Who You Know (9 page)

I was determined to find a wedding dress before she came out for Christmas—I did not want to go shopping for a dress with my mother. It was bad enough going shopping with Jen. Jen thought shopping for a wedding dress was a blast. If there were an award for the capitalist of the year, Jen would have been a serious contender. She'd at least get an honorable mention. She loved shopping as much as I hated it. It was simply not a good way for a fat, poor person to spend her day. You'd think as the bride I could get excited, but frankly I found planning all the petty details that went into hosting the most expensive party of my life rather dull.

I was late for my appointment because of little Ms. Capitalist who was hungover from partying the night before. I might've been jealous—it had been forever since I'd gone out and had fun—except she didn't look as though she'd had a particularly good time. Her hangover made me feel both righteous and dull.

Three other women had appointments at the boutique at the same time I did. Five “bridal consultants” flitted around giving advice and agreeing with everything we brides-to-be said. The women trying on dresses were positively emaciated. One of the brides-to-be was a size two. She looked damn good in everything she tried on. Wedding dresses are made for the clinically anorexic. Even the other women, who were size eightish, looked bloated in the white silk sample gowns, which, though they were allegedly all size ten, nobody could zip up. I didn't even try. White's a horribly unflattering color. Why hadn't someone had the forethought to make the traditional bridal gown a slimming shade of black or some color that wouldn't make women's skin look so sallow?

I stood in front of a mirror on a platform the size of a car tire because the dress was way too long for a shrimpo like me. I sensed that all the skinny bitches were saying, What loser would marry that lard-ass blubber butt? Perhaps they weren't using those exact words, but that was the gist of it.

“Ooh, this one looks great on you,” Jen said, the lying bitch. “I'm so jealous. I wish I was getting married. I want to have at least one kid before I'm thirty.”

“Yeah,” I said, grimacing at my reflection.

Why wasn't I more excited about this? Maybe because marriage and bridal registries were supposed to come after I had broken the hearts of a string of exotic lovers around the world. The plan had been that I would spend my twenties in a high-paying, fulfilling career. After spending years accumulating adventures, I would settle down maybe in my late thirties, to having just one live-in lover.

The reality was that I was too terrified of getting herpes to sleep around, and as for travel and excitement, I hadn't even made it out of the States. One spring break spent in Florida and a couple of weekend trips to Chicago were as far as I'd gotten.

My plans for an exciting life dwindled quickly after college, when suddenly my friends began getting married one after the other. Some of my friends had bought houses; some were already having babies. Things were getting out of control, and despite myself I'd been knocked over by the nuptial domino.

The average age American women got married was twenty-five. I was twenty-seven. I had seen the men women over thirty had the opportunity to date, and it wasn't pretty. If I didn't get married soon, I would probably never get married. It's better to be a divorcée than a spinster. Divorcées might be failures, but at least people knew somebody had loved them at one time. Eventually I'd meet somebody who would give me herpes and cheat on me and beat me up and then stalk me when I broke up with him.

I hadn't been looking for a husband, but when Greg came along, I knew we'd get married. I just had this quiet feeling; our relationship felt so right. Is that the feeling that people who marry their high school sweethearts have? It must be. But I don't think I could have appreciated how right things felt with Greg if I hadn't had the close-but-not-quite experiences with Alex and Ryan. Alex was fun and sexy. As I realized later, well after we'd broken up and I'd gained some perspective, he wasn't a particularly nice person. And Ryan had never really been my intellectual equal, not like Greg.

I don't believe that we each have only one soul mate, but I do think finding someone who is as attracted to you as you are to him, who you can laugh with and still have something to talk about years down the road, is as rare as a four-leaf clover, and if you manage to find him, you should count yourself very lucky. That doesn't mean there aren't moments when I'd like to push Greg down a long flight of cement stairs. Happily, these moments are infrequent, and most of the time I consider myself fortunate indeed.

