Eligible

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  HAVING NOT SEEN Darcy for nearly a week, Liz forwent the pretense of a run and simply walked from her sisters’ apartment building to his and knocked on the door. He didn’t answer, but as she left the building, surly about the lack of gratification, she encountered him on his way in, carrying several plastic grocery bags in both hands.

  “I assumed you were working,” she said, and he shook his head.

  “I go in tonight at six. Is something wrong?” She was deciding how to answer—was he trying to make her feel foolish?—when he added, with some degree of awkwardness, “Or did you just come over to, ah—right. Come in. By all means.”

  “Here.” She extended her hand. “Give me a few bags.”

  As she followed him back up the stairs, she took a perverse delight in sharing the latest news about her family, though instead of mockingly declaring his lack of surprise that the Bennets were harboring an insect plague of biblical proportions, he said, with what bordered on sympathy, “Old houses have a lot of issues. That’s a shame the buyers retracted their offer.”

  “Well, Kitty and Mary are your neighbors now,” she said. “They’re at the corner of Millsbrae and Atlantic, in case you need to borrow a cup of sugar.”

  “I’m surprised a landlord would rent to two people without jobs.”

  “It’s my name on the lease.”

  They had reached the second floor, and Darcy said as he unlocked his door, “You’re not worried about destroying your credit?”

  “Oh, I assume I will. But I don’t see what the alternative is.”

  Inside, Darcy put away the groceries requiring refrigeration while she sat on a kitchen stool; he offered her beer and water, both of which she declined; and within ten minutes the true reason for her visit had been not only initiated but, for both parties, successfully completed.

  “This so-called hate sex,” Darcy said then. “Is it the norm for you?” Their latest encounter, like the earlier ones, had been consummated above the sheets, and they were presently positioned near each other but no longer touching; in order to comply with cuddle avoidance, Liz had rolled away from him and lay, as he did, on her back.

  Liz laughed. “If you have to ask if someone’s slutty, that probably means the answer is yes.”

  “That’s hardly what I was implying. I just wonder if you find it more expedient. Though you did say you recently got out of a relationship, if I remember correctly.”

  “No, hate sex isn’t the norm for me, but neither is living in Cincinnati. And as a matter of fact, I’m about to leave. I go tomorrow afternoon to Houston to interview Kathy de Bourgh, and I’ll fly on to New York from there.”

  “You’re leaving town tomorrow?” Darcy seemed surprised.

  “Don’t be too heartbroken,” Liz said. “Have you ever tried online dating? If not, you should.”

  “Have you ever tried online dating?”

  “Sure, and I definitely would do it if I lived here.”

  For a few seconds, Darcy was quiet. Finally, he said, “Is the person you just broke up with Jasper Wick?”

  “If it were, that’d be scandalous, wouldn’t it? Since he’s a married man and a Stanford outcast.” Liz glanced at her watch. “A part of me is tempted to offer to write your online dating profile, but I’m not sure it’s ethical to inflict you on another human woman. It wouldn’t be very sisterly, if you know what I mean.”

  She had been teasing, but the expression on his face seemed to be one of genuine displeasure. He said, “I don’t need your help with an online dating profile.”

  “Fair enough. You do have a PhD, I hear.” Liz swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her clothes on the floor. She was fastening the clasp of her bra when she heard Darcy say, “That tattoo always surprises me.”

  It was two inches by one inch, an image of a typewriter on the small of her back. Without turning, she said, “Want to guess how old I was when I got it?”

  “Twenty?”

  “Even worse. Twenty-three. The irony is that I thought it was much cooler than a flower or a Chinese symbol. I was declaring my serious ambitions as a writer. But somehow, all these years later, it’s never been the right moment to show it to any of the people I’ve interviewed.” Liz glanced over her shoulder. “Maybe you should get the Hippocratic oath on your butt.”

  “Maybe so,” he said, and Liz felt a twinge of something. She still didn’t particularly like him, but it was hard not to wonder if they’d cross paths again. He tapped his left biceps. “Or the Skyline Chili logo up here.”

