Slightly Single (25 page)

Oops, I guess that came out bitchier than I intended. Actually, I intended it to come out bitchy, but now that I’ve called attention to myself, I realize I’m not putting my best—unpedicured, I might add—foot for
ward in front of Will’s new friends, so I just shrug like it was a joke and I’m totally in on it, and I say, “Trust me, next summer I’m outta there. So, Will, I want to see the rest of this place.”

In other words, get me the hell away from these two girls who are looking at me like they’re wondering why Will didn’t just abandon me at the bus-stop-slash-luncheonette in the first place.

We move on to the big dining hall, which consists of several round metal tables with fake-wood brown tops. Beyond that is a kitchen. A lanky geek is there, cooking something on the stove. If I’m not mistaken, he’s boiling his socks. Guess there’s no laundry room on the premises.

“Are you making that cabbage soup again, Theodore?” Will asks.

“Oh, shut up, Will,” says Theodore with such a flouncing flourish that I’m immediately aware that he isn’t competing with Will for the fair Esme’s attentions…as if his name, gold earring and Barbara Streisand concert T-shirt weren’t evidence enough.

“This is my girlfriend, Tracey,” Will tells Theodore, who drops his slotted spoon to offer me a limp-wristed handshake and tell me it’s nice to meet me.

I tell him that it’s nice to meet him, too.

Note that Will uses the dreaded G-word when introducing me to a male—and I use the term loosely, but still—and avoided it when introducing me to the twin temptresses in the next room.

As we leave the kitchen, he informs me in a low
grumble that Theodore has an eating disorder and lives on the cabbage-soup diet, which stinks up the cast house.

Naturally, fastidious Will doesn’t appreciate stink of any kind—even imagined.

Mental note: Do not mention past ingestion of cabbage soup.

Getting back to Will’s use of the G-word: as we make our way through the cast house, in and out of the dorm-like rooms upstairs, I keep an ongoing tally. It’s not like he introduces me as his girlfriend to every guy, because he doesn’t. He only uses the label one time other than with Theodore, and that’s with another housemate who obviously is more interested in Will than he is in me. When we meet the two other guys—both apparently straight—and three other girls who are here, he just tells them I’m Tracey.

Everyone is polite.

I tell myself that I’m reading too much into it.

But when we’re walking back downstairs, I can’t help casually asking, “How come I haven’t met Esme?”

And I swear it’s not my imagination that Will is startled enough to semi-gulp before innocently repeating, “Esme?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard so much about her. I thought I’d get to meet her.”

Actually, I’ve heard next to nothing about her.

But the two toenail-painters from the rec room are
just coming into the lobby, and when they obviously overhear my question, they shoot each other a look.

And that’s enough to clinch what I’ve already suspected.

Will is screwing around with Esme.

“She’s in town, at the Laundromat,” Will says.

“Oh, is she the one who’s doing your laundry?” I manage to ask from amid a cloud of swirling hysteria that threatens to touch down any second now.

“How’d you guess?” he exclaims, all golly gee.

“I’m taking a class in deductive skills at the Learning Annex,” I retort.

“Really? My roommate took that class,” Blood Red announces.

I shoot her a withering look. She doesn’t notice. She’s exchanging yet another long, meaningful glance with her friend. I’d be tempted to peg them as lesbians if I didn’t happen to intercept the glance and realize that it clearly says,
We’d better scram before the obviously deluded Tracey makes a scene about Esme washing Will’s undies.

The two of them take off.

Will tells me that he’s going to borrow someone’s car to drive me over to the bed-and-breakfast.

He grabs a key that’s been thumb-tacked to the bulletin board on top of a note that says simply, “Wills.”

Wills. What’s up with this? It’s starting to get on my nerves—mainly because it doesn’t seem to be bugging him.

I would never dare to call him Wills.

Once, when we first started dating, I teasingly called him Willy. Was he pissed. I thought he was kidding/pissed, but he was really pissed. Kind of like I am now, about the phone and the nickname and oh yeah,
Esme.

As if I’ve let her slip my mind for even a second.

No. I’ve got a mission.

Mental note: Seek and Destroy Esme ASAP.

He takes me and my luggage out to the parking lot behind the cast house. There, we climb into a beat-up green compact car. I’m not good with cars so I have no idea what make and model it is, but I’m confident saying it’s not a Mercedes or a BMW. I’m also confident in saying that it either belongs to a male, or to a disgusting pig of a female, which means despite her being on an intimate enough level with Will that she’d loan him her car, she’s no threat to our relationship.

He wrinkles his nose and brushes off the driver’s seat before getting in, then hunts for a napkin in the cluttered glove compartment so he can clean some kind of smudge from the inside of the windshield. The small back seat is littered with clothes, scripts, empty cigarette packs and fast-food debris. A Bic lighter lies handily on the floor at my feet, and there’s a lovely ashtray overflowing with ashes and butts in the front console.

Which means I don’t feel guilty lighting up.

Not until Will looks over at me and asks, “Can you please not smoke in here, Trace?”

“In here?” I echo. “Come on, Will, this is pretty much the Smokemobile.”

“My throat,” he says delicately. “I have to perform tonight.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I stub out the butt, inwardly grumbling. Then I ask, “How was opening night last night? I completely forgot to ask you about it.”

“It went well,” he says. “I want to stop and pick up the local paper on the way to the Inn to check the reviews. They should be out by now.”

