Praise for Caren Lissner’s first novel, Carrie Pilby:

“Woody Allen-hilarious, compulsively readable and unpretentiously smart.”

—Philadelphia Weekly

“Lissner’s heroine is utterly charming and unique, and readers will eagerly turn the pages to find out how her search for happiness unfolds.”

—Booklist

“In language both witty and sweet, Lissner describes the exploits of her 19-year-old heroine, detailing a transformation that is subtle, careful and believable. Instead of completing a total (and predictable) turnaround, Carrie, a genius who has just graduated from Harvard, goes on a quest for a way to live among others, having fun while still adhering to her strict moral code. The results are hilarious and impressive.”

—Philadelphia City Paper

“Debut author Caren Lissner deftly delivers a novel that is funny, sarcastic and thought-provoking.”

—Romantic Times

“Caren Lissner will break your heart, twist your mind and bust your gusset, often in the same sentence.”

—J. Robert Lennon author of On the Night Plain

Starting from Square Two
Caren Lissner

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I must first thank Howard Walper, who often Instant Messages me with unsolicited advice on my writing, work, free time and personal life. Everyone should have a friend like Howard. Seriously, he offered amazing insights into this book. I would also like to acknowledge Farrin Jacobs, my editor, for doing such a great editing job and for putting up with me; Cheryl Pientka, whose monumental feats have included putting out fires (literally) and most impressively, putting up with me; and Marc Serges, for being brilliant and also putting up with me; Dawn Eden, for enthusiasm, encouragement and suggestions, and Jeff Hauser, for support and ideas.

I am very grateful to the following for always encouraging my writing: Stacie Fine, Stacie Fine’s mom, Janet Rosen, Matt Greco, Eileen Budd, Dan Saffer, Jim Damis, Mary Beth Jipping, Barry Macaluso, Julia Hough, Regina Hill, Shanti Gold, Bridget Grimes, Angela Gaffney, John Prendergast, Neil Genzlinger, Eliot Kaplan, Robert Donnell, Linda Wiedmann, Cheryl Shipman, Dennis and Valerie, John R. Lennon, Jon Blackwell, Michael Malice, Jodi Harris, my parents, my brother Todd, Al Sullivan, Jennifer Merrick, Lucha Malato, David Unger, Joe Barry and everyone with whom I work (and yes, who puts up with me) at the fine Hudson Reporter newspaper chain. Finally, no one is to blame for my writing habit more than the outstanding writing and English teachers I had, just some of whom are included here: Frances Doane, Michael Ferraro, Barbara Kitrosser, Mary Sandholt, Roslyn Schleifer, Walter Hatton, Diana Cavalho, Kristin Hunter Lattany, Cary Holiday and anyone I’ve forgotten.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter
1

“It can’t be that bad,” Gert said.

The D train was careening through the subway tunnel, passing through areas of light, then darkness. Gert was squeezed on one of the long gray seats next to her former college roommate, Hallie. Looming high above them was Hallie’s high school friend, Erika, who was tall and always wore huge black boots.

“It is that bad,” Hallie said to Gert. “You have no idea what it’s like out there.”

Gert looked up at Erika, who was strap-hanging. They weren’t really straps, though. They were metal triangular things. When was the last time they were straps, Gert wondered.

She’s triangle-hanging, Gert thought to herself.

She’d have said it aloud if Marc were there. He liked corny observations.

Then she felt bad. It was impossible not to think of him in relation to everything. She’d done it for eight years of her life.

“Let me ask you a question,” Hallie said to her.

“Fine,” Gert said. “Ask me a question.”

“You were married to Marc for five years, and you’d dated him for three before that. In those eight years, did you come across even one other man who, had you been single, you would have considered dating?”

Gert shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she said, “because I was with Marc.”

“But,” Hallie said, “during that time, did you ever just happen to meet a man who was remotely attractive, normal, in his twenties and not taken?”

“No,” Gert persisted. “I wasn’t trying.”

“What about in the course of your regular business?”

“I wouldn’t have noticed.”

Gert wondered if, in some small way, Hallie and Erika occasionally felt a secret bit of satisfaction that the accident had happened, so they could finally prove to her that the dating scene was just as bad as they’d always said.

But true friends could never wish that on her, could they?

Gert knew they were only trying to help by dragging her out. Everyone was always trying to “help”—like the people who told her that eventually, it would hurt less, or that she was strong and she’d move on. But they had no idea how many times per day she heard expressions, songs or references that reminded her of him. Every time something bad happened to her, or she felt lonely, she thought of him on impulse, as she’d done for most of her adult life—and was reminded again that he was gone. They’d met sophomore year of college, so that was eight years or 2,920 days of memories she had to suppress in order to even feel remotely okay. Didn’t people understand that?

The only people who did understand were the women in her support group on Long Island, where she went every week. Among her circle of friends, there was not exactly a surfeit of twenty-nine-year-olds who had lost their husbands. Most of them had not even been married yet. And Gert, who had counted herself so lucky for so long, and who had been far outside the realm of her lonely single friends, was now—because of one horrible day—among their ranks.

It had only been a year and a half since the car accident. That was barely enough time to even accept what had happened. It was also barely enough time to stop having those brief moments when she felt as secure as she used to be, then, in a flash, remembered that everything was all wrong.

But Gert was finally giving in to one of Hallie and Erika’s many exhortations to go out. It certainly would be healthier than sitting home all night. Still, her heart wouldn’t be in it and her mind wouldn’t be on it. She’d just be going through the motions—like she did with so many things these days.

Gert looked at Hallie and Erika. Both of them had complained about dating since college graduation. They always made it sound like war, packed with battle plans and tricks and conspiracies. Gert had been skeptical in the past. Wasn’t dating supposed to be fun?

In college, it had been. It went like this: A guy in your class or dorm would strike up a conversation, he’d invite you for coffee or a movie, you’d flirt relentlessly in the study lounges, and eventually the conversations would turn into heated dormroom aerobics. Or in the case of Marc, the two of you were at the bookstore, and he saw you buying a used copy of Calculus for $44.99 instead of $60 new, and he said, “Where’d you get that?” and you talked about how you almost placed out of the class entirely and how you both thought that math was the worst and best subject in the world. It was the worst because it was boring, but it was the best because it always provided finite answers—no room for guesswork or interpretation. You came to realize you both liked things you could count on. You were in the same lecture, so you could study together. You got an A-minus and the first intense relationship of your life.

Gert’s other dates, before Marc, hadn’t been bad, either. There was cynical Andy, who was obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee and PEZ dispensers. Paul, the head of the political union, called the profs and deans by their first names when he saw them on campus. He went to their office hours even if he wasn’t in their classes, because other students didn’t take advantage of them and he figured it was a good time to schmooze. But neither of them was as driven or interesting as Marc, a guitar-playing business student who had three red-haired Irish brothers, none of whom looked a thing like him.

Gert’s closeness with Marc was what made her realize that someday, she might need to be with someone again. The idea of going through the rest of her life without a person beside her to help her through it was torture. But she couldn’t imagine dating right now. No one could possibly have Marc’s ideas and expressions, those idiosyncrasies and small kindnesses that made her smile. There couldn’t possibly be anyone like him.

Gert looked at Hallie, dressed so scantily in the middle of February. Hallie’s dating troubles always had seemed self-imposed. When Hallie had told Gert about the guy who’d said, “I actually drive better after a few beers,” Gert couldn’t believe Hallie hadn’t walked out on him right then. But Hallie had told Gert she wanted to stick with him because he was “sensitive.” Next, Hallie met a guy who didn’t drive drunk, but had big ears. So Hallie stopped dating him. Gert worried that Hallie was focusing on all the wrong things.

One day Gert actually told Hallie that her priorities seemed skewed.

“You meet a nice guy and his forehead’s too high,” Gert said. “You meet a jerky guy and you date him anyway and end up bitter when he doesn’t morph into a poet. You hate bars but you go to the same ones five days a week. Why don’t you just relax a little and have fun?”

Hallie got angry. She said Gert had no idea at all what it was like out there.

That’s the phrase Hallie had used: Out There.

Like it was a jungle.

The subway bumped a bit, and everyone grabbed their belongings to prevent liftoff.

“Well?” Hallie said.

“Well, what?” Gert asked.

“Name one decent guy you’ve met since college who’s single.”

Gert sighed. “Marc’s brother Michael,” she said. “He’s normal. He’s nice. So there is one who exists.”

“And you’d date him?” asked tall, ponytailed Erika, from somewhere near the ceiling.

“I didn’t say I would date him,” Gert said. “He’s Marc’s brother. I’m just saying he exists.”

“Isn’t he the short one with the mutton chops?” Erika asked.

“No. Eddie’s married.”

“Is he the one who wears stained overalls and lives in Maine and breeds Sea Monkeys?”

“Patrick doesn’t breed Sea Monkeys; he’s a crabber. And he’s married too.”

“Oh. So you mean the third brother, the eighteen-year-old.”

“Michael’s twenty-two now,” Gert said.

Hallie and Erika looked at each other.

“So you would date a twenty-two-year-old?” Hallie asked.

“I didn’t say I would….”

“See!” Hallie said, her voice surging with victory. “That is exactly my point, and something you will learn soon enough. There are no single guys who don’t have at least one major flaw, and a flaw, I might add, that would stop you from dating them—even if everything else was great. Why? Simple math. Women are interesting and honest and sensitive. Most men are not. There is only one normal, decent single guy for every five women in this city. This is what’s known as the Great Male Statistic. Girls don’t want to face the GMS. They want to believe there’s someone for everyone. The truth hurts. You only start coming to terms with the GMS when you’re twenty-six or twenty-seven. It actually killed Sylvia Plath. She finally found this guy in grad school who she thought was so great, and she married him, and he cheated on her.”

“Didn’t Sylvia Plath have a history of mental illness since she was an undergrad?” Gert asked.

“Incidental. She didn’t kill herself until Ted Hughes cheated. The truth is, the really good men are snapped up quickly. You get into your mid-twenties and it’s five to one. Don’t give me that look. You don’t believe it because you don’t want to.”

Gert was ready to go home. “Then why are we doing this?”

“Because looking for the one in five,” Hallie said, “is still better than being alone.”

The bar was two blocks from the mouth of the subway. When the women emerged on Bleecker Street, a frigid wind swept through, grazing their bare arms. Hallie wrapped her hands around herself as she walked, but insisted to Gert that she wasn’t cold.

“The only way to get into a lasting relationship is to find one before you finish college,” said Erika, her dirty-blond ponytail bouncing behind her.

“Absolutely,” Hallie said. “Look when both of you met your boyfriends. Sophomore year. And—poof—you had taken them off the market forever. Denied to older women like us.”

Erika said, “I gave up Ben at twenty-four, and someone else got him.”

“And how long did that take? Five months?”

“Not even,” Erika said, looking down at her boots. “Three.”

Gert had heard many times about how Erika had met and lost her college boyfriend. Erika and Ben had started dating around the same time as Gert had started dating Marc—sophomore year. But Erika broke up with Ben five years later. She was pretty, a lot of guys liked her, and her friends and family kept telling her not to settle down so quickly. She wasn’t sure she was ready to make a lifelong commitment, and she didn’t feel hopelessly, madly in love with Ben, the way she’d always dreamed she would be.

So she told Ben she needed a few months off. Better to figure out what she wanted now, she said, than when it was too late. She dated a few guys, realized Ben was much better than everyone she’d met, and called him up one night.

It was too late.

They passed a guy with a huge backpack who was slumped against a building, drunk. A policeman was kneeling down to talk to him. The thick smell of beer-soaked sidewalks and vomit invaded Gert’s nostrils. She remembered it from frat parties in college. It was a sad smell—the smell of being among two hundred happy people but just wanting to be with the one who made you happy. It was a memory she could do without.

“At least you got to be Ben’s first love,” Hallie said to Erika. “I’ll never get to be anyone’s.”

