Getting Over Jack Wagner (26 page)

“But you have Alan,” I reminded Hannah, an attempt to keep us above ground.

“I know. And I love Alan. But it's not the same as having a female friend.”

This distinction might sound obvious, but it came as news to me. From what I'd observed so far of Alan Pinkerton, it appeared he could serve every possible function. Boyfriend. Therapist. Personal chef. Even female friend, if called upon. Apparently there were things I did not know, and probably should have.

“Can I admit something?” Hannah said.

I nodded.

“Sometimes I feel, really, I don't know. Confused.” She laughed, a kind of startled hiccup, as if amused she'd admitted this out loud.

“About marrying Alan?”

She shook her head. “It's not Alan. When I think about being with Alan for the rest of my life, I feel lucky. Like I've been given this, this incredible gift.” She tucked her loose hair behind her ears. “But then other times, I feel like I'm giving something up. Know what I mean?”

I had no idea. “Giving what up? Getting hit on in bars? Getting called ‘momma'? Finding out the guy you thought was hot wears headgear? It ain't all it's cracked up to be, sister.”

Hannah shook her head, more vehemently. A few curls popped loose from behind her ears. “It's not about meeting other men. I couldn't care less about other men. It's like I'm giving up some part of
me.”

Suddenly I felt young, much younger than Hannah, as if we were discussing some cryptic adult subject—taxes, mortgages, whiskey sours—I couldn't hope to understand. “I don't get it.”

“I mean…” She started fingering the tassel of her tea bag. “For instance. You know how important it's always been for me to work with people, and volunteer, and things like that? Well, I think about things like that now, and I know I can still do them, but they just don't feel as…
necessary.”
She paused. “Alan is the center of my world now, and I want that. It's just that sometimes it feels like the rest of my world can get along fine without me.”

She looked down, as if consulting her tea for explanation. I took a nervous swallow of coffee. I knew what I needed to tell my friend, and knew that I meant it, as corny and sitcom-written as it would sound. “If it helps, I still need you.”

Hannah's gaze shifted from her tea to me. I tensed, hoping she wouldn't cry again. Instead, all I got was a mildly curious: “Why?”

It wasn't exactly the response you're looking for after one of the more sincere and vulnerable moments of your life. Such moments shouldn't require supporting examples.

“Why?” I repeated, a touch defensive. “I don't know, let's see. Because you introduced me to meatless hot dogs. You meet me in Denny's in the middle of the night. You explain why I dump rock stars all over the tristate area.” But Hannah looked so intent, so invested in my every word, that I let the humor go. “Actually, I could use your help right now. With an ending. For my book.”

It was as if I'd invited her on a mission to space: Hannah began composing herself with total seriousness. She breathed a series of inhales and exhales, each approximately one whole minute. She closed her eyes, a visualization technique I'd seen her try before when looking for her car keys or consoling her spleen. Then she nodded. “Okay. Tell me the story.”

Problem was, Hannah was bound to notice the “story” almost exactly resembled the last fifteen years of my life. Not only would she recognize me, but a) herself, b) her family, and c) an unfortunate mention of her going to third base with Eric Sommes. “Just so you know, some of this might sound a little familiar.”

“Am I in it?” From the eagerness in her voice, it sounded like this might actually be a good thing.

“Well, kind of. But not just you. Those Saturday night dinners on your sunporch. Your dad's record albums. Your mom. Your brothers. The Official Rock Star Fan Club.” The more I confessed, the more I wondered how and when I should be contacting a lawyer. “Boomer,” I mumbled.

“Eric Sommes?” she squealed. Honest to God, a squeal: loud, painful, pitched nearly out of human range. I flashed a smug look at Joey's Girl and Jason's Girl; we could still give them a run for their money.

“God, I haven't thought of him in years!” Hannah gnawed on a renegade curl. “He was so sweet.”

“He was obsessed with you.”

“He was just devoted.”

