Up & Out

by Ariella Papa

“Just let me know. It’s Thursday night.”

  “Okay.”

  I have to admit, I’m not one of Ron’s biggest fans. I think he used to be a frat brother, the kind that usually wears a white baseball hat—a “white hatter,” and while there isn’t anything explicitly wrong with that, I worry that he has jerk tendencies he’s waiting to reveal. Kathy seems to be happy that she is settled down. I guess I expected Kathy to go for a long-haired, artistic type, the kind she always seemed to go for when we first moved to the city. Ron can be a little obnoxious to wait staff and I think that is a sure sign of a closet asshole.

  Another thing about Ron is that he likes to talk during movies. He is also one of those people who announces what they think is going to happen, like they want everyone else in the living room or movie theater to be amazed at their deductive skills. I’ve watched enough videos at their place to know it’s a chronic thing. I don’t understand how Kathy can spend the rest of her life with a man who doesn’t take the moviegoing experience seriously. Luckily, I’ve only gone to the movies with him once.

  In spite of what I think are shortcomings, Tommy and Ron always got along. They found common ground talking about sports and Batman. While I don’t think they would have chosen each other as friends if not for Kathy and me, they didn’t mind spending time together on double dates.

  It’s important that friends’ boyfriends get along. I could tell that Kathy was secretly relieved when Lauryn and Jordan broke up because Ron and Jordan didn’t get along. Conversely, she was bummed when Tommy and I broke up because now she and Ron would have to invest their time getting to know someone else. I’m sure Seamus and Ron never would have liked each other. They both would have been trying to talk louder than the other. I can imagine them fighting over something like what ingredients were in the stew. So maybe in some ways it is for the best that it didn’t work out.

  Tommy brings up the mail when he gets home. My mail has only just started to get forwarded and somehow that means that I have double bills. I’ve just missed the payment on my credit card. I stare at the bill from May, which includes all of my Nobu splurges, including the time I treated Seamus. He was so not worth it.

  I am also going to pay for my stylish new glasses. I am never ever going to be out of debt. Now, more than ever, would be a good time to start job hunting. I know I should be placing those phone calls, but I just can’t motivate. This is not like me. I am (was!) a hardworking person, but I just feel exhausted. I just want some space, some something.

  I write a check for the minimum payment on my credit card, knowing that I will see a late fee on my next statement. I feel completely helpless when it comes to paying my bills. If I could just put them in a drawer and forget them, I would. It almost seems like there’s nothing I can do to get out of debt. It seems insurmountable. It’s as if I’ve accepted debt and just continue to live the way I enjoy. But now I wonder if there will come a time when I will not even be able to afford the minimum payment. I suppose when the severance runs out.

  Maybe I should get a sugar daddy….

  “I thought you were unemployed,” Tommy says when I tell him about dinner. “It’s time to give up your vices.”

  “Um, severance,” I say defiantly and a little bit snottily, but then realize I’m going to have to change my tactics if I want him to go with me. “I need to eat, you know.”

  “Last time I checked there was plenty of food in the fridge.”

  “It’s Restaurant Week. Dinner will be like thirty bucks.”

  “Make it sixty at least with the wine Ron is going to insist on ordering. She’s your friend, why don’t you just go?”

  “C’mon, you like Ron.”

  “Rebecca,” he smiles. “I’m not your boyfriend anymore. I’m not required to like your friends’ boyfriends. I’m not required to spend time doing things I don’t want to do. I’m liberated.”

  He thrusts his arms in the air and continues to shout “liberated” around the rooms of the apartment and into the bathroom, where he shuts the door and locks it. I crack up in spite of myself.

  I know he’s got a point. If I want this to be over I can’t expect him to be my backup date. I keep wishing I could be one of those people who just cuts off their exes, but I can’t. I would like to tell myself that the only reason I’m here is financial, but as fucked up as our relationship can be, Tommy is the only one of my friends that I still feel I can truly relate to. I go and wait outside the bathroom for him.

  “Jesus,” he says, when he comes out. “Give a brother a break. Did you make any dinner?”