“I hate her,” Erika said.

“Don’t start.”

“I’m going to read her Web log tonight and put crap on her message board.”

“Again?”

Gert had heard all about Ben’s wife, Challa, and her Web log. Challa wrote every few days in her “blog” about her life, for all the world to see. It told of romantic trips, of art classes the couple took together, of how wonderful Ben was with the baby, and of Ben’s dream to renovate an old farmhouse in New England where they could raise their family. Erika told Gert and Hallie about the night Ben had sat on her dormroom bed in college and first told her of this dream.

“That should be me,” Erika always said to them. “She’s an imposter, living my life. And here I am, sitting in my pajamas in front of the computer, reading about it.”

Hallie, Erika and Gert had problems with the first three bars they passed. Blastoff was playing eighties music. (“Eighties music was never good the first time,” Erika sniped. “Just because today’s music is so bad, suddenly we think ‘Der Kommissar’ is good?”) Gert passed on the biker bar—too intimidating. Hallie thought there were too many women in Atlantis.

“They should open a really hip bar that refuses to admit women if they’re underdressed,” Hallie said.

“Aren’t you part of the problem?” Gert asked.

“I can’t take a stand on it alone,” Hallie said. “The stakes are too high. If everyone would just say no to overexposure to the elements, I’d put on a sweater, by gum!”

Gert laughed. Hallie sometimes used funny expressions like “by gum.” It did lighten the mood a bit. But these days, it seemed like practically the only time her old roommate said things like that was when she was drinking or drunk.

Gert remembered meeting Hallie on move-in day at college. She’d liked her new roommate instantly. Hallie was a short, chubby-cheeked girl who laughed at everything and constantly poured her heart out about all her unrequited crushes. And just as Hallie was willing to share her problems, she was nosy and would ferret out all of her friends’ concerns. If something was bothering Gert, Hallie would be unrelenting in drawing it out of her and making her feel better. The two of them often left a night of studying on their respective beds to head to the corner coffee shop to hash out their problems over espresso. They would leave after two hours with a clear course of action: Call their crushes. Study harder. Hang around over break. Hallie was a psychology major, so she liked helping people deal with their dilemmas.

But toward the end of freshman year, Gert had stopped being able to match Hallie’s tales of unrequited longing. Gert was beginning to get male attention, even if she wasn’t used to it. A childhood friend of hers told her that she was “college popular” rather than “high school popular”—in her high school, only the beautiful, outgoing girls had had boyfriends, but in college, if you were pretty and funny and easygoing enough, you could do all right. One thing Gert had always had going for her was a calm rationality, a willingness to live and let live. She rarely got bent out of shape over the little things, and it seemed to her that most girls were high-strung. Especially about men. Gert thought that a lot of things guys did were funny, whereas most women found their jokes offensive or just plain gross.

It was like Hallie and Erika—especially these days. They got crazy over every aspect of the dating process, worrying it to death. Hallie was still as good a listener as she had been back in school—but only when Erika wasn’t around. When Erika was there, Hallie seemed more concerned with trying to impress her glamorous friend. Gert suspected it went back to high school, when beautiful Erika was exceedingly popular and Hallie was grateful to tag along.

Gert thought that maybe, just as Hallie wanted to help Gert get back into society, she could help Hallie not be so focused on winning everyone else’s approval—that of Erika and every man she met. Hallie used to be a lot of fun. But more and more, she acted desperate. Strained.

The three women finally agreed on a bar called Art’s. It had a dual meaning that Gert liked. She didn’t see a guy named Art, though; just a female bartender with overalls and cropped blond hair. A female Eminem.

There were four stools open at the mahogany counter. Hallie and Erika jockeyed to be at either end, rather than in the middle. If you were in the middle there was no chance of someone sitting next to you. Hallie had done that in lecture halls throughout college, too—always sat just one seat in, so a guy could sit on the end without effort. Nowadays, Hallie also chose the middle seat on airplanes, meaning that seats would be left on either side of her, guaranteed to be taken by people traveling alone. It was Hallie’s Law of Maximum Exposure, almost as airtight as the Great Male Statistic: Leave as much surface area as possible so you will come into contact with an exponentially greater number of single people.

Of course, 99.9 percent of the time, the plan failed. On airplanes, Hallie often ended up flanked by someone’s grandpa and a woman who looked like Pamela Anderson.

At Art’s, a David Bowie song was playing, which made Gert think immediately of Marc, because he’d been a big Bowie fan. There she was, thinking about him again. Whenever she did that, everything else lost focus. She sometimes lingered in such a netherworld for four to five minutes and then popped back into reality and wondered what had just happened. People would be staring at her, wondering why she looked so spacey. But there was comfort in the netherworld.

She tried to figure out which Bowie song it was. Marc would have known. He was a rock ’n’ roll encyclopedia. She could count on him for that. It was just one of the many small things she could count on. Whenever they were in the car together, she would test him just to tease him, asking which singer was on, and if he didn’t know, he would get all frustrated, and the moment they got home he’d dash up the stairs to look up the song in the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits.

Strains of Bowie were soon replaced by “5:15” by The Who, which also had a memory attached. They’d gone to see the movie Quadrophenia together. Gert was unimpressed with the movie, but loved the music. Marc was constantly trying to get Gert, and everyone else, into his favorite bands. It was adorable.

Gert hadn’t realized until he was gone just how many different things she had liked about him, nor how much his very existence had become part of her constitution. She wasn’t the type to constantly blather on about her boyfriend or husband, but she had always had Marc in the back of her mind, no matter where she was. Now, whenever something reminded her of him, she’d remember what happened and her stomach would drop. She wondered if people who were part of a couple had any idea what a privilege it was to get to spend their lives with the person they loved. Of course, they knew on one level, but did they really know?

Erika whined about wanting to sit on an end stool, so Hallie reluctantly offered her one. But instantly, the seat on the other side got taken—by a girl who’d just come in with her boyfriend. What nerve. At least the girl wouldn’t be competing with them for the guys hanging out by the dartboard.

Gert picked up the drink menu and looked at it. Wine was eight dollars a glass. It seemed ridiculous for her to spend that much money. Especially now that she was living on a single income.

She looked around the bar and felt sick. Was this the world she’d been left to—squandering money on booze, dressing half-naked, shouting over music, strategizing about where to sit?

Gert felt angry. Angry about everything that had happened. Angry at herself.

Gert knew that thinking about this at the bar didn’t make her look very approachable. But she couldn’t help it. Obviously she wasn’t ready to go out yet. Her initial instincts had been right: a year and a half wasn’t long enough. She was too tired, too angry, too sad. Maybe next year.

Then she thought of something.

She could pretend she was back in college, hanging out with friends just like freshman year. She didn’t have to be worrying about who was by the dartboard. She could sing along with Roger Daltrey. She could make fun of Erika’s ponytail. She didn’t have to be looking for a man like her friends were. She didn’t want one, anyway.

No worrying, plotting or planning.

Gert craned her neck over the bar and forced a smile. “So,” she said to Hallie, “did you fire that girl at work?”

“No.” Hallie shook her head. “I will, though.”

Hallie was the office manager at a management consulting firm, and her twenty-three-year-old assistant spent half the day calling guys, Instant Messaging guys, checking to see if she had e-mail from guys, and scribbling ratings on the posters of guys she kept on her cubicle wall. On Brad Pitt’s arm, the girl had written, “HOT.” On Ben Affleck, she’d written, “yumie” (and yes, spelled it wrong). On Josh Hartnett, she’d written, “Cute!!!” Then, on Robert Downey, Jr., she’d written a simple “OK.”

“You can’t fire her,” Erika said. “She makes you feel better about your own life.”

“I know,” Hallie said. “I may be twenty-nine and single, but at least I’ve never put Tiger Beat posters on my walls. And now she keeps disappearing every day between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m., and she thinks we don’t notice. I don’t know where she goes.”

“Do you have any idea?” Gert asked.

“No,” Hallie said. “My boss is going to have me follow her.”

Gert sensed someone sitting next to her. She felt the brush against her shoulder before she even looked. Two men were sitting down. They weren’t looking her way, though. They were talking to each other. She snuck a peek. They were both wearing leather bomber jackets. They were average-looking and clean-cut.

“Fresh meat at three o’clock,” Erika said.

Hallie took a quick look at the guys, then went back to Erika. “They’re short, though,” she reported.

“Did I ever tell you that Ben’s bitch wife is an inch taller than he is?” Erika said. “I can’t imagine what happens when she wears heels. The two of them must look like a circus act.”

“Maybe she doesn’t wear heels,” Gert said.

“Don’t be funny,” Erika said.

Gert heard the guy to her right say to the bartender, “Just a cranberry juice.” The bartender looked at him strangely before going to get the juice.

The guy noticed Gert looking at him. “I’m all for girly drinks,” he said, smiling.

“Oh,” Gert said. “This may shock you, but so am I.”

“What kind?”

“All kinds, as long as there’s citrus fruit involved.”

“It prevents scurvy,” the guy’s friend said.

“Health is always important when ordering alcoholic beverages,” Gert said.

“So I should order one for you, then,” the first guy said.

Gert said, “You could.”

Erika whispered to Hallie, “Hook-up at stage right.” Gert ignored her. The guys both seemed nice.

“Cranberry juice is…” Gert started, but then she stopped. What she’d thought of was that it was good for urinary tract infections. But that was not appropriate dating conversation. Damn—she was going to have to start thinking like that now. With Marc, of course, she could have said anything. She could have gone to the bathroom in front of him, although she preferred not to.

It was back to square one on everything. Well, at least she was older now. Square two, then.

“Cranberry juice is…good for you,” Gert finished.

“It’s good for urinary infections,” the first guy said.

Erika leaned over Gert’s seat and said to him, “Are you a doctor?”

The guy looked at her for a second.

“No,” he said, laughing. Erika shrugged and went back to her drink.

“Anyway, there’s a reason I can’t drink,” the guy added.

“What is it?” Gert asked.

“He’s on the extra board,” his friend said.

Gert looked at them blankly.

“That means I’m on call for work,” the first guy said. “But even when I’m not on call, I’m never allowed to drink.”

“Are you a cop?”

“Nope.”

“Guess what he does,” the guy’s friend said. “Guess. No one can ever guess it.”

“Gert,” Hallie called from two stools down. “Do you want a drink?”

Hallie had drained two cosmos in ten minutes. She was giving Gert a look like she wanted to know if Gert needed to be rescued. Gert didn’t know why. All they were doing was talking. “No, thanks,” Gert said. “I’m okay.”

“Gert!” Erika said. “Hallie and I are going to the girls’ room!”

“Fine,” Gert said. “See you.”

“Gert!” Erika called. “Let us know if you want a drink.”

Gert nodded.

“Your friends are loud,” the guy’s friend said in a low voice.

“They’re really nice people,” Gert said.

“You must be nice to defend them,” the first guy said.

“It’s the least you should expect someone to do,” Gert said, “defend their friends.”

“Anyone who has a rule like that,” the first guy said, “I’m all for.” He smiled. He had a small scar on the bridge of his nose. It looked cute.

“Todd defends me, right, Todd?” the second guy asked.

“Yeah, I do,” Todd said in an authoritative voice. “Two more guesses.”

“You’re a treasury officer,” Gert said.

“Hey, is that an Untouchables reference?”

“Yes,” Gert said.

“That’s like my favorite movie. How’d you know?”

Gert said, “I just knew.”

“Brian, isn’t that like my favorite movie?”

“It’s like his favorite movie,” Brian said.

Erika and Hallie hadn’t gone to the bathroom as promised. They were staring at Gert.

Hallie elbowed her.

“Why don’t you introduce us?” she asked.

“Oh,” Gert said. “Todd and Brian, this is Hallie and Erika.”

“Hiiii!” Hallie said, pulling her stool around so that she could see them better. “What do both of you do?”

“I was just trying to guess that,” Gert said.

