What Nora Knew (17 page)

I stepped through the security arch. The guard nodded; he looked bored to death. My handbag with its secret stash came riding out. Then stopped. Retreated. The roller stopped. My heart stopped. The roller resumed and my bag reappeared. No detonators went off. No alarms blared. I wasn’t carted off to detention and a cell full of prostitutes. I grabbed my bag, waved good-bye to the guards and left.

Stepping into the sunshine, I dug out my phone and called Russell’s office. His receptionist said he was with a patient, but ten seconds later he was on the line. I apologized. He apologized. He said he’d bring over a DVD and we could order in Chinese.

*  *  *

A week later, I was sitting in the reception room of Dr. David Lewis, DDS, waiting for my six-month cleaning. On the wall opposite me hung a poster of the Three Stooges dressed like dentists, holding hammers and wrenches, Dr. Lewis’s idea of humor. Behind an open sliding-glass window a young woman in a medical smock was cursing at her computer. I sifted through the magazines on the corner end table.
Cycle World
.
Golf Digest
.
Field & Stream.
I wanted to curse, too. The one other patient in the waiting area, a woman with close-cropped hair and the bone structure to warrant it, was reading an iPad. “Pathetic choices,” she said, wrinkling her nose and acknowledging the magazine selection. “Whenever I come here, I bring my own reading material.”

I said, “I’m impressed you remember to do that.”

She shrugged. “Bad teeth.” She went back to her iPad, chuckling, then sighing, then looking up and asking, “Do you ever read
EyeSpy
?”

“Sure!” I said. Maybe she’d compliment something I wrote.

“Some of their articles are ridiculous,” the woman said. “You couldn’t pay me to do the crazy things one writer does.
But this piece is adorable. Totally different for them and totally charming.”

It didn’t sound like it was about vibrators. “What’s the topic?” I asked, trying to peek at her screen.

“Love. Romance. Recognizing the
one.
” She read aloud: “ ‘Bestselling crime novelist Cameron Duncan writes that finding love is the ultimate mystery.’ ”

If Dr. Lewis had stepped into the waiting room right that second, it would have been an excellent time to lecture me on grinding my teeth. “May I see that one teensy minute?” I asked the woman.

Her eyes narrowed. She gripped her iPad. Like maybe I’d snatch it out of her hands and hightail it out of there.

“One little second? Please? I’ll give it right back. Promise!”

“Only one second,” she said, handing it over.

“I swear.”

At first I skimmed the article, then I slowed down, absorbed in Cameron’s words.
Love is a catalog of emotional needs and you need to prioritize what’s important to you. For some it’s arousal and erotica, for others it’s a playmate or security. Once you choose your priority from the catalog of love, you discover what’s critical to you.
I read his interviews with couples who believed the energy and vibrancy of New York fostered romance. These were effusive, rhapsodic, lyrical couples, not the subway cranks I cross-examined. I read his list of New York’s most romantic settings. I’d written a list. I’d included a list in my article. I liked my list much more than his list. He wrote how he was waiting for that sense of magic
and recognition he knew he’d feel from the first moment he held his soul mate’s hand and exchanged that first memorable kiss. I wanted to hate the article. But it was sweet, romantic.
We try. We trust. We make safe choices, foolish choices, wrong choices, wrongheaded choices. We fall off the course and climb back on again.

He didn’t write at all like Nora Ephron. Even the wonder boy couldn’t pull that off. But like a Nora Ephron movie, he made love sound fairy-tale idyllic and sparkling with possibility.

The woman started coughing, leaning closer to me. “Excuse me,” she said. “Perhaps you can hand me that copy of
Field and Stream.
” She was pissed.

If you have good distance vision, it’s actually possible to hand an iPad back to its owner while continuing to read the screen. That’s what I was doing when I caught one more paragraph.
In
Sleepless in Seattle,
we know Meg Ryan will end up with Tom Hanks. She’ll end up with Billy Crystal in
When Harry Met Sally.
But we still keep watching. We’re still mesmerized by the journey.

Cameron had totally ripped off what I’d told him at the book party! Did the guy walk around with a hidden wire? Did he have no shame!

“iPad hog,” the woman was saying, stuffing the tablet into her purse.

The receptionist who’d been cussing at her computer was now smiling. She and her computer must have made up. “He’s ready for you, Miss Brichta,” she said.

