Otherwise Engaged (13 page)

Michael is reading
The Tailor of Panama
, by John Le Carré. He turns a page and cocks one eye at me, as though I am slightly dangerous and must be watched.

“One of the greatest living British writers,” he says. “Any literary critic will tell you that.”

“Do you love me?” I ask.

“Uh-huh.”

“How much?” I ask.

“This much,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart.

• • •

As I was packing to leave for a weeklong business trip to L.A. this morning, I heard Michael in the shower, singing “Do Nothing till You Hear from Me,” in an above-average Louis Armstrong.

His depression is completely gone. It may be that I am a carrier.

As I was boarding the United shuttle, I started to notice that the plane was filled exclusively with men. Young men. There were about fifty of them, uniformly attractive, freshly showered. They all looked like Matt LeBlanc. It occurred to me that now I could never go out with any of them. The option to make eye contact and exchange phone numbers was no longer available to me. It felt as though my checkbook were missing.

I sat alone in their midst, looking about. Just me and the Matt LeBlancs, hurtling through the clouds. Naked under our clothes.

What I do is open up the hotel mini-bar corkscrew and, using the small knife, carve a tiny slit into the bottom of the cellophane bag of jumbo cashews and slide half a dozen out. I then replace the bag on the black lacquered tray.

I do this out of self-defense, to avoid the four-pack of Nutter Butter cookies, which are screaming out to me from behind their orange foil wrapper.

This morning I drove to the Rose Street clown in Venice Beach, near Main Street. I needed to look at it. It’s a giant
fifty-foot bearded drag queen clown on pointe, perched at the top of a building that has never been occupied, as far as I know.

What I thought was that clowns were all different: some were big and flashy, and some were medium sized and sad, and some were fat and smelled like vodka, but they each had an odd beauty. Each clown was impeccable. On some level you were always glad to see them.

I resolve not to evaluate constantly; nothing has to have a reason for being. Like that clown. What’s he
doing
up there?

If that clown can be there, then I can be here.

We’ve been together two years today. On our first date we went to the Hillcrest Bar and Grill on Fillmore Street and ate turkey burgers with curly fries. It became our favorite place to just sit and talk. The bar was a sea of enormous comfy chairs. We held all our important negotiations there. Those were the curly fry days.

They closed down the Hillcrest, about a day after we got engaged. There are no more curly fries anywhere that I know of. You can’t get them.

It’s impressive how God attends to the details.

I was flying home from L.A. and all of a sudden I looked out at the clouds, and I realized, Jesus we are really flying, and it was the most wonderful and miraculous thing, and about a minute later the feelings of anxiety and panic began.

I feel the same way about marriage, today.

• • •

My mother was driving down Highway 1 behind a big pickup truck yesterday, and a pig fell out of it. She veered out of the way just in time. The pig rolled a few times, shook itself off, and went to the shoulder of the highway, where it began rooting in the grass.

She accelerated and pulled up alongside the pickup truck and yelled at the driver, “You dropped your pig!” He looked at her for a few seconds with a stunned expression, and then floored it. Thinking she was just another crazy driver, I guess. Somewhere in Monterey, a pig wanders free.

This is a good story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Unlike my life, it is not really important to know what happens next.

When he woke up this morning, Michael couldn’t remember where he had parked his car last night. I asked him if he had been drinking. “I had one drink,” he said. He raised his voice a little when he said it.

We drove around, me in my pajamas, looking. After ten minutes he had given it up for towed, stolen, or completely disappeared. He seemed convinced that it had been spat like a watermelon seed out of the linear universe. “I can’t afford a new car,” he said, balling his fists in panic. He can, but I didn’t say so. I took a last pass at Washington Street and found it, a white Honda cunningly tucked behind a PG&E truck. He got in and drove off to work; he goes to his office at eight and I get to mine around ten.

This was one of the times when I stay calm and he goes insane. We rotate.