  “Oh, I’m good for cooking, but not dinners out?”

  “You’re good for a lot of things,” he says, raising his eyebrows. He’s not really flirting with me, just teasing.

  “All right, a hand job.” I call his bluff. He isn’t ready to deal with certain aspects of our relationship, either.

  “What is with you girls?” he asks, shaking his head and pulling a block of cheese out of the fridge.

  “What do you mean?” I know I’m defensive and I’m not sure I want to hear what he is going to say.

  “Do you ever, like, just chill anymore?” I hate to be analyzed, especially by the likes of Tommy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, calm down.” He cuts a hunk of cheese. “You never hang out anymore, you know, you girls.”

  “Did Beth say something?”

  “No.” He finally looks annoyed. “She hasn’t really talked to me lately. It just seems like there is something funky going on.”

  “Well—” I take a piece of cheese “—Lauryn’s gone and we went through all this weirdness with her last year and now it’s almost like we sort of turned kind of catty about her problems. Not like, you know, malicious, but she gave us a lot to talk about. Now she’s gone and I don’t know what we have in common anymore. Any of us. I mean, I still really like hanging out with them, but there’s all this stuff that goes with it. I’m not sure if we hang because we feel like we owe one another or because we still want to find the good times we used to have. I think when we made the switch from all-night ragers in bars to calm little dinners in restaurants, we lost something.”

  “I know what you mean,” he says. “I’ve been wondering lately what Jordan and I actually talk about. It’s like he’s always trying to impress me, but there’s nothing beneath the surface. It’s like he studies me to try to figure out who he should be, what he should like to do.”

  I nod. I haven’t let myself articulate anything like that before and I’m glad to hear that Tommy has had these confusing feelings, too.

  “Do you think Beth is okay?” I ask, and he shrugs.

  “Do you think Jordan is?” he asks, and I shrug.

  “How much do we get involved? And how shitty of a thing is that to ask?”

  “I don’t know, but I wonder about the same kinds of things.”

  “Will you please come with me to dinner? It’s only thirty bucks! I know your sister doesn’t want to go and I know I don’t want to be the lone witness to what is Kathy and Ron’s relationship.”

  “Fine,” he says. “Just don’t sign me up for anything else.”

  The restaurant is in SoHo. Osteria del something. I block it out as soon as the hostess insists on checking my light summer jacket.

  “Your party has already checked in. They’re up having drinks.” We climb up a circular staircase to a bar area that looks down on the diners. The restaurant is dim with lots of dark curtains and high-backed chairs. I see Ron looking down at everyone with a smug expression. This is his kind of place. Kathy is talking to him, but he doesn’t really seem to be paying attention.

  “Hey, guys,” Tommy says, and Kathy turns as soon as she hears him.

  “Hello, you two. Isn’t this nice?” She pulls the both of us into a big hug and kisses us.

  “Why don’t you get a drink?” Ron suggests, then summons over the waiter.

  “I could just wait until we have dinner,” Tom
my says, but the waiter is already there. “Okay what do you have for beer?”

  “Peroni and Morretti,” the waiter says.

  “No Bud Lite at this place,” Tommy comments.

  “They have terrific bellinis,” Kathy says. Maybe she noticed me rolling my eyes.

  “Do you want a bellini?” the waiter asks, looking at me.

  “Um, sure,” I say. This is more pressure than I like to have at restaurants.

  “I’ll get a Peroni,” Tommy adds. I smile at him, trying to convey my gratitude for what I fear is going to be an intense night, but he doesn’t meet my eyes.

  Ron is a pharmaceutical salesman. He makes a lot of money and enjoys talking about everything that has to do with money. I once told him how I viewed money in terms of rock shrimp tempura and he didn’t get it.

  “How’s the Web site, Tommy?” Tommy hasn’t even gotten his drink yet and already he has to defend his failed dreams.

  “You know, like most other dot.coms. I’m working part-time and trying to figure out what to do.”

