“This is great news!” I tell him, just in case he thinks I’m, oh, bitterly resentful or something.
Because I’m so not.
I’m genuinely happy for my good friend Buckley. super-de-duper happy.
I also happen to be just a wee bit selfishly sad for myself. I can’t help it.
But I’m not going to rain on Buckley’s parade. Nosirree. I’m going to march back to my seat and…and order a bottle of champagne.
Do they have champagne in Japanese restaurants?
They must.
So, yes, I’m going to order some super-de-duper Japanese champagne.
I will then toast Buckley’s rosy future with Sonja.
After which, I will proceed to get piss drunk.
As I return to my chair to get the ball rolling, I realize that other diners are glancing in our direction. I guess I was a little fake-overexuberant.
Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Nothing but the last single twenty-something female in New York City.
All right, maybe I’m exaggerating slightly, but can you blame me? Does it not suddenly seem as though everyone and their gay lover is headed down the aisle?
“What made you change your mind?” I ask Buckley, and come off sounding like Detective Lily Rush interrogating a perp.
Oops. I really need that champagne. I look around for Cute Japanese Waiter. He’s in a tête-à-tête with Cute Japanese Waitress. Probably proposing to her, I think grimly, waving my arms to capture their attention.
“Well,” Buckley says as the Cute Japanese Waitstaff ignores me and everyone in a two-table radius stares, “Sonja’s really been wanting to get married for a while…”
No, ya think?
“…and I realized that if I don’t step up to the plate, I’m going to lose her.”
“So it was her ultimatum that finally got you.”
“I guess.”
He guesses?
Does he really think he might have stepped up to the plate of his own accord?
Then again…
How does that old adage go?
You can lead a horse to the plate but you cannot make him step up to it? Something like that.
God, I need a drink.
And a cigarette.
Too bad Sushi Lucy, like every other restaurant in New York, is a nonsmoking establishment.
And too bad you are a newly minted nonsmoker, remember?
Yeah, screw that.
As God is my witness, I’m lighting up the moment we’re back out on the street. Forget the spa in Providence. I can’t be expected to handle all this marital bliss on an empty nicotine tank.
“When I looked at my future,” Buckley is saying, “I couldn’t really imagine what it would be like without Sonja.”
He should have asked me. I could have pointed out that there would be no shrill ultimatums, ticking timers, looming-deadline threats.
What’s going to happen when Sonja decides she’s ready for a baby? Will she threaten to leave him if she doesn’t have a bun in the oven by a week from Tuesday? Will she stand over him with a turkey baster and porn so he can ante up sperm, sperm, more sperm?
“I asked myself what I was waiting for,” Buckley goes on, “and I couldn’t really answer that question. Sonja was always asking why I didn’t step up to the plate. Did I think somebody better was going to come along? Somebody who would take better care of me than she does? Somebody with whom I have more in common?”
I bite my tongue to keep from pointing out that he and I are the only ones we know who would use a phrase like that. “Somebody with whom…”
Most people would erroneously say, “Somebody who I have more in common with.”
Because they aren’t copywriters and aspiring copywriters like us.
But I don’t point that out, because I don’t want Buckley to think there’s someone now present who doth protest the joining of this man and that woman in holy matrimony.
I shall not speak now. I shall forever hold my peace.
While holding my peace, I just happen to be secretly thinking there might be others with whom Buckley has more in common than he does Sonja, that’s all.
“Sonja told me to take a step back and look at the big picture…” He trails off, shaking his head with a knowing expression. “And she was right. Because I did, and that was when I knew it was time to—”
“Step up to the plate?” I supply. Not snidely, I swear.
But step up, step back, step up—I can’t help noting that Sonja is choreographing more steps these days than Fifi La Bouche.
“Right. I realized it was time to step up to the plate, and that’s what I did.”
“Good for you,” I tell Buckley in a first-grade-teacher voice, as if it was all his very own gold-star idea.
Then I am compelled to ask, “So when did you propose? Sweetest Day?”
“No, halfway through Game Two last night.”
“You asked Sonja to marry you in the middle of watching the World Series?”
He nods. “It was totally spur of the moment. You know how she’s not really a Yankees fan?”
Yup, I know. She’s from Boston and was spawned by a long line of Satan worshipers—I mean, Red Sox devotees. We’re talking her family has box seats at Fenway and threw a catered party for three hundred people after the 2004 series. Buckley refused to attend, which nearly led to yet another breakup.
Now here he is, impulsively pledging his troth to a Bean-town babe—and in the middle of a Yankees World Series, no less?
“So what happened, Buckley?” I ask, barely managing to swallow the to you I wanted to insert between happened and Buckley.
“I don’t know. It was the craziest thing. The Yankees were getting killed. Absolutely annihilated, you know?”
“I know.”
“When Jeter missed that pop fly in the fifth inning, I was devastated. Then I looked over at Sonja, and she was crying. Actually crying.”
“Did she get hurt or something?” I ask, not following.
“No, she was crying about the game. For my sake.”
“She was faking tears?”
“No, the tears were real. She was caught up in rooting for the Yankees because I was caught up in it.”