“I’m a stockbroker,” Brian said. “But Todd’s the one with the interesting job.”

“I think stockbrokers are very interesting,” Erika purred.

“Well, Todd’s job is more interesting,” Brian insisted.

“He can’t drink,” Gert added. “So I guessed that he’s an officer of the treasury.”

Hallie and Erika looked clueless.

“The Untouchables. They went after alcohol during Prohibition….”

“That movie rocks,” Brian said.

“Oh, right!” Erika said. “Wasn’t Kevin Bacon in that?”

“Costner,” Brian said.

“Yeah,” Erika said. “My ex-boyfriend was into that movie. He married a girl who keeps a Web log.”

“How many more guesses you want?” Brian asked Gert.

“One more,” Gert said.

Todd pursed his mouth. He had dark hair, a little curly behind his ears.

“Truck driver,” Gert guessed finally.

“Close,” Todd said.

“Oh…I give up.”

“I work for Norfolk Southern,” Todd said. “I’m a conductor on a train, and we get twelve hours on and twelve hours off….”

“Those are freight trains, right?”

“Yeah, and you have a couple of guys on each run, one driving and one making sure everything’s okay. It’s too dangerous to be drinking off-duty, because they could call you all of a sudden to come in. So they don’t let you drink at all, ever.”

“That’s too bad,” Gert said. “I mean, if you think it is.”

“Nah.” Todd shrugged. “I did enough of that in college. It’s okay.”

“So, Brian, how long have you been a stockbroker?” Erika asked.

“Since college,” Brian said. He looked at his watch and nudged Todd. “I think we’d better get going.”

“Yeah, we’re meeting friends,” Todd said. “It was nice to meet you, though.”

Gert didn’t know if he meant all of them.

“So…” Todd said “…if you have a number, I mean, would you mind if maybe I gave you a call sometime?”

Gert thought about it. There couldn’t be much harm. Besides, the practice would do her good. She searched in her purse for something to write on—it had been a while since she’d done this—and finally came up with an inky business card. She scribbled her home number on the back.

Hallie and Erika looked on, concerned.

Then, the men were gone.

“The only person to even talk to a normal guy was Gert,” Erika whined in the subway in the wee hours.

“Neither of you would have even talked to Todd,” Gert said. “You didn’t like that he’s a train conductor.”

“Well, I did like Brian,” Erika said.

“Based on what?”

“I don’t know. He was cute. So thanks for not helping. You were like, ‘I’m taking Todd and that’s it.’”

Gert sighed. “I wasn’t taking him. He just seemed like a nice guy, so I talked to him.”

“Why didn’t Brian like me?” Erika wailed.

“Maybe Todd only wanted my number so he could call me to get yours,” Gert said.

“Well, if he calls, don’t give it to him,” Erika said. “They were short.”

Now Gert knew the truth: Hallie and Erika were single because they were crazy.

“How did you know to mention his favorite movie?” Hallie asked.

“Oh,” Gert said. “There’s a canon where guys are concerned. Marc was always quoting lines from that movie. If you quote certain things, you can slide right into their conversation.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“We’ve got nothing to lose.”

The canon for guys in their twenties and thirties

1 The Simpsons

2 This is Spinal Tap

3 Star Wars

4 Monty Python

5 Star Trek

6 The Princess Bride

7 The Untouchables

8 The Hobbit

9 The Matrix

10 Office Space

“Excuse me,” Erika said. “Don’t you mean, ‘The canon for nerds’?”

“No. There are cool guys who like those things.”

“Hey,” Hallie said. “Maybe we should get together at my place this weekend and rent these flicks.”

So they put it on their schedule.

When Gert got home, she was exhausted. Her bed felt soft and wonderful.

She’d spent the last five hours trying to put something out of her mind that she hadn’t really wanted to put out of her mind. She’d been in an environment where everyone was supposed to appear carefree and happy, but her feelings had veered between torture and just getting a mild drubbing. Even if the bar scene hadn’t been as horrible as Hallie and Erika made it sound, there was a real harshness to it. It was unsettling. It wasn’t at all like what she would have done that night if Marc had been there.

If he had been there, they probably would have gone out to dinner, and then taken a walk through Manhattan. Or maybe they would have snuggled on the couch and watched a movie. Even cleaning the house with him would have been better than going to the bar. Playing a rousing round of that silly plastic foosball game he’d insisted on keeping in the living room would have been better. It was too hard to fall in love with someone, learn all of their quirks and passions, assume you’d spend the rest of your life with them, and then suddenly have them snatched away forever.

Slowly, in bed, Gert spread out her bare arms. Sleeping barearmed, feeling the sheets against her skin, was the closest she got to a caress these days.

She knew she had to stop thinking about what she could have done if Marc had been there. This was the new reality. He never would be.

But did she have it in her to start fighting her way through leather-jacketed and miniskirted crowds in search of a second miracle?

It didn’t seem worth it.

Erika brought two bowls overflowing with popcorn into Hallie’s living room. It was Friday night. The room had one wide window that was being pelted by the rain. Hallie popped the tops of three Diet Coke cans and a no-frills carbonated fruit punch and let them fizz on the coffee table.

Gert and Erika, sitting on the couch, reached for the diet sodas.

They left one for Hallie’s often-absentee roommate, Cat, who was rumored to be making a rare appearance within the hour. Although with meek Cat, who spent weekends with her family on Long Island, it was always hard to be sure.

Why, Gert thought, does it seem wrong for us to be having a slumber party for twenty-nine-year-olds?

Because this is not what you expected. You don’t have a sleepover party with your twenty-nine-year-old girlfriends. You and your husband have kids, and THEY have sleepovers, and the two of you stand in the doorway beaming, pleased to see the kids so excited, remembering what it was like back then—and thrilled to have your own best friend to sleep with.

“You know what would be great?” Hallie asked, lying on her stomach on the floor and painting her nails. “If the rain turned to snow, and it piled up, and we were stuck here for three days.”

Erika, on the couch, pulled a blanket around herself and shivered visibly. The rain snapped more loudly at the windows. “What would we do?”

“We’d hole up right in this room in our sweatpants and play truth-or-dare and confess our deepest secrets to each other,” Hallie said, “and order heaping bowls of pad Thai and drink cheap wine.”

“I want a guy to do those things with,” Erika whined.

“Well, you ain’t got one, so shut up.”

“I’m twenty-nine,” Erika said. “It isn’t even healthy to be boyfriendless this long. My body needs to be physically touched by a member of the opposite sex.”

“Get a root canal.”

Gert gazed over the blankets neatly laid out on the floor, and at the popcorn on the table, and really did feel like a kid at a sleepover. She wondered if later Erika would break out the Ouija board, hoping to channel Elvis, and after that the three of them would try to levitate themselves, chanting, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board….”

The door opened, and it was tiny Cat, lugging a doggie bag from whichever pricey restaurant she’d been to with her aunt. Gert had only met Cat a few times. Cat constantly complained, in her squeaky voice, that she wasn’t meeting anyone, but turned down every invitation Hallie and Erika made to go out, whether it was dancing at Polly Esther’s or rinsing trays at the University Community Soup Kitchen. She was “too tired,” or it was too cold out, or she was spending the weekend with her family. Hallie and Erika privately ragged on her, but at the same time, they loved it when she actually did come out with them, because her shrinking-violet existence made them feel good about their own lives. At least they’d had real relationships.

One more thing about Cat was that she wasn’t willing to accept any degree of obnoxiousness in boys. If a guy even made a joke about sex, Cat looked intimidated, and she retreated. Gert was glad that Cat stuck by what she believed in, but Hallie and Erika said that Cat would be alone until she was sixty-five. Then she could meet a nice guy who had prostate cancer and just wanted to be her very good friend.

Hallie got up and turned off the light so the women could watch the male canon movies they had rented: Monty Python’s Holy Grail, This Is Spinal Tap, and number eleven in the canon, Reservoir Dogs. Gert was hoping Hallie and Erika would like the movies, but the odds were against it. She’d never had a female friend who had the same sense of humor as she did, except for her high school friend Nancy, who lived in L.A. now.

Even before the movie started, Gert’s prediction was proven right. Instead of paying attention to the opening scenes of Holy Grail, Erika was fussing over her throw pillows. Hallie was finishing with her nails. Cat had already gone into her room.

Hallie got up and paused the DVD. “I forgot,” she said. “Before the movie starts, I have to tell you this. I thought of a great question for the two of you today.” She was wearing an orange long-sleeved T-shirt and gray sweatpants that Gert thought looked cute. Even though Erika was around making her nervous, Gert realized that at least this was just a no-pressure girls’ night. They didn’t have to worry about how they looked or how they dressed. Maybe it could be fun.

“Not another of your profound probing questions,” Erika said to Hallie, flicking a piece of popcorn across the coffee table.

“No, this is great,” Hallie said, prying and probing as usual. She crawled over to the table and waved her nails to dry them. “Let’s say a soothsayer told you that you would not meet the man of your dreams for eight more years.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s say that the soothsayer said that without a doubt, when you turned thirty-seven, you would finally meet someone, fall madly, madly in love with him, and live happily ever after. Would you still date people in the interim?”

“No,” Gert said.

“No,” Cat said, coming back into the room.

“Probably not,” Erika said. “I wouldn’t bother.”

“Interesting,” Hallie said. “So dating is just a means to an end for all of you. It’s not about fun or socializing or sex.”

“I have enough fun,” Gert said.

“I do enough socializing,” Erika said.

“I…do enough socializing,” Cat said.

“Most people won’t admit that,” Hallie said. “They won’t admit that dating is work. Maybe we should all decide we’re going to meet the man of our dreams when we’re thirty-seven. Then we’ll stop squeezing into tight shirts and walking around half-naked and analyzing every encounter as future husband material. We’ll stop feeling the need to put on makeup to take out the trash just in case he’s walking by. Maybe we should just assume that we’ll meet our dream man at some future point, and stop driving ourselves crazy before then.”

“I already met the man of my dreams,” Erika said. “He’s married to a bitch.”

“I already met mine,” Gert said. “And then he was gone.”

The room was silent for a minute.

Cat said, “Anyone for Ouija?”

The movies ended up largely ignored for the night, as a half hour into the first one, something reminded Erika of Ben, and she said she just had to show Hallie and Gert what had happened on Challa’s Web site that day.

Gert had sighed. Erika had the attention span of a Chihuahua.

Standing in Hallie’s room by the big bed, they waited for the Web site to load. Hallie’s bedroom was mostly black, with a black comforter over the bed and black furniture. She still had the same purple telephone from college, Gert noticed, and she wondered if it still had the same sticky goo around the push-buttons.

Across the computer screen flashed a page with a rich blue background and the words “Challa’s Corner.” A gliding pastiche of photos swirled across the screen, most of them of Challa, Ben and their baby. On the left was a list of links to things like the Weather Channel and Elle magazine.

Gert had to admit to herself that it looked cheesy.

And at the bottom of the screen was the bane of Erika’s existence: The Web log.

Standing in front of Hallie’s computer, the three women read that day’s blog entry from Challa.

Last night was cold out, and we stayed in and put the baby to sleep and made dinner. I cooked linguine and mussels, and Ben tossed a salad. It was soooo romantic!;) We polished off an entire bottle of red wine LOL!!!

Gert suspected that deep inside, all of the women were thinking that mussels and wine sounded a lot better than soda and popcorn at 11:00 p.m. Gert almost felt her body ache, remembering the effort and passion that went into something as mundane as preparing dinner together.

Erika returned to the home page and clicked a link that said, “Message board.” That was where Challa’s friends could leave comments like: “Hi, Chall!” “Hey, girl, love the new pix!” “Thanks for helping me waste time at work.”

But recently Erika had started to leave messages, too.

