A bizarre thought struck me. I wish I could go to work. I tried to squash it, but it stuck in my head as I scurried to my car. What was I thinking? My job had always bored the crap out of me!
I got into my car. It was such a beautiful day outside. One of those rare winter days when Seattle was like a crystal goblet, everything inside it sharp and clear and beautiful, including Mount Rainier to the south, the Cascades to the east, and the Olympics to the west. And look at me. This beautiful world was now mine for the taking and I was sitting in my car crying, wishing I could go back to work in my windowless office.
This was not good. Not good at all.
POST A COMMENT
Who knew our beloved B.B. was going through such drama! Good for you for giving Loser what he deserves! Maybe you can get another job as someone’s hired gun—you know, someone who gets revenge on other people’s exes.
Delilah | Homepage | 3/17/03–2:18 P.M.
Oh, how I wish I could have seen the look on Loser’s face!
Juliana | Homepage | 3/17/03–5:41 P.M.
B.B., it sounds like maybe you need some new drugs! As a connoisseur of the antidepressants, I can tell you that sometimes you need to take more than one for them to really work.
The She-Devil | Homepage | 3/17/03–9:09 P.M.
Don’t worry, you will not end up old and alone in a nursing home. You’ll be a beautiful, talented, much-sought-after best-selling author with many men vying for your attention. If not, you can move into our basement and we’ll let you take care of the kids in exchange for room and board.
A Fan | 3/17/03–9:09 P.M.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
11:37 AM Breakup Babe
Darlings, you know I’ve been in a bit of a crisis lately, what with getting fired and having writer’s block and being certain that I’m going to die old and alone and childless. It’s a lot for a girl to handle all at once.
So I think you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to tell you. I went out with The Doctor last night—you know, the one who swept me up in the most passionate kiss of all time, then disappeared into the night never to be heard from again?
I smiled to myself, took a sip of my latte. Amazing what a date and a little bit of denial could do for my mood. Twenty-four hours earlier I’d been ready to throw myself off the Space Needle. Now I felt almost perky. It also helped my mood immensely that there had been so many supportive comments on my blog from yesterday (the entry was up to fifteen comments now!), and that it was pouring rain outside.
Yes, that’s the one! As you know, I never expected him to reappear. I’d written him off, and even managed to erase our delicious kiss almost (but not quite) from my memory. So imagine my surprise when he called yesterday and asked me out to dinner. Had Sensible Girl been in the vicinity, she would have ripped the phone from my hand and thrown it across the room. But I do believe she was so dismayed by my New Year’s Eve antics that she went somewhere tropical for the winter. Florida, perhaps? She did not leave a forwarding address.
So I agreed to the dinner date, making sure to sound appropriately suspicious on the phone.
I watched the rain pour down in satisfying sheets outside. I loved the rain. It made me feel that it was okay to be melancholy. The rainy climate was one of the things that made me feel so much more at home in Seattle than I ever had in California.
I just hoped that the weather was clear on Sunday. I’d be doing my first “official” Mount Rainier training hike with a few other people who’d signed up for the fund-raising climb. We were going to Tiger Mountain, of all places. It was one of the few trails with elevation gain that you could hike this time of year. I just hoped my fellow hikers had better navigational skills than Jake. Or me, for that matter.
Today had started off promisingly. After a week of being completely blocked, and getting dangerously behind on the chapter that was due tonight, I’d worked on it for a full hour this morning. I wouldn’t have it completely done by tonight, but we still had one more class after this. My writing teacher would certainly let me turn it in a week late. After all, I’d paid him five hundred dollars!
It did frighten me that my current good mood and ability to write seemed solely dependent on the fact that I’d gone on a date with the doctor last night. I knew I had more going for me than a handsome yet unreliable guy. It’s just that my self-esteem had taken a real beating in the last couple of weeks (though all the reader love that poured forth yesterday had certainly restored some of it). Could I be blamed for needing a little male attention to perk me up again?
At least I hadn’t capitulated completely to the doctor’s desires, Sensible Girl’s absence notwithstanding.
“Look,” said The Doctor when we were halfway through our first cocktails at a new bar called the Brite Lite Lounge. All the walls were white and the waitresses were extremely pale and blond. “I’m really sorry about what happened. There was just some…unfinished business in my life that I was trying to take care of.”
I looked at him. Waited for more of an explanation. He was just as handsome as he’d ever been, if not more so. He had a soulful look about him today that I’d not seen before. His chocolate eyes looked bigger. Sadder. This was not the same cocky jokester who’d mesmerized an entire club with his karaoke rendition of “Little Nikki.”
Instead of offering an explanation, he took a big sip of his whiskey and looked down at the table, which was made of bright blue plastic. Other tables were blue, yellow, or red. “What do you mean by unfinished business?” I said impatiently. I wanted him to get to the point.
He looked up again. Ran his fingers through his hair. I noticed puffy little circles under his eyes. My heart melted still further. Techno music thrummed in the background.
“I think you’re seeing the real him for once,” Needy Girl said in a stage whisper. I looked to the right, where she’d seated herself at a small table. She wore a tight white sweater dress that made her boobs look huge. She gave me the thumbs-up sign. I tried to ignore her.
