Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows)

by Judith Arnold

  She knew what Ted was asking, of course. And sure, she was seeing people. No one for whom the word passion would be relevant. She'd pretty much given up on finding her soul mate; she no longer believed such a person existed. And she was all right with that.

  Dating was fun. Sex could be, on occasion, even more fun. She'd like to have a child someday, and she supposed she'd need a man for that. Or a sperm bank. She could easily imagine herself feeling passionate about motherhood.

  "No one serious, huh," Ted said.

  She shook her head. "How about you?"

  He hesitated, and she felt a sudden, painful spasm in the vicinity of her heart. It shouldn't bother her that Ted was involved with someone-just as she shouldn't have been nervous about seeing him at all. They were old friends, she reminded herself. Old friends rejoiced in one another's good fortune when one of them found true love.

  The tiny pang of regret, or envy, or whatever it was she was experiencing was just a vestigial thing, a remnant of nostalgic memory of their long-dead romance.

  "I'm sort of ... well, yeah," he said.

  Curiosity mixed with the regret, envy, and other unidentifiable emotions spinning through her. Who was he seeing? What was she like? Gorgeous? Blond? Blessed with big boobs?

  She smothered her curiosity. Honestly, she'd rather not know. "Good," she said with what she hoped was a friendly smile. An old friends smile.

  "I don't know where she and I are headed," he went on, then shrugged. "But we've been together a while, so ..."

  "You're a great catch," Erika said, meaning it. "She's a lucky woman.

  He flashed her another bright smile. "Thanks."

  "Girls always loved you. You were so adorable."

  "Oh, yeah." He laughed. "That's me. Adorable." His smile faded and he took several long swallows of beer, draining his glass. "This has been great, Fred, but I'm afraid I've got to hit the road."

  That he'd called her "Fred"-his old nickname for her, a play on her last name-touched her. That he so abruptly announced that he had to leave touched her in a different, colder way. She would have been happy to sit talking with him some more. Not about the lucky woman who'd snared him, but about other things. About how he'd spent the last sixteen years of his life. About whether he valued the same things now that he did then, whether he still listened to Phish and Fleetwood Mac, whether he still thought donkeys were cuter than horses.

  Her glass was nearly half full, but this encounter was over. It was good-bye time. A few long swallows drained the last of the beer from the glass. "This has been great," she said as she lowered her glass. "Thanks so much for the drink."

  "My pleasure."

  "I'm glad you got in touch." Shut up, Erika. It's good-bye time.

  "I'm glad I did, too." He caught the bartender's eye, and he hustled over and asked if they wanted to order another round. Ted declined, placed a few bills on the bar next to his empty glass, and stood. "Maybe we can do this again sometime," he said.

  "That would be nice." Erika wondered if he would have stayed longer if they hadn't ventured onto the subject of seeing other people. She wondered if his sudden desire to leave had to do with his current lover. She wondered why she was wondering. She wondered why she even cared. She wondered if old friends no longer described what they were to each other. Former friends might be more accurate. Former more-than friends.

  "I'm glad you were free," he added once he'd escorted her through the crowd and out onto Prince Street. "Both of us working in Manhattan now ... how could we not get together?"

  "Absolutely." The rain was coming down a little harder now, cool drops dancing across her cheeks and settling into her hair.

  "It was good seeing you."

  "You, too," she said, convinced at that moment that she meant it. It was good seeing how he'd turned out. That long-ago summer they'd been together, he'd seemed so aimless, so unmotivated. No plans for college. No career goals. He'd wanted only one thing in life back then: her.

  And he couldn't have her. As rhapsodic as their relationship had been, she couldn't stand to be the one single goal in an eighteen-year-old boy's life. She'd wanted so many other things: a college degree, travel, adventures, experience. To have given up all her dreams and ambitions because Ted loved her and wanted her to be his wife would have killed her.

  Killed them both, probably. Or, like so many ill-prepared teenagers who'd married too young, they might well have wound up wanting to kill each other.

