The Love Book

by Nina Solomon

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  He repeated it but she still couldn’t make it out.

  “What?” she said louder.

  He leaned toward her and cupped his hand to her ear. “Nice boots,” he said, this time with a huge grin. The same grin he had that day in homeroom.

  Cathy’s cheeks grew warm. “Did you just say you liked my boobs?”

  “I sure did. They’re awesome. They look very aerodynamic. I wish they made them in my size, but I don’t think I could pull them off.”

  Veronica and Josh slid back into the booth with another round of drinks. “What’d we miss?” Veronica asked.

  Cathy scrambled over Lawrence and out of the booth. Hands on her hips, she said, “Lawrence Weiner, you were an insensitive oaf in high school, and now you’re just an older and more insensitive oaf. With love handles!”

  The shot glass was in front of her on the table. Her first thought was to throw it in Lawrence’s face. Her second, to chug it. And though she hadn’t had a drink since she’d mistook calvados for apple cider, she went with her second inclination and downed it.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m going home.”

  Slightly on the wobbly side, she made a show of stomping away, but with all the sawdust, she might as well have been wearing bedroom slippers.

  Pat’s had filled up. Most of the empty chairs at the bar were now occupied. The barflies didn’t look like lonely, miserable drunks anymore; they looked happy and like they were having a good time. Since when had she become the fun police? Had she always been a Debbie Downer like Beatrice called her? Yes, her mother sometimes drank to excess, sometimes passed out in the living room with her coat on, but she’d also made every day a holiday. International No School Junk Food Day, when she and her sister got to stay in their nighties all day and have cherry cheesecake and soda for breakfast. Make Christmas cookies in October just because. Stay up late watching When Harry Met Sally instead of doing homework. Ride the merry-go-round at Seaside Heights until the amusement park closed.

  The jukebox was playing Dancing Queen, her all-time favorite Abba song. She and Veronica had been in the high school production of Mamma Mia!

  Veronica caught up with her. “Cathy, Lawrence wasn’t—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Cathy threw her bag on a chair and pulled Veronica onto the dance floor. She’d forgotten how much she liked to dance, and her boots provided surprisingly good support, despite the four-inch heels. Josh joined them. Lawrence, glum-faced, leaned against a pole and watched.

  One song turned into two, then three. “I haven’t had so much fun in years!” Cathy said to Veronica, who gave her a high five and a hip bump. “I love you guys! I love Pat’s! Aren’t we the best?”

  The next song was Pink Floyd. People migrated off the dance floor. Only a couple of flannel-wearing Dead Heads and Veronica and Josh remained. Cathy went to the bar for a glass of water. The bartender was cute. Clean-shaven, and wearing a work shirt and striped red-and-blue tie. Neat, but not too conservative.

  He smiled. His teeth were perfect. “What can I get you?” he asked.

  Were those his real teeth? Cathy wondered. Or veneers? In any case, they were sparkling white and probably tasted like mint. Instead of asking for water, she tilted her head and said, “Guess.”

  “You look like you’d be an appletini kind of girl.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “’Cause it’s sweet. Just like you.”

  Into a frosted tin shaker, the bartender poured several different liqueurs, one even named “pucker,” which seemed fitting, gave it a good shake, placed a napkin on the bar, then poured the caterpillar-green drink right to the tippy top of a chilled cocktail glass. Cathy had never actually had an appletini before, but it looked like candy. How strong could it be?

  “I can’t carry it,” Cathy said. “It’ll spill.”

  “That’s the point. I want you to stay here with me,” he said with a wink.

  She turned so Lawrence was out of her line of sight then took a sip. “Yummy, but I don’t know if I can finish it. I had acupuncture today.” Somehow the non sequitur had made perfect sense when she’d formed it in her head.

  “I had acupuncture to quit smoking,” the cutie-pie bartender said.

  “I hear you need to sleep with staples in your ears for that.”

  Cathy was about to ask him if he had ever been “tuned,” when Veronica rushed over and pulled her to her feet. “Josh just put on the Pointer Sisters!” she exclaimed, her mouth forming the OMG-I’m-so-excited-I’m-about-to-scream shape.