  She had pulled on her shirt and underwear and she stood, turning to face him as she stepped into her jeans. Presumably, it was the last time they’d see each other before she left town, and this unexpected welling of emotion—it was gaining rather than decreasing in intensity. Also, rather bizarrely, there was some chance that a few minutes earlier, during what had appeared to be the height of his pleasure, Darcy had uttered the words, “My darling.” If this had indeed happened, Liz was confident the utterance had been accidental, and certainly it had been acknowledged by neither of them. In any case, what was she supposed to do now—hug him goodbye like a co-worker? No, she would not hug him.

  “You’re way too good for Jasper, if that’s who it was,” Darcy said. He seemed simultaneously like a stranger and someone she knew extremely well; there was either an enormous amount to say or nothing at all.

  She tried to sound lighthearted. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  “AFTER I LEAVE town, my parents might tell you they’ve changed their mind about selling the house,” Liz said to Shane. She had met him at Coffee Emporium on Erie Avenue. “My mom especially, but don’t trust her. If that happens, call me right away.”

  “I appreciate the sensitivity of the situation,” Shane said. “But this could quickly get beyond the legal scope of what a real estate agent can do.”

  “They want to sell the house,” Liz said. “Or at least my dad recognizes that they have no choice. If they say otherwise, just treat it like static. And the minute you know another agent is planning to show it, call me, I’ll call Mary or Kitty, and one of them will make sure it looks okay and get my parents out.”

  Shane squinted in a way that took Liz a few seconds to recognize as fake casual. “Speaking of Kitty,” he said, “how old is she?”

  “Twenty-six.” Liz felt a mercenary and possibly disloyal temptation to add, And if you sell our house, she’s all yours. But he hadn’t yet asked if she was single; he was wondering, Liz could tell, but he hadn’t asked.

  “I FIGURED OUT where Mary goes,” Kitty said. “And it’s hilarious.” Liz had been lying on the Ikea couch in Kitty and Mary’s living room, reading a long article on her laptop in the newest issue of the magazine where she and Jasper had once been fact-checkers.

  “Where?” Liz asked.

  Kitty held up car keys. “Come with me.”

  “Is it good or bad?”

  “Just come,” Kitty said. “It’s worth it.”

  They drove through Oakley—this was the route they had followed to the campus of Seven Hills for countless mornings of Liz’s life—but instead of continuing to Oaklawn Drive and making a left, Kitty turned right into the parking lot of Madison Bowl.

  “She bowls?” Liz said.

  “She’s in a league.” Kitty’s voice was thick with amusement. “And it’s not a hipster league. It’s middle-aged fat people.”

  “That’s not against the law.”

  “Once you see them, you’ll think it should be.”

  As Kitty pulled into a parking space and turned off the car, Liz said, “She’s in there now?”

  “I followed her here a few weeks ago. I needed to make sure she wasn’t in a satanic cult before we became roommates.”

  “Did you tell her you’d followed her?”

  Kitty shook her head.

  “So what’s your plan? We go inside and yell ‘Surprise!’ at her?”

  “Last time, she changed in her car into
a red-and-black uniform,” Kitty said. “Don’t you think it’s weird that she’s so secretive about something so dumb?”

  “Because she knew this was how you’d act if she told us.”

  Kitty had parked near a light pole, and in the sallow illumination it provided, the sisters looked at each other. Petulantly, Kitty said, “You’re no fun.”

  “You know what, Kitty? You can decide to be a good person. If you’re lucky, you have a long adulthood ahead of you, and you might actually be happier if you’re nice instead of mean.”

  “I am a good person,” Kitty said. But it was with clear resentment that, to Liz’s relief, she started the ignition.

  LIZ CALLED JANE from the Ikea couch, and when she told her sister where she was, Jane said, “I’m sorry your last night in Cincinnati isn’t very ceremonious.”