“Anyway. As I was saying.” I was eager to change the subject. God knows Eric Sommes had already taken up far more than his rightful share of my book. “The way the book goes, the narrator dates all these different musicians.” Hannah closed her eyes again, a smile playing on her lips. “A drummer. A singer. A sax player. You get the picture.”

She nodded. The picture wasn't hard to get, for obvious reasons.

“But none of them could steal her heart,” I went on, deepening my voice like a movie trailer. “The question is: will she find true love? Will she and Jack Wagner live happily ever after? Or is she doomed to a life of pickiness and loneliness forever?” At this point, I had the J Girls enraptured; they were practically ready to buy the hardback. “Basically,” I concluded, “she's waiting for something big to happen.”

“Okay. Tell me where she is. Describe the scene.”

I glanced around, trying not to look conspicuous. “Well, for starters, there's coffee. One lone cup of herbal tea. Mass-produced bagels. Pink windows. Two nosy teenage girls. A woman who might have been our Home Ec teacher from York. You know, the one with the lisp?”

“Eliza,” Hannah interrupted. “Are we living in your ending?”

“Maybe. If it's good enough.”

It was supposed to be funny, but Hannah wasn't taking her assignment lightly. Meanwhile, Jason's Girl and Joey's Girl, freaked out by the postmodern turn this little show had taken, exchanged a panicky “this never happens on
Felicity”
look, gathered up their tiny, strappy backpacks and tottered off on their foot-high sandals. For several minutes, Hannah kept her eyes closed. I imagined her conjuring up offbeat scenarios in which the narrator a) renounces meat or b) embraces her inner goddess or c) both.

When she opened them, I was expecting the worst. “Do you want my opinion?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I think you should just let the ending happen.”

Of course. Naturally, this would be Hannah's solution: the just-add-herbs school of writing. Naturally this would be what happened if you let your special, secret project loose in a crowded Bagelmania in downtown Philadelphia: it came back to you chewed up, unrecognizable.

“You can't just let it
happen,”
I told her. “It's not like the ending is going to write itself.”

“I know,” Hannah said, calmly. “I'm just saying, maybe you shouldn't look for it so hard.”

 

In theory, Hannah's advice sounded good. In practice, though, I was fairly sure no good ending was going to present itself unless I stepped in to coerce it, bribe it, or smother it in adjectives. On my six-block walk to Dreams Come True, I kept my eyes peeled for symbols, metaphors, or attractively angst-filled men carrying rusted harmonicas or scarred guitar cases. The only potentially interesting thing I saw was a homeless man waving a Mexican flag and yelling “Free Hawaii!”

The minute I arrived at Dreams, any progress on my book was put on temporary hold. In the space of five minutes, I was bombarded with a) Beryl the receptionist, wanting to know all about my date with her grandson, b) the Travel Agents, wanting to know all about my date with Beryl's grandson, and c) the avalanche of bikini-clad brochures smirking on my desktop.

“It was nice,” I answered Beryl. I racked my brain for words that were vague, noncommittal, words that could apply to anything from a good night kiss to a bruschetta appetizer.
“Really
nice.” Damn Donny for not debriefing his grandmother himself. “He had nice…hair.”

It was weak, but seemed to work. Beryl's face burst into smiles, cheeks inflating like twin nectarines. “He does have nice hair, doesn't he? So healthy and thick.”

“Yes. Thick,” I intoned, feeling ill, and headed for my desk. “See you later, Beryl.”

“Happy Monday!” she replied, reaching for her pin of the day: a plastic frog with a string dangling between its webbed feet.
“R-r-r-ribit!”
the pin croaked when she pulled the string.
“Have a toad-ally great day!”

As I neared my workstation, I realized the Donny interrogation was only just beginning. Travel Agents were hovering around my cluttered desk like an army of anxious bees. They were soundlessly sipping their Diet Cokes, tapping their high heels, drumming their French-manicured pinky fingers on their aluminum cans. After my two-week post-date absence, the Agents had to know the verdict would be extreme: either very good or very, very bad.

