CRITICAL PRAISE FOR LYNDA CURNYN’S DEBUT NOVEL, CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-GIRLFRIEND:

“First-time novelist Curnyn pens an easy, breezy first novel that’s part Sex and the City with more heart and part Bridget Jones with less booze.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A diverse cast of engaging, occasionally offbeat characters, the hilarious sayings attributed to them, and a fast-paced style facilitated by Emma’s pithy sound-bite ‘confessions’ add to the fun in a lively Manhattan-set story…”

—Library Journal

“Readers will eagerly turn the pages…”

—Booklist

“Fabulous fun. The perfect antidote for the break-up blues.”

—Sarah Mlynowski, author of Milkrun

“…absolutely hilarious secondary characters. They alone are worth the cover price.”

—Romantic Times

“Lynda Curnyn has written a novel featuring a heroine that most people will enjoy reading about and even sympathize with her intense angst. Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend is part comedy, but mostly a serious, delightful look at people at a painful point in their lives.”

—Bookbrowser.com

“Well written, with catchy dialogue and heartfelt sincerity.”

—Rendezvous

For Alexandra and Samantha

Dream big, little girls!

Engaging Men

Lynda Curnyn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thank-you to all who inspired and supported me during the writing of this book:

My family, especially my wise and beautiful mother, who always knows what to say, just when I need to hear it.

My wonderful editor, Joan Marlow Golan, for her insightful editorial expertise, her amazing support and most of all, her TLC.

All the talented people behind Red Dress Ink, especially Margaret Marbury, senior editor extraordinaire and dear friend. Laura Morris, Margie Miller, Tara Kelly and RDI’s own engaging man, Craig Swinwood.

All my wonderful friends, especially Linda Guidi, for always listening (even when I don’t…). Stacey Kamel, for bringing on the laughter. Julie Ann Coney, for that fab photo of me and the facts on adoptive search. Anne Canadeo, for the Tight-Lid Theory that inspired this book, and her sage writing advice. Jennifer Bernstein, Lisa Sklar and Farrin Jacobs, for keeping me from wigging out. Sarah Mlynowski, for always telling me how fabulous I am and for, umm, lending me her boyfriend (it’s not what you think…).

Elizabeth Irene, who told me just what it takes to make it as an actor in this town. Michael Scotto di Carlo (aka Motorcycle) and Katrina Lorne for the cool Web site. Pam Spengler-Jaffee, for sharing her PR savvy, as well as margaritas and the post-book Elton and Billy serenade.

And let us not forget all the ex-boyfriends (you know who you are…) who inadvertently inspired me to write this book, by sheer virtue of the fact that none of them ever actually got around to proposing.

Contents

1 Tight lids and other theories of male behavior.

2 I’m not really a wife, but I play one on TV.

3 Welcome to Brooklyn. Population: Married

4 I just called…to SCREAM…I LOVE YOU!

5 A rose by any other name…might still do the trick.

6 Love means never having to pack an overnight bag.

7 All a girl needs is a little courage—and a hefty credit line.

8 I have seen the future (and it’s gonna cost a bundle).

9 Caution: This jar is not a toy! Please keep out of reach of children.

10 A nose is a nose is a nose….

11 When life gives you lemons, screw the lemonade. You need a real cocktail.

12 Happiness might just be a warm gun.

13 Till death (at 30,000 feet) do us part.

14 I shoulda packed the ruby slippers….

15 I’m in a New York state of…mania.

16 And you thought it was just a common house plant.

17 I’ll take a carat and a half—hold the husband.

18 Love happens. (And there really is nothing you can do about it.)

19 The heart is a hearty muscle (Thank God).

Epilogue

1
Tight lids and other theories of male behavior.

It started with a message on my answering machine.

“Guess who’s getting married?” came a voice I knew all too well.

It was Josh. My ex-boyfriend. Turned someone else’s fiancé. Not that I’d ever wanted to marry Josh, who suffered from an aversion to dental floss. “Did prehistoric man floss?” he would argue. “Is prehistoric man still around?” I argued back. We lasted only six months, then I told him I couldn’t see myself at sixty-five, making sure he took his teeth out at bedtime every night. “Okay, okay. I’ll floss,” he’d replied. But it was too late. The romance was gone.

Now he was getting married. To someone he’d met not three months after we had broken up four years ago. And he wasn’t the first ex-boyfriend to go this route. Randy, the boyfriend before Josh, was whistling “The Wedding March” a mere six weeks after we had tearfully said our goodbyes. Then there was Vincent, my first love—he’d been married for nearly a decade. According to my mother—who lived within shouting distance of his mother in Marine Park, Brooklyn, and never failed to keep me updated—Vincent and his wife were already on their third kid.

One ex gets married, a girl can laugh it off. Two begins a nervous twitter. But three? Three?

A girl starts to take it personally. I mean, what was it about me that didn’t incite men to plunk down large sums of money in the name of eternal love?

“It’s the tight-lid dilemma,” my friend Michelle said when I expressed my despair at sending another man to the altar without me.

“Tight lid?” I asked, awaiting some pearl of wisdom that might turn my world upright again. After all, in the time it had taken me to get a four-year degree in business administration that I no longer made use of, Michelle, who’d grown up three blocks away from me in Marine Park, had gotten a husband, a house and a diamond the size of New Jersey.

“You know the scenario,” she continued. “You struggle for a good while trying to open a jar and the lid won’t budge. But sure enough, the next person you hand that jar to pops the lid off, no problem. I mean, you don’t really think Jennifer Aniston, cute haircut aside, would have landed Brad Pitt without the Gwyneth factor, do you? Then there’s me and Frankie, of course,” she continued, referring to her husband of seven years, whom she had snagged soon after his devastating breakup with Rosanna Cuzio, the prom queen of our high school.

I couldn’t deny the pattern, once Michelle had laid it out so neatly before me. Clearly I had been instrumental in warming Josh, Randy and Vincent up for the next girl to come along and slap with a wedding vow. Gosh, I should have at least been maid of honor for my efforts.

Instead, I was nothing but the ex-girlfriend who might or might not get invited to the wedding, depending on how secure the bride felt about her future husband.

Suddenly I looked at Kirk, my current boyfriend, with new eyes. We had been together a year and eight months, by far the record for me since my three-year stint with Randy. We had become quite a cozy little couple, Kirk and I. I even got party invitations addressed to both of us—that’s how serious everyone thought we were. The question was: Would Kirk be inviting me to his wedding someday or…?

“Kirk…sweetie,” I said, as we lay in bed together that night, a flickering blue screen before us and the prospect of sex lingering like an unasked question in the air.

“Uh-huh,” he said, not removing his gaze from the cop show that apparently had him enraptured.

“Your last girlfriend…Susan?”

“Yeah?” he said, glancing at me with trepidation. Clearly he saw in the making one of those “relationship talks” men dread.

“You guys went out a long time, right? What was it, two years?”

“Three and a half,” he said with a shudder that made me swallow with fear. Apparently I was heading for rough waters.

Still I plunged on. “And you guys never talked, um, about…marriage?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding me? That’s what broke us up. She gave me the old ultimatum—we get married or we’re through.” He snorted. “Needless to say, I chose door number two.”

Aha. Relief filled me and I snuggled closer to Kirk, allowing him to sink back into his vegetative state as the cops on TV slapped cuffs on some unsuspecting first offender.

If Susan was the lid loosener, that could mean only one thing: I could pop this guy wide open. Hell, I could be married within the year.

The next day, I met my best friend, Grace, for a celebratory lunch, which was always an event as Grace, with her high-powered career and high-maintenance boyfriend, barely had time to get together at all anymore. As a concession to her hectic lifestyle, we met at a restaurant two blocks from her office on E. 54th Street and Park Avenue. Of course, Grace didn’t know I was celebrating until I clinked my water glass into hers and said, “Congratulate me. I’m getting married.”

“What?” Grace said, her blue-gray eyes bulging in disbelief. Her gaze immediately fell to the ring finger of my left hand, which, naturally, was bare.

“Not now. But someday.”

She rolled her eyes, sniffed and said with her usual irony, “Congratulations.”

Leave it to Grace to laugh in the face of being thirty-three without a wedding band on her finger. She is the strongest, most independent person I know. Not only does she always manage to keep a killer boyfriend on hand, she has a killer job as a product manager for Roxanne Dubrow Cosmetics. Yes, that Roxanne Dubrow. The one you have to hike all the way to Saks Fifth Avenue for. Grace briefly dated my brother Sonny when we were in junior high, but we didn’t really bond until she saved my life on the playground of Marine Park Junior High. I was about to get my head slammed into the concrete by some giant bully of a girl named Nancy, who seemed determined to hurt me just because I was a good fifty pounds lighter than she was. Grace stepped in, tall and blond and strong, and told Nancy to take a hike. Everyone, even Nancy, was afraid of Grace. I was in awe of her. Even more so when she adopted me as her new best friend, despite the fact that I was in eighth grade and she in ninth. Her posse of ninth-grade girlfriends was not happy to have me tagging along. But Grace wouldn’t have it otherwise.

And here we were, still friends. The only two from the old neighborhood who had escaped unscathed, without marrying some thick-necked thug named Sal and popping out babies on an annual basis. Of course, Grace’s parents had dragged her away from the neighborhood to Long Island when she turned sixteen, hoping suburbia would save her from the cigarettes and boys and bad behavior to which she had taken and in which I couldn’t wait to indulge, myself. But we still spent our summers together. In fact, I felt a bit like a Fresh Air Fund kid, the way my parents shipped me off come June. Then Grace moved into the city right after college, and I followed a year later. She was the sister I’d never had, and my mother had even dubbed her an honorary member of our family.

“Don’t you ever worry, Grace? That you’ll wind up alone?” I asked now, searching her face for some sign of vulnerability.

She shrugged. “A woman in this city can have everything she wants. If she plays her cards right.”

Easy for Grace to say. Tall, voluptuous, with chin-length, tousled blond hair and perfectly sculpted features, she was beautiful. While I…I had always been “little Angie DiFranco”—and still was—five foot four with a head of wavy black hair that defied all styling products, and thighs that threatened to turn into my mother’s any day now. I sighed. It suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t marry Kirk, I didn’t know what would become of me.

“What about you and Drew?” I asked now, wondering if Grace had been contemplating her current beau as a future husband. “Do you ever think about…you know?”

“Of course,” Grace said. “Every girl thinks about it.”

I felt relieved. At least I wasn’t the only thirtysomething unmarried hysteric. And Grace and Drew had been dating barely a year—at least eight months less than Kirk and I.

“But it’s not everything,” she said with a shrug.

Grace was right, I realized the next day as I headed for work. Marriage wasn’t everything. I had so much going on right now, it was practically a nonissue. I was an actor, and at the moment a working actor, which was really something. Granted my steady gig was Rise and Shine, a children’s exercise program on cable access, but it was good experience in front of a camera, at least according to an agent I had spoken to, who refused to take me on until I had experience outside of the numerous off-off Broadway shows I’d done.

But as I slid into the yellow leotard and baby-blue tights that were my lot as the show’s co-host, I wondered, for about the hundredth time, what, exactly, my résumé would say about me, now that I had spent six months leaping and stretching with a group of six-year-olds.

“Hey, Colin,” I called out to my co-host once I entered the studio, cup of coffee firmly in grasp. One downside of this job was that it meant getting up at five in the morning to make the show’s six o’clock taping. Apparently, it was the only time the station had allotted studio space for the program, which had a solid, albeit small, audience of upper-middle-class parents and the children they hoped to mold, literally.

Colin looked up from the book he was reading, startled, before he broke out in his usual smile. Colin was the only person I knew who could smile at six in the morning. It was his nature to be cheerful, which was why he was such a fabulous host for Rise and Shine. The kids loved him, and in the six months that I had gotten to know him, I loved him, too. He was warm, generous, loving, good with children. Not to mention gorgeous, with softly chiseled features, blue eyes surrounded by thick lashes and short dark hair always cut in the most up-to-date style. Everything a woman could want in a prospective husband. In fact, I might have dated him until he married someone else—if he weren’t gay, that is.

“Whatcha reading?” I said, bending over to see the title of his book.

“Oh, this.” He smiled, looking somewhat embarrassed as he held up a well-thumbed volume of The Challenges of Child-Rearing. “Figured it might help, you know. With the show.”

I laughed at this. “Colin, we just have to keep them fit, not raise them.”

He chuckled. “I know, I know. But you’ve seen how rambunctious they can get.”

I smiled. Colin really took this job on Rise and Shine very seriously.

“You ready?” he said now.

I sighed. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

It still amazed me that I had even landed this gig—up until my audition, I hadn’t exercised a day in my life. Yet, there I was, every weekday morning, cheerfully urging a group of ten sleepy-eyed kids to stretch, jump, run and tone. Lucky for me, my baby-blue tights were thick enough to hide cellulite.

“Positions, everyone,” Rena Jones, our producer, called out with a glare in Colin’s and my direction. Well, mostly my direction. She adored Colin. And tolerated me. Mostly because she was a stickler for timeliness, while I…wasn’t.

Once Colin and I had positioned ourselves in front of the cameras, I put on my required happy face and chimed in with Colin as we gave a three-minute intro designed to inspire a demographic with probably the lowest body-fat ratio of any age group to jump, leap and stretch, in the name of good health. “Good health is all about habits,” Rena would say, whenever anyone—mostly me—alluded to the fact that most six-year-olds weren’t in need of cardiovascular training.

Still, I took a certain satisfaction in the routine, assured that once the music—a strange mixture of circus rhythms and a singer who sounded like the love child of Barney the Dinosaur and Britney Spears—began, my feet would move into the steps of the opening warm-up dance right along with Colin’s. That when we progressed into the series of stretches, squats and leg lifts, my body was not only limber enough to make all the maneuvers, but could jog, jump and shimmer across the floor while I shouted out inspiring words to the ten little tumblers before us. Children, I might add, clearly struggling to keep up under the eye of their parents, who sat on the sidelines, their faces a mixture of parental pride and paralyzing anxiety that their kid would stumble, fall and be torn too early from the six-week segment they had lobbied long and hard to get said child on.

There was also the reassurance that when the clock against the back wall hit the thirty-minute mark, I would be able to heave a silent sigh of relief (which I disguised as a healthy exhale for the sake of my tiny followers), and bow down into a final stretch before leading the happy munchkins in the applause that ended the show.

“Hanging out with Kirk tonight?” Colin asked as we headed to the small dressing area at the back of the studio. I could tell by the way he always asked that question lately that he took a certain satisfaction in the progress of my relationship. His breakup with Tom two months earlier had been hard—Colin was clearly a one-man man—but he evidently took comfort in the fact that there were others in the world out there who were living monogamously-ever-after.

“Of course,” I replied, with all the confidence a girlfriend should have at the stage Kirk and I were at in our relationship.

Later that very night, however, I realized that Kirk was at a different stage.

I was spending the evening at his place, where I spent most nights during the week. Not only because he lived on E. 27th and Third, which was somewhat closer to the studio on W. 54th than my East Village apartment was, but because we liked to spend our every waking moment together—and every sleeping moment, which was often the case, as Kirk had a tendency to nod off early.