  “Whatever,” Liz said. “This way I’ll appreciate the luxury of my Houston hotel room.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what the extermination man told you,” Jane said, “and the idea of Mom and Dad eating food that was in the house during the fumigation—it makes me nervous. What if you move stuff to Kitty and Mary’s place beforehand, or just throw it away? Some of Mom’s spices are probably from the eighties anyway.”

  The annoyance Liz felt—it was because she knew Jane was right, and she also knew that clearing out the many kitchen cabinets, plus the refrigerators on two floors, would not be an insignificant task. And Ken Weinrich’s team was supposed to arrive at the Tudor at ten the next morning.

  Liz glanced at the closed door of Kitty’s bedroom; light shone out from the crack, and she could hear the sound of whatever TV show Kitty was watching on her smartphone. Mary was out, presumably still at the bowling alley. Liz would enlist them both, she thought. To Jane, she said, “Want me to send you a picture of the house when it’s tented?”

  “No!” Jane sounded dismayed.

  “I won’t if you don’t want me to.” Liz lowered her voice. “There’s something I haven’t told you about Darcy.” Her wish to confess stemmed less from a moral awakening than from confusion over the uneasiness she’d experienced leaving Darcy’s apartment that afternoon; she needed to discuss the oddness of their final encounter.

  “Do you know,” Jane said before Liz revealed more, and Jane’s tone was equanimous rather than bitter, “if it weren’t for Darcy, I have a hunch Chip and I would still be together?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The night he broke up with me, one of the things he said was that Darcy didn’t think we made a good couple. Chip also said, as if I didn’t know this, how much he respects Darcy.”

  An unpleasant alertness had come over Liz. “Why would Darcy have disapproved of you and Chip?”

  “Who knows? Although I’m sure I could torment myself from now until the end of time guessing.” Jane laughed a little, which seemed to Liz a sign of her sister’s progress. Indeed, Jane appeared far calmer about what she was describing than Liz felt. “Anyway, it’s not like Darcy’s low opinion of our family has ever been a secret,” Jane said. “What’s the thing you haven’t told me about him?”

  Liz thought miserably of her conclusion—her entirely self-serving conclusion, she realized—that sleeping with Darcy was not wrong. What disloyalty to Jane she’d shown! Surely divulging her trysts to Jane at this juncture, especially when those trysts were now finished, would serve no purpose. Haltingly, Liz said, “That day you fainted, when you were at the hospital—I ran into Darcy outside the ER. He helped me figure out where to go.”

  Jane was quiet, seemingly waiting for more.

  Lamely, Liz added, “I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned that to you.”

  “I do feel like I can see things more from Chip’s perspective than I could at first,” Jane said. “What if instead of me telling him I was pregnant, he’d told me that another woman was pregnant with his child? Or if—well, the way Amanda and Prisha had Gideon was using sperm from a friend of theirs, a straight friend. If Chip had donated his sperm to a lesbian couple he was close to, no matter how carefully he’d tried to explain it, it would have seemed weird.”

  “Not really. This stuff happens now.”

  “But if you’re just getting to know the other person?”

  “You’re being too easy on him.” Liz was, however, unsure if she really thought this or merely wished to deflect attention from herself and what she’d almost disclosed. Then she said, “Kitty solved the mystery of Mary’s evening outings. Mary doesn’t know we know, but apparently she’s in a bowling league.”

  “Really?” Jane sounded tickled. “That’s so cute.”

  THE DOORBELL OF the apartment, a sound Liz hadn’t previously heard, woke her just before seven in the morning. In the boxer shorts and T-shirt she’d slept in—the shirt was one she’d excavated from her closet at the Tudor, and it read HARVEST FAIR 1991 across the front—she opened the door. Insofar as she was awake enough to have any such expectations, she assumed it would be the building’s superintendent, or perhaps the landlord; but to Liz’s astonishment, it was Fitzwilliam Darcy. Instinctively, she crossed her arms over her braless chest. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “You told me your sisters’ building was at the intersection of Millsbrae and Atlantic.” Darcy’s countenance was grim: His skin was unusually pale, and there were pronounced bags beneath his eyes. He wore green scrubs, and Liz suspected he’d driven directly from his overnight shift. They looked at each other—was she supposed to invite him in?—and somewhere nearby, an oriole trilled. Darcy said, “I take it you’re still planning to leave town this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, after the epic fumigation. Or after it starts—it won’t be finished for three days.”