Miss Brichta served up one final snarl as she made her way through the door to the treatment rooms.

When I was finally stretched out in a dental chair, a green paper bib clipped around my neck, with Lynn the hygienist gloved and masked and picking away, I thought about how flattering it was, beyond flattering, an homage of sorts, that bestselling author Cameron Duncan had swiped what I’d said. What a compliment! What an accolade! What nerve. I bet he stole half the article, like all that business about magic and memorable kisses. While Lynn scraped, I made a list in my head of my memorable kisses.

Johnny Zwierzko. Fifth grade. Gum in his mouth. Juicy Fruit. I hate Juicy Fruit. Grade: C-.

Pablo Mullen. High school. Sophomore year. Lactose intolerant. Passed gas while kissing me in a Baskin-Robbins. Grade: D+.

Bradley Bernett. High school. Junior year. Making out big-time, kissing me good-night on my front steps. My father suddenly opens the door, pulls me inside, and shoves a corned-beef sandwich in Bradley’s hand, saying, “Here! Chew on this!” Bradley: A-. Sidney Hallberg: F.

Nameless Kappa Sigma fraternity pledge. College. Freshman year. Regal Cinemas in Albany. Where nameless pledge somehow managed to poke his penis through the bottom of the cardboard popcorn box in his lap and then offered me popcorn. Grade: Incomplete.

Evan Naboshek. A+. Unfortunately.

Richie Rossier. Five weeks after my divorce was finalized. Washed my tonsils with his tongue. D-.

Russell Edley. Solid B.

“Did that hurt?” Lynn the hygienist asked, stepping back. Before I could answer, she said, “Drink and spit.”

*  *  *

That afternoon, I could hear Emily in her office pretending to read Cameron’s article and commenting out loud. “Wow, Cameron Duncan did an amazing job on this romance story. Not that it was hard to write, I’m sure. Any fool could have done it, but he sure did a great job!”

I wanted to tell her that the best paragraph in the entire article, the one with the most profound insight, was mine, that he swiped it from me, took an innocent conversation shared outside of a powder room on Central Park South and absconded with it as his own.

But since I’d rather not talk to Emily, at all, ever, period, I didn’t mention that.

I slipped my headphones on and researched organic restaurants. That was my next assignment. Writing about food I never ate. My mouth ached. My mind strayed.

Lynn the hygienist had really dug in. There are almost 82 million results when you google
organic restaurants.
That should be a good start. I couldn’t get past being called an “iPad hog” even if it was true. Okay, so maybe I held on to it longer than I’d promised, but why resort to childish name-calling? If I had an iPad and someone asked to borrow it, I’d say,
Take your time, no rush at all.
So why was I annoyed with that lady and not upset with Cameron Duncan? I thought I was upset with him. I tried to stay upset with him. I read
that the number of organic restaurants was expected to grow 14 percent over the next year. I told myself Cameron didn’t remember it was me who said we still keep watching even when we know the ending. He wasn’t half as good-looking as Russell. Imagine all the women who must be swooning over his romance piece. Russell’s new mattress was too soft.
Oh, Molly, what’s wrong with you?

*  *  *

After work I stopped in the Barnes & Noble on Eighty-Sixth, grateful it hadn’t turned into a discount clothing store like the Barnes & Noble on Sixty-Sixth. I paused for my usual five-minute reverie where I imagined my own published book. My acerbic observations on
The Great Gatsby
. My smart-alecky commentary on
Pride and Prejudice.
My snarky appraisal of
Washington Square.
Hallberg, the literary heretic, embraced by critics and fans alike. I tossed in a few book tours and autograph signings.

After I got past that mental malarkey, I found the crime section. Cameron’s three novels took up an entire shelf; several copies were available for each title. I didn’t know if that was a good sign because the store ordered lots of copies, or a bad sign because nobody was buying any copies. The artwork showed Mike Bing with a different dame on each cover. Probably the girlfriends he kept killing off. I figured I’d buy the first book first and see where Mr. Duncan got his big start. Russell already owned the first book, but I never borrow Russell’s books. Russell mangles books, dog-ears them,
underlines passages with black marker that bleeds through to the opposite side, drops books in the toilet or leaves them on buses. I don’t even want to touch Russell’s books.