  Prince Street was even more crowded than when she'd arrived at Fanelli's. Despite the summer rain, people filled the sidewalks, strolling, pub-crawling, flirting, on their way to a restaurant or an off-off Broadway performance or a gallery opening. Or they were just hanging out, gossiping, grabbing a smoke, gazing at one another with invitations in their eyes.

  Erika was on her way nowhere and extending no invitations. She just wanted to leave, get away, go home. She felt a headache taking shape behind her eyes, blossoming in her temples.

  "So," Ted said.

  "Thanks again for the drink," she said. "And for getting in touch. This was lovely." She'd never been a good liar, and she worried that he'd be able to see right through her words to the truth, which was that it hadn't been lovely at all.

  If he guessed she was lying, he didn't call her on it. He appeared pensive, lost in his own thoughts. "Yeah, well." He smiled, a crooked, tentative curve of his lips, then wrapped her in a quick hug. She caught a whiff of his scent-clean, spicy, irrefutably male-and felt the warmth of his embrace for a moment too brief to measure. And then he released her. "Take care, Erika," he said.

  "You, too." She managed one more bright, cheery, utterly phony old friends smile for him, then pivoted on her heel and strolled down the sidewalk, weaving among the milling pedestrians, picking her way around the puddles, refusing to look back.

  She made it all the way around the corner with her head held high and that fake smile frozen on her lips. Then, in the shadow of a brownstone, her smile collapsed. The sky wept on her, big, cool raindrops. And she started to sob.

  SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  You think it's going to be just another day. It starts out normal: pounding on the bathroom door because your sister Nancy is in there and-hello!-she is not the only person in the family with a bladder that needs emptying, but she sees nothing wrong in tying up the room for what seems like hours while she fusses with her hair or curls her eyelashes or whatever the hell she does when she's beaten everyone else to the bathroom and locked herself inside. Then a hike across the yard to the barn to feed the animals, who live there in pairs like the creatures of Noah's Ark and who are fortunate enough not to have an obnoxious younger sister hogging the bathroom, but who instead use the barn as their bathroom, so there's inevitably a mess or two to clean up. Back to the house to make your bed, which is marginally easier now that a couple of your older brothers have left home and you're no longer fighting for access to your berth in one of the two bunk beds in the cramped bedroom all four of you have shared for most of your childhood-and is also marginally easier because said older brothers aren't thumping you on the head or hauling you out of their way so they can gain access to the closet. Then breakfast-invariably healthy, nutritious stuff, eggs or oatmeal, because when you're a wrestler you don't want to gain weight consuming the empty calories provided by doughnuts or sugary cereal.

  You check your watch, grab your jacket and your backpack, race outside for the bus and wish you were one of the rich kids with a car of your own, because riding the bus to school is dorky, especially when you're a senior. You don't even want to be in school, but hey, it's the law, and at least your friends are there, and no one dares to thump you or shove you because everyone knows that, thanks to your training as a wrestler, you can flip and pin them in no time flat. And you've got art to look forward to, if you can manage to survive trig and biology and health, which it's practically impossible to sit through without snickering because the teacher acts as if no one knows what a condom is and
she's got to explain it to you four different ways. And after school, wrestling practice, and after that a detour to Country Coffee Shop for a cheese steak with some of the guys from the team.

  And then, while you're leaving Country Coffee Shop with the taste of cheese and onions lingering on your tongue, and climbing into your teammate Will's car, your old friend Laura Maher drives across the parking lot, rolls down her window, and calls out to you, "Hey, Ted-I know the perfect girl for you," and then drives away before you can demand that she tell you who the perfect girl is.

  And suddenly your day isn't just like any other day.

  "Who?" Ted shouted after Laura, but she was long gone, leaving only the sour scent of her car's exhaust behind. "Who's this perfect girl?"

  Will gave him a playful shove. Matt, who'd been about to get into the backseat, muttered the name of a really creepy girl who'd been in several of Ted's classes in elementary school and had the habit of eating her own boogers, which, Ted supposed, was better than eating someone else's boogers but not by much.

