by Crowe, Stan
“Is this guy dumb, or blind?”
Moiré looked up at me suddenly, a surprisingly scathing look in her eyes. “He’s neither, Nick. And even if she hadn’t completely fleeced him, he’s one of those guys who is strong enough and good to stick with Ember and try to help her turn herself around even when she’s obviously hurting him. Among other things, he’s still with her because he’s a good guy, Nick. Please don’t disrespect him.”
I backed away, hands up in surrender. “Sorry, Moiré. I guess I just figured that most guys would turn tail and run if they were with a player.”
Moiré scowled again. “Most men would, yeah. This guy should run too. But he’s not most men and that’s what makes him truly special.”
I blew out a breath, feeling my heart sink. “So what are you going to do?”
She shook her head in defeat. “I don’t know, Nick. I really don’t. I guess the only thing I can do is hope. Hope that she either dumps him like she did with her other two fiancés, or that something helps him wake up to the reality she’s been hiding from him this whole time. Either way, it’s going to hurt him pretty bad, I expect. I’m not sure how I’ll handle that if and when it happens. It’d be better than watching his marriage fail. I just don’t want to see another Derrik Michaelson incident. And that’s part of the main reason I’m not sure he’d believe me if I tried to tell him.”
“And what’s that?”
“He’d see right through me. He’d think it was all just a selfish charade.”
I leaned in to peer closely at her, but she quickly turned her face away. “Why would he think something like that?”
I almost didn’t hear her as she said, “Because I love him, Nick. The way I loved Richard.”
I’m not sure who was more startled when we realized the sun was peeking down on us from behind a mountain, announcing Sunday morning. We made some hasty apologies for keeping each other out all night, said “see ya’ laters,” and then she was on her way home and I was on mine. I felt as if I’d been hastily jerked out of some amazing dream and my heart yearned to get back to it. The thought that Ella would be on my case for disappearing for an entire evening may have registered somewhere in the back of my mind, but it was utterly drowned out by the deep sense of longing and connectedness I had shared with Moiré that night. But no, it was too much and too close. I resigned myself to simply making our conversation a pleasant memory that would never happen again. I forced myself to sleep through the raw ache in my heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“When did you stop loving me, Jim?”
“Why do women ask stupid questions like that? I just don’t get it.”
“Why are men so emotionally deaf that they don’t get it?”
“We’re not emotionally deaf. We’re just plugging our emotional ears to drown out the nagging.”
The Monday after my all-nighter with Moiré, I woke with a start and to a troubling realization: Despite good general progress, my research still hadn’t gotten me closer to solving my specific dilemma with Ella. That thought was immediately followed a startling comprehension: I had finally allowed myself to recognize that there was a serious problem with my relationship. Slowly, painfully, I began to admit to myself that deep down I was frightened beyond logic. If Ella was the best thing I would ever find, then did that mean it was Ella or nothing? Even more, I was frightened to think that that nothing might actually be preferable to Ella. I knew better in my head, but not in my heart.
Images of myself as an eighty-year old bachelor flashed through my mind. All around me, my friends were telling stories about their grandkids and great-grandkids. They were sitting there with their spouses of fifty, sixty years, reminiscing about good times and bad, holding hands as they grew old together in bonds of undying love.
Meanwhile, I was all alone. Forever.
My thoughts switched to the other option. There I was, losing sleep again, wondering where Ella was and who she was with this time. I saw my kids asking, “Daddy? Where’s Mommy?” and I pictured myself fabricating another flimsy cover story for her.
In the end, despite my kids, I was still alone.
Moiré, said a voice in my head. Ella will wander. Choose Moiré.
I shook my head until I was so dizzy I was sure the thought would have been flung clean of my brain. Moiré was a nice, sweet, charming, attractive, intelligent… I killed my thoughts. Moiré was a pleasant girl to be around. She was… very helpful in my research. She was just a friend. She would probably make an excellent wife. For someone else, I forced myself to think.
I had to find an answer. I had to find it now.
Noticing the time, I leaped out of bed and into the bathroom of my apartment. I rushed through the morning routine and was catching my breath in the lab just eight minutes later. I dropped into the seat at my desk and called up all the notes I had made. I did a search for any topic I thought relevant to turning a relationship around and ate up the data eagerly. By the time other people started showing up at the lab, I’d reached two sobering conclusions: I could either confront Ella directly—and do all I could to demonstrate my endless love for her, in hopes that she’d recognize the error of her ways—or I could break off the engagement and start all over again.
Oddly enough, I couldn’t help but think of Moiré’s story about Ember and her man. Both of us guys were trapped between a rock and a sharper rock.
A headache was coming on. I would need time to think about this. This camel already had some pretty big straws on its back. I needed out. I rose to leave, but staggered a few steps, my vision blurry.
“Well, look at that,” a voice teased, “the dead really do walk.” It was Moiré.
“Har, har,” I said, but I couldn’t help but smile. Suddenly I felt better. “You’re early.”