Besides, Kirk’s doorman-building one-bedroom was a welcome respite from the cluttered two-bedroom walk-up I shared with Justin, my roommate and other best friend beside Grace. Kirk’s place was an oasis of order, his closet filled with rows of well-pressed button-downs and movie posters lining the walls with precision (yes, we both loved movies, though Kirk had an unsettling predilection for horror flicks while I liked the classics and anything with Mel Gibson). Even his medicine cabinet was a sight to behold, I thought as I scrubbed my teeth before bed that night. The toothpaste was curled up neatly next to a shiny cup containing his brush; his shaving kit (a gift from the ex that I once tried to replace with a packet of Gillettes, but to no avail) nestled sweetly next to a bottle of Chanel for men (from me, thank you very much, which he only spritzed himself with under serious duress). I also kept an antihistamine there—I had a tendency toward congestion at the slightest provocation: pollen, dust mites, mold. With a contented sigh I spit my mouthful of paste—and water—into the shiny white sink, carefully rinsing out the suds to return it to its porcelain perfection, before I returned to the bedroom, where Kirk sprawled on the bed, laptop in hand, studying the screen intently.

“Time to play,” I said, bounding onto the bed in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt (pirated from his bottom left drawer).

“Just give me a minute, sweetie,” he said, glancing up from the screen briefly to flash me a small smile of acknowledgment.

I settled in beside him, sparing a glance at the screen, which was covered in a series of incomprehensible codes, and picked up the book I kept on Kirk’s bedside table, Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and Its Double. Turning to page five, the precise place I had been the last six times I had attempted to immerse myself, I started to read. Well, not exactly read,—my gaze was too busy roaming over to Kirk’s profile.

He had the most beautiful brow line I had ever seen. Almost jet-black against creamy skin and normally smooth, though right now it was furrowed over his gray eyes as they studied the screen, almost without blinking. One of the things I had admired from the start about Kirk was his ability to concentrate against any odds. I didn’t really understand it, frankly, since I inevitably threw away any thoughts of intelligent life the minute I found myself faced with the prospect of sex. In fact, it was Kirk’s seeming lack of awareness of the opposite sex that, oddly enough, had tantalized me from the first.

We met at my “day job,” or second shift, at Lee and Laurie Catalog, where I was a part-time customer service rep to make up for all the money I didn’t get paid as an actor. At the time, Kirk had been working for Lanix, which happened to be the software that Lee and Laurie thrived on, and had come to update our systems. From the moment I saw him, studiously occupied at one of the many terminals that littered the landscape of Lee and Laurie, I was intrigued. Not only was he good-looking, with dark brown hair, intelligent gray eyes, full lips and a strong jaw, he was smart. So smart, in fact, he didn’t seem to notice anyone or anything except the scramble of codes he typed into each terminal as he bounded from cubicle to cubicle. Which was probably why I succumbed to him so quickly, at least according to Grace, whom I called repeatedly to report to on how my every effort at flirtation fell completely flat. Still, I couldn’t stop conjuring up reasons to lure Kirk to my work-station—a lazy mouse, a jammed keyboard (sesame seeds from lunch, but at least I got a smile out of him) and a surprising lack of understanding of the new software updates he’d just installed. And as he patiently wiggled my mouse, dusted my keyboard and explained the new procedures yet again, I made goofy-but-good-natured jokes, standing close enough to “accidentally” brush his arm (delightfully solid) or smile winningly up at his smooth and seemingly unruffled features.

“I’m obsessed with him,” I told Grace during the second week of failed innuendos.

“It’s the challenge,” she replied. “You can’t resist it.”

She was right, I realized later, when I finally gave in to her advice to “just ask him out, for chrissakes,” and he, to my surprise, said yes. But I was hooked good from date one. Kirk was so different from all the men who had come before. For one thing, he made enough money to actually pay for dinner. And I couldn’t help but admire his ambition when he told me his dreams of running his own software company…or his well-toned physique, when things got to that level between us, honed from four times a week at the gym.

Now, as the warmth of that lean, muscled body seeped into my consciousness, I snuggled closer, eyes intent on my book, until I felt his weight shift as he closed the computer shut and reached over to rest it on the night table.

Closing the book with a joyful snap, I thrilled to the feeling of triumph that winged through me, as it never failed to do, even almost two years into the relationship. Call me competitive, call me a nymphomaniac, I don’t give a damn—there was nothing, to me, like the sight of Kirk smiling down at me, a predatory gleam in his eye.

“Come here, you,” he said in a husky voice, as if I were the one who’d been resisting all this time.

Without hesitation, I straddled him, reveling in the discovery that he had gone from software to hardware in seconds flat, even though you could barely tell I was female beneath the roomy T-shirt I was wearing. Still, his big hands unerringly worked their way under my tee, found the somewhat meager mounds there and stroked.

I sighed, knowing what was coming. Because if there was one thing Kirk and I had down pat by now, it was sex. Like the scientist that he was, he had experimented endlessly on me to discover just what buttons to push to get me where I wanted to go. And it was never boring, despite this precision on his part, I thought, as he rolled me beneath him, did away with both of our boxers, then rested back on his heels momentarily to cover himself in latex procured from its ever-ready place in the nightstand.

I would have hated myself for being such putty in his hands, if it weren’t for the heat that inevitably overcame me as he slid inside me. My only complaint might have been that Kirk wasn’t much of a kisser during sex. In fact, he rarely brought his mouth to mine once we were joined. But that was okay, I thought, gazing up at his flushed features, his dark lashes against his cheeks, his full mouth. The view was pretty damn good from here.

Rather than revel in the view as I usually did, I closed my eyes. And just as I was settling into the rhythm, a sudden—and unexpected—image filled my mind of Kirk peeling away my clothes, lifting me into his arms and depositing me on a canopied bed I had never seen before in my life. And when, in my mind’s eye, I turned to look at the heap of cloth that had pooled at my feet as Kirk freed the last button on my— T-shirt?—I saw, to my horrified surprise, swaths and swaths of white silk. What looked to be, in my heated imagination a wedding gown?

Oh, God, I thought, as my body contracted—almost unwillingly, for it seemed way too soon—and I felt the biggest climax of my life shudder through me. My eyes flew open as the foreign sound of an earth-shattering moan left my mouth. I might even have thought it was Kirk who had cried out so freely because, unlike me, he made no bones about noisily expressing his pleasure, if I hadn’t found myself looking straight into his surprised gaze. Moments later, I felt and heard his own satisfied shudder as his body went lax on mine.

“Wow,” he said, when he lifted his head and met my gaze once more. “That was something,” he continued, a smile lighting his features as he bent to graze my surprised mouth with a kiss.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly, studying his expression. It was something, I thought, hope beating in my breast. But did it mean something? I wondered, remembering the image of that dress in all its surprising detail. Well, clearly it did mean something, as sex between Kirk and me had always been a revelation. But this felt like a revelation of a very different kind. For me, at least, I thought, gazing into his eyes and seeking out the foreign emotions that I felt racking my own heart and mind.

I did see something shining in Kirk’s eyes, but what it was had yet to be determined. Until I heard his next words.

“I never felt you so…strongly. That must have been a big O, huh?” he said with a laugh, then leaned back with a look that told me exactly what he was feeling. Pride. The garden-variety male smugness over a sexual performance well done.

As if to punctuate my realization, he went into scientist mode once more. “What do you think it was? I mean, it was the fucking missionary position, for chrissakes. Nothing special there.” He pulled his hand away from my waist, where it had been gently massaging me, and thumped the bed. “Maybe it was this new mattress? God, had I known, I would have tipped that salesman at Sleepy’s.”

Oh brother.

I might have been thoroughly disgusted at this point, if Kirk hadn’t rolled onto his back, bringing me with him, and pulled me into that solid body of his. Maybe it was the feel of his muscled chest beneath me. Or the tenderness in his hands as they slid over my back. Maybe I just wanted to believe that, though Kirk was a guy and thus given to fits of euphoria over the technicalities of sex, he did feel something more—something he couldn’t possibly express—that made me relent, pressing my body into his in an attempt to hold on to whatever that feeling was. At least until reality set in. And it soon did.

Glancing at the clock, Kirk sat up, suddenly disentangling himself from my limbs. “Is it ten already? I gotta pack.”

“Pack?” I asked, cool air crawling over me as he leaped from the bed, pulled on a pair of boxers and headed for the closet.

“Damn, did I forget to tell you?” He turned to look at me, his expression baffled, as if he were mentally going over one of his meticulous to-do lists and realizing he’d forgotten one of the most important items on it: me.

Assuming he was going away to meet a client, I prepared to launch into a speech about how nice it would be to know these things in advance. Then I heard his next words.

“I’m going home this weekend.”

That stopped me short. Kirk was going home to Newton, Massachusetts. To visit his parents. Parents, I might add, I had yet to lay eyes on myself.

“When did you decide this?” I asked, a vague panic beginning to invade my rattled senses.

“Mmm…last week? Anyway, I just booked the ticket this morning. I was going to tell you….”

His voice faded away as my mind skittered over the facts: Kirk was going home for one of his semiannual trips, and he hadn’t invited me. Again. The memory of Josh’s taunting voice on my answering machine ran through my frazzled brain. While I was orgasming over wedding dresses, Kirk was planning a pilgrimage to the parental abode without me. Clearly I was not the woman who was about to pull the lid off this thing with Kirk. In fact, given that I was oh-for-three when you tallied up the number of times Kirk had gone home in the past year and a half and not invited me, it might even seem like his lid was still airtight.

Since I didn’t know how to broach the subject of a meet-the-parents visit, I addressed the more immediate problem: “I wish you’d told me sooner…” So I might have had a chance to rally for position of serious girlfriend, I thought but didn’t say.

“I’m sorry, Noodles,” he replied, contrite. “You know how busy I’ve been with this new client. Did I tell you that I’m designing a program for Norwood Investments? They have offices all over the country. If I land Norwood, I could have work lined up for the next few years….”

His words silenced me for the moment. Maybe it was the injection of the nickname he had given me during the early days of our relationship, when I had ventured to cook him pasta, which, all-American boy that he is, he referred to as noodles and sauce. After I had teasingly told him that my Italian mother would toss him out on his ear if he ever referred to her pasta as “noodles,” he had affectionately given me the name instead. But his warm little endearment wasn’t the only thing that shut me up. There was also his subtle reminder that he was a software designer on the rise. That the program he had created six months earlier to automate office space was the only thing on his mind, now that prestigious financial companies like Norwood Investments had taken notice. In the face of all this ambition, I somehow felt powerless to express my desire to be considered parent-worthy in Kirk’s mind.

“Hey, Noodles?” Kirk said now, pulling a pair of jeans over his boxers and donning a T-shirt. “I’m gonna run down to Duane Reade and pick up a few things for my trip. Need anything?”

Yeah, I thought: my head examined. “Um, no, I’m all right,” I replied cautiously.

“Okay, I’ll be back in fifteen, then.” He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the forehead before making his way out the front door.

The minute I heard the door slam behind him, I picked up the phone. I needed another perspective. Specifically: an ex-boyfriend’s perspective. And since pride prevented me from calling back the newly engaged Josh just yet, I dialed up Randy, whose number I still had safely tucked in my memory banks. After all, not marrying the men in your life did have its advantages. I had managed to turn at least two of my ex-boyfriends into friends.

“I didn’t think you were into all that,” Randy said, after we’d exchanged greetings and I’d inquired about why the marriage issue had never come up for us.

“Into all what?” I asked.

“You know, marriage, kids. Hey, did I tell you Cheryl and I are working on our first?”

“That’s wonderful,” I said in a daze. “What exactly do you mean I’m not into marriage, kids?”

Randy chuckled. “C’mon, Ange, you know as well as I do that your career came first. You always wanted to be the big movie star.”

“Actor. I am an actor.”

“Whatever.”

When I hung up a short while later, I began to wonder if maybe I was projecting the wrong image. True, I had long been harboring the dream of making a career of the acting talent I had been lavishly praised for all through high school and college. And though I hadn’t exactly landed my dream role in the four years since I had left a steady job in sales to pursue acting, Rise and Shine counted for something, didn’t it?

Suddenly I had to start getting realistic, if I hoped to ever get a grip on this particular lid. I was thirty-one years old. I wasn’t getting any younger, as my mother lost no opportunity of reminding me. I needed to start looking like a wife.

2
I’m not really a wife, but I play one on TV.

When I arrived home after the show the next morning and discovered Justin trying to tug a sofa through the narrow entrance foyer of our apartment, I realized that even if I didn’t look like a wife, I was quite capable of sounding like one. Big time.

“What on earth are you doing?” I cried, though I knew exactly what he was up to. Collecting other people’s castoffs. For as lovable as Justin was, he had the single worst trait you could have in a roommate: He was a pack rat.

“Hey,” he said, glancing up at me from where he stood, bent over his latest find: a turquoise-green sofa that had clearly seen better days. “Can you believe someone left this for garbage?”

Uh, yeah, I thought, studying the yellow floral trim and sunken seat cushions with renewed horror.

“It was right out front, too.”

I felt a groan rising up. A threadbare couch, circa 1975, right in front of the building. Clearly there was no way Justin could have resisted. “Justin, we already have two couches.” One of which he had promised to get rid of after he dragged home his last couch acquisition. I realized once again why inheriting your Aunt Eleanor’s spacious, rent-stabilized two-bedroom could be a curse, at least in Justin’s case. In addition to the assorted furnishings Aunt Eleanor had left behind for her favorite nephew, Justin had acquired, among other things, four television sets, three VCRs, six file cabinets and a Weber outdoor grill that I assumed he was saving for some suppressed suburban dreamhouse with a garage big enough to store Yankee Stadium, should any future mayor carry out Rudy Giuliani’s threat to tear down the current home of the Bronx Bombers. For surely if that day ever did come, Justin would feel compelled to save some part of it. In his warped little mind, Justin didn’t think he was collecting junk so much as rescuing it.

“Ange, you think you could give me a hand with this?” he said.

I sighed, realizing I would have to give in for the moment, trapped as I was in the hallway until my roommate’s monstrous new acquisition was moved.

“How did you get this up here anyway?” I asked. Though Justin was well muscled for a lanky guy, I somehow couldn’t picture him maneuvering a three-hundred-pound sofa up the two long flights to our apartment.

“David in three-B gave me a hand. And he said he had some old lamps if we were interested—”

Ack! “Justin, honey, we need to talk….” I began gently, trying to not completely douse the delighted gleam in his eyes. But just as I was about to launch into a speech about the dangers of recycling, the phone rang.

“Can you…?” I asked, gesturing toward the couch that stood between me and the rest of the apartment.

I slumped against the doorway as Justin grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” he sang into the phone, in his usual chipper voice. “Hey, Mrs. Di, how are you?”

My mother. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and waited while Justin practiced his usual charm on her. I sometimes think she called to talk to him, judging by the giddiness that was ever present in her voice whenever Justin finally handed over the phone. That was just Justin’s way, I supposed. Even I had been charmed by him from the moment we had met in an improv class four years earlier. At the time, we were both just starting out in acting, Justin having given up a career behind the camera when the feature-length film he’d directed won a lot of buzz on the festival circuit and a prestigious award but ultimately no distributor. He claimed that he wanted to expand his horizons now that he had realized just how hard it was to get a movie out there. I wondered at that, since it seemed to me that it was just as hard to get yourself out there as an actor. But Justin seemed happy enough to take a union job as a grip for a production company based out of Long Island City, which gave him the kind of flexibility he needed to pursue acting.

