Maxed Out (8 page)

I leave it running in the background. I’m pretty proud of
myself: this is some CSI level bullshit right here. If it works, anyway. All
I’m really doing is searching the web for each location on the map and then
assigning it a numerical value based on which other words appear on the pages
mentioned in the search – ‘military’ gets 50 points, bank gets 30, etc,
Rothschild gets 100, etc – which is terribly unscientific and inconclusive. Whatever.
In the morning I’ll have a sorted list, and if it proves to be completely
useless I’m only out a few minutes. Time to move on to the Max problem.

I’ve got a legal pad and a felt tipped pen out making a pros
and cons list when Renee comes home, glowing from whatever she and Will just
finished doing. She recognizes it immediately: I’ve used this trick for years to
try to reduce my problems to something I can think about clearly. To her mild
disapproval, of course. I thought it was the cheesiness that turned her off until
our conversation about my relationships earlier this week; now I’m starting to
think that she dislikes dealing with emotional problems logically (or at all,
which explains a lot).

“What happened now?” she asks, sighing. “Did you sleep with
Jeremy?”

“Max proposed,” I say.

Renee seems at a loss for a moment as she puts her things
down. “You’re dealing with a proposal with a pros and cons list?” she says,
finally.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because you should know instantly whether or not you want
to marry him,” she says.

“I want to be in a relationship with him and being married
seems to be the only way right now,” I say. “I just don’t want to be in a
relationship with him forever.”

It’s weird how talking to people lets you cut right to the
root of the issue. I hadn’t managed to simplify it on quite those terms for
myself, not that clearly, but Renee walks in and it slips right out. I think of
my relationship with Max as transitory. Great, and something I want to hang onto
for a while, but transitory. Kind of like a roller coaster. It’s fun, and it’s
something you might want to ride for as long as you can, but at the end of the
day, you need to move on with your life and get off so you can actually do
something useful.

“You’re scared of commitment,” Renee says.

“It’s not that,” I say. “I just don’t want to be with him 30
years from now.”

“But you like him.”

“Yes,” I say.

“And you enjoy being with him.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re scared of commitment.”

I give her the roller coaster analogy. She doesn’t bite.

“That’s not how it works at all,” she says. “You’re just
making excuses.”

“I just want something safe and –“

“You all jumped on me when I was settling for safe and you
get to set that as your ultimate life goal? Meet someone safe and get married?”
Renee says. She seems more amused than agitated.

“Not my ultimate goal,” I say. “I just want to make sure
that if I’m stuck with someone forever that it’s someone who isn’t going to
wind up being a mistake.”

“That’s like the definition of being scared of commitment,”
Renee says.

“The only reason Max wants to marry me is so that he gets
more time off work,” I say. “This isn’t like he’s some almost perfect guy who
proposed on a moonlit night or something.”

“If he was you would have just said no,” Renee says.

“That’s not the point,” I say.

“Max at least tried to be romantic, right?” she asks.

“He tried to make some speech over dinner but I stopped him.
Marriage isn’t a binary decision that you should make based on some silly
cultural ceremony, it’s a bargain that should be made through civilized
discussion at some length. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a guy
just because he hired a company to spell my name in fireworks or something.”

“I know you hate romance –“

“I don’t hate it, I think it’s cute,” I say.

“—but it sounds like based on your criteria that you at
least should go back and talk this through with Max.”

I nod. “I’m planning on it. I just need to be confident in
my answer first.”

“I just don’t get why you’re on the fence at all,” Renee
says. “You like spending time with him. He gets more time with you, you both
get a tax break, and you get an excuse to take a week off of work and go on a
fancy vacation somewhere. Just get a prenup and a divorce lawyer on retainer.
There’s no reason it has to be permanent.”

“Isn’t that what marriage is?” I ask. “Permanent?”

“It’s a legal state of affairs that provides certain
privileges,” Renee says.

