Charmed Thirds (38 page)

See? If I had time to think about this, I’d probably get depressed.

the eleventh

I covered a day shift when someone called in sick today, a reward for being so dang good with the clientele. Perhaps my Psychology degree is coming in handy after all. If I keep it up, I will be the most overeducated custard-slinger in the history of hydrogenated fats.

It was a perfect ten tanning day and the water was calm and clear, so the beach was packed. I knew the boardwalk would be relatively dead until the sun went down and had brought along some reading material to kill time. It was a truly stellar issue of
Star
magazine, too, devoting no less than eight pages to celebrities with cellulite. This is all part of my master plan of not thinking all summer.

I was studying the nooks and crannies of Donatella Versace’s thighs when I heard a familiar voice.

“Um. Hey. Jess.”

I looked up to see Len standing before me. He had the decrepit appearance of someone who had died and was buried without a coffin, then dug up again. Unlike Kieran, who exaggerated his postbreakup devastation to better advance his rebound relationship (i.e., me), Len was clearly in very sorry shape indeed.

“Oh, hey,” I replied. Then with more compassionate emphasis.
“Hey.”

“I know. Um. That you know. You don’t have to pretend you don’t. Um. Know.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. So.” I wasn’t sure what to say. “What are you doing this summer?”

“
EMT
,” he said. “Saving people’s. Um. Lives.”

He laughed quickly, maniacally. Then silenced himself.

“I was sorry to hear about what happened,” I said.

“Were you?” he asked, drifting past the colorful tubs of custard in the case.

“Of course I was,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just. Um. Thought that you might be. Um. Happy.” He paused in front of vanilla bean.

“Happy?” I asked. “Why?” I knew what he was getting at, but I wanted to hear him say it.

“Because of. Um. How we broke up.”

I opened the freezer and dug into the tub. “Len, it was ages ago,” I said. “Besides, two more guys dumped me after you. I’ve gotten used to it.”

He silently watched as I worked the scoop through the custard.

“I’ll never get used to this,” he said morosely.

“Sprinkles?”

“Do? I? Want sprinkles?” As if this were a question he were incapable of answering, along the lines of, “What happens to us after we die?” or “What is the meaning of life?”

“Live a little, Len,” I said, expertly rolling the cone through the chocolate sprinkles before handing it over.

Len inspected it as if he were an African bushman who had never encountered something so puzzling. So
cold.
He took an apprehensive lick, and sprinkles tumbled to the floor. The chilly sweetness spread over his tongue. He grinned like a kid.

“It’s good,” he said.

“I know,” I replied.

“Thanks, Jess,” he replied, before turning around and walking away. I couldn’t see his face but I just knew that he was still smiling, even after he was out of sight.

the fifteenth

One of my high school coworkers (Clueless Crew version 2.0) who can’t be trusted to work at night told me that some “totally sketchy dude” keeps coming around looking for me. I needed more specifics.

“Sketchy how?”

“He looked like he hadn’t taken a shower for, like, ever,” she said in between the pops and cracks of her gum. “Cute, though, if you like the dirty type.”

“Plain white T-shirt?” I asked. A feeble question, that. Marcus could have given them up long, long ago.

“Cornell T-shirt,” she replied.

Len.

Apparently, he came back to the stand the day after his first appearance, and the days after that. But I was always working the night shift so I kept missing him. Finally, last night, he figured out that he should come after dark.

“Hey!” he yelled over the roar of the crowd.

“Hey!” I yelled back. “Too busy to talk. Call me!”

Ever the reliable one, he called me at home the next morning.

“I. Um. Forgot to pay.”

“Pay for what?”

“The. Um. Cone.”

I laughed. “It was a freebie, Len. No need.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said. “It was. Um. Really good.”

“We take deep pride in our products and customer service at Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe.”

“It’s a very. Um. Smart business model,” he replied.

“Right,” I said, sensing he had more to say. “Is that the only reason you called?”

“No,” he said.

And then he took the next half hour to ask me if I felt like joining him for coffee or engaging in some other outing, which would be completely platonic because he is still wounded and is in no shape to enter into an emotional relationship with anyone right now. I tried very hard not to laugh at his earnestness.