Our improv teacher had paired us together, me being the only student without a partner when Justin straggled in, even later to class than I had been. I was a bit scared of working with Justin, who, with his dark blond hair, green eyes and tall good looks, was just the kind of babe I avoided. After all, a good-looking man—and an actor to boot—was bound to be cocky. So you can just imagine how I felt when the instructor led us in our first theater game, which required me to stand with my back to Justin and allow myself to fall straight back into his arms. “To build trust,” the instructor had explained. And build trust it did. From the moment I felt Justin’s firm grip beneath me after those first spine-tingling moments in midair, I knew instinctively he would always be there for me. In the years that followed, he had been. Like when my old roommate threw me out of our apartment two years ago to make room for her new live-in boyfriend. Justin had opened his two-bedroom to me without batting an eye, though my mother had batted hers a bit about my having a male roommate. She got over that right after I dragged Justin home for dinner and he easily won her over. Justin and I have been living together ever since.

“This Sunday?” I heard Justin say now, “Oh, Mrs. Di, you’re torturing me. You know I’d never turn down your manicotti, but Lauren’s coming to town.”

Lauren was Justin’s girlfriend, of the past three years, though their cumulative time spent together was probably more like three months. Lauren was a stage actress who always found herself in some leading role or another, but, somehow, never in New York. Currently she was doing Ibsen in, of all places, South Florida.

“Yep, gotta do the girlfriend thing this weekend,” Justin continued with a chuckle. “But Angela’s not doing anything, as far as I know. Hang on a second, sweetie, I’ll let you talk to her. You take care, Mrs. Di,” he finished cheerfully, handing me the receiver now that he’d managed to sew up my Sunday plans.

“Hi, Ma,” I said, sliding awkwardly from the arm of the sofa onto the seat cushion and sending a poof of dust into the air.

“Angela!” my mother shouted in my ear, as if surprised to hear my voice. I honestly believe she thought it was a miracle I wasn’t gunned down on a daily basis, living as I did off of Avenue A. The only thing Ma knew about Alphabet City was the bloody battles featured in the movie of the same name, which my brother Sonny had deemed it necessary to show her, just days after I had moved in with Justin.

“What’s up, Ma? How’s Nonnie?” Nonnie is my grandmother, who lives on the lower level of my mother’s house in Brooklyn, which is as good as living with my mother, judging by the amount of time she spends in my mother’s kitchen.

“Nonnie’s fine. In fact, she’s looking forward to seeing you this Sunday for dinner. Sonny and Vanessa are going to be there!” my mother informed me, as if my arrogant brother Sonny and his obscenely pregnant wife were some kind of enticement.

I gave a silent inner groan. Once Ma got it in her head that her family was coming together for Sunday dinner, there was no excuse, short of emergency brain surgery, that could get me out of going. “Family comes first,” she was fond of saying to me and my brothers. And I knew she was right. Only it made it difficult sometimes to compete in New York City, where it often seemed as if no one had parents at all.

“You’re bringing Kirk, right?”

“Um, he’s going out of town for the weekend,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?”

I could tell by the impressed tone of her voice that she assumed it was on business. And since Kirk did make semifrequent trips to see clients, I decided not to burst her bubble just yet. After all, Kirk had met my family before. Hell, he was practically an honorary member. The creep.

“Listen, Ma, I gotta go. Justin brought home this…couch,” I said, glancing down at the worn fabric once more, “and we need to move it out of the hall.”

“A couch? I thought you just got a couch.”

“We did. Justin is starting a collection.”

She laughed, as if anything Justin did was perfectly delightful. And as I clicked off the phone and glanced over at the cradle across the room, which there was no way in hell I could reach with this monstrosity in the way, I decided to summon my perfectly delightful roommate, who had since disappeared into his bedroom, probably to watch the Yankees game.

“JUSTIN!” I bellowed loud enough for the whole floor to hear.

“What’s up?” he said, popping his head out of the bedroom, a puzzled frown on his face. As if I were disturbing him.

“What do you mean, what’s up?” I said, slapping my hand on the couch and sending another load of dust into the air.

“Sheesh, I didn’t realize that couch was so dirty,” he said to my chorus of sneezes.

“Apparently there are a lot of things you don’t realize,” I said in frustration. “Like that we already have two couches. Like that I have to schlep out to Brooklyn Sunday night and still be up at five on Monday—”

“But you never go to bed any earlier than midnight. Even when you’re home.”

“That’s not the point!” I shouted.

Startled, Justin simply stared at me. “What is the point, then?”

“The point is…the point is…” My throat seized, and suddenly I burst out with, “Kirk is going to see his family this weekend.”

“So why didn’t you tell your mother that you’re going with him?”

“Because I’m not going with him.”

“Oh,” he replied, and I could tell by his confused expression that he still wasn’t getting it.

“He didn’t ask me to go.”

“Oh,” he said, his tone implying that it all made sense to him now.

“Shouldn’t he have asked me to go?” I asked, clutching the phone receiver in my lap.

Justin seemed to consider this for a moment. “Did you want to go?”

I sighed. “That’s not the point.” Maybe men were thicker than I realized. “The point is, we have been dating almost two years and I have yet to meet his parents, despite the fact that he has been to my mother’s house in Brooklyn more times than I can count.”

“Brooklyn is a lot closer than—where’s he from again? Brookline?”

I sighed. “Newton. But the point is, he doesn’t take me seriously. Not seriously enough to introduce me to his parents. Or to…to marry me.”

Justin visibly blanched at this. “Marry you?” he said, as if the word caused a bitter taste in his mouth. What is it with men and the M word anyway?

“Yes, marry me,” I replied. “Why is it so hard to believe that Kirk would want to marry me? After all, I’ve been sleeping with him, eating with him, sharing some of my most intimate thoughts with him, for a year and eight months. Don’t you think it’s time we made some kind of commitment?”

“We eat and sleep together,” Justin said, a smile tugging at his lips, “and we’re not getting married.” Then he paused, glancing over at me with a glint of amusement in his eye. “Are we?”

“Forget it,” I said, realizing that as lovable as Justin was, he would never understand. He was, after all, a guy. And I knew about guys. I had grown up in a family full of them. “Let’s just find a place for this couch,” I said, wondering where we were going to put it until I convinced Justin of its utter worthlessness. Then I thought of Kirk’s clutter-free one-bedroom and realized there were other reasons to get married besides love. Like real estate.

I decided to take my problem to the Committee. The Committee, so named because of their unfailing ability to have an opinion about everything and everyone, consisted of the three women who filled out the other three corners of the office cubicle I shared four times a week, answering the demands of the discerning customers who shopped the Lee and Laurie, a catalog company claiming to be the purveyor of effortlessly casual style. Though I was grateful to Michelle for hooking me up with the job when I decided to give up my nine-to-five gig as a sales rep in the garment district for the actor’s life, I had learned in my short career at Lee and Laurie that there is nothing casual—to me, anyway—about paying seventy-five dollars for a T-shirt designed to look unassuming enough to, say, take out the garbage in. Still, it was a job that suited my actor’s lifestyle, with convenient three-to-ten-o’clock shifts and, believe it or not, health insurance. Lots of it. It was the just the kind of thing a girl with dreams and chronic postnasal drip craves.

It was also the mecca for the wife, judging by the number of Comfortably Marrieds who flocked to Lee and Laurie’s employ, hoping to earn some extra income once their kids were old enough to become latch-key.

Hence my decision to go to the Committee, which was composed of Michelle Delgrosso, who seemingly only worked at Lee and Laurie to be able to indulge herself in the expensive lip gloss and overpriced trims designed to keep her dark, layered shoulder-length hair smooth, shiny and enviable; Roberta Simmons, a forty-something married mother of two perfect children, and Doreen Sikorsky, who was a bit of a wild card, with an alleged divorce in her past and enough conspiracy theories to make me wary of most of the things she said.

“Hey,” I said in greeting as I approached our four-seater cubicle, which was currently occupied only by Michelle and Doreen. And since Doreen was on a call, I was glad to have Michelle’s ear. After all, Michelle was the epitome of everything my mother deemed good in this world. Brooklyn born. Married at twenty-three years old. And the owner of a three-bedroom house in Marine Park.

“Where’s Roberta?” I asked, realizing I might need a better balance of opinion. Roberta’s life was a little closer to what I aspired to, if only because she lived in Manhattan.

“She’s in the can, as usual,” Michelle said with a small smile. “I swear I don’t know what that woman eats.”

“We can’t all be bulimic, Michelle,” Doreen said, having finished her call just in time to tune in to the conversation. “Hey, DiFranco, how’s it hanging?”

I sighed. These were the kind of people you worked with when you accepted $15.50 an hour as your starting salary. Maybe I should just keep my dilemma to myself….

But then Roberta showed up, looking like her usual sane and steadying self. Maybe it was the short haircut—women with short hair always seemed smart and responsible—that framed her soft, elfin features and wide blue eyes. Or maybe it was the expensive camel trousers and well-cut black tee, compliments of the employee discount Lee and Laurie gave its devoted staff. “Hey, Angie,” she said, sitting herself down and putting her headset back on.

“Hey, Roberta,” I said, adjusting my own headset over my ears. But just as I was about to launch into my dilemma, the familiar long beep sounded in my ear, indicating that my first phone call was coming over the line. Suppressing a sigh, I launched into the introductory script that had been drilled into us during training, “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy. This is Angela. How can I help you today?”

Fortunately, I had a quick and easy call from a woman who thought the new boat-neck tee looked so clean and comfortable on the blond goddess who modeled it on page 74 that she deemed it necessary to order it in every color. Once I had inputted all the information into my computer, thanked her for her order and hit the call end button on my phone set, I swiveled around to face my cube-mates once more.

“So listen to this,” I said, as Roberta and Michelle fixed their gazes on me and Doreen rushed her customer off the phone.

“Kirk is going home to see his parents this weekend,” I continued, studying the expressions of all three women expectantly, “without me.”

“Have you ever met his parents before?” Michelle asked.

“No,” I replied, noting that Roberta’s brow had furrowed at my response.

“Break up with him,” Doreen said succinctly. I glanced toward Roberta frantically, but she had already launched into a call.

“Don’t listen to her,” Michelle said, waving a hand in Doreen’s direction dismissively before focusing her dark brown eyes on me. “Let me ask you something, Angie. How long have you two been together?”

“A year and eight months.”

“That long, huh? Hmm…” Michelle’s well-penciled eyes grew pensive and her glossy lips pursed.

“You don’t want to marry this guy. Or any guy, for that matter, trust me on this,” Doreen chimed in again. I glanced once again over at Roberta, but she was still on her phone call and would be for some time, judging by the way she was typing furiously into her keyboard. “A man like that will never give you anything you need,” Doreen continued.

“Well, that all depends on what Angie wants,” Michelle said, her face brightening as she looked at me hopefully. “What do you want from him, Angie?”

For some reason, her question filled me with a flutter of confusion. What did I want from Kirk? Looking into her face, I saw all the hopes and dreams the Comfortably Marrieds of the world felt for the Anxiously Single. Then I remembered that wedding gown—and my amazing climax. Clearly, marriage was something I had been craving. And why wouldn’t I want it? I loved the idea of coming home to someone night after night, someone I knew would be there for me during the rough patches. I wanted to share my life with a man, not just some two-to-four-year interval we would later laugh about over drinks, as I often found myself doing with Josh and even Randy.

And as my eyes roamed over Michelle’s well-groomed coif and expensive jeans, I realized I wanted something else: a dual income. Could you blame me? Living in New York City was no cakewalk on the measly salary I gleaned from a part-time job and my illustrious role at Rise and Shine. This is not to say I didn’t love Kirk. I did. All the more reason for us to combine incomes, phone bills and, even more important, rent, I thought, remembering the sofa-laden flat I shared with Justin.

“I want to marry him, of course,” I said, as if the answer were self-evident.

And to Michelle, who had, from age eighteen, plotted and planned her wedding to Frankie Delgrosso, co-owner (with his dad, course) of Kings County Cadillac in Brooklyn, this was not only self-evident but cause for celebration. “Angela is getting married!” she practically shouted before moving seamlessly into “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy….”

“Married?” Roberta said, now done with her call and swiveling to confront me. “To Kirk?”

“Of course to Kirk!” I replied with a laugh. “Who else?” Beep. “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy. This is Angela. How may I help you today?”

Turning away from Roberta’s somewhat confused expression, I attempted to focus on the customer’s question, which had to do with sizing on the slim-cut trousers we’d just debuted in our fall collection. But as I tried to guide the poor woman toward pants that would accommodate the somewhat peculiar proportions she described, I couldn’t help but wonder what had struck Roberta as so odd about the notion of Kirk and me getting married. Frustrated after a solid four minutes of flipping through catalog pages while the customer rejected my every recommendation, I barked somewhat irritably into the phone, “Have you ever considered something with an adjustable waist?” The woman made some equally irritated reply and huffed off the phone. With a quick prayer that no one in the quality assurance department was monitoring that call, I turned to Roberta once more.

“What’s wrong with Kirk?” I asked, studying Roberta’s expression. After all, she had gotten to know Kirk somewhat during his brief time servicing Lee and Laurie. She had witnessed the flirtation between us, had seen the first fluttering of romance as we began dating, watched as we eased into coupledom. If she had an issue, I needed to know.

“Nothing’s wrong with Kirk,” she said. “In fact, I like Kirk very much.”

“So?”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t think you two were moving in that direction.”

“That’s just the problem,” I said. “Kirk isn’t moving in that direction.”

“Some men need a little nudge,” Michelle said, turning to face us once more. “A little lid loosening,” she continued, reminding me of her tight-lid theory. “You know, Frankie wasn’t even thinking marriage when I started leading him into jewelry stores to look at rings. I think he had his credit card out before he even knew what hit him,” she added with a gleeful little giggle.

“Oh, brother,” Doreen said, with a roll of the eyes.

“What’s got you moving in that direction?” Roberta asked now.

Her question filled my face with heat. I couldn’t even confess my wedding-fantasy orgasm to Grace, much less to these women. “I’m thirty-one years old—shouldn’t I at least be thinking about it?”

“Ah,” Roberta said with a knowing smile. “It’s the old biological clock, isn’t it? I guess that makes sense. When I turned thirty, all I could think about was having my first child.”

Oh, God. Who said anything about kids? I mean, they’re cute and all, but one thing at a time…. “It’s not that, really. I just want to be taken seriously,” I said, realizing that Roberta wasn’t listening as she launched into a story she’d already told us countless times, about her struggle to potty-train her daughter, who had just now turned thirteen and I’m sure wouldn’t appreciate the fact that her mother still dwelled on this part of her history. Fortunately, another call came in just before Roberta got into the particulars. Clearly she was going to be no help, I realized, as Michelle clicked off her call and faced me once more.

“You want to be taken seriously?” she asked. “I’ll tell you how.” Then she leaned in low, and whispered, “Go on break.”