  Cathy put down her drink. “I have to dance to this song,” she said. “Save my seat.”

  “You got it,” the bartender replied, smiling. He even had dimples!

  Veronica and Cathy had danced to this album so many times in Veronica’s parents’ basement and they still had the choreography down pat. Somewhere in the middle of “Jump,” Cathy started to feel a little woozy, but this was their big finish. Veronica took her hands and they spun around. The next thing she knew, she was flat on the floor, spitting sawdust out of her mouth.

  The bartender vaulted over the bar and helped her to her feet. Embarrassed, but fine, she limped off the dance floor—and that’s when she realized she’d lost the heel of her new boot.

  “Ah, shoot!”

  “Have no fear,” Lawrence said, immediately beginning a search-and-rescue operation. “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”

  Cathy was furious. Not only didn’t she need his help, she also resented his willful misuse of one of her favorite Joseph Campbell quotes.

  “Lawrence, please. I don’t need you to put on your headlamp or night vision goggles or whatever other gear you have and come to my rescue. I’m perfectly capable of managing just fine on my . . .” Her voice trailed off as she ran to the bathroom, making it there just before she thew up.

  She splashed water on her face and looked in the mirror. She looked slightly peaked. Nothing a little blush couldn’t fix.

  The bartender’s name was Richie. He told Cathy a little about himself as he drove her home in his Jeep. He was attending business school part time, planning to go into his brother-in-law’s business, something to do with cars. The world had finally stopped spinning. Her father was visiting her sister for the weekend and wouldn’t be home until Sunday. The bartender could be her trou normand. A minty palate cleanser before the next course of true soul love.

  Richie parked the car in front of the house and cut the engine. He helped her to the door. She was walking more Captain Hook, less Kalinda, than she would have liked.

  “I’ll have one of the guys drop your car off in the morning.”

  Holding onto the railing and balancing on one foot, Cathy pecked him on his clean-shaven cheek. He smelled like lemons. Was he waiting for a signal that he could kiss her? She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, anticipating the feel of his lips on hers. But nothing. When she opened her eyes he was walking down the steps.

  “See you around,” he said, clicking his car lights on.

  Maybe Joy was right; it wasn’t her Season of Love.

  * * *

  First thing the next morning, Cathy drove to the Blue Lotus Center. The Love Book was on the bench right where she’d left it. Before leaving, she took a little detour to walk the meditation labyrinth, hoping to understand what Joy had meant when she said there was mystery in design and simplicity in intuition. She walked slowly, still dizzy and hungover, but with each step she felt a little clearer, more sure-footed. When she reached the center, she found the white cat curled up with a black cat, like yin and yang. Not wanting to disturb them, she turned around and went back the way she’d come. And then she realized that the end of the labyrinth and the beginning were the same.

  When she returned home, there was a small box on the front porch and a note from Lawrence: Sorry for being such a heel. She didn’t have to open it to know what was inside.

  CHAPT
ER TWELVE

  UNSOLICITED MATERIAL

  EMILY SAT IN THE COMMUNITY GARDEN on West Eight-ninth, a secret oasis tucked between crumbling brownstones, going through a stack of manuscripts. It was the first week of October, but it felt like summer. Amazingly, there were still some fragrant blooms on the rosebushes; some that hadn’t even yet opened.

  Since the salon, she and Duncan had met for lunch several times (a business expense), and he’d even offered her a job as an assistant to the literary editor (an unpaid but “influential position”) at a “prominent” left-wing periodical where he was a contributing editor. They hadn’t gone beyond a platonic peck on the cheek, but for Emily it was the most exciting relationship she’d ever had. Duncan was cerebral; his mind was her aphrodisiac. For all she knew he was asexual. She was relieved actually that they hadn’t progressed to the next level. Flings had a tendency to throw her life off balance. With Duncan, the lines seemed clear. No sexual power plays, no bouts of insecurity. He treated her like an equal, albeit an unpaid one. He even said she might have a novel in her.