  "It better not be her," Ted said. Not that he thought ill of any of his classmates, and she'd probably outgrown the whole booger thing long ago, but still. Whoever this perfect girl was, he wanted her to be ... okay, call him shallow, but he wanted her to be beautiful. He wanted her to be sweet and smart and funny, too, but beautiful was pretty high up on his list. If he got to vote on particulars, he wanted her to have long, straight, light brown hair with golden highlights shimmering through it, and big brown eyes, and the kind of dimples that didn't look like someone had dented her face with an awl but were subtle and graceful and drew his eyes to her elegant cheeks.

  Elegant. Yes. He wanted her to be elegant.

  He wanted her to be a few inches shorter than him, and physically fit, and he wanted her to have perfect posture. He wanted her to walk with purpose, as if she knew where she was heading, and where she was heading was exactly where she wanted to be.

  Not that he had a specific girl in mind or anything.

  Will muttered, "I think we've lost him, doctor," while Matt cupped his hands over his mouth and did the whole "Earth to Skala" thing. Ted shook his head to clear it. Sometimes he thought of his brain as an Etch-a-Sketch; one sharp shake and whatever image he wanted to erase dissolved, leaving him with a flat gray emptiness.

  But the image of Erika Fredell never really disappeared from his mind.

  How long had he had a crush on her?

  When was the first time he'd ever seen her? That long.

  Not that she cared about him, one way or another. He could plant himself in front of her, douse himself in gasoline, and light a match, and she'd probably say, "I really should try to put this fire out, but I've got to go horseback riding."

  That was what she did. He knew this because Mendham High was small enough for everyone to know everything, at least about the people in their own class, and because he and Erika traveled in overlapping social circles. He knew that Erika didn't just go horseback riding. She was into competitive riding, show jumping. Equestrianism. He'd first heard about that from a classmate who lived near her and told Ted she was an "Aquarian," as if her zodiac sign carried special significance. It took him a few days to find out she was an equestrian, not an Aquarian. But by now, everyone in the school knew how seriously she took her riding. Hell, she rode in national competitions. She won ribbons and trophies. When it came to horses, she was hot stuff.

  As a jock in a family of jocks, Ted had a great deal of respect for winners.

  He had even more respect for Erika Fredell's discipline. He was in awe of the fact that she went to a stable every day after school to train. Every single day. Weekends, she trained some more, or traveled to competitions. Unlike him and his friends, she didn't hang around the school after the final bell rang. She didn't loiter in the school's parking lot or down by the bleachers. She never showed up at Country Coffee Shop on early release days, when half the school wound up there to buy burgers or ice cream.

  He didn't have a prayer with her, he knew that. She took honors classes. She dwelled a few rungs up the economic ladder from him and lived in a big house with, he was willing to bet, more than one bathroom.

  Besides, one of the frustrating mysteries of love was that the girl you had a crush on was never the same person as the girl who had a crush on you. If Erika Fredell had a crush on anyone, it was probably one of the rich boys, someone sophisticated, someone as at home in the world of horse shows as she was. Ted had heard rumors back in sophomore year that she was seeing an older guy, although he had no idea how much older the guy was. Older than Ted, in any case. Then she'd dated someone on the lacrosse team for a while, and Ted had thought, lacrosse? Why date someone who needed a stick to play his game when you could date a wrestler who relied on nothing but his own body to excel in his sport? Maybe the stick had turned her on. Expensive equipment might have appealed to her.

  Or might not. She wasn't with the lacrosse player anymore. She wasn't with anybody. Ted was friendly with her, but not friendly enough to ask why. He figured that either she thought mere high school boys were beneath her or she was too busy with her horses to be bothered with the whole social scene. Given her scheduleschoolwork, training, competing-she couldn't possibly have time to think about boys, let alone go out with one.

  And anyway, he was dating Kate, and he shouldn't even be thinking about Erika. A two-year-old crush was a silly thing, kind of lame, kind of pointless. Kate was nice enough, she was cute, she was hot, and he should count his blessings.