“But—“

“No buts. If you’re not religious that’s all it is. There’s
no reason to view it as anything but temporary. Sure, there’s some financial
penalty for breaking the marriage because of legal fees and whatnot but you can
minimize that with proper planning.”

“Why are you so cynical about all of this?”

“You’re the one who finds romance cute,” Renee says.
“Thinking of marriage in anything other than legal terms is completely
hypocritical.”

“I didn’t expect you to take his side,” I say. “I thought
you would be more supportive of waiting for the right guy.”

“What, to carry you off into the sunset? Would you even
enjoy that?”

I don’t have a good response, so I sit on that for a minute.
I generally enjoy being the one in charge in my relationships. The fact that
Max has been a departure from that pattern is the only reason I’m taking this
proposal seriously: with any of my past boyfriends the sudden reversal of
initiative and control would probably have thrown me hard enough to refuse
outright.

“You think I should accept,” I say finally.

“I think you should think about it and make sure you have a
real reason,” Renee says. “Will could probably draw up a pre-nup or whatever.
You might want to talk to him after you talk to Max again and make sure
whatever he has in mind isn’t unreasonable.”

“Why can’t you just have a solid recommendation one way or
the other that I can take?”

Renee laughs. “I’ve screwed up enough of your relationships
as it is. It’s your life. Make a decision. Or don’t and go talk to him and see
what he thinks.”

Lot of help that is. She’s right, I suppose. This is a two
person decision – I’ve said that enough myself – and I need to make sure that
Max is involved and has a fair chance to plead his case. I still need to have a
solid stance before I go back in, so I spend a few more minutes writing things
on the legal pad before I retire for the evening.

I call Max at maybe 10:30 on Saturday, after I’ve had some
time to shower and think for a bit. He’s awake, of course. He’s a firm believer
in keeping the same schedule on weekdays and weekends, which is great in a
vacuum and terrible if you have any variation in your bedtime. Just another one
of Max’s little quirks that I’m still not sure I want to live with for the
duration of a marriage. I realize that doesn’t inherently have to be very long,
but at the same time everyone I know makes fun of the latest celebrity marriage
to break up after only six months. I’m not sure that I’m ready to join them.

“It’s a cultural thing,” I find myself saying to Max, on the
phone. “As a culture, we haven’t decided what marriage means in the absence of
religion. When someone gets married in a church it
means
something –
there’s this idea that you’re entering into a sacred union in front of a higher
being. When you get married in a courtroom you’re just sharing assets and
getting a tax write-off. We’re all still trying to equate the two, even though
they’re completely different.”

“Do you just want to talk about this in person?” he asks.
“It sounds like you have a lot to say. I’m not quite sure what you’re
responding to right now—“

“Let me finish,” I say. “I’m against the idea of marrying
you because I want to get the first kind of marriage still, one which is a
permanent arrangement concerning the state of our relationship, not the one with
the legal benefits and whatnot. I realize they’re different. I’d be perfectly
happy getting the second one if other people did too, but I’m not sure that I’m
ready to be a divorcee a few years from now, even if we split in a mutually
agreeable way. Not because I have any problems with it. Because other people
would view me differently. It’s a cultural thing.”

“You’re letting other people’s perceptions dictate our
relationship?” Max says.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s completely ridiculous to not care about
what other people think. We’ve had this talk before. Whether you like it or not
public perception has a noticeable and discernable impact on everything you do
and not factoring that in is ridiculous, no matter how stupid the reasons
people have for having their opinions are. In this case, I think that our
relationship isn’t worth potentially losing –“

“None of your friends would stop talking to you if we
divorced and you wouldn’t get fired,” Max cuts in.

He’s right, of course, but I’m not quite ready to think about
it on those simple terms. “My opinion of myself would go down, though, because
that’s influenced by—“

“You’re just scared of commitment,” he says. “That’s okay.
Can we talk about this in person?”