She’d used all seven of her America Online screen names to create aliases to post things. Some were meant to annoy Challa, and some were just meant to confuse her. She told Hallie and Gert that Challa deserved it. Why did Challa have to shove everyone else’s face in her and Ben’s bliss all the time? Erika said that if she herself were married to someone as passionate and artistic as Ben, there was no way she would waste her free time writing blog entries about it.

The three of them read what Erika had posted on the message board that morning.

“You are banal,” Erika had written under the screen name Mr. HushPuppy. (She chose screen names completely at random, based on whatever she happened to see from the Internet café while she was typing. That day, someone had walked by in Hush Puppies.)

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Erika had responded to herself, this time using the name LadyAndTheTrump. “She started a whole Web site dedicated to herself. Sweetie, you don’t need TOO much attention, do you?”

“Challa’s a ho and a slut,” Mr. HushPuppy wrote.

“Ho, ho, ho, Merrrryyyyy Chall-mas,” wrote “JenDurr.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if Challa did name a holiday after herself,” Mr. HushPuppy wrote. “Too much attention isn’t enough for this girl. She should be lucky for what she has, not clog everyone else’s cyberspace with her binary spittle.”

“You’re a sick girl, Erika Dennison,” Hallie said, laughing.

What really got a rise out of Erika and Hallie that evening was that Challa, who previously had been ignoring the posts, was now getting into fights with the “writers.”

“Can’t you at least say something meaningful between your insults?” Challa had written back to Mr. HushPuppy. “If you hate me so much, then please don’t read this board. I didn’t invite you. At least LadyAndTheTrump sometimes has something meaningful to say.”

“Ah,” Erika said aloud, triumphantly. “She’s using me as an example for me to follow.”

Gert worried that someday, Erika would take this too far.

Chapter
2

“This girl, Erika, told me she’s just like me, but we’re really very different,” Gert told her support group on Long Island.

The group was for young widows. Until a few years ago, most of the “young widows” in Gert’s area had been in their forties and fifties. Now there was a handful in their twenties and thirties, too. Gert found it worth the forty-five-minute rail jaunt each Saturday morning to talk to people who could understand what she was going through.

She hadn’t gone to the group right away. In the weeks after Marc had died, she’d been surrounded by close friends and relatives. They were at the funeral, at Marc’s parents’ house, stopping by Gert’s apartment. Gert needed to be squeezed among a crushing throng of people who knew Marc so well that they understood the profoundness of the loss; people who knew his interests, his kindness, the expressions on his bespectacled face. Only people who knew him as well as she did could understand the depth of the void.

Right after the accident, Gert’s mother temporarily moved into Gert’s condo in Queens. She had already tried to convince Gert to move back to L.A., but failed. Gert’s best friend from childhood, Nancy, had tried, too. But Gert wasn’t sure she wanted to go back yet. All the experts said that you shouldn’t make major changes in your life within a year after a death. Besides, deep inside her, she feared that going back home would make her feel even lonelier. At least in New York, there were people like her. Alone.

For a while, relatives stopped by her condo to visit. Co-workers of Marc’s from the brokerage firm sent cards and flowers.

Then, slowly, the comforters tapered off. That meant that entire days yawned open with emptiness. Gert would pull herself out of bed, slog to work, get the occasional call from a friend who’d emit platitudes about taking things one step at a time, come home and, if she could stand to do something normal for two hours, watch a movie. In the past, no matter what happened to her, she knew he would be at the end—the end of the phone line, the end of a rough day, the end of the long commute home. Now, only she was there. All she had left to cling to were the vestiges of old routines.

Gert’s parents found her a therapist on Fifth Avenue. For the first six months, she went every week and talked to an overly clinical woman who was nevertheless a good listener. But she realized that she would have rather stayed home. What she really needed, she decided, was to interact with people her own age who’d lost a spouse.

Gert knew she wouldn’t have found such a support network if not for September 11. Most of the young widows’ support groups in the area had sprung up because of that day. Marc had died only four days before that, on the seventh. The funeral was two days later. If it had been two days after that, it probably would have had to be postponed. She’d lost him, buried him and forty-eight hours later the world had exploded.

She found several groups advertising on the back page of the Voice. The first day, she had felt intense self-loathing as she walked into the room. All of the women were strangers, and they looked strange, too. Strange and sad. They were women who had absolutely nothing in common with her—except for one horrible event. But she had forced herself to hold back her tears. She sat down in a hard school chair in the circle. She listened. And she talked. She found out they all had similar experiences to hers. The other women in the group were prone to dazing out for five minutes at a time for no reason, too. They, too, were still getting sales calls for their husbands and not knowing how to respond. They, too, were incessantly told by well-meaning people that they would feel better soon. They, too, had assumed they would be married to one person for the rest of their lives—and suddenly had had that person yanked away forever.

The only time Gert felt unburdened was when she was in the group. Normally she struggled under the weight of knowing that if she bumped into someone and had to explain that her husband had died, it’d be an uphill battle to deal with their awkward responses, to make them understand how she felt and all of the challenges she faced. The women in the group just knew.

“Where were you when Erika said this?” asked Brenda, a heavyset thirty-five-year-old nurse. Brenda, who had the voice of an evangelist, had become the group’s de facto leader. Their group had been started by a social worker from a local hospital, but the social worker eventually had found they were able to run it on their own.

“We were staying at Hallie’s apartment Friday night,” Gert said. “Hallie was my roommate in college. Erika is her friend from high school. Anyway, Hallie was in the bathroom brushing her teeth, and Erika and I were smoothing out our blankets on the floor, and Erika got serious. She turned to me and said, ‘I know you think no one understands what you’re going through. But every day when I wake up, I still want to say hi to Ben. He was in my life for so long, and then he was gone. I love him and I never get to see him anymore. So believe me, I know how you feel.’” Gert paused to take a deep breath. “And I know she was trying to be helpful, but having your husband die in a car accident is not the same thing as breaking up with him because you weren’t sure you loved him and then he ends up with someone else. I wanted to tell her this—”

She broke off.

“But you didn’t,” said Leslie, a short owl-eyed girl who had been married to a man thirty years older than she. Gert felt sorry for her, imagining she’d taken the first guy to be smitten with her—and then Gert felt bad for being judgmental.

Brenda said to Gert, “You could have told her.”

“But she was only trying to help,” Gert said.

Michele shook her head. She was thirty-four, a paralegal. “They all are,” she said. “But don’t you ever want to say, no, this is how it really feels? Losing your husband feels like nothing, dead, like you want to jump back into that week when you had him back, and all you can do is look back because there aren’t things to look ahead to anymore.”

“I can’t say all that,” Gert said.

“Honey, you need to let someone in,” Brenda said. “Don’t be afraid of being real with people.”

If I was real with people, Gert thought, I’d lose all of them.

The other topics at the meeting were standard: How they’d gotten through special occasions, how they filled their free time, how they were managing their financial affairs. Marc hadn’t had any life insurance, except for the $1,000 policy he’d gotten—along with a free Discman—for signing up for a Sony Mastercard. Who would ever have thought to get life insurance for a twenty-seven-year-old? Marc’s parents, luckily, paid for the burial and for a year of the mortgage on the condo. Some of the women in the group had had to sell their homes.

“The problem with moving isn’t necessarily about money,” a woman named Arden said. “I can’t pack up his things. Some of them, I haven’t touched since he died.”

Gert thought of the extra bedroom in the condo, the one Marc had used as a workroom. It held a computer, trophies going back to his high school soccer championships, even Boy Scout patches. She had barely touched these things since he’d died. Sometimes she wandered into the room and stood there for a while, in a comfortable haze.

“Don’t push yourself,” Brenda told Arden. “Everything has a time.”

“It feels like you’re putting him away when you put something aside,” Leslie said. “A pipe exploded last year and it poured all over Jesse’s Yankees cap, and I had to throw it away. Then I started crying.”

Everyone was quiet for a minute.

“But see, they got to the Series,” Brenda said. “So he was watching over them.”

Leslie laughed. “I don’t think he did that.”

“See?” Michele said. “We can smile when we remember, not just cry.”

Gert’s mind started drifting. She found herself wishing that Chase were there. Chase was a quiet girl with short hair and a shy smile who had come to several meetings and then stopped. Chase was twenty-nine, too, and she had lost her fiancé around the time that Gert had lost Marc. She seemed like a nice person, and Gert had hoped they would become friends. But Gert hadn’t gotten to the point where she felt comfortable asking for Chase’s home number or inviting her to do anything. And then, suddenly, Chase had stopped coming. Gert wasn’t sure why. As much as she liked the women in the group, most of them were a few years older than she. She hoped Chase would come back.

People like Chase—fiancées—had it worse than everyone, Gert thought. They hadn’t even married their loved one yet. They had had to lose someone they loved before they’d officially become related. They didn’t even get to call themselves widows. What should they be called? In this day and age, there needed to be a less clunky term than Bereaved Significant Other.

Gert noticed that the people in the group were getting up, and she realized the session was over. She’d been dazing again.

She had to stop doing that.

Todd called that afternoon.

Gert was scrubbing the house. When they’d first moved in, they had used a maid service once a week. She’d felt a little spoiled, but all of the neighbors in the condo building used the service, and it was something good to spend their money on when they were making more than enough of it. One day, Marc had been on the phone with his mother and had mentioned something about the maid coming, and his mother had had a fit, saying they were being lazy. Gert knew it was aimed at her. Marc’s mother liked Gert, but she could also be hard on her. Gert had, after all, taken over the duty of raising her little boy. Marc’s father was a big bear of a man who made bad jokes and always greeted everyone with a new dopey nickname. Marc had picked up this habit, with his own litany of nicknames. He and his father competed over who could make up the worst one. Gert missed Mr. Healy’s cheerful face.

Gert had always felt much more comfortable around Marc’s father than Marc’s mother. Mrs. Healy was overbearing. Everything had to be the best. Marc and his older brothers were driven, all in finance and real estate, all hustling tirelessly. That’s how they’d been raised. That’s what they got praised for.

Gert pushed thoughts of the Healys out of her mind and moved the mop slowly across the kitchen floor. There was a tiny rainbow near a corner where the sunlight bent through a glass candy dish, and she mopped the spot.

A shrill sound startled Gert. The phone. She stared at it for two rings, then picked it up.

“Is Gert there?” a voice asked.

Gert knew instantly who it was. She smiled. If nothing else, Todd was disarming. Even if she wasn’t going to date him, or anyone else right now, she certainly could be friends with him. She had felt incredibly comfortable talking to him at the bar. He was completely different from Marc, though. Marc was sure of himself, maybe even a little cocky. Todd was just Todd.

“It’s the Sober Guy,” Todd said.

“Ah,” Gert said. “Is that what your friends call you?”

“Sometimes,” Todd said. “They’re always saying, ‘Come on, just have one little drink.’ They don’t care that I’d lose my job. My company is like the CIA. They do drug tests when they hire you that can track marijuana you smoked two months ago.”

“Better stick to crack,” Gert joked, then winced, wondering if it was too sharp a comment to make to someone she barely knew. It would have made Marc smile, if he were there.

Todd laughed. “So how are you doing?”

Gert hadn’t had anyone ask her that in weeks, except her parents, who were still trying to convince her to move back to the West Coast. She’d confirmed their worst fears right after college when she’d married a guy from Boston and moved to Queens.

“Not bad,” Gert said.

“What are you doing today?”

“Just cleaning my place.”

“I need to do that,” Todd said. “My roommate’s a slob. Do you live alone?”

“Yes,” Gert said, balancing the phone on her shoulder so she could keep mopping. Yes, she thought. I live in a condo with two bedrooms. The second one eventually would have been the baby’s room. It’s ridiculous that I live here, but I don’t want to move.

“How was your day?” Gert asked.

“Great,” Todd said. “I ate lunch at this bar by my old job. And I just had tea, and the bartender looked at me like I was crazy, but I told her I’m not allowed to drink because of work, and you know what she guessed I must be? A brain surgeon. Do I look like a brain surgeon?”