“Oh,” I say like I’m convinced, but I still bet she stubbed her toe when he wasn’t looking.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Sonja. She’s always been nice to me, which shows she hasn’t got a clue that I have, at various times since we met, secretly lusted after her boyfriend.
Looking across the table at Buckley, picturing him in a tux on an altar vowing to cherish another woman until death do them part, I wonder whether I’m still a little bit in love with him after all.
Is that why I’m so jealous of Sonja?
Do I wish I were marrying Buckley?
“Ready to order?”
Saved by Cute Japanese Waiter, who isn’t all that cute close up. But then, who is?
Buckley is, that’s who.
Jack, too, but he’s not marrying another woman. He’s not even marrying me.
Therein lies the problem.
The one that can only be solved with liquor.
Placing the soul-search temporarily on hold, I ask Japanese Waiter about getting some champagne.
“You want saki?” is the disconcerting response.
Did I say I wanted saki?
“No,” I respond succinctly, “I’d like a bottle of champagne.”
“No champagne.” He shakes his head with Soup Nazi vehemence.
Does he mean they don’t serve champagne? Or simply that he doesn’t want me to have any?
Before I can pursue it, Buckley butts in to say, “That’s okay, Tracey. I drank half a bottle of White Star last night with Sonja and it gave me a headache.”
Sonja again. It’s always Sonja with him now that he’s engaged. Sonja, Sonja, Sonja. It’s sickening. It really is.
“Plus,” Buckley goes on, “I’ve got a lot of work
to do this afternoon. I’ll stick with water and tea.”
That’s fine for him, but I order a double bourbon. Straight up.
And the sashimi deluxe with white rice, not healthy brown, a Philadelphia hand roll with extra cream cheese, a side of edamame, and both the miso soup and the green salad with ginger dressing.
“Hungry?” Buckley asks dryly as the waiter leaves.
Depressed is more like it.
Am I in love with Buckley?
I think about our history.
Then I think about Jack, and our history.
Jack, who doesn’t seem convinced that he is capable of loving, honoring and cherishing me until death do us part.
Still…
Jack, who spent an hour and forty dollars combing the Upper East Side for saffron when he could have been parked in front of the playoff game ignoring me and my flamboyant pal.
If that isn’t love, what is?
You need to take this relationship with Jack one step at a time, I think, embracing my inner Sonja and Fifi La Bouche. You need to stop worrying about what everybody else is doing and what you and Jack aren’t doing.
You need to take control of the things that are within your reach for now…
Like the smoking.
I’m ready to quit.
I really am. In fact…
I already did.
An hour down, seventy-some years to go. How hard can it be?
Hey, maybe I can use it as leverage! Maybe I can tell Jack that I’ll agree to quit smoking before I leave to spend Thanksgiving in Brookside (I can’t smoke in my parents’ house anyway) if he’ll agree to propose before then.
Nah. That would be an ultimatum, and despite having embraced my inner Sonja mere moments ago, I don’t do ultimatums.
If Jack doesn’t propose of his own accord, then I don’t want him to propose at all.
Okay, not really.
I don’t care whose idea it is…
All I want is for Jack to propose.
Chapter 8
I am all cozy on the couch with Jack on the blustery night before Halloween, watching the newest installment in the latest Apprentice/Survivor/Big Brother/Amazing Race hybrid, which we TiVo’d last night.
Do you know how challenging it is not to accidentally find out which contestant got booted off this week before you have a chance to watch something? I swear, it’s more stressful than account management at Blair Barnett.
Speaking of which, I was forced to stick my fingers in my ears and run away from two “Can you believe what happened last night on…?” watercooler conversations this morning at work. Whatever it was must have been big. To play it safe, I avoided the television section of today’s Post, and I didn’t dare open my AOL sign-on screen because I was afraid it would be right there, photo and all, like it was when I accidentally missed a Bachelor episode back when it was on and anyone cared.
Anyway, my clever spoiler-avoidance plan worked. Jack and I still have no idea who gets booted or what drama ensues, and we’re closing in on the final fifteen minutes. I am on pins and needles, trying my hardest not to eat the entire bowl of candy corn I set out earlier.
It’s here because I spotted it in a big display of cellophane bags full of trick-or-treat candy in the drugstore while I was picking up the Nicorette my doctor prescribed, and how can you resist something when they shove it in your face like that?
Okay, I’ll admit that the candy wasn’t exactly right there on the pharmacy counter. But it was close by.
Okay, not that close by.
Okay! Okay! I had to wander up and down the aisles in search of it.
Are you happy now? Jeesh. Can’t a person indulge their newly discovered sweet tooth without being made to feel all guilty about it?
I used to be more of a chips’n’dip gal myself. But suddenly, candy is calling my name wherever I go. Sour Gummies, M&Ms, Jujubes, nonpareils—anything I can munch like popcorn while pretending it’s better than cigarettes. Which is like pretending a church-choir concert is better than U2 live at Madison Square Garden.
Let me tell you, nothing is better than cigarettes. Not sex (although sex with my fantasy boyfriend Bono might come close); not reclaiming your sense of smell, which you hadn’t really noticed was missing until now; sure as hell not Jujubes.
