Starting from Square Two (11 page)

“They shouldn't,” Erika said, shaking her head. She wiped melted ice from the table. “You're right.”

“So will you guys do it with me?” Hallie asked.

Gert didn't really want to drag herself through it, but it seemed at least a little healthier than watching Hallie and Erika feel like victims all the time. “I'll help,” Gert said. “As long as I don't have to ask for any numbers.”

“Fair enough,” Hallie said. “Erika and I will do the real pursuing. But we need your support.” Gert smiled. She felt okay about them again. She certainly did go back and forth.

“I'm in, too,” Erika said. “There's power in numbers….” But her voice trailed off. She was watching something near the window. There were two men at a table, discussing the weekly paper.

Hallie followed Erika's gaze. “They're short,” Hallie said.

“I don't care,” Erika said. “They're cute. Watch and learn.”

Erika got up and slinked toward the front door. But at the last minute, she suddenly stopped and pointed to one of the articles in the paper the guys were reading.

“I can't bear to look,” Hallie told Gert, shielding her eyes with her hand. “It's too embarrassing.”

Gert laughed. “So, you saw Bugs Bunny Boy last night?”

Hallie winced. “It wasn't good.”

“Why not?” Gert had been hoping this would work out. “Was he wearing Warner Brothers again?”

“No,” Hallie said. “He was wearing Disney. But that wasn't the worst of it. He had this horrendous flu and kept sneezing all over me.” Hallie shivered visibly. “I feel chilled just thinking about it. I can still picture his sweaty forehead, with his bangs sticking to it. He was wearing a black turtleneck with Donald Duck. Why would you go out when you're that sick? He has no common sense. I could never find that attractive.”

“Maybe you could look at it as, he was horrendously sick and still wanted to be with you,” Gert said.

“Delirium is one excuse for his behavior,” Hallie said.

Gert noticed that Erika was talking to the men. She focused on Hallie again. “Why don't you give him one more chance? He doesn't seem that bad.”

Hallie shrugged. “I don't know,” she said. “I need more than ‘He doesn't seem that bad.'”

They were both quiet for a second. Gert read the little pink movie schedule on the table. She tried to think of another topic. Work. “Has anything happened with that girl at your office?” she asked.

Hallie lit up. She shook her head. “They wanted me to fire her on Friday for disappearing,” Hallie said. “And of course, when I went to fire her, she had disappeared. I was busy by the time she got back. I'm going to follow her Monday and see where she goes. My boss thinks it'll be better if we have more cause.”

Erika returned. She shielded her hand with her body and showed Gert and Hallie what she'd copped from the guys.

It was a business card.

It said, “Eden Youdani, Resident,” and it was from Mount Sinai hospital.

“He's a doctor?” Hallie said.

“The cute one was,” Erika said, sitting down. Hallie glanced toward the men's table, but they had just left. “The other one mentioned a fiancée.”

“That definitely makes him uncute,” Hallie said.

“Here's the thing, though,” Erika said. “Dr. Youdani wears a yarmulke.”

Hallie looked back again. “I didn't notice.”

“Because he was facing us.”

“That means he's religious,” Gert said. “Would he date someone non-Jewish?”

“Probably not,” Erika said.

“So…?”

“I didn't tell him I wasn't,” Erika said, a sneaky expression crossing her face.

Hallie said, “Are you going to call him?”

“Of course. He's a doctor!”

“But what happens when he finds out you're not Jewish?”

Erika shrugged. “Why should he have to find out?”

Gert thought that Erika was going to just keep hurling herself after impossible men. Maybe it was a way to avoid meeting anyone new. That way, she could keep dwelling on Ben.

In some ways, Gert understood. It was hard to compare everyone to your fantasy guy—especially if he'd once been real.

“But he
will
find out you're not Jewish eventually,” Hallie said.