He seems to know his way around this place pretty well, I notice, as he maneuvers the green trash can on wheels over winding, mostly unmarked country roads. The lake keeps popping up, and he points out various local attractions along its shore.

I hate that this place is so familiar to him and it’s so foreign to me. He has this whole life without me. He lives here, and I don’t.

The thought that in a little over a month he’ll be back in New York is no longer comforting. Not when I know I need to confront whatever he’s been doing while we’ve been apart…and, possibly, whatever he used to do while we were together.

We stop at a little mom-and-pop-type store, the first place I’ve seen up here that’s truly quaint.

I buy three packs of cigarettes, a Diet Raspberry Snapple Iced Tea, and the latest edition of
People
to read while Will is getting ready for his performance later. At this point, I’m pretty much
Gulliver’s Travel
ed out.

Will buys a newspaper called the
Lakeside Ledger
and whips through the pages as soon as we’re back in the car. He finds what he’s looking for as I open the Snapple and take a big gulp.

I realize I’m hungry.

“Are we going to stop for lunch anywhere?” I ask, thinking there must be a place to get a good salad up here. This is the country. Fresh vegetables. Home-grown lettuce. Deep red, sun-warmed tomatoes…

My stomach growls ferociously, unsated by the Snapple.

Greasy fries with tons of salt, vinegar and ketchup. A double bacon cheeseburger. A chocolate shake…

“Will?” I prod, weak from hunger.

“Shhh!” He’s busy reading the review.

If we’re just going to sit here without driving, I’m going to get out and smoke to take the edge off my appetite. I climb out of the car and light up.

As I stand there, leaning on the car in the gravel parking lot, looking around at the woodsy setting and the tourist types coming and going, I start thinking again about Will cheating. I picture him up here in the country, in the moonlight, by the lake, with somebody else.

Then I realize that I’ve smoked my entire cigarette and Will’s still sitting silently in the car.

“That must be a helluva long review,” I say, stubbing out the butt on the ground and poking my head in the open window.

Will is grim.

The page containing the review is crumpled on the floor behind his seat.

Clearly, it wasn’t a rave.

“Are you okay?” I ask him.

He shrugs.

“What did it say?”

“See for yourself.” He’s looking straight ahead.

I climb back into the car and fish the review from a litter of ketchup-stained napkins and lipstick-stained tissues.

Will McCraw, as George, is a comely addition to the Valley Theater cast, but brings little energy to the challenging role.

Oh. No wonder he’s upset.

I keep reading, my mind already racing for words of comfort.

His lackluster performance could not begin to capture the brooding enigma that embodies his character, a passionate artist. His thin, incapable voice frequently seemed to lack the necessary range. However, the dazzling Esme Spencer was perfectly cast as the beguiling Dot, who is head over heels over the career-obsessed George and must ultimately decide whether it’s time to “Move On” in the show’s most haunting musical number. To her credit, Spencer managed to consistently create convincing romantic sparks in her onstage moments with the hapless eye candy that is McCraw.

I feel like somebody just dropped a hair dryer into my bathtub.

The dazzling Esme Spencer.

So she’s his leading lady.

So their onstage romantic sparks were convincing.

Don’t do this.

That comes from a cautionary voice somewhere deep inside of me.

It’s as effective as the
Patrons Only
sign on the rest rooms of the Grand Hyatt hotel on Forty-Second and Lex.

I turn to Will.

Will is now the brooding enigma that is his character, a passionate artist.

His arms are folded across his chest, his jaw is stiff, and he glares through the still-smudged windshield.

In other words, this probably isn’t a good time to bring up our relationship.

But it can’t wait any longer.

This has been building for the past few hours, since I got here.

No, the past few days, since he called me collect from a bar.

No, the past few weeks, since he left.

Oh, hell, it’s been building since I’ve known him.

I take a deep breath and let it all spill forth at last, to my credit having the presence of mind to open with an obligatory, “Will, I’m sorry about the sucky review. But it’s only one critic, and what does she know? The thing is, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve come to realize that I need to ask you a question, and I need you to answer it honestly for me.”

He hasn’t even flinched.

I wonder if he’s even listening.

I rush on, “It’s just this feeling that I’ve had, and maybe it’s completely off-base. I mean, it might just be me—just my insecurity, and my imagination—but I need to know…Will, have you been faithful to me?”

Now
he’s
flinching.

Not only is he flinching, he’s turning on me in a rage. “
What?
You’re asking me this
now?
”

My own anger bubbles promptly from the depths. My previously carefully controlled voice erupts into a shrill, “Well, when else am I supposed to ask you? You’ve been gone for a month. And you never call, so I can’t ask you over the phone.”

“I never
call?
”

“A couple of times, in the middle of the night. I’m supposed to work with that? Will, you’re not being fair.”

“
I’m
not being fair?” He gives a bitter laugh. “You’re obviously celebrating Kick Will While He’s Down day, and
I’m
not being fair.”

“I know, it’s not the best timing…and I said I was sorry about the goddamn review. But, Will, this is important.”

“Tracey, right now, in my life, nothing is as important as this. Nothing.”

“Including me,” I say flatly, my insides churning.

He says nothing, just lifts his chin slightly and glares into my eyes.

“Take me to the bed-and-breakfast,” I blurt, feeling the tears coming on.

He starts the engine.

But he doesn’t take me to the bed-and-breakfast.

Sobbing in my seat, my face turned blindly to the open window, I don’t realize where we are until we’re pulling up with a violent jerking stop in front of it.