“Yeah. Something told me I should skip class and come in.” She sized me up. “Rough night again?”
I grimaced. Was it that obvious?
“Hey,” she said, coming to me, glancing around to ensure no one was paying attention to us, “I’m sorry about the other night. I’ve been meaning to apologize for keeping you out all night, but you’ve seemed… distracted ever since.”
She was right. My morning epiphany had actually been building for quite some time now. My mental dam against it was finally cracking under the stress.
“Moiré?” I said quietly, “I know it’s barely lunch time, but can we get out of here? I need fresh air.”
She nodded, a knowing and sympathetic look in her eyes. I eventually stopped staring into them when she blinked.
We left the lab, headed for anywhere. Before I knew it, we were in Tipper Canyon, a nice little bundle of hiking trails just northeast of campus. As usual, the parking lot was full and people were both coming and going from the trailhead. I’d taken Ella there as often as she’d let me; those excursions stopped after just three weeks. But there I was again. I wasn’t sure if I was following Moiré, or if she were following me, but it hardly mattered to either of us, so we just kept walking even once we left the pavement and started onto the dirt of the first trailhead we came to. For five or ten minutes we traveled in companionable silence. The air was clean, the scenery of the canyon beautiful and I gave in to the deep sense of peace, of rightness, dumping my worries trailside with every step. Silly me to remember my worries. Suddenly, I realized what I was getting myself into.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I muttered to myself.
“Excuse me?” Moiré returned.
“Nothing,” I said, looking pointedly at a distant pine on the peak to my left.
“Ah,” she said and I detected a note of a hidden giggle in her voice.
We continued wordlessly, while my train of thought chugged slowly along the track of logic. I was engaged to be married, but I faced chaining myself to almost certain marital failure. The sensible action was to abort before tying the knot, but that flew in the face of everything I felt about commitment and about working things out. Ella coul
d be reasonable. She had shown signs of being “her better self,” even beyond the first few weeks of dating. I should stick with that and make the best of it; the fundamental changes (the ones necessary to ensure that Ella and I remain happily married) would take time. Then again, the work I’d done for my dissertation leaned toward the “get out while you can” answer. I still found that unacceptable. But who to ask? I needed a woman’s perspective, but I didn’t want to worry Mom. My sisters were too busy with real life to feel comfortable bugging them. Ella, of course, wasn’t an option at all. Wait—Moiré. She was a woman. I took the chance.
“Hey, um, Moiré?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not one to gossip, but I’ve been… helping a friend with some, you know… relationship issues, recently. You know, me, the Love Doctor? Everyone just sort of figures that I know everything about relationships and all.”
She smiled more knowingly than I felt comfortable with, but she played along anyway. “A friend, huh? What’s his issue?”
“Well,” I began carefully, “he’s… feeling confused.”
“About?”
“Well, there’s this girl he’s dating, but he’s not sure about a few things. On the one hand, he loves her and would marry her tomorrow if it were practical. On the other hand, she seems to have… how to put this nicely… personality quirks that give him room to doubt. Yeah. Personality quirks.”
Moiré cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.
“I guess long story short, he’s confused about whether he actually should marry her or not and he’s been bugging me for answers quite a bit, recently. I figure, ‘Hey, Moiré’s a woman. Maybe she could give me a woman’s perspective,’ if you know what I mean.”
She nodded and smiled. “So you want me to hand you a definitive answer as to whether your friend ought to marry the girl.”
I winced at her directness. It only took a moment to realize that, yes, I had placed myself in such a clichéd situation that I was only deluding myself to think otherwise. Combine that with that look of knowing suspicion she’d flashed me and I was suddenly almost certain she’d know who my “friend” really was. I continued pretending anyway.
“Yeah. Sure. Anything you could give him would be great.”
“Well,” she began, “does she love him?”
I didn’t mean to hesitate, but it took me a moment to spit out “Of course.”
“Does she want to marry him?
I blushed. “Well, actually they are engaged.”
“Ah,” she said again, “that changes the game some. Now it’s a ‘how do I break this off without disappointing other people and in the face of the arrangements that have been made.’ That is more complicated. Have they bought the wedding announcements?”
I caught myself before I could speak. “Actually,” I said truthfully, an unnerving realization settling on me, “I’m not certain.”
“Right. How long before the wedding?”
“It seems to be on a flexible schedule,” I murmured.
“Moving back?” she asked.
“Moving up,” I replied. “Unexpectedly and considerably.”
“Ah. Who’s changing the date?”
“She is,” I said, trying not to give myself away with a sigh.
“Well,” Moiré said with a smile, “it sounds as though she wants to marry the guy.”
I was surprised I hadn’t seen it in that light before. Could it be that Ella loved me more than I knew, so much so that she couldn’t stand delaying our marriage? It was a nice thought, but it didn’t fit the data.
“So,” Moiré went on, “if she loves him enough to speed things up, then what are these personality quirks of hers that your friend is getting hung up on?”
