Five Things I Can't Live Without (33 page)

“Rum and Coke?” he asked.

“That sounds great.”

I claimed the table just before another couple could. I smiled at them apologetically, and they turned away without acknowledgment. Ah, the social graces of youth.

When Dan came to the table, he had a beer for him and a glass of wine for me. “No hard liquor,” he said apologetically. “Just beer and wine.”

“Once we’re regulars, you’ll need to carry a flask.”

“I’m on it.” Dan slurped the foam from his Guinness and surveyed the room with bemusement.

“Remember being this young?” I asked. “I can’t believe I just said that, but look at them.” At the pool table, a girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen had arranged herself into a position of near obscenity. She was presumably making a shot, but she held the pose for so long that it was clear what she really wanted was to bend across a table with impunity.

“Not that well, actually.” I was pleased to see that Dan’s eyes were grazing the room and didn’t land on the girl at the pool table.

“Really? When I’m someplace like this, it all comes back to me. How great and how awful it was at the same time. It’s a blessing and a curse to have so many possibilities. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.” He reached across the table for my hand. “Our anniversary is next week.”

“I know. We made it.” I leaned in for him to kiss me. It was fun to be in this bar full of kids, tonguing each other at the table. We broke it up sooner than we would have if we were actually their age. As he drew back, I asked, in true eighteen-year-old style, “What are you thinking right now?”

“Remember in class when we stopped dancing?” he answered slowly. He didn’t seem to realize that I had been teasing him. “Well, I was just thinking how easy it was for everyone else to keep dancing because they don’t know each other. They don’t show each other their frustration like we do, because they don’t have any history. They’re polite, and they want to make an impression. In some ways, it’s easier for two strangers to keep dancing.”

“That’s probably true.”

“And because they keep moving, you can’t tell exactly what’s wrong with them. Like, Roxy came over to us because we’d stopped dancing, but if we just kept going like everyone else, she wouldn’t have.”

“But then we wouldn’t have learned that I was going too early.” I said it lightly, but I still felt a little embarrassed about my arrogance in telling Dan what to do.

“It was a good thing she came over because we were getting kind of tense, but next time, I think we should just keep moving and we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

“We could practice at home, too. That could be fun.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe we could go salsa dancing on our anniversary. Go public.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Some things need to stay under wraps.”

“Tonight it’s club soda only,” Larissa said. “I want to stay sharp.” Her eyes roamed over the scene, which wasn’t promising. They’d lowered the lights, but we all still knew we were on the tenth floor of an office building. The office building that housed a Jewish singles service, to be more precise. Larissa adjusted her name badge and smiled around generically.

“I still can’t believe you got me to come to this with you,” I said.

“I needed to make sure I’d have someone to talk to. You’re my sure thing, in case there’s no one interesting.”

“There’s no one interesting.” The women outnumbered the men two to one. Most of the men seemed socially inept and those who had even a modicum of charm were cutting a wide swath through the women.

“I see a few I wouldn’t mind talking to.”

“The same few all the other women want to talk to?”

“I didn’t say I had great odds.” Larissa realized she was leaning against the wall in a way that was less than inviting. She straightened up and took a sip of her drink. “Friendly and available, that’s what I’m going for here.” She glanced at me, almost coyly. “So when are you going to help me revise my profile?”

“I was starting to think you’d never ask.”

“Yeah, well. I had to maintain some pride.”

“Pick a night next week and it’s yours.”

“Thanks. I mean, there’s got to be a trick I’m missing. Look at this …” She gestured toward the room, trailing off dispiritedly. Then she smiled at me and said, “You know, it’s okay. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

Larissa had continued to make strides since breaking it off with her therapist. Lucky for me, the serene goddess act had slipped away. But she was still at peace with doing things like watching poker tournaments while eating gummy worms and drinking tequila sunrises. (I never asked how she stumbled upon that particular winning formula.) Most important, she didn’t beat herself up for feeling like she needed a man. Sometimes she got depressed about not having anybody; sometimes she worried that it would never happen for her. But mostly, she was prepared to do what it took to get what she wanted, even when it led her to places like this. I had to respect that.

“Let’s stay a little longer,” I said. “This is my first mixer. Don’t you want to show me a good time?”

“Stop calling it a mixer.”

“I think it’s a funny word. This whole thing feels so 1955 to me.”

“You’re right, it is.” She was looking at one specific man, who was failing to make eye contact with her. “So what’s going on with you?”

“On Sunday, Dan and I will have been together a year.” I announced it proudly, then realized it was a somewhat dubious accomplishment for someone my age.

“That’s right! That’s so great. Mazel tov!” Larissa exclaimed, loudly enough for people nearby to glance over. “The first year’s the hardest,” she added. “That’s when you make a map of the territory.”

“What does that mean?”

“By the end of the first year, the blinders are off and you see what you’re really dealing with. You’ve done your scouting, and now you’ve got a map of the territory: all your faults, all his faults, what you like about you as a couple, what you don’t. So at the end of that first year, once you’ve got the map, you have to decide whether you actually want to go forward and explore. It’s like, you know you’re going to have to work at things, but you’ve decided the discoveries are worth it.”

I nodded, smiling to myself. “I like that. Dan and I have our map now.”