“Fine,” I say. I’m tired of hearing that from everyone, but
I want to get this sorted out. “Where? When?”

“Brunch at the usual place?”

“No romantic crap,” I tell him.

“Fine,” he says.

Renee crawled out of bed at some point during our phone
conversation. She’s staring at me oddly. “Who ends a phone conversation like
that?” she says. “No romantic crap? You’re going out to talk about marrying
this guy.”

I ignore her. We’ve been over this already.

“By the way your thing finished,” she says. “Whatever your
computer was working on.”

“What?”

“The fans were going nuts around 2 am. I didn’t like, look
or anything, I just checked to make sure it wasn’t hanging. When I checked
again this morning it was done.”

I had forgotten the sort I was running on likely locations
for Jeremy’s vault. “Can you print it off?” I say. “I need to handle this Max
thing before I chicken out.”

Renee looks at me funny. “Whatever,” she says.

I get out of her apartment in record time. Normally I’d have
been ten minutes hunting for my keys and figuring out which shoes to wear but
right now I’m like a cartoon character and I dash out of frame for a split
second and come back in fully dressed and ready. I’m actually really excited
about taking this next step with Max. At some point in the last day I decided
I’m going to let him marry me, and I can’t wait to get that started. I feel
like I’m in high school waiting to get picked up by my prom date, except we’re
in a mature relationship instead of me just dating him to make my best friend
jealous and we’re having great sex instead of fumbling around in the backseat
of his parents’ car.

He hands me a rose when he meets me at the café.

“I thought we agreed—“ I start.

“You were just putting on a show for Renee,” he says. “I
know you get embarrassed by big over the top public gestures but we’ve talked
about this before and you appreciate flowers.”

“You just spent like five bucks on something that’s going to
die in a few days,” I say.

“I spent five bucks on making you smile,” he says. “Even if
it only works once it’s totally worth it.”

Max already got his money’s worth when I first saw him. I
can’t help myself here and I get a big silly romantic grin again and we share a
kiss before we get our food. None of the stuff I’ve been thinking about and
lecturing at Max on the phone matters right now. It’s nice to just be with him
for a few minutes.

The subject of marriage finally comes up when I run out of
eggs.

“I had some unrealistic expectations about marriage,” I say
as an icebreaker.

Max is silent.

“I enjoy spending time with you, and if getting married
allows us to spend more time together, I think it’s something we can do, with a
few conditions.”

“You realize you’re the woman and I make more money than you
so you’d make a large profit off of a divorce, right?” he says.

“That’s not what I meant,” I say.

“Then what is?”  

“I want –“

“Wait a sec,” he says. “Can I say something first?”

“I suppose,” I say.

“I want to apologize for what I said last night. I’ve been
doing some thinking. If you don’t want to marry me but you still want to be
together, I’d be willing to quit my job for you.”

I’m stunned. I wasn’t expecting this.

“Granted, it’s probably not as big of a sacrifice as you
want, because I got an offer from Riverside to coach next season, so I’ve got a
bit of security if we don’t work out,” Max continues.

I shake my head. “It was perfect until you told me that,” I
say.

“We’re about honesty and openness,” Max says. “We got into
this mess when I didn’t talk to you about my problems honestly. I’d like to get
back on track, which means being open now.”

“Thanks,” I murmur.

“You said you had conditions for our marriage?”

“I wanted to make sure you were doing this for the right
reasons,” I say. “It sounds like you are.”

“I want to marry you because of you,” Max says. “Not for
anyone or anything else. Just you.”

“Shall we set a date, then?” I say.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, Max, I will marry you.”

“Thank god,” he says. “I don’t know what I would have done
if you said no.”

“Me neither,” I say.

I’m not sure where this leaves us, really, but that’s okay.
If the future was certain there would be no point in living it. For the short
term, I’m with Max a while longer. If getting married is necessary so we can
spend more time together, I’m okay with that.