  I tune out as Ron launches into why the dot.coms failed and how stupid everyone was to believe in them. He keeps saying, “I’m just saying you need to be selling something.”

  I feel like Ron has said these things many times to many people and maybe even to me. I look at Kathy. She is smiling at Ron as if he is running for office. This was a girl who liked long-haired guys who played guitar. What is she doing with him? Is this the best potential father for the children she wants to have by thirty?

  I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I am greeted by the bathroom attendant. I hate when normal restaurants have bathroom attendants. It’s just so uncomfortable. I don’t have my wallet, but even if I did I think it sucks to be expected to tip when you are just using the bathroom. I have no money so I have to suffer the guilt I feel as the attendant stares at me when I wash my hands. Leave it to Ron to pick a place with a bathroom attendant. This guy loves to be catered to.

  He’s not a bad guy. But why does Kathy even have to get married now? We’re twenty-seven. We’ve got plenty of time. Lauryn got married early, but look where it got her. Her marriage always seemed like a fun thing to do after we got out of college. It didn’t faze me when it happened, because they fought just as much as ever. I look again at Ron when I find the table we’re sitting at. I just don’t see it.

  We get a booth. Kathy, determining it’s safe to stop giving her full attention to Ron, momentarily starts talking to me about the table centerpieces. Ironically, as soon as she stops listening to him, he starts listening to her and interrupts her about what he thinks would make a better centerpiece. They start to argue about the price of Ron’s preferred centerpiece, but it isn’t a full-out argument, it’s like they still have a semblance of politeness, which makes it even worse.

  I glance at Tommy for a sign, but he is looking intently at the menu. I open it up. There is no sign of a prix fixe or “Restaurant Week” menu. I peer over Tommy’s shoulder to see if he has some kind of special insert. He looks up at me and shakes his head. I’m in trouble.

  “I just think four thousand is too much to spend on centerpieces,” Kathy says.

  “I think you’re right, Kathy,” I say. “Where is the Restaurant Week menu?”

  Ron and Kathy finally pick up their menus and look inside. It isn’t there.

  “Maybe we had to sit up in the bar to get it,” Ron says.

  “We can ask,” Kathy says. I think she is trying to quiet me. She looks back at Ron to get him to finish the centerpiece “discussion,” but he’s distracted by the wine list.

  “How does everyone feel about red?” I look at Tommy. I’m willing to say that I am fine with water, but Tommy shrugs, and when the waiter comes back, Ron orders a bottle of something Italian that I’ve never heard of. He doesn’t ask about the prix fixe menu and neither does Tommy.

  “Kathy wants to have a budget wedding,” Ron says. He reaches over to rub her cheek with his rather hairy hand. “I want her to have the special day she deserves.”

  I feel a little uncomfortable with being so involved in their relationship issues. I think maybe Kathy wants the father of her children to have lots of money. Maybe that’s what makes the relationship tick. Long-haired guitar players aren’t usually financially stable and, heck, somebody’s got to keep her in the glasses she’s accustomed to.

  “I just think we have to draw the line somewhere,” Kathy says.

  “You’re right, Kathy,” Tommy says with a poker face. He’s acting like none of this fazes him, like he wouldn’t be much happier at home watching Star Wars again. I fear that inside he’s calculating the cost of this in his head. “You have to draw the line somewhere.”

  The waiter comes back with the wine. Ron asks Kathy to taste it.

  “No, Ron, you know better,” Kathy protests.

  “C’mon, I showed you how to do it.” The waiter knows who is calling the shots and pours the wine in Kathy’s glass. Ron watches her sip it and nod.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the waiter. “Is there a menu for Restaurant Week?”

  “It’s at the bar,” he says haughtily. “I’ll get it for you.”

  I smile at Tommy, who has perfected the art of showing no emotion. It’s something Ron could learn from. He is currently reprimanding Kathy for not tasting the wine properly.

  “You just swallowed, you didn’t even taste it.”

  “Ron, I wasn’t going to go through that whole rigmarole in the restaurant.”