“Sure, Len,” I said.

And so, that’s how I ended up going out with Len tonight.

My mom caught me getting ready to go out, a primping ritual that consists of taking my hair out of its topknot and shaking it out until my scalp doesn’t hurt anymore.

“Do you have a date tonight? It’s about time you got back out there.”

“Actually no,” I said. “I’m going out with Len Levy. Remember him?”

“Len Levy? The Len Levy who broke up with you to date a lesbian?”

“He didn’t know she was a lesbian at the time, Mom, but yes. The same.”

She pondered this for a moment. “You know,” she said, tapping her fingernail on the Restoration Hardware catalog. “I
always
liked Len.”

“I know, Mom, I know.”

“Is he still premed at Cornell?”

It is one of life’s inexplicable ironies that my mother is more invested in Len’s Ivy League education than my own. “Uh . . . I have no idea,” I said.

“How can you be going out with him tonight and not even know his major?”

Again, this was of strange importance for someone who had never had a college major. Thankfully, the doorbell rang before I pointed this out to her. My mom scurried to greet him.

“Len!” she gushed. “So lovely to see you! Come in! Come in!”

Len had showered since the last time I saw him. He looked clean
and
clean-cut in a sky blue Le Tigre polo and pressed khaki shorts. Through the glass in his wire-rimmed specs, I could see that the whites of his eyes were still pink with sadness, which somehow only enhanced the intensity of his green eyes.

“No really, Mom, we have to get going if we’re going to . . . uh . . . catch our movie,” I said, glancing at my watch. “But before we do, Len, would you please tell my mother what your major is?”

He turned to my mother and said, “Biological Sciences.”

“And what is your GPA?” I asked.

“3.82.”

“And what do you want to do after you graduate?” I asked.

“Apply to medical schools.”

“Which ones?”

“Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Yale.” Then he darted a look at me before saying, “Columbia.”

“And what do you foresee as your specialty?” I asked.

“Cardiology.”

I looked at my mom. “Anything else?”

My mother had rolled up the Restoration Hardware catalog so tightly that she could have used it as a weapon.

“I’ll arrange for him to send you his
MCAT
scores when they arrive,” I called out before she could answer, ushering Len out the door.

“So. Um. We’re seeing a movie?”

“No,” I said. “We’re getting something cheap to eat.
Cheap
being the operative word there.”

“Helga’s?”

Helga’s. I hadn’t been to Helga’s since the last time I saw Len, which was when I’d gone there with Pepe after saying good-bye to Marcus . . . what? Two summers ago?

“Helga’s,” I said, slipping into the passenger side of the Saturn. He’s been driving the same car since we dated in high school, and though the new car smell had faded, it still looked fresh off the lot.

We didn’t say much on the ride over, choosing to fill the silence with the CD player. I could have guessed the three CDs in random rotation:
In Utero
(Nirvana);
Vs.
(Pearl Jam);
Rubber Soul
(The Beatles). John Lennon sang about an irresistible girl, one he should have known better than to fall for:

“She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry / Still you don’t regret a single day . . .”

I thought it might be like pouring salt on Len’s open wounds. For his sake, I talked over the words.

“Do you still play?” I asked.

“Play what?” Len asked, keeping his eyes on the bumper precisely three seconds in front of us, as is recommended in Driver’s Ed for cars traveling at 30 mph.

“Guitar.”

His Heineken eyes bulged in surprise. “Oh. Um. Guitar. Right,” he said. “I almost forgot I used to do that. No.”

“No?” I asked. “Why not?”

“School,” he said simply.

I didn’t respond.

“Do you still write?” he asked.

Eddie Vedder sang:
“I seem to recognize your face / Haunting, familiar yet can’t seem to place it . . .”

“No,” I replied.

“Why not?”

I laughed quietly to myself. “School,” I lied.

Len tapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand as if to say,
Well, there you have it,
without actually having to say it.

“That’s too bad about your guitar,” I said. “You were really good.”