Plus, after seeing Jen and my girlfriends date one self-absorbed loser after another, I really appreciated how good Greg was to me. He was so sweet. He wasn't into football or porn or getting wasted with his buddies. He didn't spend all his money on beer and electronic equipment. I wasn't about to let such a good guy get away.

Why hadn't we had the forethought to elope?

Why were wedding dresses made to make our asses look like the hindquarters of a wildebeest?

AVERY

I
did not want to get out of bed Saturday morning. Something about going to the bar made my mood sour. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that nursing two margaritas throughout the evening had left me sober enough to notice the desperation that filled the air like humidity, heavy and thick. I'd been sober enough to watch Les watch Jen, sober enough to calculate the chasm of difference between thirty (my age) and twenty-five (Jen's age).

Eventually, however, my rumbling stomach managed to motivate me to get out of bed.

I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of yogurt and fruit and flipped through the newspaper. As usual, I started with the horoscopes, then the comics, then the celebrity gossip. Eventually I'd glimpse at the serious news, doing my best to avoid reading anything depressing. If a headline talked about rape, murder, war, or robbery, I didn't read it. I used to read everything, and I'd end up crying in my cereal bowl and be sad all day. I flipped the page and froze when I saw Gideon smiling up at me from an ad for men's cologne. He looked gorgeous as always. His long dark hair, his dark eyes courtesy of a Cherokee grandmother. He was thin, but his muscles were well defined. It was easy to see why I'd been so proud to be seen with him, why I'd wanted to brag to everyone, “Look! This gorgeous guy actually wants me to be his wife!”

I quickly shut the paper and pulled a stack of e-mails from Art I'd printed off at work from my bag.

As soon as I began reading them, my mood lightened. I'd been a lot happier since I'd begun writing Art. It gave me hope that someone decent was out there. All weekend, I actually looked forward to going into work Monday so I could hear from him again.

It was hard for me not to look around my apartment and envision smiling pictures of me and my future boyfriend, Art or whoever he was, taken from a variety of interesting vacation spots. If things worked out between Art and me, we'd go camping in the mountains, vacation in Hawaii, go to museums in Italy and France. He'd tell me little-known facts about the artists and their work. As an artist, he'd be able to point out things that I might not see on my own. We'd make a cute couple. I had no proof, but I felt fairly certain he was quietly good-looking, with a friendly smile and beautiful eyes.

By noon I officially began feeling guilty for squandering my day and I put on a T-shirt and shorts, threw my exercise mat on the floor, and started with some stretches. I used to do yoga every day, but now I was down to two or three times a week.

After warming up I went into the downward dog position, feeling my muscles lengthen. I breathed slowly, letting my tension drain away. I stretched further, as far as I could go. I loved that moment when my mind stopped fretting over quotidian details and all I could think about was how good my body felt.

When I used to perform, there was always that moment before the music started and the spotlights went on that I was sure I wouldn't remember what the first step was and I'd be standing there, motionless, like an idiot. I would stand/sit/lie there in whatever strange pose, straining to remember the first step, and until the music started, I couldn't have told you if you held a gun to my head what the first move was. My mind was that blank. But then the music would start, and the lights would come on, and my body always knew the right step, and I would get to this place where my body and mind were working together in a way they never did in any other area of my life. Throughout the performance, it seemed as if my body were acting on its own accord, as if the steps were programmed into my limbs. It wasn't until the music stopped that I would realize just how intensely I'd been concentrating. Even though I worked hard and long at the office, nothing I did there challenged me like performing once had.

After an hour or so of yoga, I went for a jog. I came home and showered and changed, then I called Rette. “What'cha up to?” I asked.

“I just spent several hours inducing clinical depression by trying on wedding dresses. Now I'm not cleaning, not working out, not going to the library to search for jobs on the Internet, and I'm certainly not doing a damn thing about the wedding. I was thinking about how I should be doing these things, however. Does that count as being productive?”

“You are strategizing, really.”

“Oooh, yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing, strategizing. How about you?”

“I went jogging and decided that was accomplishment enough for the day. I was just about to read a romance novel. I have to read about someone else's love life since mine is a desolate wasteland.”