  There was a pause. Then, in a severe voice and without preamble, Darcy said, “I’m in love with you.”

  “Ha, ha,” Liz said.

  “It’s probably an illusion caused by the release of oxytocin during sex,” Darcy continued, “but I feel as if I’m in love with you. You’re not beautiful, and you aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are. You’re a gossip fiend who tries to pass off your nosiness as anthropological interest in the human condition. And your family, obviously, is a disgrace. Yet in spite of all common sense, I can’t stop thinking about you. The time has come for us to abandon this ridiculous pretense of hate sex and admit that we’re a couple.” Darcy had delivered this monologue stiffly, while mostly avoiding eye contact, but when he was finished, he looked expectantly at Liz.

  If she had ever been so bewildered, she could not recall when. And though she understood that his remarks contained some flattering essence, she had never been more insulted. For several seconds, she searched for words and finally said, “So this isn’t—you’re not joking? Or are you?”

  “I’m not joking at all.”

  “Darcy, how could we possibly be a couple? We don’t even like each other.”

  “That was at first.”

  “For you, maybe,” Liz said. “I mean, sorry, but I still consider you a jackass. Do you imagine you’re doing me some big favor by overlooking how unattractive I am and how much you hate my family and declaring your love anyway?”

  Darcy’s surprise was apparent in his widened eyes, a surprise, Liz thought, that served as further evidence of his arrogance. Tightly, he said, “I was under the impression that you appreciated candor. It wasn’t my intent to offend you.”

  “How could I possibly want to be with the person who pushed Chip and Jane apart? I know now that you told him to break up with her. And I know you were part of getting Jasper kicked out of Stanford. This idea you have that your judgment is better than everyone else’s, that you alone should decide the fates of other people—the only question is if being a surgeon gave you a god complex or if your god complex is what led to your being a surgeon.”

  “I see,” Darcy said. “And you believe that I have not only the will to control people’s behavior but also the power?”

 
; “The facts speak for themselves.”

  “Let me assure you that the idea for Chip to leave medicine and go back on Eligible didn’t come from me.”

  “You may not have bought his plane ticket to L.A., but I’m sure you influenced him.”

  “And when you suggest that I got Jasper expelled from Stanford”—Darcy’s expression was haughty—“just so I fully comprehend, was it that he was innocent and I planted evidence on him, or was it that he was guilty but I should have unilaterally decided to let him off the hook?”

  “There are worse crimes than writing an idiotic story.”

  Darcy scrutinized her face before saying, “Yes, there are.”

  “Even if you hadn’t screwed over Jasper and Jane, I’d never want you to be my boyfriend,” Liz said. “And even if you hadn’t just insulted my looks, my personality, and my family, and blamed your interest in me on sex hormones—even if you’d expressed your attraction like a normal human being, I still wouldn’t.”

  She was experiencing a pleasing anger, a satisfying outrage rare in her daily encounters, and she expected him to be experiencing it, too. But rather than glaring back at her, he seemed wounded, and a small seed of doubt formed within Liz.

  “I apologize for misreading the situation so egregiously,” he said. Then—it was such a strange, old-fashioned gesture—he basically bowed to her. “Forgive me.” He turned, and in a matter of seconds, without further farewell, he was gone. Immediately, Liz began to question whether she’d imagined the whole bizarre exchange.

  Still standing on the threshold of the open door, Liz found that she was shaking; her anger was quickly slipping away, replaced with a growing uneasiness. How was it possible that Darcy—Darcy—had announced that he was in love with her? If it was at some level gratifying, it was also unthinkable. How thoroughly confused she felt, how rattled and off-kilter.