“I just got here. I can’t go on break,” I whispered back.

“The call volume is pretty slow,” Michelle said. “Go on break.” Then she leaned back in her chair. “Gee, Roberta, all that time you spend in the can is putting ideas in my head. Now I have to go to the bathroom.” She put her phone on standby and took off her headset, giving me a meaningful look.

I clicked my phone onto standby mode. “I have to go, too,” I said, sliding off my own handset.

“You can’t both go on break!” Doreen began to protest before her cries were cut off by her own rather curt “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog…”

Though I felt guilty leaving Doreen and Roberta to juggle all the calls that came into the phone cue for our unit, I was desperate for help. And I was sure Michelle was going to be able to provide it, judging by the confident sway of her Calvin Kleins as she headed through the office, out the double doors which closed off customer service from the rest of the world that was Lee and Laurie Catalog and to the elevator bank.

“Let’s go outside a minute. So I can smoke a butt.”

I sighed. Clearly I was at Michelle’s mercy now, I thought, feeling even more guilty as we got on the elevator and headed down eleven floors and outside into the cloying summer heat.

The moment we stepped onto the concrete out in front of the building, Michelle had already lit up a Virginia Slims and was puffing steadily. “Want one?” she asked, holding out the pack with one well-manicured hand.

“All right,” I said, taking a cigarette though I had given up the habit, for the most part, shortly after my father died from cancer four years ago. Some things, however, still required nicotine.

After she had lit me up and I had taken one heady drag, Michelle started in. “Getting married is a game. You want to do it, you gotta play the fucking game.”

“Game?” I said, grimacing at the all-too-frequent swear-words that flew out of Michelle’s mouth, especially when she was on her favorite subject: men.

“You know, getting the lid loose. It doesn’t happen overnight—”

“This tight-lid theory is bullshit,” I said, taking another acrid puff of the cigarette before I dropped it to the ground.

“Bullshit? I’ll give you bullshit. You remember who Frankie was dating before I hooked up with him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Rosanna Cuzio. But that was high school. No one marries their high school sweetheart anymore—”

“But Rosanna Cuzio was the prom queen. The fucking prom queen, Angie. She and Frankie went out for four fucking years. Then, just about the time she’s picking out china patterns, he dumps her. Dumps her!” Her eyebrows shot up and she took another drag of her cigarette. “So a few months later, Frankie and I start going out. Within two years, whammo,” she said, holding up her left hand, which was covered in gold rings, one of which sported a one-and-a-half carat emerald-cut.

I have to say, the sight of that ring was about to convert me once more. Until I remembered Susan, Kirk’s ex. No, she wasn’t the prom queen, but with a degree in engineering from MIT, she was a pretty strong contender for a lid-loosener of the very best kind. “Kirk’s last girlfriend gave him the old ultimatum. But I don’t see him shopping for rings with me anytime soon. He didn’t even invite me to meet his parents, for chrissakes. Does that indicate a man who is about to pop the question?”

Michelle shook her head, blowing out another blast of smoke. “You’re not fucking getting it,” she said. “The lid is loose, but it’s not off. You have to apply a little pressure. You have to play the game. In fact, it’s really only a matter of three steps.”

“Steps?”

“Yeah, to get him to pop the fucking question. The first one is deprivation.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “And what, exactly, does that entail?”

“Just don’t be so available. When he calls up to make plans, tell him you’re busy.”

Maybe that was what I was doing wrong, I thought, remembering the look of pure longing I’d seen in Justin’s eyes at the thought of Lauren coming home after three months. Hmm…

“And whatever you do, do not have sex with him.”

“What?” This particular step would be a lot harder on me. After all, sex was one of the best things in Kirk’s and my relationship.

“I know it sounds crazy, but all that shit about getting the milk for free is true,” she said, blowing out a last puff of smoke and crushing the butt beneath one three-inch heel.

“I don’t know, Michelle, it sounds kind of…manipulative.” I wanted a proposal that was genuine—that came from Kirk and Kirk alone. “That’s just not me,” I continued. “I’m not a game player.”

“Okay,” she said, waving that weighty engagement ring in the air as she pulled open the door and headed inside once more. “But, remember, you got to be in it to win it.”

3
Welcome to Brooklyn. Population: Married

“I don’t like that, Angela,” my mother said, standing over a sizzling pan of eggplant on the stove. It was Sunday, and after an utterly uneventful weekend spent mostly alone (Justin and Lauren had disappeared to the Hamptons on Saturday, thank God, to celebrate their happy reunion), I had gone to my mother’s house early, ostensibly to help her cook, and was now being subjected to the third degree while chopping garlic. It was my own fault, really, for admitting that Kirk had gone home to see his parents. And for saying it with a less-than-cheerful expression.

“How many times has he been here?” Ma said now, flipping the eggplants with barely contained indignation. “It’s not right.”

For once I had to agree with her. She was from the old school, where a man treated a woman with the utmost deference. My father was one of those men. It seemed when I was growing up, there was never a moment when he didn’t put my mother’s concerns above his own. Even up until the moment he died, as he lay on his sickbed, where my mother had permanently stationed herself, he begged her to go to sleep, knowing he would be up and in pain for the rest of the night. Of course, my mother didn’t dare close her eyes during those last few days. In fact, she still blames herself for succumbing to exhaustion the night he passed away. “I closed my eyes for one minute, and he was gone!” she laments, as if the fact that she couldn’t stay awake had ultimately done him in. Even four years later, she still wore mourning clothes, and judging from the way her knit skirt was starting to fray around the edges, they were the same ones she’d bought in her first year as a widow.

“Ma, how come you never wear the dress I bought you?” I said now, hoping to get her off the subject of Kirk. “What did you do, throw it out?”

“I have it. It’s in the closet.”

I bet it was. Along with sheet sets she had gotten on sale and never used and the tablecloths from Italy she was saving for a “special occasion” that never seemed to come. Hence the one flaw in the Old World ways: You never enjoyed anything while it was fresh and new. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” I said.

“Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself,” she said, starting to pull the eggplants out of the pan and placing them on a plate.

“Who’s worried about Angela?” Nonnie said, coming through the kitchen door from her apartment downstairs.

“Hey, Nonnie,” I said, jumping up to enfold her in my arms. I breathed in her flowery scent and leaned back to gaze at her soft, smiling features with relief. Cheerfully attired in a bright red blouse and a pair of polyester capris—like most of her peers in the eighty and over set, she couldn’t resist synthetic fabrics—my grandmother was a breath of fresh air in the gloom that permeated my mother whenever she thought one of her children was in danger of unhappiness. Since I was the one who usually fell into that category, I had come to rely on Nonnie to keep things on an even keel.

“You gonna cook in that?” my mother said, turning from the sauce she stirred momentarily to take in my grandmother’s festive outfit and made-up face.

“I sure am,” Nonnie said, then defiantly grabbed a bowl of chopped meat off the counter. After dumping in the garlic I had just finished dicing along with breadcrumbs and myriad other ingredients so secret she claimed she was taking their names to her grave, Nonnie reached into the bowl of red meat and spices and, rings and all, began to mix the ingredients by hand.

“So what’s your mother worried about now?” Nonnie asked, addressing me as if Ma weren’t standing two feet behind her at the stove.

“Oh, you know. The usual. Me and Kirk.”

“Hey, that’s right,” my grandmother said, as if it just occurred to her I was without my other half. “Where is the Skinny Guinea?” she asked, using her nickname for Kirk. It was Nonnie’s way of accepting Kirk as a permanent fixture in my life despite the fact that he had no relatives whatsoever who hailed from the boot of Europe. She believed that all the meals he had eaten in our home qualified him as an honorary Italian, albeit a thin one. “I don’t know where he puts it!” she would say after he cleaned a plate heaping with pasta and red meat.

“He went home,” I admitted now, watching her face carefully as she grabbed up a clump of meat and began rolling it into a meatball.

“Oh, yeah?” she said, plopping the meatball into the pan my mother had laid out on the table and grabbing up another clump of meat. “Too bad. He loves your mother’s eggplant. He’s gonna miss out, huh?” she said with a wink as she finished up another meatball.

I smiled. Leave it to Nonnie to turn things around and make it seem as if Kirk were the one missing out on something. Reaching into the bowl before her, I started to roll meatballs right along with her.

“You don’t think that’s wrong?” my mother chimed in, giving the sauce one last stir before she joined us at the table. “He’s been to this house I don’t know how many times, and he doesn’t invite Angela into his own home? To meet his parents?”

Nonnie shrugged, grabbed up some more chopped meat, rolled. “Don’t his parents live in, whatsit—Massachusetts?” she said. The way she said Massachusetts made it clear that this wasn’t as desirable a location as, say, Brooklyn. Because in Nonnie’s world, there really weren’t too many places outside of Brooklyn she felt it necessary to be. Her own mother had moved here from Naples as a teen, and Nonnie had grown up right on Delancey, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. In all these years, she’d never really seen any reason to go anywhere else. According to her, Brooklyn had everything a person could need: Al’s Butcher had the best Italian sausage, and there really wasn’t a better bagel to be had anywhere in New York than at Brooklyn Bagelry, never mind the rest of the country. And with Kings Plaza a short walk away and packed to the brim with shops that kept her in polyester and high-heeled Cubby Cobblers, what more did a woman need?

“He’s not serious about her. And I don’t like that,” my mother said, putting up the water for the pasta.

“Serious. Who needs serious? There’s plenty of time for that,” Nonnie said with a wave of one ringed hand.

She was right, I realized. Why was I in such a hurry, anyway? Kirk and I hadn’t even been together two years yet. Getting all worked up about marriage seemed a bit…premature. Didn’t it?

Returning to the table and grabbing a hunk of chopped meat, my mother eyed me and Nonnie with a shake of the head. “Did you bring up the sausage from your freezer?” she asked my grandmother.

“No, I didn’t have any,” Nonnie said lightly. “But don’t worry. I asked Artie to bring it.”

“Artie?” my mother said, “Gloria Matarrazzo’s husband?”

“Gloria’s dead,” Nonnie said, rolling the meat between her hands. “Has been for a good year now, God rest her soul. You should know that, Maria. You went to the funeral.”

“So why’s he coming here?” Ma asked.

“I invited him,” Nonnie replied, as if this should come as no surprise to anyone.

“You what?” my mother said, pausing midroll.

“What?” my grandmother replied, eyes wide with innocence. “We’re friends. We’ve been playing poker together on Friday nights for fifteen years now. I can’t invite the man to my home for dinner?”

But as Nonnie turned her attention to the meat once more, I could swear her cheeks were slightly flushed.

“What are you up to?” Ma demanded, putting words to the suspicion that lurked in my own mind.

But before she got her answer, the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it!” my grandmother announced, rushing to the sink to rinse her hands. Then, checking her reflection in the microwave door, she gave her curls a quick pat and headed to the living room and the front door, leaving my mother and me staring after her in surprise.

“Artie! Glad you could make it,” we heard her exclaim from the next room. And within moments, she was leading Artie Matarrazzo into our kitchen. “Look who’s here!” Nonnie announced, gripping his hand. “You remember my daughter, Maria, and my granddaughter, Angela?” she said to Artie, who looked somewhat unsure how he had wound up in our kitchen, much less by my grandmother’s side. I might even have thought he’d stumbled to our house by accident, judging by his somewhat rumpled attire and bewildered brown eyes beneath bushy gray brows, if it weren’t for the sausage he pulled out of the shopping bag he carried.

“Oh, Artie, you remembered,” Nonnie gushed, gazing at the package as if it were a dozen roses, and leaning over to kiss his fleshy cheek.

Oh, my, I thought, exchanging a look with my mother.

Nonnie had a beau. And if the size of that sausage he was sporting was any indication, it was serious.

No less than an hour later, my brother Sonny arrived, with his wife, Vanessa. Of course, dinner was pretty much done by this point, and even the table had been set, leaving Sonny and Vanessa with nothing more to do than stand in the middle of the living room, while both my mother and my grandmother oohed and aahed over Vanessa. Or more specifically, Vanessa’s abdomen, which was round and bursting with her and Sonny’s first child. My mother’s first grandchild. “First grandchild from birth,” my mother would always clarify. My brother Joey had fraternal twins that came with his fiancée, Miranda, and once my mother had accepted the fact that her oldest son was not likely to give her any grandkids unless he married Miranda, she embraced little Tracy and Timmy as her own.

“There is nothing like it when your own son is having a baby,” she declared now, as she often exclaimed when Joey and Miranda weren’t around.

Vanessa, of course, ate it up. Standing before my mother, she ran one well-ringed hand over her abdomen, pressing the fabric of the pink maternity top against the swell, as if to show it off, as she said, “I can’t believe how big I am—and I’m only in my fifth month!”

It was true that Vanessa was huge, but I don’t think it was all baby. At five-nine, with a mane of blond hair sprayed so high it practically hit the woodwork on the way in the door, she still wore her trademark four-inch heels. Huge hunks of gold jewelry dangled from her ears, neck and arms, which somehow added to her girth in an oddly glamorous way. Her overwhelming size made her pregnant state seem all the more glorious. When Vanessa was in the room, she literally took it over. You couldn’t not talk about her.

“How are you feeling? Still getting that morning sickness?” Ma asked. Then, “You really should sit down. Especially in this heat. Summer’s barely begun and already the humidity is unbearable. Angela, get Vanessa one of those nice armchairs from the dining room.”

There really was no escaping Vanessa’s reign over a room, I thought, heading to the dining room for an extra chair as I heard Sonny begin to regale Nonnie and my mother with story of Vanessa’s latest sonogram. “I saw something on that screen. I swear it’s gonna be a boy….”

There was only one thing that could dispel the Vanessa obsession. Well, actually two things. Tracy and Timmy, the Twin Terrors, who had just now exploded through the front door and into the living room, practically barreling Vanessa down in their six-year-old exuberance.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Joey called out in admonishment, as he came through the door, his hand firmly around Miranda’s tiny waist.

It still amazed me to see Joey in “dad mode,” as he’d taken on the role rather abruptly when he met Miranda a year earlier. Up till then, he had devoted all his time and energy to running the auto-parts empire my father had left to him. And whatever spare time he’d had was spent waxing and detailing the ’67 Cadillac that was his pride and joy. Now, suddenly, Tracy and Timmy were his pride and joy. Miranda, his raison d’être.

My mother should have been satisfied with this turn of events. For years, she worried Joey wouldn’t lift his head up from the Caddy long enough to settle down and give her the grandkids she craved. But somehow she couldn’t swallow down the idea of Miranda. It was as if she saw Miranda only as some destitute single mother scheming to get her hands on the dough from our family’s business.

Fortunately, Miranda didn’t notice—or at least acted as if she didn’t. “Hi, Mrs. Di,” she said, leaning in to embrace my mother. I saw my mother’s arms go around Miranda’s petite frame, though I could tell she refrained from her requisite squeeze until she moved on to Joey, whom she not only hugged but gave a firm swat on the butt. “He gets better looking every time I see him!” she said to Nonnie, a wistfulness in her voice that indicated to the more astute observer, like myself, that she felt all that magnificence was somehow being wasted on Miranda.