“Anyone can look like a brain surgeon,” Gert said.

“Wow. I feel so important now.”

“What’s your old job?”

“Oh. For a little while after college I was a courier in the diamond district. My friend’s family owned a jewelry store. They needed people they trusted to do those jobs, so we both worked there for a while, walking around the city transporting jewelry and hoping not to get mugged. It was kind of fun, and I got to hang out with my friend’s family, who have this old-fashioned business that not a lot of people have anymore. One time, on a Friday after work, they took us to their apartment on the Lower East Side and they had a zillion relatives over and cooked Romanian food. It was incredible.”

Gert realized that Todd liked long answers, long explanations. He wasn’t concerned about boring her. It didn’t mean he was full of himself—just that he wasn’t constantly checking to see if he was saying and doing the right thing. He had no affectations, no pretensions.

She liked it.

The other line beeped, and Gert ignored it.

“Do you have to go?” Todd asked.

“No. But I am cleaning….”

“Okay. Well, what I wanted to ask was…do you want to have dinner some night?”

“Um…” Gert said, looking around the room. “I guess, maybe.” She realized she was being too tentative. “I mean, sure. Why not?”

“Great,” he said. “My schedule gets a little strange. I’m working nights the rest of the week, but I’m free after next weekend. Unless you wanted to get together tonight.”

Gert thought putting it off for a week would be wise. She could use the week to work up to it. But looking around again, she realized she didn’t have anything to do that night. She might as well go. Todd seemed harmless enough.

“Either way is fine,” Gert said. “I didn’t have any major plans tonight.”

“Really?” Todd said. “Do you want to do it tonight? I don’t want to push, but it might be nice to see you before my schedule gets crazy.”

Gert was flattered. She accepted.

When she put down the phone, it rang instantly.

“Hey!” Hallie said.

“Hey,” Gert said. “You sound excited. What’s up?”

“Erika knows this bar where some of the Giants hang out. Do you want to come tonight?”

Gert hesitated. “I could,” she said. “But I probably can’t.”

“Why not?” Hallie asked.

“Well,” Gert said, “do you remember that guy Todd, from the bar?”

“Choo-Choo Boy?” Hallie suddenly seemed intrigued. “Did he call you? Did he ask you out?”

“Yes,” Gert said. “He asked if I wanted to have dinner.”

“That’s great!” Hallie said. Gert was glad Hallie was excited for her. “It’s at least a start,” Hallie added. “When are you going?”

“Tonight,” Gert said.

Hallie was quiet for a second.

“Tonight?” she said.

Gert hesitated. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. “I said I would,” she said.

Hallie was quiet again.

“You haven’t been out on a date in a long time,” Hallie said. “Maybe you should have a powwow with me first to plot strategies.”

“Okay.”

They met at four outside a coffee shop. Hallie snuffed out her cigarette before entering. The New York smoking ban still wasn’t to take effect for two months, but Hallie wanted to practice. Gert was glad for the ban, but kept her opinion to herself. It wasn’t that she was a priss; it was just that secondhand smoke gave her a sore throat.

“Here’s the thing,” Hallie said, sitting down at a square white table with gold flecks in it. The coffee shop was filthy, but cozy. “You know that you can’t accept a date for the same night. It makes you seem desperate.”

“It’s not a date,” Gert protested. “It’s just a friendly dinner. Besides, Todd’s going to be busy next week. His schedule’s going to get crazy.”

“With work? Or with dates?”

“With work.”

“How do you know?”

“Why would Todd lie?” Gert said. “I just met him.”

“I don’t know.” Hallie shrugged, winding paper from someone else’s straw around her pinkie. “For some reason, he just struck me as a little off. I wouldn’t be so trusting so soon. Believe me, I’ve seen what’s out there. You have to be careful.”

“I will,” Gert said, knowing Hallie was only trying to help but wondering how she’d gotten so cynical. Todd was a nice guy, right?

Gert looked around. She noticed that many of the people in the coffee shop were reading the paper. But the women who were reading it kept peering over the top, to see who else might be there.

Hallie said, “I think I’ve met half the weirdos in Manhattan. And I think Erika’s met the other half. I don’t want you to get disillusioned.”

“Did you ever think,” Gert said, choosing her words carefully, “that maybe you and Erika try too hard and obsess too much? You strategize and analyze, and men can probably sense your frustrations.”

Hallie looked hurt. “I can’t act relaxed and happy with my station in life when I’m not,” she said.

Gert wasn’t sure what to say.

“Do you remember when I dated Steve for six months after college?” Hallie asked. “While I was dating him, guys hit on me all the time. And of course, I didn’t need them, because I was with him. They must have sensed that I was happy. And then, after Steve and I broke up and I was miserable, no one ever came up to me. But I couldn’t help being miserable. So there’s a Spiral Deathtrap of Dating: When you’re with someone, you look happy and relaxed, and thus, a lot more people than you need are attracted to you. When you’re sulky and alone, no one is attracted to you, and thus, you stay sulky and alone. I can’t look content when I’m not.”

“I know you can’t look happy all the time,” Gert said. “Maybe what I’m getting at is that when you and Erika are together, you both come off as less approachable.”

Hallie looked beyond Gert, at the wall. “That’s not the real problem,” she said. “The real problem is that the ratio of women to men around here is too high. I should move to Silicon Valley or Alaska, where the male-to-female ratio makes sense. Or, I could get silicone implants.”

Gert cringed. “Guys hate silicone implants,” she said.

“You know so much about guys,” Hallie said to her, “but you’ve only really been with one.”

It struck Gert as odd that Hallie and Erika always claimed to know so much more than she did about men, yet they were still single. They were always trumpeting their dating rules and they were still alone.

There’s a law Hallie should cite, Gert thought. Gert’s Law of Dating: The more rules you cite about it, the less you really know about it.

“Anyway,” Hallie said, toying with a cigarette she didn’t intend to light, “I want you to have a good time with Todd tonight.”

Gert smiled. “Thanks,” she said.

“But,” Hallie continued, looking serious, “don’t let your guard down. If a guy seems too good to be true, he usually is.”

“Oh, I know it could end up a total disaster,” Gert said, waving someone else’s smoke away. “But we’ll be in a public place. What could happen?”

“You have my cell phone number, right?” Hallie said. “Call me if there’s any trouble. Even if I’m talking to Jeremy Shockey, I’ll be there for you.”

Gert laughed. “I will.”

The houses across the street from Gert’s were white and connected to each other. From window to window dripped a string of unlit Christmas lights, which normally hung there until just before Easter. On a dark, overcast day like that one, they looked like buds. Flurries coated the barren branches outside and made little hammocks in the corners of the windows. Not much of an accumulation was expected—it was too warm.

Gert stood in the room with Marc’s trophies, staring across the street. She saw a little blond-haired girl peeking out a round third-story window. She remembered when the girl had been a tiny baby in a carriage. Seeing the infants in her neighborhood go from carriages to walking on their own two feet made Gert conscious of her age. Lots of things were making her conscious of that lately. She wasn’t fond of the reminders.

The girl was part of an extended Greek family who lived in attached houses on the block. Gert’s section of Queens, only a few subway stops east of Manhattan, was very Greek.

She returned to her bedroom, to her mirror.

The anticipatory feeling of a date was one of the nicest parts, she had always thought. You knew you were going to see someone you liked. You could scrub extra hard in the shower. You could get a haircut. You could stare at yourself in the mirror. Well, not for too long.

Even though Gert was just going to be friends with Todd, she still felt compelled to at least look half-decent for him.

She stared at her reflection and tried to figure out what she could say to him.

I rode on a train once.

Nah, that wouldn’t do.

My uncle used to work for Conrail.

Trains are cool. I’ve got a full complement of HO models.

Somehow he’d see through the lie. And just because he worked on a train, didn’t mean he collected them.

She could hum the song about “getting the train through” from Sesame Street. They could talk about kids’ TV shows from the 1970s. Marc’s oldest brother had been on Zoom, which was taped in Boston. That always impressed people of a certain age.

There she was, thinking about Marc again.

She had to stop.

How would she tell Todd about him?

She probably shouldn’t mention Marc to Todd right away, she decided. The only way to talk about Marc was to give him his proper due, to tell everything that had happened. He wasn’t something you could chat about like the news or weather. If it wasn’t the right time to tell everything about him, you shouldn’t broach it.

Okay. She needed a conversation topic.

The male canon. Oops—she’d left something off the list when she’d told Hallie and Erika about it: Fletch. Guys loved Fletch.

What were some lines from Fletch?

“Excuse me, miss? Can I borrow your towel? My car just hit a water buffalo.”

Didn’t really work too well in conversation.

It wasn’t a good quote for tonight, anyway. It was too base. Guys didn’t necessarily like girls to get too base. Except guys you’d been married to for five years and dated for three, whom you could say just about anything to. Who you could wrestle with at 10:00 a.m. during a blizzard when the city was locked down and the mayor had ordered everyone to stay home. They should have worked on having a baby that day, just like everyone else. They were both waiting for promotions at work. Just one year each at their new salaries, and then they were going to try. There was always more you could have. More, more, more. And all of a sudden, you’d lose the most important thing of all.

“Hi,” Todd said, coming into the entrance of Sal’s, an Italian restaurant in Chelsea near the movie theater. He was wearing sneakers, but he looked like he’d just gotten a haircut, and he was smiling.

“Hi,” Gert said, standing inside the door. The restaurant was moderate-sized, with a family of six chattering near the back. The tablecloths and walls were a rich red. A waitress appeared and led them back.

“I was just on the subway,” Todd told Gert, “and some woman insisted I’d gone to school with her brother. She kept saying my name was Cody. The whole ride, she stared at me, going, ‘You’re sure you’re not Cody?’”

“You should have showed her your driver’s license.”

“Imagine if I pulled it out, and it said ‘Cody,’” Todd said. “That would be freaky. Like The Twilight Zone.”

“I loved The Twilight Zone!”

“Me, too. The old episodes.”

As they sat down, Gert was glad the conversation had started easily. She was also grateful for the dinner-and-movie date. It was simple, it was inexpensive, and it guaranteed that after dinner you wouldn’t be asked back to the guy’s apartment to watch a video—a common male strategy in college that had meant something else.

“I like this place,” Todd said. “The food’s good, and the prices are right.”

So he was practical. Gert was glad. She didn’t like when people tried to impress her with fancy restaurants that provided mouse-sized meals. Marc’s co-workers at the brokerage firm had taken them to places like that all the time. She had always left starving.

“So,” Todd said, “thanks for coming out on such short notice.”

He seemed a little nervous. Gert smiled. “I wasn’t doing anything special,” she said. Ooh! Her friends would smack her for admitting she was alone on a Saturday. She added, “I could have gone out with my friends tonight, but I can see them anytime.”

“How long have you known them?”

“Since college,” she said. “Well, Hallie since college. Erika is her high school friend.”

“Who was the one with big hair?” Todd asked.

Gert laughed. Everyone had such varying perceptions of looks. Erika had been dressed to kill that night, and Hallie had been practically naked, but what Todd had noticed was big hair.

“I didn’t think either of them had big hair,” Gert said.

“I didn’t mean any offense,” Todd said. “Brian was the one who thought so. I didn’t notice anyone having big hair.”

“That’s okay,” Gert said. “I think Erika was sort of interested in Brian.”

“Girls always like Brian. He’s engaged to a woman he works with.”

“Then why was he at the bar?”

“Why not? We were waiting to meet friends.”

The waitress brought their water, and she stood at the table expectantly. “You ready?” she asked.

“I guess we should pick up our menus first,” Todd said, smiling, and the waitress nodded and took off.

Todd added, “Brian lived in England for a year and he said they never give you water when you sit down. You have to ask for it or you’ll never ever get it.”

“Really?” Gert said. Then, in a barely passable British accent, she added, “That’s rather peculiar, don’t you think?”

“I rather believe so,” Todd said.