True, Jujubes can’t kill you. Not that I’ve heard, anyway. Yet.
Back when my grandmother started smoking, nobody thought cigarettes were deadly, either. For all we know, the surgeon general might one day see fit to place skull-and-crossbone warnings on Jujubes.
What does that prove, you ask?
I have no idea, other than that I resent quitting smoking. Even though it started out as my idea.
Now it’s more Jack’s idea. If it weren’t for him, I’d have at least cheated, or maybe even started up again before now.
So I suppose I should be grateful to him for helping me kick a deadly habit.
But really, I just want to kick him.
Especially when he clears his throat for the gazillionth time tonight.
“I’ve got a tickle,” he informs me for the gazillionth time tonight, too busy fast-forwarding through the commercial to catch the lethal look I give him.
I shake my head and look away, and my gaze falls on the Chia Pet on a nearby table. The seeds I grudgingly spread over its disgusting scalp As Directed have yet to sprout the promised tiny green seedlings. Every time I see the ugly, defective little gnome, I want to hurtle it out the window.
In case you haven’t noticed, my nerves are a little fried. If I could just have a smoke everything would be great, but I can’t, so I’m clenched and bitchy and Jack’s goddamned tickle and all this who-gets-booted tension isn’t helping.
Nor is the tasteless Nicorette I’m chewing while chain-eating candy corn. In fact, the Nicorette tastes better when I chew the corn-syrupy-sweet morsels right into it, although the texture is getting slimier and crumblier by the minute.
I really think smoking is infinitely more appealing, death sentence and all. But Jack is sitting right here like a gestapo guard and I promised him I’d quit and it’s been over a week and all I have to do is make it through tonight and then if I really want a cigarette I can sneak one tomorrow.
I jab another couple of candy corn in my mouth. Earlier, I started out eating my way through the bowl one piece at a time, in the usual method: nibbling off the white tip of the triangle, then trying to bite off the orange middle section as evenly as possible along the dividing line with the yellow base so as not to get any yellow with it and not to leave any orange on the yellow, and finally, eating the yellow.
That’s my usual method, anyway.
But tonight, I keep inhaling the whole triangle at once. Rather, a couple of triangles at once. I can’t help it. I need to keep my mouth busy so that I won’t smoke. Or say something stupid. Because not smoking makes everything and everyone get on my nerves.
Including Jack.
Especially poor Jack, because he’s the only one here.
Do you think he has any idea that if he clears his throat one more time and mentions that Goddamned tickle, I’m going to smother him with a throw pillow until he stops flailing?
Mental Note: L.W.C.1 sucks. Don’t ever quit smoking again. Jack presses a button on the remote and the show comes back on, but the cheesy host, Ed, whose teeth are blindingly white as all reality hosts’ teeth must be, and who speaks without verbs as all reality hosts must, is in midsentence and the players have begun a new stunt leading up to this show’s equivalent to the boardroom/tribalcouncil/mostdramaticroseceremonyever.
“Can you back it up?” I ask Jack, irritated. If he’d let me handle the remote this wouldn’t be happening but no, he thinks the remote is all his and it pisses me off.
“What?” he asks.
“Can you back it up?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Why?”
“Because we missed what Ed said.”
“We didn’t miss anythin
g. Maybe like two words,” he goes on, effectively drowning out everything that’s being said even now.
“Back it up,” I say again. Then add a grudging, “Please.”
He seems like he’s about to protest again, God help both of us, but then he obviously thinks better of it and points the remote to back up the scene.
Only it’s still not far enough—he gets Ed in midsentence again.
“Jack!” I shriek in dismay, just as the phone rings.
He promptly presses a button on the remote, freezes the picture and looks at me. “Should I get it?”
Is he asking my permission, or does he mean do I want to get it instead of him, or does he mean are we going to let it go into voice mail? What is he doing? What does he want from me?
God, I’m so stressed out!
“I don’t care,” I snap, “whatever.”
He picks up the phone.
It’s his mother, my beloved and perhaps deluded Wilma. Maybe she’s so into having me for a daughter-in-law that she convinced herself it’s actually going to happen. Poor thing.
But at least someone is crazy about me.
And, perhaps, just plain crazy.
As I listen to Jack’s monotone Yups and Nopes for a minute and wonder why when he talks to her the conversation is entirely one-sided. Is it because I’m here listening? Is he effusive when I’m not here?
I doubt it. I mean, he’s not effusive when he’s talking to me on the phone, either. I bet our conversations sound pretty much the same way on his end. Yup, nope, nope, yup. Strictly taking care of business, especially now that we live together and see each other all the time.
“No, not yet,” he says as I reach into the candy bowl.
I wonder if she’s asked him whether we’ve had any trick-or-treaters for Beggar’s Night yet. Beggar’s Night, where I grew up, anyway. Around here, though, the night before Halloween is apparently called Gate Night. I have no idea what that means. Beggar’s Night is more fitting, don’t you think? Not that I’m going to get into that again with Jack. We almost had a huge screaming fight over it a little while ago.
Ironic, since it’s a moot point in Manhattan. At least, in our building. We don’t even get trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
“But I will,” Jack is saying into the phone.
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