“He’s all right,” Nonnie responded, with a wink that said Joey was more than all right in her eyes, as she engulfed him in a hug that practically swallowed his six-foot frame. “You remember Artie Matarrazzo, right, Joey?” Nonnie said, dragging Joey to Artie, who sat obediently on the couch. “Hey, Mr. Matarrazzo,” Joey said, shaking the older man’s hand with the same surprise my brother Sonny had displayed at the sight of my grandmother, flushed and beaming over a man other than Grandpa, who had been dead a good ten years now.

But no one had too much time to wonder over Artie, now that Tracy and Timmy had launched a full attack on the living room. They had already pulled all the cushions off the couch and were about to proceed with a pillow fight when my mother swooped down to hug them and shower them with the gifts she kept handily beside the sofa they had all but destroyed. It was as if she would gladly have taken on Tracy and Timmy, who with their big blue eyes and curly brown locks were irresistible, and put Miranda, who stood by gazing on the scene with love, out to pasture.

But whatever lingering animosity there was, it was immediately dispelled when, moments after Nonnie went into the kitchen to check on the sauce, she returned and announced, “Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat!”

Once we were all settled around the table, with me sitting between Tracy and Timmy to keep them from tearing at each other’s hair while we were eating, it suddenly occurred to Sonny that my other half was missing.

“Hey, where’s Kirk?” he said, between mouthfuls of eggplant and linguine.

“Who’s Kirk?” Tracy asked, completely forgetting the guy who had kept her giggling all afternoon with his silly little jokes the last time we were here.

“You idiot,” Timmy declared. “Kirk is Angela’s boyfriend.”

“I’m not an idiot, you’re an idiot,” she said, reaching behind me to yank her brother’s hair and sending my head jutting out neatly over my plate, giving my mother an easy aim as she set about taking it off.

“He went home to see his parents,” my mother supplied, eyebrows raised as if inviting speculation about Kirk’s intentions.

“Oh, yeah?” Sonny said. “I didn’t think that guy had a home, judging by how often he eats with us.”

“Doesn’t his family live in Massachusetts somewhere?” Vanessa said, clearly proud of herself for remembering the details of my boyfriend’s life. For whatever you wanted to say about Vanessa, she really did make an effort when it came to family.

“Newton, Massachusetts,” I replied, leaning back and neatly frustrating Tracy’s effort to get a grip on her brother’s head in turn. With a glance at my mother, I continued in what I hoped was a matter-of-fact voice, “It’s about six hours by train.” Not that Kirk ever took the train. He had so many frequent flier miles, he could probably take us both on the shuttle out of LaGuardia without making a dent in his considerable savings account. The jerk. Still, I had an argument to win here. “So it’s not exactly a hop, skip and a jump from New York.”

“I didn’t say anything!” my mother protested, completely denying the subtext her raised eyebrows were sending everyone at the table.

And just in case anyone missed the subtext, Miranda innocently laid it out for all to see. “Have you ever met Kirk’s parents?”

As I stumbled toward an answer, my mother declared, “No, she hasn’t. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Joey said, as if he weren’t following.

“I just think that if a man is serious about a girl…” my mother began.

“What? You thinking of marrying this guy?” Sonny said, as if marriage for his baby sister was an option he had yet to think of.

“I don’t know what I’m—” I began.

“Why shouldn’t she be thinking of it?” my mother chimed in. “She’s thirty-one years old.”

“Believe me, you’re better off waiting,” Miranda said. “I married Fred when I was twenty-five, and look where that got me,” she continued with the habitual roll of the eyes she made whenever she referred to her ex-husband.

My mother’s mouth dropped open, then she shut it soundly. But her expression, as it roamed over her prized firstborn son sitting next to his bride-to-be, said that she didn’t think Miranda had done too badly in the long run.

“Hey, Vanessa was only twenty-five when she married me. And you’re happy, baby, aren’t you?” Sonny said, turning to his wife, who scrunched up her nose and rubbed it against his, as her hand roamed over her ever-present abdomen. Somehow the sight of them made me feel…wistful. But only for a moment.

“Well, I was a young bride, too,” Nonnie said, “and all that made me was a young widow,” she continued, giving Artie a significant look. “But things are different today. Women today like to date around. Test-drive a man before they take him home for good.”

“What? I was wrong to marry my husband at twenty-two?” my mother said defensively. “We were in love. We wanted to be together.”

And there, I thought, lay the thing that stabbed most about Kirk’s weekend away. Did he even want to be with me? Really be with me?

“Tell you the truth,” Sonny said now, “I always liked that first guy you went out with. Vincent Salerno. Whatever happened to him?”

“Married,” my mother said, as if whatever point she was trying to make was already proved. “For over nine years now.”

“Whoa-ho,” Sonny said with a barely contained laugh. “Another one bites the dust. And didn’t you recently go to the wedding of that guy you went out with in college? What was his name? Randy?”

“That was five years ago already,” my mother said. Clearly she was a stickler for details tonight.

Oh, God, please don’t let them ask about Josh next….

But Sonny didn’t even need to ask about Josh to make his point. “Hey, you wait any longer, Ange, and all of the good ones will be taken,” he said.

“Not all of them,” Nonnie said, giving Artie a look that stopped his fork midway to his mouth.

Even my own grandmother was going to beat me to the altar, I realized now, judging by the blush that was crawling up Artie’s neck.

“Angela’s different,” Vanessa said in my defense. “She’s artistic,” she declared, her thick Brooklyn accent making the word sound more like “autistic.”

“Hey, Angela, can you do that headstand for us again?” Tracy asked, remembering a Rise and Shine routine I once demonstrated for her in my mother’s living room.

“No headstands,” Joey said as Tracy began to scoot out of her chair. “You gotta eat first. Then Angela will do her tricks for you.”

Tricks? Oh, brother.

When had I gone from “artistic” to circus sideshow freak?

I sighed. Maybe there really was something wrong with me.

4
I just called…to SCREAM…I LOVE YOU!

There is only one thing worse than returning to an empty apartment on a Sunday night—that’s returning to an empty apartment littered with the remains of someone else’s good time. Specifically, Justin’s and—judging by the two wineglasses nestled cozily together on the dining room table—Lauren’s. Apparently they’d come home early from the Hamptons. Candles littered the windowsill; the smell of burning wax was still in the air. A note left by the answering machine indicated in Justin’s loopy scrawl that he had taken Lauren to the airport. Which meant, since Justin didn’t have a car, that he was taking an expensive round-trip cab to LaGuardia, just so he could spend an extra hour with the woman he once described to me as “the best thing that ever happened” to him.

I sighed. When was I going to be anyone’s best thing?

As I headed into the living room and saw that sofa #3 had been maneuvered from its position in the middle of the room to a less prominent place in front of sofa #2, I realized I did have something to be thankful for. At least Lauren had used her considerable influence over Justin to persuade him that his most recent sofa acquisition was atrocious enough to warrant a slip-cover, which Lauren had no doubt created from one of Justin’s bedsheets, I deduced from the pale blue covering that now disguised sofa #3’s threadbare expanse. Since the two sofas faced the largest of our four TVs, their positioning created a movie-theater effect that satisfied my inner actor on some levels, despite the sacrifice of a good three feet of living space. I plopped down in the front row, grabbed the remote from the marble-topped coffee table (all the French provincial castoffs were Aunt Eleanor’s) and clicked on the TV, my eyes roaming to the clock on the far wall. Seven o’clock. Kirk’s flight landed at 7:50 (I saw the ticket on his dresser—not that I was checking). No luggage (Kirk always carried on), so he’d head straight for Ground Transportation. Give him five minutes to land a cab. Twenty minutes to the Midtown Tunnel. Ten minutes through the tunnel (after all, it was Sunday night, there was bound to be traffic). Kirk lived six minutes from the tunnel (he actually timed it once). That would put him in front of his building at precisely 8:31 p.m. Two minutes up the stairs, twenty minutes settle-in time (Kirk couldn’t relax until his bag was unpacked and his toiletries safely tucked away in his medicine cabinet once more. I found it cute at first. Annoying later, when I was waiting to hear from him after one of his frequent weekends away.) That took us to 8:53. By nine o’clock he would be on the phone, proclaiming how much he had missed me.

I only had to wait two hours for a reminder of why I had been in the relationship with Kirk for twenty months despite the fact that he hadn’t felt it necessary to bring me home with him. We loved each other, dammit. Had declared it so in month three. Reveled in it until month eight. Settled into things at the year mark. And now…now we sometimes took it (love, that is) and each other for granted. So what that he hadn’t asked me to come with him? It didn’t really mean anything in the face of all we had. Why, I bet if I just opened my mouth (because Grace always told me I was guilty of not communicating what I wanted) and told him how much it would mean to me to go home with him next time around, he’d happily invite me along. In fact, he might regret he hadn’t brought me along this time. He might even want to schedule a trip home within weeks just to make up for it!

And so, with this soothing thought I settled in to watch a round of mindless TV, starting with a rerun of Friends, which seemed to be on six times a day now that it had gone into syndication. I studied Jennifer Aniston with renewed interest, imagining this cheerful blond goddess settling in at home with her golden-blond god, Brad. Surely there was something to Michelle’s tight-lid theory if this woman who had had trouble attracting the attention of David Schwimmer in her fictional life had landed Brad Pitt in reality.

So much for my reality, I mused, quickly changing channels once Rachel et al’s coffee-shop existence was wrapped up with a rousing laugh track. One hour to go, I thought, with another glance at the clock. I spent it watching a news program on the deadly bacteria that resides in common household objects. And just as I was absorbing the fact that I had greater things to worry about than whether or not I will one day marry (like that I will certainly one day die), I realized it was just about nine and anticipation warmed me, reminding me that I was at the moment very, very much alive.

I jumped off the couch and headed for my bedroom to throw on a pair of boxers and a tee. Might as well get comfortable, I thought, with a vision of myself curled up cozily with the phone while Kirk whispered how much he’d missed me. Admittedly, he wasn’t usually so demonstrative, but I had begun to look forward to a certain heightened display of intimacy whenever he returned from one of his business trips. Once I even lay in wait at his apartment, wearing a black lacy bra and thong. You can imagine what kind of amazing sex we had that night.

With a glance at the clock, I realized it was 9:10 already—so where was my phone call? My hey-baby-missed-you-so-much-I-could-die speech? Maybe there were delays at the airport….

I heard a key slide in the door. Or maybe he decided to drop by!

“Hey,” came the sound of Justin’s voice in the hall. What was I thinking? Dropping by wasn’t the kind of thing Kirk did, after all. It wasn’t that he was unromantic, just…orderly.

“Hey,” I said, joining Justin in the living room, where he was toeing off his sneakers and settling in on sofa #3. “Lauren get off the ground okay?” I asked, my face a mask of concern. The subtext of my question was: Any delays at the airport that I should know about?

“Without a hitch,” he replied, his gaze falling on the dining room table with the two wineglasses. “God, I hated seeing her go.”

My stomach plummeted at his forlorn expression, and I remembered suddenly what it was like to really miss someone. The look on Justin’s face was the kind every girl pines for.

But it was only momentary, that look. For, suddenly, Justin glanced at the clock and snapped to attention. “Hey, mind if I put on the game? I just heard in the cab that the Yankees are up by three against the Red Sox.” He grabbed the remote.

I had my answer. The Yankees were playing the Red Sox. Kirk was a Red Sox fan. Was it possible he got home and immediately flipped on the TV to catch the rest of the game?

I glanced over at Justin as he pounded a fist in the air. “Yea!” he roared along with the crowd on TV.

Oh, yeah. It was not only possible, it was probable.

Despite the fact that I was annoyed at being beat out by baseball, I joined Justin on the couch, never mind that I was a Mets fan, mostly by birth rather than from any true allegiance to game watching. Yeah, I could sympathize. I had watched the subway series with great trepidation. But it wasn’t something I worked up a sweat about on a regular basis. Wasn’t something I ignored friends, families and people I allegedly loved for.

The clock ticked on. Justin became more jubilant with every pitch. The Yankees were up by five now. By the time I did talk to Kirk, he wasn’t exactly going to be Mr. Happy. I thought about calling him during the game, but didn’t want him if his attention was going to be divided. I decided to wait until the seventh-inning stretch.

When the seventh inning finally arrived and a Yankee win was all but secured, Justin decided this called for an all-out celebration. “I’m going down for beer and chicken wings. Want anything?”

“No, no. I’m good,” I said, making my way casually over to my bedroom, where I hoped to make my long-awaited phone call with Kirk in privacy. I was so high-strung at this point, I feared I might do something I’d later regret—like yell.

Kirk picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Noodles, I was just about to call you….”

Ah, if I could only have waited thirty more seconds, I would have had the upper hand. Still, I was glad to hear his voice. I missed him. “The lure of baseball was too great, huh?” I joked.

“You kidding? I couldn’t bear to watch that travesty once I saw the score. I shut it right off.”

Oh, brother. Then, as if to answer my unasked question—What exactly have you been doing in the one hour and fifteen minutes you’ve been home and not calling me?—he said, “I’ve just been settling in, unpacking.”

Uh-huh. “Did you have a good weekend?” I asked, trying to rise above it all.

“Great,” he said, his voice perking up. Then he proceeded to tell me, in lavish detail, all about it. Playing touch football with his cousins in the legendary acre lot his parents lived on (legendary to me, who had never actually seen it); holding his sister Kate’s baby; meeting his other sister Kayla’s boyfriend. All the children in Kirk’s family had first names beginning with K. His mother’s idea, according to Kirk. I wonder if she realized that she had created KKK with her alliteratively named progeny? The funny thing was, Kate had married a guy named Kenneth, and their new baby’s name was—guess what?—Kimberly. I wondered now if the other sister had managed to line up a K-man with this new boyfriend. Hey, wait a second. New boyfriend? Kayla’s new boyfriend was there?

“Um…how long has your sister been seeing this guy?” I asked, hoping “new” boyfriend meant new to Kirk but practically married to Kayla. After all, that was the only reason I could drum up why Karl, Kasper, Kirby, or whatever the hell his name was, had been invited and I hadn’t.

“I dunno. Couple of months?”

Couple of months? Remain cool, remain calm.

“Seems like a nice enough guy, but who knows? Kayla goes through guys like they’re going out of style.”

Remain cool, remain calm. Get the facts. “So, um, does anyone ever ask about your girlfriend, sweetie?” I knew it sounded like I was fishing, but there was no other way to do this. I had to know.

“Oh, yeah. My mother’s always harping on that subject, ever since Susan and I broke up. She always liked Susan….”

Liked Susan…

“But I learned my lesson that time around. Telling my family about stuff like that is like feeding hungry piranhas. They don’t let up.”

“Stuff like what?”

“You know, who I’m dating, whatever.”

Whatever. “Kirk, do you mean to tell me that after almost two years, your parents don’t know I exist?”

“Oh, they know I’m dating someone. But that’s all their getting outta me. Besides, they know I’m intent on getting my business off the ground….”

“Excuse me, Kirk. Someone? You’re dating someone?”

Silence on the other end. The dumb lug probably just realized he’d stepped on a land mine with his blithe comments.

Finally he said, “You know what I mean, Ange. Didn’t you tell me the less your mother knew about your daily life, the better?”