“A shame, old boy.”

They ordered appetizers and talked more. Todd spoke animatedly about his job. He said his company’s trains ran from Croxton Yards in Jersey City up to Binghamton, New York. It was a six-hour run, and usually it was just him on the train, plus an engineer who was driving it. There was a children’s hospital that they passed in upstate New York each time, and the kids would always wave out the window at the train. Sometimes, they’d make a sign, like Blow Your Horn! This was Todd’s favorite part of the run.

Todd said to Gert, “Do you like your job?”

Gert told him about working for a marketing and public relations firm that handled only pharmaceutical companies. She had majored in communications in college, but she wasn’t sure what she’d do afterward. She’d finally found a job as an assistant at a PR firm. The pay was low and the people seemed phony, so she kept her eye on the want ads. Then she saw an ad to be the assistant to a vice president of a different firm. The pay would be much higher, and the building was right next to a midtown subway stop, but she’d be less focused on creative work and more on meeting her boss’s needs. Still, she had been happy enough outside of work that she didn’t really care what she was doing during those hours. If she wanted, she could work on a portfolio and move over to the creative side. She actually had wanted to do that for a few years, and had tons of good ideas for product promotions. But for some reason she hadn’t gotten around to finishing her portfolio yet.

“Are you guys responsible for the goodies?” Todd asked. “Like the notepads and rubber pill toys and clipboards doctors get with the names of drugs on them?”

Gert laughed. She usually just got blank stares when she told people what she did. At least Todd was creative. “Our company doesn’t make them, but it does research to see if they’re a good way to increase product name recognition,” she said. “We might get twelve people in a room and bring out a tray full of those toys, then take them out of the room and see which ones they remembered.”

“Wow.” Todd closed his eyes. “I remember…that you’re wearing a red shirt and you have long hair, and dimples.”

Gert smiled shyly.

The waitress set down a bowl of calamari, along with a huge, soft stuffed red pepper. Gert was hungry. She hadn’t eaten Italian food in a while.

They made up their plates, and they ended up talking so rapidly that Gert only ate half her meal. She barely even tasted it. She hadn’t expected to enjoy Todd’s company so much. He told her that if the train broke down anywhere along the route, whether it was pouring rain or sloppy snow or in the middle of a dangerous city at 3:00 a.m., it was his job to jump out with a flashlight and walk the length of the train to find out where the problem was. “Some of those trains are a mile long,” Todd said. “And you don’t want to get out and walk the length of a train in a desolate area at 3:00 a.m.”

“I wouldn’t try it,” Gert said.

She told him about the worst part of her job, dealing with her often-cranky boss, Missy, and about the odd cast of characters at her old job. They had been so brain-dead that after a certain point, she’d stopped smiling for fear they’d complain about not getting the joke.

“So how did you end up in your line of work, anyway?” Gert asked Todd.

“Well,” he said, wiping his mouth, “it was strange. It wasn’t a job that would have occurred to me at all.”

“So what happened?”

He hooked some linguine around his fork. “I majored in history in college,” he said, “and I wasn’t that great a student in school, but history was the one thing I was interested in. I love finding out how things came to be. There are so many stories. I knew I wouldn’t have lots of jobs lined up after graduation with that major, though. For a while I led tours in a museum part-time. Then I was reading the help-wanted ads in the paper one Sunday morning, and I saw this boxed ad at the bottom of the page for an information session for a train company, and something kind of clicked. Working for the railroad is kind of a cliché, but I’d never actually thought you could do it.”

“It seems like a job people had a hundred years ago,” Gert said.

“Exactly!” Todd said. “That’s what I thought. But that’s what interested me. There’s such beauty in trains. Cars and planes and buses change every year, but if you look at a passing freight train, with its string of yellow and orange and brown boxcars, it looks the same as it did fifty years ago. And trains travel through the most historical points in the country, too. They’re like moving museums of America. But when I first saw the ad, I didn’t know if I should go to the info session. It didn’t seem like a job that people who went to college did. I tried to talk myself out of it.”

“Yeah….”

“But I realized something: I had majored in history because I loved it. And now I could look into a job I might love, too. My heart told me to go.”

“And you went,” Gert said.

“And I went. The recruiters actually try to talk you out of it. They tell you about the crazy scheduling, the long hours, the drug testing, and the hard work. But everything they said to scare us off was something that made me want to do the job more.”

“That’s great,” Gert said. “A lot of people don’t follow their heart.”

“Especially about work.”

He asked Gert where she’d grown up. She said she was from L.A., and that her parents were still there. She said she’d come east for college. She didn’t say she’d stayed and married a Bostonian, though. She told Todd that her younger brother was still in L.A., and that he’d done nothing for two years after high school and was now waiting tables. She told him about her best friend from childhood, Nancy, who lived there with a husband and two kids. She said she usually talked to her about once a week, and the same with her parents.

Todd told her that the friend she had met at the bar, Brian, was someone he’d known since elementary school. He said he only had a few close friends, but once he got along with someone, they were friends for life.

Gert realized by the time they’d finished dessert that she had gone for more than an hour without thinking of Marc. It was the first time in a year and a half that that had happened. Even when she was sleeping. She’d had a dream two days earlier, in fact, in which she was sure he was right next to her. She could even smell him. Then she awoke. She wanted to crawl back into the dream. She wanted so desperately to fall back to sleep.

When Todd asked whether she still wanted to see a movie, she was glad, because she’d been wavering on it. What she really wanted to do was find out more things about him—not sit in a theater with her mouth shut. But she wasn’t going to say that, because then he might suggest going back to his place, and that would ruin everything.

“Well,” she said, “it is pretty late.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Todd said. “I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have to go to work at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow. Could we do it another time, though?”

He wasn’t trying to get her back to his apartment! And he wanted to see her again. She hadn’t botched the date. What luck!

“Sure,” she said. “That sounds good.”

“Do you want to take a walk before we head home?”

It was bitter cold outside. He took her hand for a second, without thinking, and then let go when they got near the waterfront. “What’s out there?” he asked.

“Water,” Gert said.

He laughed. “I knew you were smart,” he said. “It looks like an island.”

“Long Island?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a bench facing the water, and they sat down. She wondered if he was going to ask The Question. At what point did guys ask women about their ex-boyfriends and past relationships? It didn’t happen on a first date, right? She wasn’t sure.

The women in her support group had talked about this: If you met someone new, at what point did you tell him that your husband had died? For the older women, it wasn’t much of an issue, because their suitors generally figured they were either divorced or widowed and asked about it. But with younger women, it wasn’t expected at all. And Gert had found that when you told someone such news, particularly young people, they often had no idea what to say. Sometimes they just stared at her, stunned. It was almost as if they were waiting for her to comfort them.

But Todd didn’t ask about Gert’s former boyfriends. He asked about her friends, her college, her dreams. He told her that he figured that someday he’d have kids, travel and see the world—not by train—and be a good person so that he’d be satisfied when he got old and looked back on his life. He said what was most important to him was to be with the people he cared about and make them happy.

He was simple, Gert thought. Much simpler than Marc.

But he was the kind of guy, she thought, that someone could fall in love with.

Gert found out Todd was younger than she was—twenty-six. Hallie had a “Rule of Twenty-Seven.” If a guy was still single after twenty-seven, she said, there must be something wrong with him. If he was decent, it was unlikely that he’d even get that far. So once a woman surpassed the age of twenty-seven, she would always be dating guys younger than her.

Todd was Gert’s brother’s age, which she found a little strange. It was like dating one of her brother’s meatheaded friends. But Todd wasn’t anything like her brother. Gert loved her brother, but he could definitely be a meathead sometimes.

They made plans to see a movie the weekend after next. Then Todd gave Gert a quick kiss on the cheek.

She could still smell his cologne and feel the brush of his stubble afterward. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that.

Chapter
3

“You can’t start dating the first person you meet,” Hallie said.

They were at a dingy coffee shop on the Upper West Side, near Hallie’s apartment.

“Did Brian say anything about me?” Erika asked Gert. “I don’t want to date him…I just want to know why he didn’t like me.”

“I’ll ask the Saturday after next,” Gert said, feeling suddenly tired of Erika. She elected to forget the “big hair” comment.

“But you were supposed to come to a party with us on that Saturday!” Hallie said. “You can’t go out with him that day. Can’t you see Todd on Sunday?”

“He’s working on Sunday,” Gert said. “He’s working for a week straight after that.”

“Now she knows his schedule,” Erika said.

“They’ll have to have their wedding when he’s not on call,” Hallie said.

“They won’t be able to have alcohol at the reception,” Erika said, “because Todd can’t drink.”

“Then I’m not coming,” Hallie said. “How can a single girl get through a friend’s wedding without alcohol?”

“Will you guys stop!” Gert said. “We’re not getting married.”

“You act like it.”

“You know, all the two of you do is complain,” Gert said. “It almost seems like you’re upset that I spent an evening with someone nice.”

There was silence.

“You know we just want you to be happy,” Hallie said.

“Yeah,” Erika said. “We know what guys are like. We don’t want you to get hurt.”

Gert didn’t want that either. But sometimes it hurt to get up in the morning. Whatever was coming couldn’t be much worse.

Every other Christmas, Gert and Marc had stayed with Marc’s parents in their huge warm house in Massachusetts, where all four brothers had grown up. Gert loved that house. It held oodles of guestrooms, a fireplace and long slurpy couches you could fall asleep in. It was in an upscale waterfront hamlet just north of Boston with gaslights on the main streets and shanties near the water. During holidays, relatives practically oozed from the walls: Cousins, nieces and nephews, all asking Gert when she was going to have a baby. She had always said, “Soon.”

Nowadays, she sometimes felt like she had a gaping hole inside of her, ready to be filled with something living. She used to look at Marc and think that she couldn’t wait to see what kind of person would come from them.

This past year, on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Healys hadn’t invited her to the house. She and Marc had routinely stayed on the East Coast for one holiday and then gone to her parents’ in L.A. for the other. But now, she hadn’t heard from Marc’s parents in almost five months. She still had their last name. She had been officially part of the family. Yet, suddenly, because of one day, half of her support network was gone.

Going home to L.A. for both holidays had been especially hard. Gert’s brother and his girlfriend were there. Gert was alone. After bluffing her way through dinner, she’d gone up to her childhood bedroom, lay on her mattress surrounded by purple walls and cried.

She remembered the times that Marc had stayed with her there on holidays, how they had both crammed onto her single bed in the room with the stuffed animals and purple walls, and how funny that was. He used to scrounge through her closet to find old diaries and report cards and use them to tease her. “‘Gert’s penmanship has improved slightly, but she needs help following directions,’” Marc read one time in an authoritative voice, linking it to the way she’d botched a bisque recipe the previous weekend. “Oh, look,” he said. “A poem: ‘I Love My Fish.’ Aw, how cute—you drew fins on the ‘O’ in love, to make it look like a fish! No wonder you flunked handwriting.” But as much as he teased, he was unrelenting in wanting to see every single thing in her closet. Gert sometimes felt as though she had actually kept all those things to show someone someday, if she was lucky enough to find someone who cared enough about her to want to know what she’d been like as a kid. And he had. He’d gone through everything, asking incessant questions. Marc was driven in everything he did.

Once, at Marc’s house, Gert had gone through his things, too. It was only fair. He had packed most of them away in the basement before heading off to college. She was delighted to find that he had listed the contents of each box very carefully. He was super-organized and super-particular. All his baseball cards were in order, all his die-cast cars were in order. She teased him constantly as she burrowed through the boxes. He’d even alphabetized his comic books.

She also found photos of him growing up. There was one of him at his high school graduation in wire-rimmed glasses, looking younger but just as serious. His short brown hair was neatly cut, and he was wearing a suit and tie. Very neat, very particular, very handsome.