“I’ve got to say, I was worried about you for a while. I didn’t want you to lose a good thing.”

“I’m glad I didn’t lose him, too.”

She smiled at me. “So that’s it, then. You’re sticking.” I looked at her blankly.

“Blackjack terminology. You like your hand and you don’t need any more cards. You’re sticking with what you’ve got.” She laughed. “I, on the other hand, could use a hit.”

“You’ll get one. But not here.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.” Larissa smiled at me, and arm in arm, we headed for the door.

When I pushed open the front door, Dan sat up, blinking rapidly. He’d fallen asleep on the couch and now he had the startled, unkempt look of a hatchling.

I perched beside him and tousled his already-tousled hair. I liked him like this, uncomposed and childlike. “So I guess I know what you did with your night.”

He glanced at the clock. “Just a quick catnap. But how was yours?”

“It was an awful scene, just like we knew it would be.”

“Why does Larissa go to those things?”

“She likes to have them on the calendar. Something to look forward to.”

He nodded and yawned.

“I’m tired, too. We could go to bed early.” I snuggled beside him on the couch, still wearing my coat.

“First, we have to dance.” Dan forced himself alert through a split-second act of will.

“Now?” I whined.

“Remember, we agreed to practice.” He got to his feet.

“Hey, that was my idea. It’s not fair to use it against me.” I tried to burrow more deeply into the couch, but he started pulling me up. I continued to protest, mostly in jest.

“I bought us some music.” He ran to get the CD player remote, and went through the selections until he got the one he wanted. Salsa music blared. “Sorry,” he said, turning the volume down. He helped me out of my jacket, laying it on the arm of the sofa, and assumed his dance position.

“Is that what you did tonight? Shopped for salsa music?” I was still hanging back. The music seemed awfully fast, and my body felt leaden.

“Mostly I mixed drinks. None of them were quite right. I’m trying to come up with something really special for our anniversary.”

“What are you calling it?”

“That part’s not going so hot, either. I thought of combining our names: the Dora or the Nan.”

“Ick.”

“I know. I thought we could come up with the name together.”

“How about Map of the Territory?” I suggested.

“That’s a little long, isn’t it? What does it mean anyway?”

“I’ll tell you later. Right now, let’s dance.” I felt a renewed burst of energy, and stepped into his arms.

“Okay. Just give me a second to find the beat.” He was bobbing his head just slightly. It was clear he didn’t realize he was doing it, which made it all the more endearing. Finally he cued me to start my basic step.

We messed up within seconds, and then started over, laughing. “This music is really fast,” I said.

“We’ve just never done it to music before. It’s always been Roxy’s syncopation.”

“I hope she gets rid of that stick soon.”

“And a one, and a two, and a one two three …”

We started again, with the same result. But Dan urged me, with his body, to keep going.

We tried out the various combinations from class, with frequent returns to basic.
Whatever happens, we’ll always have basic.
But when Dan tried to lead me into the cross step, we botched it so thoroughly that we came to a halt.

“Let’s just make up a few of our own,” he said, lifting his arm for me to start twirling. As he led, I did my best to follow. We were lousy, and we were laughing.

“Just keep moving.”

About the Author

Five Things I Can’t Live Without
was born when Miami mated with unemployment. If you’ve already finished the book, it might seem an unlikely spawn, so allow me to explain.

In early September 2005, I was headed for a cheap, end-of-summer vacation in Miami. The destination might seem strange, since I live in Berkeley (a bridge away from San Francisco) in California, state of legendarily beautiful beaches. But California beaches are something of a bait-and-switch: Undeniably gorgeous, but even as far south as San Diego, the ocean can chill your bones. Miami has no such handicap. What it does have is a hurricane season, starting right about Labor Day, which no one thought to mention. But I was thirty years old, and by that age, no one’s obligated to tell you anything. Which is the best and the worst part about being thirty.

Well, I dodged a hurricane and the lasting impact of the Miami trip came in the unlikely form of beach reading. I’d never read chick lit before, but Iwound up being delighted by my starter book. Sweet, vulnerable, winning, funny, insightful—all the things I’d want my writing to be, if I still wrote. But Ihadn’t written a creative word in years—I’d dropped my dream of being a writer to study marriage and family therapy—and I wasn’t planning to. That’s where unemployment comes in.

At that time, I was a social worker, a job that was intended to tide me over until I got to do therapy full-time. While I didn’t have the grand epiphany in Miami that I couldn’t stand my job, there is undoubtedly a relationship between getting away from my job and suddenly quitting it several weeks after my return. And there is undoubtedly a relationship between quitting my job and Nora quitting hers in the first chapter of the book. If nothing else, I knew where to begin. I knew a little something about the trifecta of liberation, fear, and hyperanalysis, and that thankfully, at least some of the time, it could be funny.

Chick lit came back to me with three weeks until my temp job started. I had some time to kill and a meta-life to occupy so I started working on the then-untitled
Five Things I Can’t Live Without.
The more feverishly I wrote, the more I realized that chick lit was the perfect vehicle for exploring what had always been my primary interest and passion in life: relationships (with lovers, friends, colleagues, and most important, with ourselves). Turned into the best job I ever had. I’m just hoping it’s not temp.