“So were you,” he said. “Um. At writing. You know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

“It wasn’t as much fun. Um. Once I stopped collaborating with Flu,” he said. Marcus’s nickname. His face broke out in crimson panic. “Oh! Um! Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “You can say his name. I’m over it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Len,” I said. “I am.”

“That’s good,” he sighed as he pulled into Helga’s parking lot. “Because I don’t feel like I’ll ever . . . Um . . .”

Eddie moaned.
“Hearts and thoughts they fade . . . fade away . . .”
And Len failed to finish his sentence, as if he interpreted these lyrics as a command.

With all the things that had changed over the years, Helga’s was as refreshingly dingy as ever. We requested a booth way, way in the back. We ordered coffee. We sat quietly, without really looking at each other. I decided to break the silence.

“I went on Accutane, just like you,” I said, immediately recognizing that this was, perhaps, the most retarded conversation starter ever. Why remind him of his—of
our—
zitty history now that our complexions were clear?

“You
did?”
Len asked. “Why would you do that?” He seemed truly baffled, and curious to hear if there was a non-acne-related reason why someone might go on this particular drug.

“Cysts,” I said, hoping my curt response would close the topic I had stupidly opened in the first place.

“Oh?” he replied skeptically. But that was all he said, and I was grateful.

“So,” I tried again. “I’m thinking that you might be able to help me out.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Well, as the first of a string of guys to drop me,” I said. “Maybe you can give me some insight as to why I’m so dumpable.”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as if this gesture might somehow improve his hearing.

“Um. What?”

“Kieran, my sham of an ex-boyfriend from school, said I was too much woman,” I said. “I think that’s only a problem when you’re too much
annoying
woman.”

“I never thought you were. Um. Annoying.”

“Then what’s wrong with me?” I asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he said. “It was
us
that was the problem. As I can only assume it was with you and. Um. Kieran.”

“And Marcus?”

He let that line of questioning drop and offered another. “Have you. Um. Heard from him lately?”

“Not since last Christmas,” I said.

“Me either,” he said.

We both took long slugs of coffee. I resisted the urge to ask him about the nature of his correspondence with Marcus, and what it had revealed, mostly because I knew that anything Len could tell me wouldn’t make one bit of difference.

Instead I asked, “What did you see in Manda anyway?”

“I think. Um. That I appreciated that she was willing to change for me.”

I groaned. “That’s so Freudian, Len.”

“I don’t know much. Um. Freud.”

“He theorized that we don’t fall in love with an actual person, but with a projection of our own desires. By changing, Manda became less of herself and more like you.”

“Maybe,” he said in an offhand way that let me know that he wasn’t a fan of undergraduate psychobabble. It put me in my place, that’s for sure. But I wasn’t offended because sometimes I need that.

More coffee.

“Remember when you asked why you might be so. Um. Dumpable?”

“It was only about a minute ago, Len.”

“Um. Right,” he seemed embarrassed by the error. “I can only speak for myself here. But. Um. I think I knew that you wouldn’t change for me. Um. I don’t think you would change for
anyone.
It’s like what makes you
you
is unassailable.”

“And that’s been working so well for me,” I deadpanned.

“Not changing who you are isn’t a bad thing . . .”

“If my romantic history is any indication, it can’t be a
good
thing.”

Len drained his cup in lieu of a response.

“So you’re really. Um. Over Marcus?” he asked after a few seconds of silence.

“Really,” I said. I enjoyed being able to say it like I meant it.

“Do you still think about him? Because I still think about Manda all the time.”

I contemplated the question. Do I think about Marcus?

The honest answer is that I try not to. But making a conscious decision not to think about someone is, by definition, thinking about them. Not to mention those studies I’ve mentioned that suggest the more energy you spend trying to forget about someone, the more likely it is that the person will pop up in your dreams.

Recently, my dreams all relive real moments from my past. Me buzzed at the West End in my Barnard T-shirt. Me sweating on the corner of 110th and Amsterdam. Me sparring in my dorm room. Me serving a custard cone on the boardwalk. Only instead of Mini Dub, instead of Bastian, instead of Kieran, instead of Len is Marcus, Marcus, Marcus, Marcus. And he never says a word.