Marc’s particularities had extended into adulthood. There was a certain steakhouse near their college in Pennsylvania that he had loved. So a couple of times a year, he would wake up in their New York apartment on a sunny Saturday and randomly decide it was time for a “steak break.” He’d drive the two of them three hours back there for dinner. After relaxing and enjoying their meal, they’d drive the three hours home. Marc was such an adventurer, Gert thought. And he took such good care of her, too. But she also knew how to support him when he needed it. She filled in all his blanks.

Another thing about Marc was that he was big on looking after his friends. He consistently went out of his way to help them move, to study, to work on projects. A year after graduation, his best friend, the baby-faced Craig, was in Illinois at graduate school teaching economics to freshmen. Marc and Gert took a road trip out there. Marc forced Craig to bring them to one of his classrooms to give them a mock lesson, so they could see exactly how Craig taught his students. Marc delighted in other people’s fancies. But at the end of the day, when he needed someone to rest his head against, it was Gert. Heading back in the car, she would look over at him, his Red Sox baseball cap hovering over his tired eyes, and she’d squeeze his right shoulder.

Now she would never go to the steakhouse in Pennsylvania. She’d never get to reach over and squeeze his shoulder while he was driving. And she had no reason to head up to Boston to visit the warm house with the fireplace and the huge slurpy couches.

“It’s like you don’t just lose him,” said Brenda, the nurse, at the support group that weekend. “You lose his whole family. You see them at services and memorials right after, but if you didn’t have a baby with him, your in-laws stop needing to see you. It ends up being an exchange of cards on holidays. It’s like, for years they cared about you, but it was only because you were part of him.”

“We never had kids,” Gert said. “I always think that if we’d had kids, I’d still hear from them all the time. They’d be inviting me up there or coming down to visit. Now they act like we were never even related in the first place.”

Arden looked angry. “We have this society that makes you feel like it’s okay to defer everything,” she said. “I have a friend who’d been living with her boyfriend for almost six years. They lost him in the Pentagon, and the two of them hadn’t even gotten engaged yet. Six years. Now the relationship counts for nothing in anyone’s eyes. She feels like she doesn’t even have a right to the memories.”

Gert thought again of Chase, who’d lost her fiancé in the towers. Chase hadn’t been there in six weeks now. Gert wanted to ask Brenda if she had her contact number, so she could make sure Chase was okay. But she knew she probably wouldn’t ask.

“You put things off, and poof, you wish you hadn’t waited so long,” Michele said. “But I have friends who got married and had their kids young, and they always tell me they think they gave up their youth too soon. You never know what’s going to happen. You just have to do what you feel is right and not sit around having regrets.”

Stephanie, who was a personal trainer, said, “What about my biological clock? I’m thirty-five, and I still can’t imagine when I’ll be psychologically ready to date again. If I start two years from now, and I meet someone, it will probably be at least a year or two before we get married. By then I’ll be thirty-eight. Too old to have kids. For the rest of my life.”

“Honey, you can have kids these days till you’re fifty,” Brenda said.

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“That’s a medical falsehood perpetuated by the media.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. It’s…”

Gert wasn’t in the mood for this debate. Her gaze moved to the wall of the community center where the meetings were held. There were finger paintings all over it from the daycare program that was in the building. One of the paintings said in round, childish letters, “TODD.” Gert smiled, thinking Todd was actually a little innocent and childlike.

She thought of telling the women in the group about going out with him. But she was feeling guilty about it. The women always talked about how they couldn’t imagine dating someone again. What right did she have to have dinner with a man—and what right did she have to actually enjoy it?

“Having a baby alone just isn’t something I’m going to do,” Arden said.

Everyone else got quiet.

Gert found the silence uncomfortable.

“Well, let’s move on,” Brenda said. “What else happened this week?”

Gert saw no volunteers among the ten women there. She started reluctantly. “I had dinner with someone,” she said. “On Saturday.”

The other women leaned closer. “A man?” Brenda asked. Gert nodded. “Your first date since…?”

“Yes,” Gert said. “But it wasn’t really a date. Just a friendly dinner. I met him when I was out with friends, and he asked me to dinner, and I figured I might as well try, just to see what it was like.”

“And how was it?”

She shrugged. “His name’s Todd. He seemed nice….”

“But he’s not your husband,” Brenda said.

“No,” Gert said, shaking her head. “No one could be. And he’s very different from Marc. But in a way, I was glad. If he was anything like him I’d have felt like I was cheating.”

“Don’t ever feel like that,” Brenda said. “Don’t any of you feel like that.”

“There’s at least room in our hearts for new friends,” Michele said.

“Are you going to see him again?” Leslie asked.

“I think so,” Gert said. “It’s strange, but I feel like I want to learn more about him. But just last week we were all saying how we couldn’t possibly imagine dating again. What right do I have to go out with anyone when it’s only been a year and a half?”

They all got quiet.

“I have a confession,” Michele said. “I know I said I couldn’t date for years. But sometimes, when I’m in bed at night, I miss being held.”

“I do, too,” Leslie said.

“It’s odd,” Brenda said. “I think the better your relationship was with your husband, the more you probably will need to find that closeness again. It’s just that the idea of being with a stranger repulses us. What we really want is to be with our husbands. But it’s impossible. Right now, a fantasy seems better than a real person.”

“When are you going to see him again?” Arden asked.

“Next weekend,” Gert said.

“Those friends you mention,” Brenda said, “make sure you don’t let their notions of dating and five-nights-a-week partying push you. If you need four months to get to know this guy, to get to the point when you so much as want to kiss him, you take four months. Gert has to do what’s right for Gert.”

Gert smiled. Brenda often lapsed into social worker–speak.

“Are those girls younger than you?” Michele asked. “When you talk about them, they seem like it.”

“No,” Gert said. “But sometimes, I feel about five years older than them.”

“It’s not that you’re five years older,” Arden said. “It’s that they’re emotionally five years younger than you. If you’re between twenty-five and thirty-five and you’ve never been married, you get to subtract five years from your age. So your friends are twenty-three or twenty-four. And if you have children before you’re thirty-five, you add five years to your age.”

“What if you’re a widow?” Brenda asked.

“You add a hundred,” someone said, and all the women laughed.

At work, someone had left a card on Gert’s desk. It was a congratulations card for a guy who worked on a different floor. Gert was supposed to put ten dollars in it for a wedding gift.

Gert hated these cards. Hallie had told her once that in China, it was the opposite. In China, if something great happened to you, you took everyone else in the office out to dinner; they didn’t take you. That made sense—after all, you were the lucky one. You were the one who was getting married or promoted.

Marrying the person you loved was not a struggle. The struggle was being able to keep going after you’d lost yours, or not finding one at all. The people who needed cards were those who weren’t engaged, those who weren’t about to have a baby—those who were miserable, single, alone.

“Congratulations,” Gert wrote unenthusiastically in the card, and stuck in her ten dollars.

She got up, sauntered down the hall and pitched the card onto the desk of Leon, the long-haired fiftyish nihilist proof-reader. “No backs!” Gert said, and raced back down the hall.

“Awww, I hate these!” she heard him say.

As she ran, she looked at the tops of buildings: The GE building, the Paine Webber building, some brown towers she didn’t know the name of.

At work, the people were mostly older. She had always been glad that she’d been married and hadn’t counted on work as a social outlet. No one in her office went out after hours. The only person there whom she really had thought of as a friend was her boss, but even that had changed over the last few months. Missy was in her mid-forties and still dressed sexily, always in skirts and off-black panty hose. She had an evil sense of humor. But for the past few months, she’d had mood swings that could have registered on the Richter scale. Gert thought it had to do with relationship issues. The rumor was that Missy was having an affair with the chiseled young guy on the ninth floor who worked in the mailroom. There were elevators near the back of the building that could be stopped between floors without setting off alarms.

What else could she say about Missy? Missy had been saying for years that she was going to get separated from her husband, Dennis, but she never had. Gert had met Dennis at the office Christmas party. He was a sad sack. He hated dancing, so he always stood near the buffet table watching Missy dance up a storm with every guy in the company. Gert wondered why Dennis didn’t try a little harder to keep up with Missy, looks-wise. Not that he should have had to. But he could have at least tried.

After fobbing off the congratulations card, Gert sat back down and stared at her in-box. The accounts that her boss handled involved baldness remedies, skin creams and hemorrhoid preparations. Not really Gert’s preferences, but she had, from time to time, thought up some pretty funny campaigns for all of them. Watching British comedies with Marc often got her thinking creatively. Someday, Gert could take over those accounts if Missy moved to others. Or she could move to other accounts if she had a portfolio of creative work. But Missy was there to stay, and Gert had put off starting creative work for a long time. There were only so many things you could do at once. She’d been fulfilled enough in the past and had never really expected to get most of her satisfaction nine-to-five, anyway. She went out with Marc’s co-workers, took road trips to see friends, celebrated milestones with both of their families—siblings’ graduations, new babies—cooked together, bought a condo. She had felt feminine doing these things, even. Now she felt like she had to be the man and woman in dealing with every daily chore and struggle.

Before Marc died, she had been toying with some portfolio ideas that he’d encouraged. But after the accident she’d been uninspired to do anything that disturbed the stasis of other facets of her life, particularly work. Tragedy could certainly make you lose interest in the fast track.

“Oh my God!” Hallie sang into the phone to Gert that night. “You have to get over to Erika’s apartment. We’re reading Challa’s Web site!”

Gert was in bed, kicking her heels and watching a romantic movie that was making her feel more depressed than romantic. She had to be careful with forms of entertainment these days. Things that were romantic made her miss Marc. Things that were witty made her miss Marc. Things with action made her miss Marc. She was on a long main course of light and fluffy.

“I was watching a movie,” Gert told Hallie.

“What movie?”

“Before Sunrise,” Gert said.

“Oh my God, you never saw that?” Hallie asked. “That was ten years ago.”

Marc would never have seen an Ethan Hawke movie. Especially one about Ethan taking his brooding self on a train through Europe. Gert thought about all the movies she could catch up on now, and then hated herself for the thought. She often thought about the movies Marc would have wanted to see, the ones that were coming out that spring: Both the Matrix and X-Men sequels. Every single time she heard about them, she felt bad, thinking about how excited Marc would have been. If he were there, they’d be strategizing about how to get to see them both on their opening days.

“I guess I just never rented it,” Gert said of Before Sunrise.

“Well, I don’t want to take you away, but you have to see the Web site,” Hallie said. “We’re going to order dumplings for dinner and plot strategy.”

Gert was getting tired of the movie, anyway. Maybe watching other people’s evil machinations would take her mind off her pain. She was going to have to force herself to recover, even if it meant pushing herself into uncomfortable situations.

“That sounds good,” Gert said, pulling herself up.

On the N train, Gert remembered the corollary to Hallie’s Law of Maximum Exposure: If you’re single, being outside is always better than staying in, even if you have nowhere to go. You could meet someone getting on the bus, or standing in line buying your shriveled bagel.

Gert decided that Hallie should either forget these dating rules completely, or put them on a list and publish them. Even if they were myopic and pessimistic, at least someone would find them funny. Maybe Hallie could post them on a Web site for bitter wymyn.

Erika’s apartment was a studio in Harlem. It hadn’t always been hers alone. Erika had gotten it with a friend right after college. They had hung a blanket across the room to separate it. Eventually, the other girl got married and moved out, and Erika was earning enough money at the design firm to allow her to take the big step of living in the prewar hovel alone.

It was the coziest apartment Gert had seen in Manhattan. Two of the walls were exposed brick, and there was artwork everywhere. Some of it was stuff Erika had bought, and some was stuff she had designed. Gert knew that both Erika and Ben had been big fans of modern art. Ben had always wanted to be an architect, although from what Gert heard, he had never ended up going to graduate school.

Gert knocked on Erika’s front door. She heard cackling inside, then steps. When the door swung open, Erika was there, looking pretty and smiling at Gert. Her blond hair was streaked with a few dark lowlights, and it was back in a ribbon. Graphic designers always dressed well.