“Happy Monday,” I offered, waving a casual hello.

In an unprecedented move, the Agents skipped the pleasantries. No one waved. No one spoke. No one “Happy” anythinged. Some couldn't even look me in the eye. Then, from somewhere in the depths of the crowd, a lone voice commanded: “Eliza!”

With something like reverence—or was it terror?—the sea of Agents parted, and I found myself face-to-face with none other than the Queen Mother herself. As she stepped forward, it dawned on me that I just might be in major trouble for cutting work for two weeks. Maybe QM was going to fire me, make a public example of me to send a warning to the rest of the staff. She took a menacing step toward my desk, her face tight-lipped and tanned to almost black.

“So,” she said, leaning forward and gouging her fuchsia fingertips into my desktop planner. I felt my heartbeat leap into my ears. QM looked me up and down, searching my face with her hawklike eyes, which were caked in purplish-black mascara and narrowed to the width of pennies. “Don't keep us in suspense, honey,” she rasped. “How was the date?”

Apparently, even in the dog-eat-dog world of the upscale travel business, two weeks of unwritten ad copy pales in comparison to a date with a Securities Analyst. Surveying the rapt crowd, I knew I had to be honest. These women had invested a lot in the predate planning effort; they deserved the truth. I sat down heavily, glancing over my shoulder to make sure Beryl was out of earshot, then addressed the group.

“Everyone, I am sorry to have to tell you this,” I sighed. “The date with Donny the Securities Analyst was a disaster. It sucked.”

On second thought, maybe there is such a thing as too much honesty. The Agents and QM looked so chagrined that the date went badly and/or offended by the word “sucked” that I spent the next several minutes madly stammering in an effort to justify myself. I catalogued all the inexcusable things Donny had done, i.e., admitting he was cheap, staring at other women's butts. (I conveniently managed to omit all of my own faux pas, i.e., shouting in the restaurant, ordering mozzarella, accidentally implying Donny couldn't read.)

When I had assured them all I'd given the date a fair shot—yes, I
did
wear a bra; no, I did
not
drag him to a rave—they began returning to their respective workstations, dejected but sympathetic. One or two Agents rattled off some vital stats about the few unmarried men they were still aware of—an electrician in Yardley, a third cousin somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—and QM offered a terse “Practice makes perfect,” which had no apparent relevance at all.

Once they had all drifted off, I tried my best to refocus. (By that I mean, of course, refocus on the work of finishing my book, while pretending to refocus on “Skiing Stowaways!”) I cleared an islet on my desktop and turned on my computer. I had just begun sifting through the tornado of brochures, wondering if any might provide a good setting for my final chapter, when Beryl sang out: “Eliza! You have a call on line two!”

Understand: I never get phone calls in the office. I happen to prefer it that way. It is part of the reason I write for a living; to remain behind the scenes, cynical and left to my own devices. “Did they say who it was?”

“Just a minute!” Beryl said, then called back: “It's your mother!”

My instincts, in order of appearance: a) Beryl had begun losing her mind during my two-week absence, b) Donny and his grandmother had orchestrated a bitter, unfunny practical joke at my expense, or c) the caller was actually Andrew, doing his impression of my mother. The last one was most likely.

“Got it,” I said, dug out my phone, and pushed the blinking button. I was ready to play hardball with a half-decent impression I'd worked up of Andrew's Uncle Ned. “Hello?”

“Hello? Eliza?”

It wasn't Andrew. It actually was my mother.

“Mom?”

“I'm sorry to bother you at work, but it's kind of important, honey. There's something I need to talk to you about.”

Correction: this was
not
my mother. This woman was an imposter, and not a good one. She spoke too calmly, she called me “honey,” and she hadn't yet made me feel guilty or unmarried at all.