  For the past few weeks she’d been Tweeting and Tumblring and had even started a daily blog about her experiences “doing” The Love Book. Remarkably, she already had three hundred followers and almost as many subscribers. She’d hoped to have something concrete to tell her friend the editor when they had coffee later that day, but so far no luck.

  Finally, Duncan arrived, wearing a dark suit and a pair of weird sunglasses that looked like flying goggles. He grinned and gave a world-weary sigh, as though relieved to be back on terra firma. He sat on the wrought-iron bench and slathered his face with sunblock until his skin was Marcel Marceau white, then fastidiously positioned himself toward the sun. As an afterthought, he offered some to Emily, but she was wearing SPF 15 makeup.

  “That’s not enough,” he said. “I want to be looking at a beautiful woman in twenty years.”

  That was all it took. She closed her eyes while he applied lotion on her face the way she used to do for Zach when he was little. His hands were softer than her massage therapist’s, a luxury she couldn’t really afford since her divorce.

  He thumbed through her rejection pile. “You have no idea how much this helps. I can’t afford to waste my time wading through slush. Can’t these people read? No unsolicited material.” He picked up a story, glanced at the author, and looked at her. “This, is in the rejection pile?”

  “Yes, it’s very . . . derivative,” she said.

  “Pierre Aboulay derivative?”

  Duncan’s goggles were black holes. She couldn’t even see her own reflection. She thought of a line from The Love Book: Everyone you meet is a mirror. She felt ungrounded, like she didn’t exist.

  “Who is Aboulay?” she asked. “Should I know him?”

  “He’s only the world’s greatest French author of the twentieth century. Perhaps of all time!”

  She braced herself. “Have you read it?”

  He removed his goggles and laughed. “That was priceless. Aboulay’s a hack. He’s been hounding me for years to publish his drivel.” He reached into his messenger bag and took out a chocolate chip cookie. “It’s spelt. Want a bite?”

  “No, thanks,” she said, looking at her watch. “I have an appointment. I should be going.” She didn’t like being laughed at.

  “You can’t leave yet. I have another stack of submissions. They’re upstairs. It’ll only take a minute. I promise.”

  * * *

  Max waited for Pam to catch her breath. The reservoir was crowded with wannabe Type A’s jostling each other as though they owned the jogging path, while the real movers and shakers had already been at work since dawn. They were trying for a ten-minute mile, but it wasn’t looking too promising. The pace was torturously slow and Max was doing everything she could think of to avoid going crazy: walking lunges, chassés, high knees, running backward, but it felt like she was stuck in molasses and still Pam lagged behind.

  As always, Pam was wearing a full face of makeup. It was only ten minutes in and already she was dripping with sweat. With any luck she’d be too winded to talk about her latest quandary: whether to get Fraxel laser on her lower abdomen or a tummy tuck. She’d begun to get some upper body definition, but nothing would help that muffin top or those stubbornly jiggly potato thighs, only accentuated by a streaky spray tan. Max found cellulite repulsive. Anything that moved of its own accord when it wasn’t supposed to, she could do without. It was one of the reasons she was glad she wasn’t well endowed. No elephant breasts flapping around when she was tower running.

  They rounded the south side of the reservoir where it crossed the bridle path. Pam stopped for a drink of water at the gatehouse. This side of the path always conjured haunted memories for Max. A glimpse of the Twin Towers used to be visible through the trees. Today, without the endorphins to numb her out, to “lidocaine” her until she felt nothing, her thoughts turned dark. To suicide. The first recorded suicide in the reservoir was in 1884. An unidentified man in evening dress jumped into the water, a gun in his pocket. Not long after, a woman who called herself Titania walked quietly to the edge, leaving only a note and her lace gloves floating on the surface. Romanticized versions of an act that often defies explanation. Several suicides had occurred each month until a ten-foot fence was erected as a deterrent. After Calvin shot himself, Max had only brief respites from thinking about the horror, but they were fleeting, the reason she’d spent so much of her late teens and early twenties wasted. And a fence, no matter how high, wouldn’t have prevented him from putting a loaded gun to his temple.