“Oh, please. You have the mysterious Art. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the excitement of first falling in love.”

“Excitement? Torture is more like it. I want to skip right to the part where you are comfortable walking around naked in front of him because you know he'll love you even though gravity is doing horrible things to your body.”

“When do I get to that part of the relationship? I don't walk around naked even when I'm all alone. My thighs would chafe and the skin on the back of my arm would flap like a bird preparing for liftoff.”

“Very funny. You're beautiful, Rette. I know it and Greg knows it. You're the only holdout.”

“It's true I was lucky to score a guy who doesn't mind fat women.”

“You're not fat.”

“Whatever. This stupid wedding is going to kill me. Why didn't we elope? All the saleswomen at the bridal shop were fawning over us, telling us all these lies about how we looked like fairy princesses. I look more like Cinderella's fairy godmother.”

We talked for several more minutes. Rette kept cracking me up with tales of her bridal woes.

I ordered Chinese takeout for dinner and ran a bubble bath. I read my novel for a while, laid it on the edge of the tub, and called my mother on my cordless phone to ask about her blind date. She'd signed up with a dating agency a month or so earlier, and this week she was supposed to have gone on her third arranged date.

I hadn't told her about Art. Even though I thought it was great that she'd gone to a dating agency, I was embarrassed I couldn't find a guy the traditional way. She was older; it made sense for her to go through a dating service. But I was young enough that I should have been able to find a guy in a more romantic milieu. The women on
Sex and the City
were in their mid-thirties to early forties, and they scored dozens of dates every week.

“So how was the date?”

“Oh honey, it was . . . not good. He didn't seem like a healthy man. His aura was a very murky green.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. If this doesn't work out, I have three more dates left. And I've been thinking about teaching a gardening class at the free university. It might help the business, and who knows, maybe I'll meet someone.”

“How are things going at the shop?”

“It's a little slow; it always is this time of year. We're just getting our poinsettias stocked up.” Mom owned a flower shop. She'd started the business using some of the insurance money she got after Dad died. Gardening had always been her biggest passion. Her yard could rival any small botanic garden.

“How are you doing?”

“I'm good. Nothing very exciting. My boss is going on maternity leave soon, so I'm working really hard in hopes that I'll be asked to fill in for her.”

“That'll be great.”

“Yeah.” I couldn't think of anything else to say. When had my life become so boring? “Well, I guess I should let you go. I'll talk to you later. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, honey. Sleep well.”

I hung up the phone and stared at the few lingering bubbles clinging to the top of the bathwater. My father had died when I was three, so for as long as I could remember, it had been just Mom and me.

She dated a few men when I was a kid, but nothing ever got serious. I liked it that way. I liked having her all to myself. We would spend our weeknights and weekends baking and painting and gardening. We'd make huge bowls of popcorn and watch
Fantasy Island
and
Love Boat
together.

Mom met Carl when I was twelve. I didn't like Carl or his put-on smile. I didn't like his pock-marked skin or the way he made his unfunny jokes at other peoples' expense, trying in his sad way to feel better about himself. Mostly what I didn't like was who my mother became around him, fawning and skittish, straining to create a semblance of familial happiness that wasn't there. During weekday nights and weekend days I escaped in dance practice. On Saturday nights, Mom and Carl would go out to dinner and a movie, leaving me home alone with a TV dinner and my resentment.

I wanted my mom to be happy, but I knew, even then, that Carl was not the right man for her.

When they were first dating, every time he saw me his smile was so forced I thought he might bruise a dimple. I went away to a performing arts high school in New York shortly after they were married, so after that, I only saw him a couple of times a year for holidays. We tolerated each other from a polite distance until he left Mom for another woman when I was twenty-four.

Mom was so devastated; she hadn't been able to date at all in the nearly six years since the divorce. Now, just like me, she was finally ready to test the water, dip her toe into the icy-cold dating sea, trying to muster the courage to take the plunge.