“That's fine,” Erika said. “E
ven
tually. I'll just avoid revealing my religion for the first few dates. People are too polite to ask. They beat around the bush with, ‘What did you get for, uh…Christmas, or Chanukah….' I can figure my way around that. By the time he finds out, he'll be enamored and it'll be too late. A nice, responsible doctor is the one thing that might get my mind off Ben.” She sighed. “It's terrible when you liked someone so much that they raise the bar for everyone else. They doom you to sky-high standards.”

Gert definitely understood that. “Dr. Eden Youdani doesn't know what he's in for,” Hallie said.

 

That night, Gert and Todd talked on the phone. And they began talking on the phone every day.

“They put us up in a hotel whenever we make a late run,” he told her via his cell phone on Monday. “I'm staying in Binghamton tonight. One year we got hit with a sudden storm that dumped two feet of snow. I was stuck for three days.”

“That actually sounds romantic,” Gert said.

“It might have been,” he said, “but I was stranded with only Bernie the engineer. And there's only so much cable you can watch.”

“What else is there to do in Binghamton?”

“Get a drink in a bar and watch the snow,” he said. “Well, a nonalcoholic drink.”

Tuesday, he called and said the kids at the hospital in New York had made a sign that said,
Hi, Train!
He said he'd smiled for hours after seeing that.

Wednesday, he said, “My little brother has a girlfriend who he's actually been seeing for more than two months.”

“He sounds like
my
brother,” Gert said.

“It's weird when younger brothers start to grow up.”

“It is.”

Thursday, Missy gave Gert extra work at the last minute. Gert had to stay at work later than expected. She felt agitated, but she was happy when Todd called around six.

“She was snapping at me all day,” Gert said, talking low and cupping the phone lest someone from another department walk by and hear. “I'm tempted to do a lousy job and run home, but people depend on our work. They need to know about new drugs they might need.”

“You feel such a responsibility for what you do,” Todd said.

“I only do what everyone should do,” Gert said.

“You're modest, too,” Todd said.

The support washed over Gert like a warm massage.

“Did anything happen on
your
job?” she asked, remembering again what Hallie had told her.

“Well, not mine specifically,” Todd said. “But we found out that down in South Carolina, a conductor saved a three-year-old girl. She'd wandered out of her backyard and was crawling on the tracks and they were only able to get the train down to five miles an hour, so the conductor jumped out and ran ahead of the train and pushed her off.”

“Wow!” Gert said. “Is that what you guys do?”

“We hope we never have to,” he said, “but sometimes, it happens.”

He left her feeling as if she couldn't wait to see him on Saturday.

 

First, she had to get through Friday.

And she wasn't sure, waking up Friday morning, if she'd make it.

She had had another really intense dream that night about Marc. It wasn't anything specific—they were in the car, going somewhere—but the important thing was, he was there, and the future was infinite. She had woken up suddenly, before the end of the dream, and for the first few seconds, she tried to tell herself that maybe the accident was what she had imagined, and Marc's being alive was real. She had felt so settled and happy in the dream—the way she had always been before.

The prevalence of dreams about Marc, and her depression during daylight hours over what had happened, varied so much
with circumstances. They arose depending on the weather, what she'd eaten, where she was in her biological cycle, the tasks she had before her, which music was on, the day of the week, the time of day. Usually she didn't even know what the stimulus was, or whether there was more than one. There might be blocks of time during her day when she felt okay, even hopeful. Then she would suddenly remember how happy she had been up until a year and a half ago, and the contrast with how she felt now—empty, robbed—was almost too much to bear.

She hadn't even realized at the time how happy she'd been, because it was just the way she always felt. And along with it was the underlying assumption that it would always be that way. For many years she saved newspapers with important events—both she and Marc did—with the assumption that they'd give them to their kids someday. It was just a given. Now there was something missing inside of her, some inner stable core.

Lying on her stomach in bed, Gert turned over on her side. She could call in sick today. Why not give herself a break? Toying with calling in sick sometimes helped her for a few minutes in the morning, even though, in the end, she usually decided to save it for an emergency. Her mom had once told her, “It's okay to take a mental health day,” but she always talked herself out of it.