I suddenly regretted having brought this topic up. I felt, at once, childish and selfish. Moiré had a point: why was I getting hung up on personality quirks? Everyone had them. It would be something I’d have to deal with no matter who I married, just as my wife would have to deal with my little oddities. So that was it, then? I was just being stupid? Before I could go any further with those thoughts, Moiré interrupted them with something unexpected.
“Nick, do you remember those personality tests they made us take, freshman year?”
“Which one of the five hundred?”
She laughed. “That animal one.”
“The one where we figured out which animals best suited our personalities?” I had no idea where this was going.
“That’s the one. Have you had your friend and his girl take that one yet?”
I blinked. “No. Why?”
“Well,” she said, “Maybe it would help him find out which ‘personality quirks’ of his fiancé were rubbing him the wrong way. I figured that the animal one is a good choice because it’s kind of funny, so it’s less likely to make your friend’s fiancée feel like she’s being probed, you know?”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“So why don’t we test it on you?”
I blinked. “Say what?”
“You. We’re testing this on you, to refresh your memory. Then you can use it on your friend and his girl.” She pointed to a fallen tree off to the side of the trail. “Go. Sit there.”
I sat wrong and slid off the tree, slightly ripping the back of my pants. Recovering quickly, I sat again, barked and panted. She concealed her laugh behind a faux-professional face.
“What?” I asked. “You’re not going to conclude that I’m a puppy dog?”
“You’re faking it. I’m positive you could never catch a Frisbee with your teeth.”
I just stuck out my tongue.
“Bad Nick,” she scolded. “No processed swine intestines for you!”
I shuddered at the thought. “Geez… don’t punish me too hard, eh?”
She smiled smugly and said, “Let’s begin.” With that, she ran through the standard battery of questions for the test. In just under two minutes, she had her prognosis for me.
“You, sir, are… a chinchilla.”
I just stared at her.
“You’re a social animal who loves night life, is excellent at escaping cages and who can be cute and cuddly and very affectionate if properly cared for.”
I continued to stare; only now, I dropped my jaw slightly for added effect.
“I suggest that you find someone with a similar personality with whom you can mate and breed a whole herd of really cute baby chinchillas.”
My jaw dropped further.
“Okay,” she said, ignoring my look, “I want you to climb up on that rock, over there and yell, ‘I am the chinchilla!’ as loud as you can, to show off the party animal that you are.”
I was either starting to really enjoy this, or to wonder about her sanity. I remained motionless.
“That rock. Scream. Now.”
I’m not sure what it was in her voice, but for some reason I couldn’t help but obey. I scrambled up the designated pulpit of shame, flung my arms wide and bellowed, “I AM THE CHINCHILLA!”
Of course, no humiliating scene would have been complete without half-dozen underclassmen girls rounding a bend in the trail, to get a good, full view of my display. I groaned and covered my face, ignoring the giggling and comments, glad that I wasn’t still on the hunt. When the giggling faded away with their passing, I shot a sharp glance at Moiré.
“You set that whole embarrassment up, didn’t you? Did you pay them with brownies or something?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied airily.
“Guess I won’t be getting any dating partners out of that bunch.” I gestured in the direction the girls had gone.
“Well, they wouldn’t go for the receding hairline anyway.”
I blanched. “Hey. I do not have a receding…” But she was already laughing. I nearly gave in to the urge to run my hand through my hair, but I had combed quickly that morning and it was as thick as ever. “Anyway, so we know I’m a cute little party animal. But what good will that do
my friend?”
Moiré leaned up against a tree and thought before saying, “You never answered my earlier question.”
“Remind me?”
“Well,” she said, “I asked about the personality that your friend has issues with. What are they and why do they bug your friend so much?”
I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Feeling lightheaded, I sat down and placed my head between my knees. Moiré was at my side instantly.
“Nick? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head between my knees and held up a hand to ask for a moment’s break. I heard her back away, but I could feel that she was still close, still worried. When my head finally cleared, I blinked up at the brightness of the midday sun and buried my face again.
“Sorry,” I told her. “That was a weird little spell just then. I need way more sleep than I’m getting.”
“Then we should get you home.” She rose. “You know what? How about you take a day off, this time. We’ve got a few tests scheduled—I’ll run those for you and give you a full report when you return. You’re no good to yourself or anyone else if you’re completely brain dead. C’mon. Let’s go.”
I sighed and started to stand. She hooked a hand under my elbow and the sudden shot of adrenaline got me on my feet in a flash.
“Wow. That was a sudden turn around,” she said and I could see her surprise.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
She glanced back at where I’d embarrassed myself. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at this trail the same again.” A laugh started and then stopped. Moiré let go of me and took a couple quick strides back to the tree I’d been sitting on.
“Hey, Nick?” She stooped and then turned to me, a cream-colored envelope in her hand. She pulled out a fancy looking letter and started reading. After a few lines, her eyes flicked to mine.
“Well, well Doctor Cairn. I’ve always wondered what a chinchilla would look like in a penguin suit.”