I got out of the tub, slipped on my robe, and took my book out onto the couch in the living room. The book was about a beautiful stage actress, Cassandra Davis, who was in hiding from a violent man who'd become obsessed with her. She'd fallen in love with Michael just before Ajax, the mentally unbalanced criminal, had begun stalking her. Before meeting Cassandra, Michael, a world-renowned wildlife photographer, had never wanted to settle down. Now, his only goal was to make Cassandra his bride.

Cassandra fled the country to escape from Ajax's violent threats. She loved Michael too much to endanger him, but he loved her too much to let her go. So when her attempts at going into seclusion brought her to Italy, France, Greece, Brazil, and the Bahamas, Michael always found her and followed her, over oceans and mountains and jungles. I always wanted a love like that. An overcome-all-odds, journey-over-mountains-and-oceans love.

I thought my first love, Marcos, was that kind of love. Marcos was a musician on the ship where I worked after college. He was half-Hispanic, half-Irish, and he had striking good looks. Just thinking about his smile could still make me melt.

On the day we met, he approached me while I was warming up for practice. I was doing the splits, arching back to grab my leg to get a better stretch and loosen my back muscles.

“Ouch,” he said.

I came out of the splits and sat in a
Z
position, my right leg against my left knee and my left foot behind me.

“I've seen you dance. You're amazing,” he continued.

“Thank you.”

“My name is Marcos. I play the piano on the ship. You're new.”

I nodded. “This is my third day. My name is Avery.”

“Ah, to be new again. To not know who's sleeping with whom, who hates whom, who to watch out for.”

“Sounds kind of interesting.”

“Let me take you out to dinner tonight and I'll pull the veil of innocence away.”

“I have to perform tonight, but another night would be fun.”

“We dock at an island Saturday night, so neither of us will have to perform. Should we plan on Saturday? Say eight o'clock?”

“It's a date.”

He picked me up just before eight as he promised. He was holding a single red rose.

“You look stunning,” he said. I was just wearing a simple sundress and sandals, but I smiled, feeling beautiful.

“Thanks for the rose. Let me get it some water.” I got a Styrofoam cup from the bathroom and filled it with water. It wasn't the most elegant vase, but it was all I had.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded, smiling.

We had a simple dinner—he had jerk chicken, I had a salad with fried plantains and poblano goat cheese—and far too many piña coladas. We spent the rest of the night dancing outside, under the stars, in the cool night air. His breath on my neck, and his hands on my arms, my back, my waist—it made me feel so alive, so awake, so aware of every sensation—the smell of the night air and the sea breeze and the lingering remains of coconut suntan oil from the beach goers earlier in the day; the sound of calypso music and the waves hitting the shore; the sight of women in bright flowing sarongs and the strings of lights decorating the restaurant behind Marcos. As we danced, I could clearly see our future together: We'd have gorgeous, musically gifted children and a glamorous, adventurous life. As artists, we wouldn't be wealthy, but we'd live rich, full lives, and grow old together but never stop dancing or listening to music and creating music of our own. We might even come back to this tiny island to retire, to spend our last remaining days in a land of endless sunshine.

That, of course, has always been my problem: I never remember to take into account the possibility of rainy days in my plans.

Marcos was charming and fun and very romantic. On our evenings off when we docked at an island, we spent the nights dancing under the stars. We'd spend our mornings making love and our days playing on the beach or shopping in the small towns. Some nights he would say he needed to work on his music, that he was almost finished writing a new piece. I'd fallen in love with him in part because of his passion for his music, so when I wouldn't see him for days in a row, I never questioned it was because of his dedication to his art. Except he never let me see the end result of all these evenings he spent alone “working.” One night when we were docked and he said he was working I went off the ship and was wandering down the beach when I saw him dancing with another woman on the deck of an outdoor bar. That's when I finally figured out he wasn't spending all those nights slaving over his piano. He cheated on me several more times before I realized his cheating wasn't a challenge our relationship needed to overcome, it was bullshit. Even then, he was such an addiction, the only way I could give him up was to quit my job and move back to Colorado.