  Garrett understood this. He’d felt the same sense of loss, the bottomless grief, guilt, anger, a blinding torrent of emotions. Calvin had been like a father to him. She didn’t have to explain herself when, now that she was sober, instead of anesthetizing herself with booze, she had to push herself to her absolute physical limit and then beyond, otherwise it was more than one person could stand to bear alone.

  This past weekend, Garrett had borrowed a friend’s Cessna and they’d flown up to Falmouth, Massachusetts. Garrett was participating in a conference at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on the role of oceans in climate change. Grandpa Calvin had an old Cessna Caravan and used to take Max to local air shows. He’d promised he’d make it sea worthy and teach her to fly, but when he died, the Cessna, along with most of his other treasures, was sold for scrap. Her grandfather had been Garrett’s mentor, so she knew he was no slouch, but she hadn’t realized he was an expert in the field. Next summer, he was leading an expedition in western Greenland to study glacier and ice-sheet melting. His eyes sparkled like Calvin’s as he discussed a promising study of bioavailable iron concentrations released by Greenland’s melting glaciers, which could potentially slow global warming and improve marine life and air quality.

  At the end of the first day of the conference, they rented mountain bikes and did the 3.2-mile, single-track loop in Beebe Woods five times. This was hard core, not the “conversationals” she’d endured in Normandy. Garrett was as skilled on two wheels as he was in the air, navigating the rocky passes and terrain as if he knew every inch of the dirt trail. He never once looked back to see if she was keeping up. He was in his own zone and so was she. The ride down the ridge was fast and treacherous, with steep drops on both sides.

  She was thirsty, her quads and hamstrings ached, and her hands were numb from the vibration, yet there was no time to think about anything but the next turn, the road ahead.

  Back at the house where they were staying, Max soaked in the huge whirlpool tub and gazed through the skylight until the October sky exploded with stars. When she pulled the plug, a trail of sparkling blue bath salts disappeared down the drain. She didn’t believe in rituals like salt baths to banish psychic intruders—Calvin had taught her to only put her trust in empirical evidence—but there was no denying that she felt cleansed, released, free, and ready to start fresh.

  Max had never planned further ahead in any rela
tionship than the next morning when she’d make her exit, but Sunday, as they ate lobster rolls and littleneck clams on the deck of the Captain Kidd, watching the old drawbridge go up to let the tall sailboats in and out of the harbor, she could see herself sitting next to him at the foot of Leverett Glacier next summer, not with fear, but hope for new beginnings.

  Pam was bent over, trying to catch her breath. “That was the best workout I’ve ever had,” she said, adjusting her sports bra.

  “Next time we’re going to try to break the twelve-minute mile,” Max said. “There are grandmas who walk faster around their kitchens than you run.”

  “You’re such a bitch! So, are you coming tonight? I want you to meet my new client and you still haven’t told me squat about this pilot guy.”

  “I told you I’d let you know.”

  After workouts, they always went to Le Pain Quotidien, where Pam would consume more calories in one sitting than the average woman ate in a day. As they walked down Eighty-fifth Street, Max caught a glimpse of Emily walking into the courtyard of a building with a man Max recognized from the gym. Emily wore an embroidered hippie coat and clogs, and Count von Stunning was in a suit and dark glasses. They looked so mismatched. Max called to her but she didn’t turn around. Either Emily was snubbing her or was so entranced by her companion that nothing and no one else existed. Max had fallen hard for Garrett, but there was no way she’d ever let anyone pull her under water again.

  * * *

  Emily followed Duncan through the arched entrance of the fortress-like building. The Belnord’s rent strikes and landlord problems were legendary, but so were the stratospheric ceilings, ornate working fireplaces, and rooms of vast proportions. She’d always wanted to see what the landmarked apartments looked like. Her vision didn’t even come close. Duncan had one of the last rent-controlled apartments in the building, a three-bedroom inherited from his great-aunt Bernice. It looked like he had also inherited the old lady’s dilapidated antique furniture. It was a cluttered mess, but one Emily could easily get lost in.