I have spent a good deal of time in therapy analyzing why I've been attracted to the people I've been attracted to. What “buttons they push” in me that makes me want them in my life. I've spent a good deal of time analyzing why my friends are attracted to the types of men they are attracted to. I've watched them swear that they've met their soulmate, that they've never felt this way before and that it's destiny—and then break up with that soulmate in less time than it takes to get a sofa delivered. I've watched friends—smart, levelheaded friends—get married, and then I've watched in shock as their marriages fell apart. And I've watched absolutely ridiculous couples stay together for ten years and counting.

And I've been so busy looking for love and being frustrated that I can't find it, that I have never really defined it for myself. So I sat at this little café as the sun went down, and pondered.

“I guess I don't really believe in romantic love,” I finally said. Thomas raised his eyebrows and Lorenzo looked as if he had just seen a ghost.

“What do you believe in, then?” Thomas asked.

“Well, I believe in attraction. And I believe in passion and the
feeling
of falling in love. But I guess I don't think that that's necessarily real.”

Thomas and Lorenzo seemed shocked.

“Why? Because sometimes it doesn't last?” Thomas asked.

“Because
most
times it doesn't last. Because most of the time it's about what you're projecting onto a person, what you want them to be, what you want yourself to be, so many things that have nothing to do with the other person.”

“I had no idea,” Thomas said. “It seems we have a very big cynic here.”

“This is a disaster, truly,” Lorenzo said, throwing his hands in the air. “I thought I had it bad.”

I laughed. “I know! I didn't know what a cynic I was until this moment, either!”

“But Julie,” Thomas asked, concerned, “how can love ever find you if you don't believe in it?”

I looked at them both staring at me with great concern, and then—I burst out crying. Funny how that happens. One moment you're a strong, independent woman talking about love and relationships. And the next moment someone says an arrangement of words that somehow destroys you.

“No! Julie. It was not meant to be—no!” Thomas was horrified. “Please, it was nothing!”

I put my hand over my face. “No, I know, don't feel bad. I don't know why…I'm just too…please. Don't worry about it. Really.” But as I spoke, the tears rolled down my face. There it was again, the question that always seems to pop out of the subtext when I least expect it.
Why are you single? Why don't you have love?
And now, in Rome, one answer:
because you don't believe in it.

“I'm just going to go to my room,” I said, starting to get up.

Thomas grabbed my hand as Lorenzo said loudly, “
Ma no,
Julie, come on! You can't run back into your little room to cry. That's unacceptable.” Thomas added, gently, “How are we ever going to be friends if you run and hide every time you have an emotion?” I sat back down.

“I'm sorry. It must be the Lexomil or something.”

Thomas smiled. “Yes, I'm sure. You're relaxed. Your defenses are down.”

I turned to Lorenzo, embarrassed. “I'm so sorry. I'm not usually like this.” He looked at me with admiration.

“Women! They are fantastic. Look at you. You feel, you cry. So fluid.
Che bella! Che bella!
” He waved his arms around and laughed. I burst out laughing as well, and Thomas looked as happy as any man could look.

After we went to another restaurant for dinner, and I had the best pasta carbonara I've ever tasted, with large strips of bacon in it—not chunks, not bits, but actual
strips
(you wouldn't think it would work but it did)—it was time to go to sleep. Lorenzo went home, and Thomas and I walked back to the hotel, passing piazza after beautiful piazza, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps. Rome is so old, so beautiful, it's hard to take it all in. When we got to the hotel, Thomas walked to a motorcycle with two helmets locked to it. He got out a key, unlocked them, and handed a helmet to me.

“And now,” he said grandly, “you must see Rome by motorcycle.”

“When did you get this?”

“It's Lorenzo's. He has a few. He lent it to me while you were asleep.”

I don't like motorcycles. Never have. Because here's what—they're really dangerous. And it would be cold. I don't like to be cold. But the thought of explaining that to him and seeming once again like an unspontaneous, unromantic, panicky American, well, it just exhausted me to the core. So I took the helmet and got on the bike. What can I say. When in Rome….

We drove fast, by random Roman ruins and by the Forum. We wound through tiny streets and raced along the main thoroughfare and up a street that led straight to Saint Peter's Square.

There I was, on the back of a dangerous vehicle that was going very fast with a driver who, let's face it, did have a few glasses of wine at dinner. I was cold. I was frightened. And very vulnerable. I imagined the motorcycle crashing, Thomas losing control as we took a turn, our bodies sliding into oncoming traffic. I imagined some official calling my mom and telling her what happened, and her or my brother having to deal with the horror and hassle of getting my body shipped home.

And then, as we rocketed back toward the hotel, we circled around the Colosseum. It struck me: none of these structures are surrounded by walls or gates or plate glass. They stand unprotected, waiting to dazzle us, accepting their vulnerability to any graffiti artist or vandal or terrorist that might want to come around. And I thought to myself,
Well, if this is how I'm going to go, it's a damn good way to go
. And then I wrapped my arms around Thomas a little tighter and tried to drink in every ounce of magnificent Roman splendor.

When we got back to the hotel, Thomas took off his helmet and helped me take off mine. There's nothing less sexy than wearing a motorcycle helmet, truly. We walked through the lobby and into the elevator. I was suddenly jarred back into the world of dynamics and morality and innuendo and not knowing where Thomas was sleeping that night. And as if he had read my mind, Thomas said, “My room is on the third floor. I believe yours is on the second, yes?”

I nodded. I had managed to remember my room key and my room number. Thomas pressed the second-and third-floor buttons and the doors closed. When they opened again, Thomas gave me a polite kiss on both my cheeks and said, “Good night, my dear Julie. Sleep well.” I walked out of the elevator and down the hall to my room.

Back in the States

Georgia knew exactly what she was supposed to do. Dale was coming over in a few minutes, and she knew the cardinal rule that everyone, no matter how romantically inept, knows: you always try to look extremely hot when you are meeting with an ex. But on this particular morning, Georgia had said “fuck it.” She wasn't going to bathe and blow-dry for Dale. Fuck him. She wasn't trying to woo him back. Fuck. Him. He can go live with his underage samba dancer.

Georgia and Dale were meeting to talk about how they would officially share custody of their children. No lawyers, no fighting. Two adults with no agenda except for the well-being of their kids.

When she opened the door, Dale walked in looking, well, hot, unfortunately, but fuck him. The first thing he did when he came in was look up and see that the little door of the smoke alarm was open, and the battery gone.