“Gertie!” Erika said, and she threw her arms around her and hugged her. Gert felt a surge of warmth. She realized why Hallie always wanted to please Erika. If Erika was in a happy mood, she could make you feel like the most accepted and wanted person in the world—like you were as glamorous as she was. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Erika said. “We need you.”

Maybe Erika wasn’t so bad.

Gert followed her to the far corner of the room. Hallie was already sitting in front of Erika’s enormous Macintosh. It had little color printouts taped to it. They were impressive designs.

“This is great!” Hallie said. “This is so great!”

“What?”

“Take a look.”

Gert peered closely at the screen.

TO WHOEVER KEEPS POSTING THE

OBNOXIOUS MESSAGES

I know your the same person because their all coming from the same server I checked it out. Even if you use diff. screen names you can’t fool me. Your unintelligent and unoriginal to. You obviously don’t like me and I’m not sure what I ever did to you, but tell me and maybe we can come to an understanding about it otherwise I’ll delete every one of your postis.—C.S.

“You have to help me,” Erika said to Gert. “We need to write some posts, but from different computers. You have a computer at home, right?”

“Yeah…” Gert said uneasily. She didn’t like where this was going.

“I need to create more screen names and send messages from different servers,” Erika said. “That way, it won’t be coming from just mine and the Internet café. It’ll really drive Challa nuts. I’m going to write that I’m some girl who had an affair with Ben on a business trip.”

Hallie’s mouth dropped open, and her gaze moved from the screen to Erika’s face. “You’ve mentioned that before,” she said. “But you said you’d never do it.”

Erika said, “This girl is living my life, and wasting Ben’s. She’s stupid and needs too much attention. She took my whole life. I should be having kids with him right now.”

Gert felt nervous. “What if you write that,” Gert said, “and she takes the site down?”

Erika was quiet for a second.

“Don’t you understand?” she said, her voice rising. “Don’t you get it? That would be the most wonderful thing in the world.”

Erika sounded ready to cry. Gert felt embarrassed for her, so she stared at the floor.

“If Challa took this stupid site down,” Erika said, “then I wouldn’t have to maniacally check it every day to see what Ben’s doing. I wouldn’t have to know everything that’s going on in his life. But I just have to. I have to figure out what he’s doing now, and whether I did the right thing. I just wish the site didn’t exist. But if it does, I have to check it.”

Gert considered suggesting that Erika pretend the site didn’t exist. But she knew people couldn’t trick themselves in matters of the heart. Hell, she’d certainly tried. She had dutifully repeated positive messages as her therapist had instructed. “If I get through today, I’ll have accomplished something.” “Marc would want me to be happy.” “There was nothing I could’ve done.” “Everything happens for a reason.” These were the lies she’d told herself.

“I know you guys think this is crazy,” Erika said. “But Ben and I honestly had something. I can’t just forget about it.”

As the three of them sat on the subway heading toward Gert’s condo, it occurred to Gert that she should have pretended her computer was broken. They would have believed her. There was a nasty computer virus going around called the “Kiss Virus.” It looked like an e-card that said, “KISS…” but when you clicked the link, it said, “…your hard drive goodbye!”

Gert told herself it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Erika would just blow off steam for a few minutes and be done with it. At least Erika and Hallie were helping Gert get out of her apartment. She had to cut them more slack. This was Erika’s strange method of getting closure.

Gert knew about closure. It was a favorite topic in the support group—those women who wished they’d said more to their husbands before they’d died. Gert had her own fantasies, in fact, about that day, all the ways she should have stopped the chain of events that led to Marc’s death.

“Did you tell Gert about your date?” Erika said to Hallie, pushing a newspaper away on the subway seat.

“Oh, it’s barely worth telling,” Hallie said. She turned to Gert. “This guy from work set me up with his friend the other night. He’s into seafood, so we went to a seafood place.”

“Sounds good…” Gert said.

“Well, it started off that way,” Hallie said, “but…two things. One, he wore a Tweety Bird shirt. It had an emblem of Tweety on the shirt where an alligator would be.”

“At least he’s different,” Gert offered.

“Yeah, but,” Hallie said, “he’s totally obsessed with Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers cartoons.”

“That’s like a secondary male canon thing,” Gert said. “A lot of guys are into Bugs Bunny cartoons. Remember Marc’s best friend, Craig? He had all the tapes.”

“I do remember Craig, and I know some guys are into Bugs Bunny,” Hallie said. “But would they wear Tweety Bird on a first date?”

“I guess not,” Gert admitted.

“I think the more I go out, the more easily I get irritated by guys who don’t make an effort,” Hallie said. “I spend so much energy worrying about impressing them, but they don’t even do the basics to look half-decent.”

“What was the second bad thing about him?” Gert asked.

“Oh. He kept saying things about us being on a first date, or pointing out that things were awkward, even when I didn’t feel that way,” Hallie said. “Like, our meals came, and the minute I put food in my mouth, he said, ‘So, have you ever gone camping?’ And I said, ‘No, I guess I was never really into that.’ And he was quiet for a second, and then he said, ‘Wow, this is awkward.’”

“There should be a rule,” Erika said, putting her finger in the air, “that if you actually point out that something is awkward on a date, you immediately get ejected from your chair.”

Gert was glad that she had felt comfortable with Marc, and then with Todd, right away.

“I guess I’ll go on one more date with him,” Hallie said. “Everyone deserves a second date.”

“Not everyone,” Erika said.

“I’m perfecting a top-secret innovative method to meet men, anyway,” Hallie said. “No more of these horrible blind dates. Both of you will think I’m a genius when you hear my idea.”

“You said something about this last week,” Erika said. “Tell me already.”

“I’ll tell you soon,” Hallie said. “I promise. I’m working on it. You’ll both love it.”

Gert didn’t know whether to look forward to it or dread it.

Erika was tapping away at the keys of the computer in Marc’s trophy room.

“My new screen name is Baltimora,” she announced. “It’s in honor of the group that sang that ‘Jungle Love’ song in the eighties, which was on the radio when the alarm went off this morning, so now it’s stuck in my head. And boy, this’ll drive Challa crazy.”

“I want to write some,” Hallie said. “You said I could write some.”

Gert walked over to her window and pulled down the shade.

“The two of us can argue with each other!” Erika said, cracking up. “We’ll both say that we’re flight attendants who gave oral sex to Ben on his business trip to Texas, and that he was the best customer we’ve ever had.”

“That’s mean,” Gert said, wondering why she was trying to give Erika the benefit of the doubt. “What if you were married to him and living your life, and some girl kept writing this stuff to you?”

Hallie and Erika got silent.

“Gertie,” Hallie said.

“Gert,” Erika said, “if I had married him and was as happy as this girl seems to be, I would not need so much freaking attention that I’d write a Web site about myself every day. She needs to appreciate what she has instead of rubbing our noses in her syrupy slop.”

Hallie and Erika switched off writing messages, and they laughed hysterically. At the end, the exchange said:

THIS SITE IS STUPID AND P.S. LEARN TO SPELL. BEN IS A LITTLE “TO” SMART FOR YOU.—Baltimora

Hey, leave them alone. The two of them are happy. Ben told me so when we did it in the bathroom on Continental flight 221 to Houston.—XSGIRRRL

WAS THAT TO “BUSH” INTERCONTINENTAL AIR PORT? GET IT—BaLT.

We’re lucky Ben has so many business trips. He showed me this site to tell me how annoying his wife is. Don’t get me mad, honey, or hack hack hack!—XSGIRRRL

“They could file a harassment complaint on you,” Gert said.

“It’s a public forum,” Erika said. “There’s no law against calling someone annoying on their Web site. Besides, the worst that can happen is that Challa feels as bad today as I do every day.”

Gert suddenly understood. Erika wanted to jar Challa a little, make her less smug. Deep inside, Gert couldn’t help but know what Challa’s life was like. When she’d had Marc she never thought about being alone, about how hard it could be. Now Gert saw women walking with their husbands or complaining about their boyfriends, and she wanted to shake them and say, “Do you realize what you have?”

“I’m going to go back to using the Internet cafés to send these next time, anyway,” Erika said. “They’re less traceable.”

Gert was still pretty concerned about what Erika might do next.

Chapter
4

I am definitely too old for this, Gert thought.

I am too old to have get-togethers with friends who sit around and make “boy lists” like something out of a Judy Blume book, and rate every guy we ever dated on a scale of one to ten. I’m too old to wake up every Sunday morning and look out my window at all the couples getting into their cars to drive to the suburbs to visit their in-laws while I’m going to stay home in my pajamas reading the newspaper.

“Hey, I know what we can do,” Hallie said on her couch, flipping through Cosmo. “Let’s take the Purity Test.”

“You guys gave me the Purity Test last week,” Erika said. “I got an F.”

Gert was on the far end of the couch, looking at the photos in Entertainment Weekly. Hallie’s wicker basket of magazines was always a good distraction.

Hallie laughed. “Let’s play truth-or-dare, then,” she said.

“As if there’s something you haven’t done,” Erika said, stretching out on the rug.

“Speak for yourself,” Hallie said. “I guess you want to go first.”

“Maybe I want to do a dare instead,” Erika said, pulling a low-fat Pop-Tart off the table.

“Well, we’ll just play ‘truth,’” Hallie said.

“You always pulled this in high school,” Erika sighed. “Okay. Give me a ‘truth.’”

“How many naked male members have you seen in your life?” Hallie said. “Not counting relatives.”

Gert couldn’t help but think of her own answer. It was a pretty low number. But she’d never really minded….

“Come on,” Hallie said. “How many Johnsons have you seen au naturel?”

Erika said, “Less than…ten. No, wait. Less than eleven.”

“Gert?”

“It’s Erika’s turn,” Gert said. “We don’t all have to go.”

“Everyone has to answer in ‘truth,’” Hallie said.

“According to rules, which Hallie just made up,” Erika said wryly, polishing off half of the Pop-Tart.

Gert thought about adding on a few but decided to go with honesty. “Less than…three.”

“You guys are hedging,” Hallie said, exasperated. “How are we going to learn each other’s secrets if we can’t be honest?”

“Well, you answer it,” Erika said. She shot Gert a smile. It felt nice to be liked by her.

“I’ve seen nine and a half,” Hallie said simply.

“Nine and a half?”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“No follow-up questions allowed,” Hallie said. “I answered mine. We have to move on now. Rules are rules.”

Heading home on the subway, Gert heard cars honking and an ambulance in the distance.

She thought of some “truth” questions she’d really like to ask Hallie and Erika.

Did you resent me while I was married? Are you worried because there’s a possibility with Todd? And about Todd: Am I supposed to feel okay when I see him this weekend? How have you dealt with being alone? How can you be happy if you’re not with someone you love? Hanging out, eating your favorite foods and trading “truths”—is this what passes for happiness when you’re single? If neither of you ever fell in love again, would you find a way to compensate with other hobbies and activities—grow a new limb?

Gert had thought about asking them directly. But they seemed to only want to play games and joke around. Everything was a joke to them. She didn’t want it to always be this way. Maybe if she got Hallie alone again they could really talk. It wouldn’t happen with Erika around.

When Gert picked up her mail, she wasn’t surprised to see mostly junk mail. Her personal mail had slowed to a trickle since the advent of e-mail. She still got magazines, since she hadn’t had the heart to cancel Marc’s two-year subscriptions. But today, there was something in a fancy beige envelope. It was partially hidden inside the curled Macy’s circular.

Gert pulled it out. It was addressed to “Ms. Gert Healy.”

She stood in the foyer, on the ridged black mat, and tore it open. She first had to step aside to let Mr. Schroeder and his schnauzer get by. The two of them looked alike.

Mr. and Mrs. Donald Barnett

Request the honor of your presence

At the marriage of their daughter

Jennifer Ann Barnett

To Michael Howell Healy

And then a date.

Marc’s youngest brother, Michael, was getting married.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.