“I was talking about stuff like what I ate, how late I stayed out. Not the person I’m contemplating marrying!”

A new silence descended, this one a bit more harrowing. But no worse than the sigh that finally emerged, the words that followed. “Ange, you know how I feel about that….”

I did?

“My whole focus now is on building my business. I thought you understood. I thought…”

But I was no longer listening. I was tired of what he thought. It was just so…unromantic. I wanted to be caught up in a passion. I wanted a man to want me so badly it hurt to imagine life without me. And I wanted it with Kirk. Was that so much to ask for?

That’s how it happened. I suddenly found myself putting step one of Michelle’s engagement scheme into action. I don’t know why I succumbed. Maybe it was the fact of my absence (both literal and figurative) from Kirk’s big family weekend. Maybe it was the blasé tone Kirk used when he said before hanging up, “Hey, when you come over tomorrow night, could you bring my U2 CD?”

See? This is where we’re at. We don’t even ask each other out anymore. It’s all assumed.

Naturally, I had to start shaking up some of those assumptions. “Uh…actually, tomorrow night I’m meeting up with Grace.” There! Take that!

“Oh. Okay. Where’re you going?”

Wouldn’t you like to know, I thought, feeling a tad triumphant. Until I remembered I didn’t know where I was going with Grace, who didn’t yet know we were going anywhere. “Shopping.”

“Have fun,” he said, as if I’d said I was having my body dipped in hot wax. Kirk was not a shopper, unless we were in say, CompUSA. “You could come by after, if you felt like it….” he offered.

“Oh, well, I’ll probably be too tired. You know shopping wears me out.”

“Okay. I guess it’s just as well. I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do with work—I could stand to put in a little overtime. In fact, I’m gonna hit the sack now. I got a big day ahead of me tomorrow.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said and, after a muttered goodbye, I hung up the phone, dissatisfied. This lid might need the rubber glove treatment. Or maybe even a sledgehammer.

“Just sit tight,” Michelle advised at work the following Tuesday, when I informed her that I had put step one of her plan in action. “Give it a few days.”

“A few days?” I didn’t think I’d last that long. As it turned out, Grace had had plans with Drew last night and couldn’t be lured to Bloomingdale’s even to make an honest woman out of me. And since tonight she was attending some work-related cocktail party, I was faced with going straight home from Lee and Laurie to another fun evening at home.

So I sat tight. After all, I had plenty of couches to choose from.

Thank God for our large-screen TV, a hand-me-down from Justin’s friend C.J., who had married his long-time girlfriend, Danielle, and moved on to Westchester and a forty-two-inch. The only thing on, of course, was Friends, and, somehow, tonight I just couldn’t deal with it.

Deprivation was going to be a lot harder on me than on Kirk, I could tell.

Because the truth of the matter was, I had done that shameful thing that most women do when they get too cozy in a relationship. I had thrown over my own life for the sake of our life together. Take an average week in my life:

Monday: Rise and Shine, which I only get through at six o’clock on a Monday morning by telling myself that I am going to buy Backstage this week and begin to search for that great film or TV role I plan to land now that I have TV experience on my résumé and union cards from both AFTRA (for TV—see what a few leaps in front of a camera can get you?) and the Screen Actor’s Guild. But what usually happens is, I bypass the newsstand on the way home from the studio and pay a surprise visit to Kirk at his home office, where we eat bagels and lox until Kirk realizes he has too much work to do to sit around all day eating bagels and lox and sends me on my way.

Tuesday: Rise and Shine. Maybe breakfast with Colin. Maybe I buy Backstage today, but usually just go home to watch a movie (we have a hell of collection, mostly due to Justin) or read the complete plays of August Strindberg (if I really want to depress myself) until I realize it’s 2:10 and I’m never going to make it to Lee and Laurie on time for my three-to-ten shift. Rush to shower and change, arrive at Lee and Laurie at three-fifteen. Leave work at ten, take the crosstown bus to Kirk’s (thus securing myself sex and saving myself a transfer to the Second Avenue bus, which never comes every ten minutes like it says it will on the schedule posted at the bus stop).

Wednesday: Rise and Shine. Sometimes Rena wants to have a planning meeting, and then Colin and I have to sit and listen to her drone on and on about her dream plans for Rise and Shine. Go to lunch with Colin, complain about Rena (whom Colin defends), until it’s time for Lee and Laurie. Get off at ten, go to Kirk’s.

Thursday: Rise and Shine. Maybe breakfast with Colin, after which I decide that that the edition of Backstage on the stands is too old and not worth spending the cash on. Sometimes I go home to clean my apartment (a fruitless endeavor with Justin as a roommate, but I can’t seem to stop myself), or sometimes I find myself lured in to some treacherous sample sale, where I spend the afternoon trying to convince myself of the utter necessity of owning yet another stretchy black shirt. If I’ve dawdled in midtown long enough, I usually just go straight to Lee and Laurie. Sometimes I’m even on time! And guess where I head afterward? Kirk’s, of course.

Friday: Rise and Shine. And since I have no shift at Lee and Laurie and no desire to start any self-actualizing project, I find some way to waste the entire day. Like renting the complete movies of Bette Davis. Or giving myself a pedicure. Until Kirk and I go out for dinner, or simply sit around the apartment like the old married couple we are (not that he realizes that).

Saturday: The dreaded ten-to-four shift at Lee and Laurie. After a day like this, can you blame me for going straight to Kirk’s, where we order takeout and while the evening away in front of the TV or at the movies?

Sunday: Day of rest. Except when my mother manages to convince me of the utter necessity of my coming down to Marine Park for family dinner. Kirk comes, of course. After all, he loves my mother’s cooking. Kirk never says no to a Sunday in Brooklyn.

Now do you understand how I’ve gotten so wrapped up in being wrapped up every day of the week? Kirk and I might as well get married at this point. What would be the difference, anyway?

“The ring,” Michelle explained somewhat impatiently when I complained the next day about how much I am suffering and wondering, really, what it’s all going to get me.

“When a guy buys you a ring, it means something.”

So I sat tight for yet another night, telling Kirk I had a monologue I was working on. “Oh yeah?” he said with surprise. Of course he was surprised. I hadn’t done any auditioning since Rise and Shine became a cable-access phenomenon. Why should I? I was on the road to superstardom in a yellow leotard.

But suddenly there I was, reverting to my former self. The actor who had played Fefu in Fefu and Her Friends. (Don’t let the name fool you—this was a serious role.) The woman who had once wowed crowds at the Classic Stage Company with my powerful rendition of Miss Julie. In case you were wondering, I was once a force to be reckoned with. But an actor has to earn a living….

“What are you doing home?” Justin asked, loping in from God knows where. He’d turned down the last production gig he’d been offered, so I knew he hadn’t been working on the set all day. In fact, he seemed to be working less and less ever since he had landed a few commercial spots for a long-distance telephone service a year ago, which I thought was pretty ironic, considering the number of long-distance relationships Justin had been in (yes, Lauren wasn’t the only one. Denise, his previous girlfriend, was from Oak Park, Illinois, Justin’s hometown—a place Justin hadn’t lived in himself since he was twelve, although his romance with Denise had begun on a visit to relatives one summer when he was in college). The commercial, which featured Justin looking frazzled and gorgeous as he ran across a campus and up the dormitory stairs, all in time to pick up a long-distance call from his mom, was so well received that they made two more. One in which Justin leaped across buildings to pick up a call, and another where he hijacked a campus security cart. His success had mostly to do with that utterly beatific smile on his face as he picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Mom.” Ironic, too, since both of Justin’s parents had been killed in an auto accident, leaving him an orphan at the tender age of twelve, shipped off to live in New York with his aging Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Burt, who were now gone a good nine years themselves. Maybe there was something of the yearning I knew he still felt for his parents injected in the smile he projected from the small screen once he picked up that telephone. Whatever it was, the commercial ran so often—it even made Superbowl Sunday slots—that Justin was still coasting on the pile of residuals money he’d racked up. Perhaps that was making it harder and harder for him to get out of bed for the odd production job that came his way.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I replied, defensive. Sometimes the ease of Justin’s life annoyed me, I have to admit.

He ignored my irritated reply, plopping down next to me on the couch.

“Where’s Kirk?” he asked. Even Justin realized my life was so intimately entwined with Kirk’s that my being home on a weeknight meant something.

“Don’t know. Home, I guess,” I said, picking up the remote and surfing through, hoping my expression showed my indifference. I didn’t really want anyone to know what I was up to, especially not Justin. It was downright…humiliating. But utterly necessary.

Then the phone rang and I was completely unmasked. “If it’s Kirk, I’m, I’m…not home,” I blurted as Justin reached for the receiver.

He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, as he spoke into the phone. “Hello? Hey, Kirk, my man, what’s up?” he continued, his voice belying the suspicion in his eyes as he gazed at me. “Angie? Naw, she’s not home. But then I didn’t check under the rug….”

I glared at him, despite my humiliation.

“Okay, I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “Take it easy.” After he hung up, he turned to stare at me full in the face.

I ignored him, lost in my own quagmire. “What the hell is he calling me for anyway? I told him I was busy.”

Justin’s eyes widened. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing!”

“God, Ange, don’t tell me you’re playing games,” he said. “I didn’t think you were like that….”

“I’m not!” I insisted. But suddenly it seemed glaringly apparent that I was one of those women I despised.

5
A rose by any other name…might still do the trick.

I would have despised myself even more for shamelessly avoiding Kirk if I didn’t come off the Saturday shift at Lee and Laurie to find him waiting out in front of the building for me.

“Hey,” he said, a smile lighting up his features as I came out the front doors.

“Kirk!” I said, surprised, realizing that he hadn’t done anything so spontaneous, so…romantic, since the early days of our relationship. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you, stranger,” he said, putting his arms around me and tugging me close. “I missed you.” Then he kissed me so tenderly I felt a rush of warmth toward him.

Now I ask you, can you blame me for playing these stupid games? Especially when Kirk led me back to his apartment and made love to me like it was our last night on earth together.

Two simultaneous orgasms later, I was a goner.

Which is probably why I found myself sitting across from Michelle at a tiny table in the back of a bar by our office on Tuesday night, plying her with drinks while I smoked cigarette after cigarette from her pack, reveling in my relationship revival and anxiously awaiting advice on my next maneuver.

Hanging out with Michelle after hours was a peculiar enough event as it was, because we hadn’t really been social since high school—specifically, since just after Grace moved to Long Island and I had moved on to my first serious boyfriend, Vincent. At the time, Michelle had been dating Vincent’s cousin Eddie, and we bonded simply because it was always useful to have a girlfriend around all those nights we roamed the streets with the guys, restlessly searching for adventure and usually winding up at a diner or the movies, blowing what little money we had. Though Michelle was a bit of a fair-weather friend (or a fair-man friend—we parted ways when she moved on to Frankie, who ran with a different crowd), at least for a while I had someone around to tell me whether I had lipstick on my teeth or if some cheerleader had been spotted at school that day flirting a little too hard with Vincent. In truth, Michelle and I wouldn’t even be friends now, except that when I gave up my job in the garment district four years ago, my mother had told the whole neighborhood (including Michelle’s mother, whom she’d run into at the supermarket) that I was jobless, penniless and about to pursue a career with no pension plan. Mrs. Delgrosso had happily told my mother about her daughter’s illustrious career and flexible hours at Lee and Laurie and put me in contact.

But despite all my doubts, I couldn’t help turning to Michelle now that step one had succeeded in at least a quarter turn on Kirk’s lid. Suddenly I was ready to be persuaded that the art of persuasion was my only resource when it came to Kirk.

“Make him jealous,” Michelle said with a definitive crack of her gum.

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, that’s your next step,” she continued. “You need to convince Kirk that he’s not the only man who’s pining for you.”

This was not as easy as it sounds. Kirk was just not the jealous type. In fact, during the first months of our relationship, when we were caught up in the throes of new passion, I was suddenly the object of every man’s desire. So much so that one overzealous suitor even followed me home from Lee and Laurie one night, trying to get my phone number. Kirk, who had been waiting out on the stoop for me (yes, there was a time when he did that), had found the whole thing quite amusing.

“That’s because he didn’t see the guy as a serious threat,” Michelle advised. “You need to bring on the heavy artillery.”

I looked at her. “Heavy artillery?”

“Yeah. You need to show him some other guy is serious about you,” she said, her eyes narrowing speculatively. Then, realization lit her face. “Flowers,” she said. “You need to get flowers from another guy.”

“What other guy is going to send me flowers?” I said, going through my catalog of men and coming up short. The only man who’d ever bought me flowers was Randy, romantic that he was. But Randy had been married for five years, and was not inclined to buy me anything nowadays except the odd drink whenever we happened to get together.

“That’s the beauty of this plan,” Michelle said. “You don’t need another guy. You can send the flowers yourself.”

“Myself?” This plan was starting to seem ridiculous. And expensive. “Do I sign the card from myself, too?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head at me as if I were the insane one. Then her dark eyes lit up, as if my faux Prince Charming had just stepped into the bar. I even turned my head to see if, in fact, there was some bouquet-wielding charmer waiting in the doorway. Then swung it back just as quickly when I heard her say, “Jerry Landry.”

“Jerry Landry?” I asked, incredulous. Jerry was our boss and—at least according to his calculation—the Office Stud. He made a point of hitting on every available woman—and even some of the unavailable ones, depending on how short they happened to wear their skirts—who worked for Lee and Laurie Catalog. It was rumored that he slept with at least fifty percent of the incoming trainees, but I had a feeling Jerry himself started these rumors. Because although we all laughed at his stupid jokes and even batted our lashes playfully at his off-the-mark flirtations (after all, he was the man monitoring both our phone calls and our break times), I seriously doubted any woman in her right mind would find him attractive. Maybe it was the amount of Brylcreem he used to get his suspiciously dark hair (suspicious for a forty-two-year old with gray chest hairs peeking out beneath his oft unbuttoned collars) slicked back, guido-style (hello? The eighties are over, Jerry). Whatever it was, something made Jerry utterly unappealing to most of the female population. Men, however, thought he was the greatest. Probably because he was the one buying the rounds during those rare after-office outings. And because the guys actually believed all those conquest stories he told. Even Kirk had, during his short stint at Lee and Laurie. So much so that, on more than one occasion, he had sidled possessively toward my cubicle when Jerry was leaning over me, giving me his usual schtick while trying to look down my shirt. Hmm, maybe Michelle wasn’t so far off in this far-off scheme of hers….

Then I remembered that it wouldn’t be Jerry’s credit card that took the hit. “How do you propose I pay for these flowers?”

“Look,” she said, “do you want to land this guy or what?”

Apparently, I did. Because suddenly I was willing to forgo that seventy-eight-dollar pair of pants I had been coveting in the Lee and Laurie Catalog (that was the other problem with this job—it fed my shopping disease) for the sake of my future.

That’s when I got caught. No, not by Kirk. By Justin. Which seemed worse, somehow.

I was on the phone ordering flowers for myself. I know, I know. Stupid, right? On my budget I was the last person who should’ve been dialing up for a dozen long-stems, but I was a different woman. I didn’t even recognize me. The thing is, I had invited Kirk over to my place for our usual Friday night together and, according to Michelle, I had to undo some of the damage I had done by sleeping with him with a quick follow-up maneuver.