As I got to work I saw the homeless man Graham calls the Ex–Creative Director, sitting on the park bench near the
water fountain, running one hand backward through his dirty hair, basking in the sun. He is wearing Kenneth Cole shoes, an unconstructed jacket, and greasy black tuxedo pants. I never see him with a bag of cans or a shopping cart; he always has fresh coffee. I have never seen him beg. He survives, I imagine, by persuasion.

I wonder if he was ever married. I wonder if there is a Mrs. Ex–Creative Director.

I fainted yesterday, in front of Whole Foods.

Around three o’clock, after I saw Reuben, I stopped at Whole Foods, as I always do. Right away, next to the Japanese eggplant, I started to feel dizzy. I left the store and headed to the parking lot, with great determination. The idea was that I would make it to my car and sit for a while before I drove home. One minute I was leaving the store and making this plan, and the next minute the white dots appeared and then they all held hands, and I crashed.

When I came to, I was stretched out on the asphalt, lodged between two parked cars. Nice, I thought. Private. My shoes were placed side by side at my feet; my jacket was neatly folded next to me. All of this I found fascinating.

Five or six out-of-focus faces looked down at me with concern. The base of my skull was cradled by a strange kind man. Because of his position above and behind my head, I could not see his face but just heard his voice. I liked this man, and the man at my feet who had removed my shoes, and the bag boy who had brought orange juice. It was possible that I loved them.

He spoke clearly and distinctly, holding my skull off the pavement with tenderness. He asked me questions.

“Is there anything we need to know … ? Is there anything you need to tell us?”

I’m getting married, I thought.

I explained that I had just fainted is all; it’s happened before, ever since I was little. They nodded slowly, as if trying to remember.

I held the straw and drank the juice. I rubbed my face, where a lump was forming. My arm hurts; the knees of my pants are torn. I begin to hope no one I know sees me. Self-consciousness wades back in. The kind man asks me if I can sit up. I can. I make a joke; they all laugh. With regret I realize I have come back. I am entertaining again. Soon I will have to get up, get in my car, and drive home. To get away from what I have created, which I see now is a Scene.

A second man, who had been running the Save the Rainforest booth next to the open-air crenshaw melon display, reaches out and takes my pulse without comment. He announces that my spleen is out of whack. He hands me his card: Jon Berkhald. Shiatsu Massage and Nutritional Counseling.

“Did you have a hard day?” Jon asks.

Jon wants to solve me, I can tell. He doesn’t seem to understand that this is not me fainting; this is a documentary of me fainting.

At my two o’clock session with Reuben, I’d admitted that I didn’t have any motivation or interest to deal with my family or Michael’s anymore. They seemed like pleasant and defective strangers.

And now the strangers seem like family, as I lie on the ground. Perhaps this is my new family, I thought. Conveniently located next to the crenshaws.

Reuben had said, “You are about to take a husband. This is the biggest passage you can make, other than birth and death.”

“I know,” I said. Then I drove to Whole Foods and passed out.

A
ccording to the lingerie department at Nordstrom, the Top-Ten Bridal Essentials, in this order, are:

1. A blue garter to keep
   
2. Another to throw
   
3. Bustier
   
4. Alluring chemise and robe
   
5. Captivating gown and robe
   
6. Lacy bra and panty/matching garter and stockings
   
7. Silk camisole and slip
   
8. Teddies
   
9. Silk pajamas
   
10. Forever New
    

Forever New is Nordstrom’s own brand of granulated fine-washables soak. Five dollars for an eight-ounce jar; I buy two but no lingerie.

The top-ten list is inscribed on a placard at the lingerie counter. I read the whole list, and then I think, They forgot Valium. A woman standing near me laughs, a short burst. Her ten-year-old daughter looks scornful. I have said it out loud.

Five months and twelve days until the wedding.

What nobody tells you about getting engaged is he asks you and you’re delirious for about two days and then it tapers. He asks you and you’re running around telling grocery clerks and ordering subscriptions to bride magazines and discussing prong settings versus suspension settings, and then after two days this ebullience passes. And instead of looking ahead you are suddenly struck by everything you are leaving behind.