She looked up at her alarm clock. It was 7:29.

The worst time to wake up was one minute before the alarm was about to go off. Now she would have to lie there helplessly and wait for the explosion.

The numbers hit 7:30.

“Crappy the Clown! Crappy the Clown! Crappy the Clown!” yelled a morning DJ. This was the worst morning show in all of New York. That was why Gert kept her clock radio on it: Having to listen for one second urged her right out of bed.

“Where's Crappy's lovely assistant? Abigail Van Urine, come hither!”

Gert got up and snapped it off.

 

That day at work was more miserable than she'd expected.

“Did you sign for my FedEx yesterday?” Missy asked, coming in at ten, her hair in disarray. She didn't look as perfect as usual.

“Yes,” Gert said, looking up. “I put it on your desk.”

“Where on my desk?”

Gert would have to stay out of Missy's way today as much as possible. Best to keep off her radar when she was acting like this.

“In your office,” Gert said.

“No, I know where my desk is.
Ob
viously it's in my office. But where on my desk did you put it? Come show me. There are half a million things on my desk. Where on my desk?”

The day before, Gert had seen something come over the fax machine: A copy of a rough draft of a divorce agreement Missy was working on. It was to be a no-fault divorce. Gert didn't know if Missy's husband even knew about her plans. If Missy was having an affair with the mailroom guy, Dennis certainly didn't know about
that,
either. Maybe the FedEx had to do with all of this.

“I put it in front of your chair,” Gert said, getting up.

Missy, face-to-face with Gert, said slowly, “From now on, if you get something important, hold on to it and give it to me directly.”

Gert had been leaving things on Missy's desk or chair for years. She didn't know why there was a sudden change.

Missy turned, and Gert followed her into her office. Missy's office was a mess. The desk faced the door, with her chair leaning back against the window. Missy was the only person Gert knew who actually positioned herself so she wouldn't be able to look out the window.

But Missy was right. There was no FedEx on the desk.

“I thought I left it there,” Gert said.

“Jesus, Gert. When you see something important come in, put it in a safe place,” Missy said, seething. Gert willed herself to keep her mouth shut and looked at the ground.

But Missy was still looking at Gert. “Are you going to give me some privacy, or what?” Missy finally said.

Gert started toward the door.

“Close that, please,” Missy snapped.

Gert walked out, sat down in her chair and returned to the survey forms she was supposed to be working on. But she bristled. She remembered how good Marc had always been at comforting her after a day like this. A dinner, a hug—it almost had made it worth the pain. Now she just had work to do, and no comfort in sight. It was still a day until she'd see Todd.

Usually, Gert noticed only the buildings of midtown when she looked down the hall, but today she looked down and saw Dennis, Missy's husband. He looked basically the same as at the Christmas party three months ago, except that now his mustache was better trimmed. He reminded Gert of Cliff Clavin from
Cheers,
but was even less intimidating.

Gert noticed the wrinkles in his forehead and his gray hair and she suddenly felt bad for him. He was probably a nice guy who had met Missy when they both were very young. Then she'd outgrown him, outsocialized him.

He stopped at Gert's desk. “Is Melissa Hathaway in there?”

Gert found it odd that Dennis didn't recognize her from parties. Clearly, interpersonal skills were not his bag. “I think so, but I can call,” Gert said. “Who should I say is waiting?”

“Dennis.”

Gert picked up the phone. “Melissa? Dennis is here to see you.”

“Dennis my husband? Here? I'm supposed to meet him at Arthur's.”

Gert didn't know what she was supposed to say. She hated it when Missy yelled at someone else through her. “Well, he's here, so—”

“Tell him I'll be out in fifteen minutes.”

Gert put down the phone. “She's tied up,” Gert said. “She'll be out in fifteen minutes.”

Dennis didn't move. “Fifteen minutes? Can I borrow your phone?”