So, I’m on the phone, ordering up flowers from Murray’s 24-Hour Florist—New York City is probably the only place in the world where you can get anything delivered at just about any time. It’s this type of convenience that makes a girl capable of anything, right? And I wouldn’t have felt so bad about my behavior if Justin hadn’t strolled through the door just after I had handed over my credit card number.

“…if you could deliver those flowers promptly, I would appreciate it. Thanks.”

“Who died?” Justin asked, heading for sofa #3 (he always developed an especial fondness for the newest sofa as if to prove to me, and the rest of the world, the worthiness of salvaging it) and picking up the remote.

“Died?” I asked, puzzled, as I hung up the phone.

“Didn’t I just hear you ordering flowers?” he said, his gaze seeming somewhat speculative despite the way he was already cruising through the TV channels.

Humiliation shot through me. Then panic. Justin wasn’t supposed to be home tonight. Fridays he often frequented the open-mike night at the Back Fence, watching musicians try out their material and, I imagined, gathering the courage to get up there himself. Or something. Because ever since he had left film, and then acting, ostensibly to pursue music, he seemed to have lost his energy to do anything but strum a few chords on his guitar now and then as he gazed dreamily at his assorted artifacts around the apartment. The only reason I knew he was still pursuing anything was his vigilant attendance of Friday night’s open mike. It was one of the reasons I had picked tonight for this wretched little plot. I didn’t even want to bear witness to what I was about to do, and I certainly didn’t want one of my best friends to. “Aren’t you going to the Back Fence tonight?” I inquired, ignoring the fact that he had settled on a program and sunk deeper into the sofa.

“Nah. I’m beat,” Justin said. After a few moments, he finally looked up at me, probably because I was hovering over him, anxiously trying to figure out a way to get him out of the apartment. It wasn’t so much the fact that Kirk was coming over. After all, Kirk had accepted Justin’s presence in my life, albeit grudgingly. It was just that I was absolutely appalled at the idea of Justin discovering my plot to win Kirk’s pledge of undying love.

“What’s up?” he asked, studying me with concern.

“Nothing!” I protested, completely blowing my cover. Then I glanced up at him from where I had begun to pick at a nonexistent piece of lint on the sofa. “It’s just that…Kirk’s coming over.”

“Oh yeah?” he replied with some measure of surprise. It wasn’t that Kirk never came over, it was just that we spent more time at his place. Probably because of my roommate factor, but I feared mostly because of my (or should I say “our,” meaning Justin’s and my) clutter factor. Kirk had a decided distaste for the disorder Justin and I so willingly chose to live in, and when he was here, he couldn’t help but point out the problems that resulted from irregular removal of recyclables (I had an increasingly bad habit of saving all the newspapers, magazines and trade papers I never seemed to get around to, in the hope that I would, one day, get around to them) and accumulation of other people’s irretrievables (You-know-who was responsible for that). I couldn’t help but agree with Kirk. There was something wrong with living with six lamps, three sofas and a stack of newspapers and magazines that rivaled the periodical room of the New York Public Library.

“Anyway, I was gonna cook him dinner.”

This got a raised eyebrow.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he replied, turning his attention back to the TV. But I knew he was thinking of the time I threw a dinner party for all our friends, which was nothing short of disaster. Thank God, Justin had come to the rescue and pulled together a quick pasta fagioli. For a guy from the Midwest who was a mixture of every ethnicity except Italian—English, French and even a dash of some sort of Scandinavian—he certainly had a way with Italian cuisine. It was as if he had inherited the Italian gene that I hadn’t. “You need help?” he asked as I continued to stand there looking at him uncertainly.

“Not exactly…” I began, not sure how to tell him that I simply needed him to go away. “What’s C.J. up to tonight? You haven’t seen him in a while,” I hedged. C.J. was Justin’s best male friend, who somehow managed to be married, successful, and yet still one of the coolest people I knew. He was vice-president of an independent record label that had found phenomenal mainstream success and yet still managed to maintain its indie roots. Though C.J. lived in Westchester now, he often came in on weekends when one of his bands was scheduled to play. “Maybe he’s in town tonight. Isn’t that new band he signed supposed to play CBGB’s?”

Finally Justin got it. “Oh, I see,” he said, his gaze falling on the table, where the candles from his weekend with Lauren were still strewn. “You want to be alone…with Smirk.” “Smirk” was what Justin called Kirk when Kirk wasn’t around. It wasn’t that Justin didn’t get along with Kirk. He just despised everything Kirk stood for: material success, technological innovation. The future. I had to forgive Justin for it—being an East Villager before the dot.com gentrification, I was on the same wavelength. Sort of.

“Do you mind?” I said, hoping he would suddenly find some other venue for his slacker revue tonight.

“Nah.” He shrugged. “I’ll just watch the game in my room.”

So much for getting him out of the apartment. I had forgotten about the Yankee game. There was no way I could hide my embarrassing little ploy now, I thought, heading for the kitchen to tackle my next project: domestication. It wasn’t that I couldn’t cook at all—I make a mean marinara—it’s just that I stuck pretty much to those things which wouldn’t kill anyone if I messed them up. But if I was going to make Kirk pine for the woman he could possibly lose, I had to tackle something a guy like Kirk could understand: meat.

I headed for the fridge, where I had stacked a package of perfectly cut—or so said the butcher at Lenny’s Meats—perfectly thick and perfectly frightening sirloin steaks. I wasn’t a veggie or anything, I just was a little afraid of foods that had the capability to inadvertently poison me if undercooked. I put the steaks carefully on the counter, wondering just how long I had to grill them on the George Foreman (a Christmas present from Sonny that I had yet to take out of its original packaging) to destroy any of that malicious bacteria I seemed to know way too much about for a woman with such limited culinary experience. Fortunately, my mentor in man-catching, Michelle, had loaned me her copy of Cooking With Style, which, despite the suspiciously bright platter of vegetables that graced the cover, had a section on grilling.

Flipping the book open, I was amazed at how easy it all seemed. Six minutes for each side? No problem. Knowing that timing was everything, I set the asparagus to steaming and tossed the potatoes in the microwave. This was easy, I thought, laying the steaks on the hot grill just as the buzzer rang.

“I’ll get it!” I yelled, running for the intercom, though Justin hadn’t budged from the couch.

“Hey, it’s me,” came Kirk’s voice as I pushed the listen button. I depressed the door buzzer with something like dread. Then I immediately went to the front door and waited, as if by greeting him at the door I could protect him from my own madness—or Justin’s all-knowing gaze. When I heard him ascend the third flight, I stepped into the hall.

“Hey,” I said, as he approached.

“Hey, Noodles,” he said, his face creasing into a smile that made me feel guiltier and guiltier. Clearly I wasn’t cut out for this level of subterfuge.

He kissed me, his eyes roaming over my face as if he could see the deceit there. And there must have been something in my expression because he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” I said quickly, turning and leading him down the narrow hall toward the living room.

“Hey, Captain Kirk, what’s up, man?” Justin said with a wide grin from his—semipermanent, I hoped—position on the couch.

I felt Kirk stiffen with tension beside me. Though Kirk had been forced to accept the fact of Justin’s presence in my life from day one, it was clear he didn’t always approve of Justin’s seemingly carefree lifestyle. Justin must have sensed this, as he seemed to revel in his slacker ways in Kirk’s presence. But Justin did make some attempts to bond, I suppose. Like the whole Trekkie thing. When Justin discovered Kirk was a fellow Star Trek fan, he took great delight in rehashing the finer plot points of what he considered the Great Episodes, while Kirk couldn’t get past the way Justin took the good captain’s name in vain every time Justin greeted him.

“Justin,” he said with a curt nod. And while I was pointedly rolling my eyes toward Justin’s room in a silent message that I hoped said, Time for you to go, Justin was gazing happily at Kirk as if he was his new best friend.

And apparently he was, judging by the way Kirk’s own eyes lit up when he spied the television screen. “Is that the Yankee–Red Sox game?” he said, swiftly leaving my side and planting himself cozily beside Justin on the couch.

Oh, brother. Now how was I going to get Justin the hell out of here?

I decided that the best I could do at the moment was hit the kitchen. After all, I had bigger things to tackle at the moment. Like meat.

I headed for the kitchen, where those bloody red steaks still sizzled. Thank God I had asked the butcher to cut an extra steak. It looked like I would be cooking for three.

I can do this, I thought, when I had flipped all the nicely browned steaks and began placing the freshly steamed asparagus on a serving platter and pulling the baked potatoes out of the microwave. Studying my handiwork, I realized I was practically a Domestic Goddess.

Once the six minutes designated for side two were up, I pulled one of the steaks off the grill and cut into the middle, just to make sure they were good and cooked and I wasn’t about to poison myself, my best friend and my, um, future husband. Red juice rushed out, sending a shiver through me. There was no way we could eat these like this, I thought, my head filled with visions of dancing microbes. That cookbook couldn’t have been right….

I threw the steak back on and closed the lid on the George Foreman, just as the intercom buzzed.

“I’ll get it!” I said, rushing for the intercom with an anxious glance at the sofa. Kirk continued to stare at the TV, unfazed. Justin, on the other hand, looked over at me, his eyes narrowed.

Hands trembling, I pushed the talk button, praying my beloved roommate wouldn’t betray me now. “Yes?”

“Flower delivery,” said a voice with a thick Spanish accent. I glanced over at the couch. Now I had Kirk’s attention, I realized. But the thrill of victory was quickly squashed by the look on Justin’s face as he sat back, folding his arms across his chest. He knew what I was up to. With a quick don’t-you-dare-say-a-word glare that I hoped Kirk didn’t pick up on, I headed for the door and swung it open.

Only to discover the deliveryman holding what looked like some sort of flower bush. A very large flower bush. “What the—” I stopped myself, glancing back into the living room, where Kirk and Justin looked on. Where are my roses? I wanted to scream but couldn’t for obvious reasons.

“Flowers for Miss—” the man began, studying the order slip he clutched in his free hand. “DiFranci?”

I sighed. A florist who couldn’t even get a name as easy as DiFranco right obviously hadn’t been the best choice for this ridiculous plan of mine. Correction, Michelle’s. Why had I listened to her anyway?

As I stared at that large pink bush, I realized this screwup by Murray’s had left me with a way out of this ridiculous scheme. “There must be some kind of mistake,” I began. “I didn’t order a…a…plant.” That was the truth, right? I had ordered roses. One dozen long-stemmed ones. At $54.95.

A frown creased the man’s features. Lifting the order slip closer to his face, he squinted at it. “Miss, the order here says I am to deliver these flowers to Miss Angela DiFranci?”

“I’m sorry but, I can’t accept—” I glanced back when I realized that Kirk now stood at the end of the hall. Of course, Justin stood just behind him, the smirk on his face even more pronounced now.

“What’s going on?” Kirk asked. “Is there a problem?”

“Mmm, nothing. Just go back to your game. I think they have the wrong apartment.”

“No, miss. It says right here that I’m to deliver these flowers to Miss Angela DiFranci, three-forty-seven East Ninth Street, apartment three-B.” Then, squinting at the slip, he said, “The order was placed by—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, grabbing the offending plant and pulling some cash out of the pocket of my jeans to silence my plant-wielding nemesis.

God knows how many singles I handed the guy, because with a wink and a smile, he disappeared before I could even ask for pruning directions. I only prayed that this bush I was now the proud owner of wasn’t any more expensive than the roses I had ordered. And that Kirk would at least get some of the secret romance they had been intended to invoke.

“Hey, is that an azalea?” Justin said as I walked toward them, wondering how I was going to carry on in the face of this…madness. “I love azaleas. My mom used to grow them back in Oak Park when I was kid.”

So much for romance.

“What’s the card say?” Kirk asked as I set the offending plant carefully on the coffee table.

“Yeah, what does it say?” Justin said, clearly curious as to what my little game was.

Curious myself, I opened the card. At the words printed there, I felt my perfectly ridiculous plan take a turn for the worse. “Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Love, Sam and Stella.”

“Who’re Sam and Stella?” Kirk asked.

Wouldn’t I like to know.

As it turned out, I made an (almost) complete recovery from the azalea fiasco. After dining on asparagus, potatoes and roast chicken (ordered up from BBQ when the meat had been rendered inedible by excessive overcooking), Kirk and I retreated to my room, leaving Justin to the azalea, which he was so taken with, he even moved some of the heaps of books he kept on the windowsill to make room for the latest addition to our happy little home. And while Kirk and I were languishing in bed, cozily watching a rerun of Seinfeld, the phone rang.

Kirk immediately looked at me, his brow creased. “Who the hell is that?”

Shrugging, I reached for the receiver. Late-night calls were not uncommon for me, though Kirk didn’t know that. After all, he didn’t spend enough time at my place to know my habits.

“Hello?” I said tentatively.

“Were you never going to call me back?”

“Josh!” I exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been, uh, busy,” I said. “So, uh, how are you?” I asked, not daring to look over at Kirk, who was probably wondering why Josh was calling me at—quick glance at the clock—11:47 p.m. But Josh’s and my friendship was such that we could call each other at any hour of the day for a consult on anything from the dangers of medical mismanagement (Josh was in insurance, now that he had given up his acting career) to the pitfalls of auditioning (because somehow Josh still had lots of career advice on the career he had himself given up). Though the late-night calls had all but ended since he’d moved in with Emily, he still sometimes resorted to them when he couldn’t get in touch with me otherwise.

“Didn’t you get my messages?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. I did. That’s, uh, wonderful news.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not every day a man finds the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with,” he said smugly. Then, as if to console me that I hadn’t been that woman, he continued, “But I want you to know, you’re the first person I told—after Emily’s family, of course.”

Some consolation. Who else would Josh have told? He didn’t speak to his parents anymore (years of therapy had shown him that they had not only damaged him in the past, but would prove even more damaging to his future), and I was probably one of the few friends Josh had left now that he had thrown his whole life over for Emily.

“So what do you say to a little celebratory dinner Monday night?”

“Monday night?” I replied, realizing that, as usual, I had nothing planned other than the usual takeout-and-a-rental with Kirk. “What time?”

“Around eight?”

“That’s fine,” I said, resigned to my fate.

“Looking forward to it, Ange.”

“Yeah, uh, me, too,” I replied, hanging up the phone feeling something like dread.

But a quick glance at Kirk’s expression revived me immediately. Judging by the scowl that now creased his handsome brow, he was jealous. Jealous!

“What the hell was that about?”

Very jealous, obviously.

“Oh, nothing.” I waved a hand nonchalantly and burrowed in beside him again to watch TV. “That was Josh. You remember Josh, right?”

They had met over a year ago. I had been playing Miss Julie in an off-off-Broadway production of the play of the same name, back in the days when I believed playing obscure characters in even more obscure venues would actually get me somewhere. Though by that time Josh had given up all pretensions of having an acting career himself, he still came to see me whenever I managed to land something juicier than, say, a crowd scene in a Christmas show. Josh had been dating Emily at the time, though he hadn’t brought her for one reason or another—I suspected because it had been too soon in their budding relationship to introduce her to the ex-girlfriend. I had introduced him to Kirk as merely “a friend,” though months later, during one of those relationship talks in which you ’fess up to your past, I did let it drop that Josh and I had dated. At the time, Kirk took it in stride, but now that my ex-boyfriend had given me a midnight call, it seemed the playing field had changed….