Maybe I’d go buy an egg-salad sandwich at the Barnes & Noble café. If I read fast enough, I could read Cameron’s book while I sat there and not pay for it. I’d just have to be careful with the pages. I have enough of a moral code to draw the line at reshelving books I’ve smeared with egg salad. But whipping through a couple hundred pages or so while sampling a book for free? I’m cool with that.

I was weaving my way through fiction toward the café when I saw Russell’s head. I peeked over from my aisle to see his aisle. Poetry. Russell was in the poetry section. What the hell was Russell doing in poetry? A normal girlfriend would have walked up to her boyfriend, expressed delight at their fortuitous unscripted meeting and casually asked,
What the hell are you doing in poetry?
But I went for option B. I spied on him. Why, I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time, more than any deep-down desire to be a sneak. It’s fascinating to observe someone who thinks he’s walking around unobserved. You never know what you might learn. Like I learned, for instance, that Russell was buying a poetry book. There was only one possible explanation. He was buying the book for me. I’d have to hide and wait until he left. If I showed up now, I’d spoil his gift. I ducked around to the Women’s Issues section. He’d never find me there.

Later, Russell said it was my idea. I said it was his, even though it really was my idea to invite Kristine and Angela to dinner with their new boyfriends. But Russell’s the one who suggested we use his apartment instead of mine because his dining table’s bigger.

“Now we have to pay for a cab across town,” Angela said when I told her the locale.

“Take a bus.”

She was sitting on my floor, her legs straight out, doing stretches. I was sitting on my sofa not doing stretches. The Black Eyed Peas were singing “Rock That Body.” “What’s wrong with your place? You own good dishes,” Angela said.

“One, don’t assume this dinner party warrants good dishes. And, two, how am I going to feel if, after dinner, you go across the hall to have screaming sex and I’m stuck here scrubbing
pots with Russell? If you leave and get in a cab, I won’t have that problem.”

Angela extended her arms like a holdup victim. She bent forward toward her toes. “Leave with Charlie and me and only Russell will have that problem.” She was joyful, bubbly, giddy, over her swim coach. At first I worried, does she make love with the guy, roll over, and tweet,
It was good for me
. But Angela’s relationship with her phone took a serious step backward as soon as she started a relationship with a man. She was counting down the days until school started again, relishing her boyfriend’s current availability. “I should have been a teacher and worked for the school system,” she said. “It’s great having the entire summer off to hang out at home.”

“You hang out at home the entire year.”

“So what should I wear?” she asked, arms in the air, then back to her toes. She was a new Angela. She still wore her sweats collection, but when Charlie was within a one-mile radius, she whipped out the ruffles and lace.

I smiled at her. “Whatever makes you happy.”

“I am happy,” she said. She moved onto her back, stretching in all directions, making snow angels on my carpet.

Both Angela and Kristine seemed to feel they’d met the
one
. How did they know so fast? I never know fast. I assess, make lists of pros and cons, and accept another date if the pros outweigh the cons.

After my divorce, when I retreated to Long Island, sleeping in my old bedroom even though it was now an arts-and-crafts
room, my mother came into my room one night bringing me a cup of tea. She sat down on a closed tub of library paste and said, “Molly, if love was easy, it wouldn’t feel like magic when you finally got it right.”

Magic. I wanted magic. But what’s it take to get it right?

I told Angela the dinner wasn’t going to be formal, just Russell tossing a couple of chickens under a broiler.

“Can I bring something?”

“Sure. How about a salad, a side dish, some wine, dessert, and two chickens?”

I hoped we all hit it off. Russell was a nice guy. And from whatever foggy, fuzzy memory I retained of our speed date, Charlie was a nice guy. The four of us could go out and have a nice time. But if Russell and Charlie became friends, and then Angela and Charlie broke up or Russell and I broke up, how could Russell still be friends with Charlie while Angela and I were still friends? When Evan and I divorced, we divvied up our friends. You get the casserole dish and Judy Linklater; I’ll take the soup tureen and the Seratores. In the end I kept the friends I brought to the marriage, and no matter how friendly I’d grown with Evan’s friends, he kept his. I’ve seen this happen with couples who split after twenty years. The woman gets custody of her college roommate, the man gets custody of his; except for one couple I knew where the husband ran off with his wife’s college roommate.