He asks you and two days go by and you haven’t even gotten the ring yet before women, mostly big scary already married women with perfect manicures, start asking specific questions about your wedding. It is then you realize it is no longer conceptual. You have the whole wedding to plan, and from that moment on the pressure builds. And every time you talk to your mother she grills you about caterers and flowers and whose name is going first on the invitations. Efficient shop clerks whip out calendars and show you how little time you have left, actually. How it’s a lot sooner than you think, the wedding.

You could say, Oh we’re getting married in fifty years,
and they would arch their eyebrows and say in a lilting voice, It’s sooner than you think.

A warm night, the scent of wet leaves sidling in the open window. We are in bed with our laptop computers. It’s the new sex.

Michael is surfing the Internet. I feel very close to him, as though he were my right leg, or an eye.

Out of a clear silence he recites, “Omaha Steaks.

“Four for thirty-nine dollars and eighty-five cents, with six free hamburgers.”

“How much is that each?” he asks, beginning to calculate the enormity of it.

A considering pause.

“Six free hamburgers … like that makes up for it.”

I don’t answer. My not answering, in fact, seems to fuel the whole discussion and enliven it.

A minute later, just when I think he’s moved on, he poses this question to the imagined audience, whom it is his duty to enlighten.

“Have you paid ten dollars apiece for a steak yet?”

Then, “Might as well go to Alfred’s,” he says.

Ah. The epilogue I had hoped for. Alfred’s steak house near the Broadway tunnel, featuring valet parking. Extreme old San Francisco bordello, full of mafioso types and Italian women with thick eyeliner and secretive faces. We are going to go there sometime soon, now, because of this. We will go there and eat bloody steaks and gigantic potatoes with everything on them. We will do all of this before we get married and have a baby and our lives end.

• • •

Yesterday there was a company-wide electronic memo about me. I was formally promoted. So it’s official, although I wouldn’t be surprised to be led into an empty garage and be shot in the back of the head like Joe Pesci in a Scorsese film.

Reading the e-mail, I felt almost nothing. I was frankly expecting it to usher in a new phase of personal power and self-esteem.

Today people at work have been stopping by my office to congratulate me. John Hoberger, a veteran agency producer whom we secretly call The Hoe, said, “You know what it is? It’s respect.” Then he said, “You deserve it.”

I have to admit, that felt pretty good.

No one has figured out that I am an impostor yet. Only a matter of time before they find out. Then this whole charade will be over, thank God.

Last night in my mind I formed MAJM: Middle-Aged Jewish Men, a support group for middle-aged Jewish men and their non-Jewish partners. The former would have a forum in which to gripe about HMOs and the way the airlines are run and how you can’t find anything good except in New York. They could renew their vows never to buy retail unless completely unavoidable, and then afterward, we of the shiksa would also have a chance to share experiences and touch base with our own kind, eating things with mayonnaise and acting carefree. Sticking forks into toasters and improperly hanging pictures.

When I met Michael I was thrilled to be finding a MAJM.
But I didn’t know the whole story then. I only knew him as good MAJM, the wise funny great cook with the sexy reading glasses who genuinely likes women and understands fabric. The MAJM who won’t let you buy second best, what he dismisses with a wave and the magical word
chazzerai
. I wanted the sophisticated MAJM, the well-dressed breezy professional
New York Times
MAJM. I honestly thought that’s what I was getting. Not the neurotic madman who stalks salmonella, who has to rush home if there’s a raw tomato in the car.

Sometimes I just want to say, “Wait a minute. I didn’t order all this.”

“It comes with,” the representative from MAJM would explain.

There was a hummingbird outside our window, so we watched it for a while. Michael had just brought me my coffee. He has done this since the beginning. He used to fix me toast or breakfast, too. We are down to just coffee.

“Hummingbirds,” he tells me, “have the fastest heartbeat of any living thing.”

My heartbeat is slow, and his is rapid. Michael said, “You’re a tortoise, and I’m a hummingbird.”

We are running out of things to talk about. I knew it would happen, I just thought it would be later.