“What did he want?”

“Oh, he wants to have dinner Monday night.” See? Not a lie.

“Don’t we usually hang out on Monday?”

“Oh, did we have plans?” I asked innocently.

That was the crux of the problem with relationships. Those presumed dates. Just because I often hung out with Kirk on Monday night, I suppose he had the right to assume I would continue to do so without any sort of prior confirmation. But, if I was practically living at Kirk’s place four out of seven days a week, didn’t I have a right to presume we would one day make that seven out of seven days? No, I was not allowed that presumption. And, therefore, Kirk would no longer be allowed his.

“So you’re going out to dinner with your ex-boyfriend,” Kirk said, his gray eyes wide with disbelief.

“Oh, I don’t think of Josh that way,” I said. “We’re just friends,” I added. “Very close friends.”

And then, before a smile of satisfaction threatened to blow my cover, I rested my cheek on Kirk’s bare chest, presumably to settle in to television once more.

But who was I kidding? My heart was racing out of my chest with the thrill of victory. Kirk was jealous! That had to mean something, didn’t it?

6
Love means never having to pack an overnight bag.

What it ultimately meant was that I had to suffer through an evening with Josh. Not that he wasn’t a good friend—he was. Or he used to be, pre-Emily. I just preferred him over the phone or via e-mail. I think it was because I could…manage him better.

“Hey, Angie, how are you?” he said as I approached him where he stood outside of Holy Basil, a Thai restaurant in the East Village we had agreed upon after much debate. Josh always tried to coerce me to go the Upper East Side, where he now co-habitated with Emily. But, truthfully, the only time I ventured higher than midtown was to see Grace, who lived on the Upper West Side.

Despite what I knew about his flossing habits, Josh looked spectacularly well-groomed in a navy pinstripe suit, hot-pink tie (this, I suppose, was his attempt to show that despite his dreary nine-to-five life, he still had a wild side) and wire-rimmed glasses.

We hugged hello. Actually, Josh hugged, while I went for a quick kiss on the cheek. The end result was that I wound up kissing his neck. I stifled a groan. Somehow, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, I always did something to convince Josh I still “wanted” him. This was what happened when you broke up with a guy before he got a chance to break up with you, even though it was evident to both of you the relationship was over.

When he leaned back from the embrace, Josh stood staring at me in a pose that looked surprisingly like his head shot: chin down (drawing attention to his dimpled cleft), blue eyes forward, a slight smile lingering on his well-shaped mouth. Yes, Josh was a good-looking guy. The problem was, he seemed to need constant affirmation of that fact—especially now that he wasn’t acting anymore and having agents and directors tell him that he had the kind of look that could sell anything from toothpaste to hair-replacement products (did I mention that thick mass of dark, wavy hair?). Hence, the reason he had always gotten great commercial work. He had the kind of face that made him just good-looking enough to make you covet whatever skin-care system or toothpaste he was touting, and unassuming enough for you to believe he actually used it.

I decided to throw him a bone. After all, we were friends. And I understood that particular anxiety (heightened in actors, who base their work on their looks) that drove lesser people to face tucks and chin lifts.

“You look great,” I said, smiling up at him and, I’ll admit, waiting for some confirmation that I, too, was flourishing enough to consider giving up my day job.

“You let your hair go curly,” he said, his eyes roaming over my hair, which I suddenly realized was sticking to the back of my neck in the heat. This was not a compliment from Josh, who used to tell me (with great regularity) during our grand-albeit-brief romance that I should have my hair straightened.

“Yeah, well. Summer. Humidity. Can’t fight nature forever,” I said, smoothing my hands over one of the shorter layers that usually framed my face but were now, I was sure, flying frightfully away from it.

Once we were settled at a cozy little table for two in the dimly lit restaurant, Josh became Josh again. The goofy little numbers cruncher who was trying so hard to seem like he was anything but the insurance actuary he was.

“So Emily and I went to see The Yearning Saturday night,” Josh began, naming a play I had seen over a year ago, back in the days when it was playing at an avant-garde theater and people like Emily Fairbanks didn’t know of its existence. After all, what interest would Emily Fairbanks, prep school girl from Connecticut, have in Lower East Side residents battling AIDS (because that’s what The Yearning was about), unless she was paying eighty-five dollars a ticket? I guess at those prices, even Emily could afford to be sympathetic.

“Whose idea was that?” I asked, suspicious. In fact, I had been suspicious of Josh from the moment I had seen him in front of the restaurant, wearing what looked like a Brooks Brothers suit. This from the man who could never justify buying popcorn at the movies, no matter how tempting the smell (“Five dollars for corn?”) Invariably, I would buy my own, which he would guiltily eat. At the time, I accepted his frugality. Even admired it. We were both actors then, and of the mind-set that we could do without expensive frivolities for the sake of art. But ever since Josh had gotten a day job—and a princess, because that was what Emily appeared to be—he’d changed.

“Emily got comp tickets from her boss,” he replied with a certain smugness, as if his future wife’s skill at attaining freebies was to be admired. Apparently, Emily didn’t even have to pay for her kinder, gentler feelings.

“Yeah, well, I saw it already at LaMama,” I said, battling back with my superior I knew-it-was-great-art-even-then attitude.

But this didn’t faze Josh, who had an uncanny ability to lay me bare and bleeding with one well-put question. “So how’s the auditioning going?”

And there it was, the truth of just how far I wasn’t from Josh’s own bourgeois world. I hadn’t auditioned in months. Six, to be precise. Ever since I had landed my gig as exercise guru to the six-year-old set. But in the face of Josh’s inquiry, my career at Rise and Shine took on epic proportions. “Haven’t really had a chance,” I began, “what with the show being so successful and all. My producer has us rehearsing new routines already, so we can start up the new season as soon as the old one ends. And then there’s work and Kirk….”

He bobbed his head, as if this answer made sense to him. Then, with the apparent wisdom of a man who had spent all of one year pursuing his alleged lifelong dream, he said, “Yeah, I remember that life well. Always running around. Never sure where your next paycheck or your next meal was coming from. You know, I just read a report the other day that something like sixty-nine percent of all people working in creative fields die of causes that could have been treated during routine health-care….”

And there you had it: my “attraction” for Josh. We had met over an antihistamine on the Great Lawn of Central Park while playing disinterested bystanders in a student film that we hoped might make it to Sundance, but that ultimately wound up on the cutting-room floor. After six hours of waiting for the two leads to get through a breakup scene on the blanket before us, my allergies had gone into overdrive. Josh, a fellow sufferer, had recognized the symptoms right away, and during the break slipped me a Claritin. Afterward we had shared coffee and the kind of conversation that could convince a woman she had found her destiny, or at least a man she could fearlessly fall apart in front of. We had a lot in common: the same allergies (pollen, dust mites, cats and certain varieties of nuts); the same neuroses (death, poverty and the imminent collapse of the retaining wall that kept the Hudson from flooding the F train) and the same fear that all our waiting around at open calls and suffering through rejection would ultimately result in nothing.

You would think that since he’d given up the precarious life of an actor for the relative safety of life insurance, he would have calmed down, but no. Now that he had succumbed to a career of creating tables designed to measure such things as death due to, say, consumption of common household products, Josh was a font of horrifying statistics. And though I knew better, I could not, somehow, keep from waiting with rapt attention for some morbid little tidbit to drop from his lips. It was as if I needed him around to remind me that even if there were things in life I couldn’t be sure of (my acting career, Kirk, the number of sofas in my apartment at any given time), I could be sure of one thing: the fact that I would die.

“So, you folks ready to order?”

“I am,” said Josh, glancing up at me in question.

“Uh, yeah. You order first,” I said, burying myself in the menu, my appetite gone. How was it that Josh always had a knack for making me realize the pure insanity of my life?

“I’ll have the Pad Thai,” I said finally, ordering the same thing I always ordered whenever I ate Thai. Boring, yes, but at least I knew what I was getting. And I liked to be sure of something in life. Besides, I was allergic to so many things, it saved me from having to interrogate the waiter about hidden ingredients that could potentially kill me in the other entrée choices.

“So let me tell you how I did it,” Josh said, and I knew, without any further clarification, what “it” was. The proposal. I sipped my water, pasted on a smile and listened while Josh proceeded to tell me all about the glorious evening he asked Emily Fairbanks to be his wife. Josh prided himself on being a romantic. In fact, he still gets on my case that I didn’t appreciate all his valiant attempts to woo me (okay, forgive me if I didn’t find rowing across the lake out front of his parents’ family cabin in the Poconos on the hottest day of the year romantic). But as he told me about the carriage ride across Central Park (a bit clichéd, but we’ll give him points for big spending), how the moon hung low in the sky and the only sound was the gentle clip-clop of the horse’s hooves (I’m sure there was traffic. There’s always traffic. But never mind…). How Emily’s eyes lit up when he turned to her in the cozy little seat, took her hand in his and said those words he had never uttered to another woman before.

I have to say, I got a little choked up there. Especially when I saw shining in Josh’s eyes what looked like the real thing. Love. For Emily Fairbanks, whose most notable quality (in my mind, anyway) was a certain nobility of brow and good skin.

I smiled, the lump thickening in my throat. I was happy for him. Really, truly happy. Because if Josh, with whom I shared not only the same allergy prescription but the same paralyzing anxieties, could get married, then, hell, I would be just fine.

“So let me know when I have to get my tux,” I said, referring to our old joke that I would have to be Josh’s “best man,” since I was (at least according to him) his closest friend.

And then Josh ducked his head and actually blushed.

“Okay, okay,” I continued to banter, unaware of the source of his discomfort, “I’ll wear a dress if I have to. But no taffeta!”

But when Josh continued to avert his gaze, I realized our old joke was no longer funny. And I suspected I knew why.

“I am coming to the wedding, aren’t I?”

Finally he looked up, his gaze hesitant. “Actually, Emily and I…well, we were just talking about, well, you…and she doesn’t really feel, uh, comfortable with, uh, inviting…that is to say, uh—” he ducked his head once more “—you.”

My mouth opened to speak, but not a word was forthcoming. After all, though we didn’t hang out much anymore, Josh and I were friends. And though we hadn’t fared well as a couple, we had come to depend on each other in some ways. At least until Emily had entered the picture.

“C’mon, Ange,” Josh said now. “You have to understand how Emily must feel. I mean, you are my ex-girlfriend.”

And, apparently, I thought as I scanned his embarrassed features for some sign of the man I thought was one of my closest friends, that’s all I would ever be.

But I didn’t have time to ponder my flagging relationship with Josh. Because suddenly my relationship with Kirk took a turn for the better.

When I came home from dinner that night, there was a message blinking on my answering machine. “Call me when you get in,” came Kirk’s voice over the machine (rather insistently, I might add).

I opted not to call.

What? It was late. I didn’t want to wake him up.

Besides, I didn’t want to do anything to break my feeling of sheer power. A power that only grew when, while I was sitting at my desk at Lee and Laurie the next day, Jerry Landry leaned over my cube, eyes gleaming as if he were going to tell me some dirty secret, and said, “You got a call at the control station from Kirk. You want me to transfer him?”

“Sure,” I said, my insides shimmering with an excitement I had not felt since the early days of Kirk’s and my relationship. I glanced at Michelle, who raised an eyebrow at me. Kirk never called at the office. Not only was it near impossible to get through during the day, he never really had a need to. Until now.

“Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy,” I answered as I was supposed to, praying Kirk’s call had gotten to me before a customer’s.

“Hey,” Kirk said, “what’s going on?”

“Hey,” I replied, as calmly as I could.

“Why didn’t you call me back last night?” he demanded. I almost felt a pinch of guilt at the hurt in his tone.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said, rushing to make amends as was my nature (despite what you might think of me, I really am no good at this game-playing stuff). “It was just so late when I got home and I figured you were tired, and—”

“What the hell time did you get home?”

Wow, he was mad. “Uh, eleven-thirty.” I neglected to explain it was because I had spent a major part of the evening letting Josh know just what I thought about the fact that he felt it necessary to exclude me from the most important day of his life. An utterly fruitless endeavor, as I discovered that not only did I not understand Emily Fairbanks, I understood Josh even less.

“What the hell were you doing?” Kirk barked. “Oh, never mind. You coming over later?”

“Later?” I glanced at Michelle, who was nodding her head in the affirmative. “Uh, okay.”

“Good, because we need to talk…. See you around ten-thirty.”

“Okay,” I said, clicking off the line and turning to face Michelle. “He wants to talk….”

“Bingo!” she proclaimed, clapping her hands together.

My eyes widened. My God. It was working….

I showed up at Kirk’s place around quarter to eleven. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t Kirk standing in the doorway of his apartment, waiting for me.

“Hey,” I said, approaching cautiously.

He didn’t answer, only pulled me into his arms and proceeded to kiss me in a way he never had before. A bit roughly. Not that I minded. In fact, I liked it very much.

I linked my arms around his neck, pressed my body into his, looked up into those gray eyes I thought I knew so well and saw something unfamiliar stirring there. I would have called it anger, if not for the kisses he kept feathering over my mouth, my chin.

And here I thought I was going to get a speech about Josh.

Kirk broke the kiss, but only long enough to lead me down the long hall to his bedroom, where he pulled me down to the bed and proceeded to molest me.

In the best way, of course.

Better. Because I had never seen Kirk in such a…fever. He was always so in control (not that that was a bad thing—it accounted for his longevity in the sack). Now he was like a man driven by demons, tearing at my clothes (well, not exactly tearing—he did have a certain respect for fashion and knew what these little Lycra numbers went for), running his hands over my body as if committing it to memory.

Once he was inside, I nearly came when he gazed down at me, a look of pure possessiveness in his eyes.

You can just imagine what effect that had on me. And this time, Kirk didn’t even attribute it to the mattress.

Now, as we lay curled into each other, I felt a ribbon of pleasure move through me. For no matter what manipulative devices had brought Kirk to this point, I couldn’t deny that what had just happened between us was very, very real.

“That was nice,” Kirk said, nuzzling my face with his and causing another flutter to rush through my satiated body.

“Yeah, it was nice,” I said, gazing up into his eyes, which had now gone soft and were looking at me in a kind of wonder.

I came home the next day after an evening during which Kirk had made love to me no less than three times. It was if he were trying to drive home (literally) the fact that I was his and no one else’s. A pretty heady experience, as you can imagine. Not even the rigorous morning I had spent at Rise and Shine could dispel the glow I was feeling.

As I rode the bus home from the studio, I realized how foolish I had been to spend money I didn’t have on azalea plants I didn’t want and steaks I would inevitably render inedible. Kirk loved me. Really loved me. I felt like an idiot for going to such lengths to prove something to myself that I should have already known. And since I knew I’d feel like an even bigger idiot when my Visa bill came, I had resolved to undo some of the damage I had inflicted on myself by returning the azalea. After all, I hadn’t ordered it. I could march it right back to Murray the florist, play the disgruntled consumer and get my money back. It was a simple plan.

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