  For some reason, thinking about Kate gave him heartburn. Or maybe it was the cheese steak he'd just eaten. He tried not to consume junk food during wrestling season, because he had to make weight before each meet. Cheese steaks were a treat he indulged in no more than once a week. For the most part, he tried to stick to a diet of high-quality protein and veggies during the season. He might not have the kind of discipline a girl like Erika had, spending every freaking afternoon practicing her jumps and turns and figure eights, or whatever it was she did on her horse, but when it came to wrestling he knew how to focus. Better to eat smart than to have to sweat off pounds in a sauna hours before a meet.

  He wondered if Erika Fredell ever attended a wrestling meet. It wasn't like wrestling attracted the kind of audience the football team did, or the basketball team. The wrestling team probably had more fans in attendance at its meets than the lacrosse team did, but that wasn't saying much.

  If she did attend wrestling meets, he wouldn't know. He never looked at the audience when he was wrestling. Too distracting. If he knew she was there, he might start showing off for her, hotdogging, trying high-risk maneuvers. He might lose his concentration. Just as he'd be going for a pin, he'd glimpse her in the stands and forget where he was, and next thing, he'd be shoulders against the mat, listening to the ref count him out.

  Once he, Will, and Matt were in the car and tearing out of the parking lot, the other guys decided to devote themselves to figuring out who his perfect girl was. "Emily," Will guessed. "She's been with every guy in the school at least once. It's probably your turn, Skala."

  "Yeah," Matt chimed in. "She's run out of other guys. You're the only one left."

  "And she doesn't like Kate, so it makes sense that she'd try to steal you from her."

  "Maybe she's not into you at all. Maybe she just wants to piss Kate off."

  "Kate's pretty easy to piss off," Will noted. "You piss her off all the time, Skala, don't you?"

  Ted laughed good-naturedly with his friends, and secretly suppressed the desire to throw a few punches. He didn't mind being teased; growing up with four older brothers, he'd developed a skin as thick as a rhino's. But being teased about girls rankled him, for some reason.

  Probably because he knew the one girl he dreamed about, the one girl he believed was perfect, would never be interested in someone like him.

  "Come on," Laura's voice spun through the wire. "It's just a small party. You should go."

 
Erika lounged on the bed, her head cushioned by her pillow and the phone receiver tucked against her ear. "I'll be riding all day Saturday," she said. "Then I'm supposed to go out to a party that night?"

  "That's the general idea. I'm riding, too," Laura reminded her. "A day in the saddle has never kept me from a night of partying."

  Erika sighed, although Laura's cheerful wheedling made her smile. "I'll be exhausted."

  "Take a nap."

  "And smelling like a horse."

  "Take a shower."

  "What's so special about this party?" she demanded to know.

  "It's senior year, Erika. You need to go to at least one party before you graduate."

  "Oh, good. I thought you were going to say I needed to go to at least one party before I die."

  "That, too."

  "I go to parties," Erika defended herself. In general, she went to parties only because Laura dragged her to them. Laura was one of her closest riding friends. They'd known each other for years, from back when Erika's family was still living in South Orange. The Fredells had moved to Mendham when Erika was about to start tenth grade-a horrible time to move to a new town and a new high school. Everyone else in the high school already knew one another. They'd grown up together. They had memories of one another dating back to preschool. They'd eaten cookies and milk at one another's houses, swum in one another's pools, played hoops and sung in the school choir together. Erika had been the odd one out, the new girl who had no history with these people.

  But she'd survived. Most of her social circle had consisted of other riders when she'd lived in South Orange, and the same was true in Mendham. She was glad her family had moved, because Mendham was horse country. Her family's new house was much closer to the stable where she trained, much closer to Five Star, her favorite horse.

  And much closer to Laura Maher, whom she'd known for years through riding and who attended a private school in Morristown, one town away. Even if they didn't see each other in school, they could get together afterward. And Laura could drag Erika to parties, which she did with frequency despite implying that the party she wanted Erika to accompany her to this Saturday would be the one and only party Erika went to before she died. Or graduated.