  “Why not? That’s how you taste it.” The waiter hands me a menu with the lunch fixed price on it—they aren’t doing dinner. I hate him and his attitude. I guess we have no choice but to order a plate of twenty-eight-dollar pasta. I point the word lunch out to Tommy and mouth, “I’m sorry.” He picks up his wineglass and holds it up and out to the arguing lovebirds.

  “Here’s to just swallowing,” Tommy says.

  We all clink his glass.

  Sixty-five dollars apiece later, we climb up the five flights to our apartment. Ron and Kathy were kind enough to give us a ride back in their cab. Kathy insisted on paying. Tommy volunteered to sit in the front so as not to suffer through Ron’s stock trading ideas.

  “I’m sorry,” I say in a heartfelt way.

  “About what?”

  “The cost of the night, Ron’s incessant talking, asking you to go.”

  “What about the lack of beer selection and the fact that the waiter gave us an attitude for serving us food we were paying for?”

  “I’ll never ask you to do anything like that again.”

  “Oh, you can ask, I’ll just never go.”

  “I’m sorry. This proves what I’ve always suspected about Restaurant Week. That it’s a scourge on innocent diners. I can’t believe Kathy is marrying him.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you see how he kept cutting her off?”

  “She seems happy.”

  “I think she just wants to get married.” Tommy shrugs, as he has been doing all night. Even though he is one of my only friends that I can still feel comfortable around, what I really need now is a girl to rehash this with.

  I change my mind about how I feel about being unemployed from day to day. Some days I really can’t get motivated to do anything. Other days I find myself walking around the city or being really social, calling old college friends I haven’t talked to in a while and e-mailing Lauryn. Sometimes I start making lists of things I’ll have to do when my two months are up. One thing is constant; I am not going to get a job before I absolutely have to.

  I often walk over to the air-conditioned twenty-five-screen movie theater on Forty-second Street. I hop from cool movie to cool movie, smiling at the ushers if they suspect me. Most day screenings don’t have a big audience and I feel like (especially with surround sound) I am momentarily in other people’s lives.

  At times I feel so guilty. I know there are people out there who work a lot harder than I did. Not everyone gets a cushy thing
like severance and that makes me feel worse and less motivated. From minute to minute my feelings and moods change. Someone has pulled the rug out from under who I was. I have no idea how to navigate my life.

  My inertia is totally against the work ethic of my parents, but I feel so let down. No one owed me anything, but at one time I believed that the stuff I created was really for kids and now I know that it was for a network to try to sell to advertisers who wanted to brainwash kids. How could I have been so naive for so long?

  So when I’m not feeling too bad about myself I tell myself that I deserve this for the time I spent on the front of the corporate world. This is my life, no one else’s, and I can’t feel guilty for what I have that other people don’t. “I’m regrouping” will be my party line when people start to ask me what my plans are. Of course, no one does. Everyone expects that I’ll just hang out till my severance sentence is up, so I don’t have to explain myself.

  Some days I miss Esme so much. It’s hard to think that something that was once in your head—such a big part of you—is now a part of some corporation. I think about the way she looked when she discovered why her neighbor’s cat was getting sick or how she solved the mystery of where the school flag was. These were simple stories, but I made them and I fear for what is in store for her.

  Maybe what I lack is a routine, so I start to make dinner for Tommy and me every night. I still want to eat well, even though I can’t afford to go out to a restaurant. I prepare very light things because it’s summer, orzo feta salad, steamers, grilled mixed seafood. I start walking down to Union Square every other day when the farmer’s market is there to buy fresh produce, artisan breads, seafood and cheese. Every Friday I buy fresh flowers.

  Tommy appreciates my efforts, but I feel him trying to maintain a bit of distance sometimes and I totally understand that. He is as confused about what to do as I am.

  I meet Janice out for lunch. It’s been almost three weeks since I’ve seen her. She’s called me pretty much every day with whispered updates on the fate of my sweet little Esme, but I finally agreed to meet her in person. I have a little anxiety about it because I’ve been spending so much time alone. And then there’s the lunch bill to worry about.