“There was this woman,” he said, looking me directly in the eye at last. “I was really hung up on her, and when you and I met, the whole thing was ending, but I was just…holding on.”
So, I wanted to say? Why the hell are you telling me this? Suddenly I just wanted to be at home, in bed. I didn’t know why I’d agreed to be here. I’d been jittery and excited for this meeting, but not because I actually expected romance. It was a distraction, and I was desperate for distraction, but who wanted another woman to be part of it? My mood threatened to take a nosedive.
“Huh. Well, sorry to hear that,” I said, not sounding sorry at all. “What are you going to order for dinner?” I gestured at his menu. I wanted to get this night over with now. I was tired of rejection. Tired of losing things: love, jobs, the ability to write.
“Well, now it’s over,” he said. “For good.”
“Oh.” My hand stopped halfway on its journey to the bread basket. In my confusion, I retracted it. Put my hand on the table instead.
“R.,” he said, putting his hand on mine. I was so surprised by that touch I didn’t have time to steel myself against it. Suddenly it felt as if every nerve in my body was located in my right hand.
“What?” I said, looking at him, trying to make my voice cold despite the fact that my body temperature had just jumped up to fever levels. I looked at his lips. Remembered that kiss.
Good God, I had to get a grip.
He looked around. Then at me again. Lowered his voice. “What I want to say is I’m really sorry because I liked you. A lot. I mean, I like you. Still.”
I stared at him. Tried to think of something clever and cutting to say. But in my feverish state, the best I could come up with was, in a strangled tone, “Well, you sure didn’t act like you liked me.” Suddenly the techno music boomed about three times louder. We both jumped.
“I KNOW!” he said, practically yelling to be heard over the music. Then he heaved his
shoulders upward dramatically, and rolled his eyes. A hint of the old performer-doctor was coming back. “I acted like a COMPLETE ASS!” The couple at the next table glanced over at us.
I giggled despite myself.
“I was an IDIOT!” he said even louder.
“Okay, okay,” I said, looking around to see who else might be listening in. The couple at the table to the left immediately looked back at their dinners, trying to hide their interested expressions.
“Well,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the music while also trying to be discreet. I leaned toward him. “What about this ex-girlfriend of yours? How do I know she’s completely out of the picture?”
He looked briefly around the restaurant, then leaned forward, and said in as low a voice as he could given the sonic chaos around us, “She’s been taken care of.”
I laughed again, despite myself. Damn it, he was not supposed to be charming me! He could tell that his act was working, though, and he leaned back in his seat, a little more relaxed now. Then he gave me a hopeful smile, and cocked his head like a puppy.
“We could rewind a bit,” he said, “start things over. Or maybe just go back to that kiss.” He still had his head cocked when he said that, but I saw a softening in his eyes.
And I started. My first thought was, “He’s read the blog! He’s mocking me.” For a second, I felt nothing but complete mortification as I recalled my swooning blog entry about his kissing skills. But, as I looked at him, there was no sign of mockery on his face. Then a second, more sensible thought struck me: “No, that kiss meant something to him, too.”
The air was thick between us for a minute. I didn’t know what to say. He waited, but now he wasn’t looking at me anymore. Instead, he looked down at the table.
“I—”
He looked up.
There’s no point going back, I should have said. I would have if Sensible Girl hadn’t been on vacation! Instead, Needy Girl was staring at me, eyes wide, her Lemon Drop tilting dangerously as she held it in her right hand.
“Give him another chance!” she whispered. “He’s begging! Wait, wait. I have to get a picture of this.” She quickly pulled her cell phone out of her purse, placed her Lemon Drop on the table (where some of it sloshed over the side of the glass), and took a picture of The Doctor. “Okay, continue!” she said to me, grabbing hold of her Lemon Drop again.
“Well,” I said, “how about this? We can hang out and get to know each other better before we—” I stopped. Smiled in an embarrassed way. “I don’t really feel like I know who you are.” I plunged forward, surprised by my own honesty. “It seems like you’re always hiding behind some…persona.”
He looked surprised too. Then he shook his head and laughed, with a rueful expression on his face.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I wasn’t—how shall we say—very emotionally available before.”
“Hmm.” I looked at him, waiting.
“But I’m getting more emotionally available by the second.”
“Oh, really?” I couldn’t keep the flirtatious tone out of my voice.
“Yes, really.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to see how things go, won’t we?”
“I guess so,” he said. Paused. “Meanwhile, do you think we can ask them to turn this music UP so I have to talk even more LOUDLY?” he said, raising his voice so the whole restaurant could hear and grinning a smile at me that was so sexy it should have been illegal.
Outside the rain was coming down even harder. On the street, people scurried from one place to another. I felt better than I had since the spectacular conclusion of The Great Unpleasantness, Part II. At least on the surface. Underneath I had a vague sense of impending danger.
I pushed it away. So maybe my mood was precarious. Maybe I was taking too much of a chance by even hanging out with the doctor. The important thing was that the episode had temporarily dissolved my loneliness and boredom, and I knew I could continue to be productive today. I would finish up the blog entry and get to work on my book.
After dinner, he walked me to my car. It was warm for March, with a scent of salt in the air. As we walked down Second Avenue, past a string of trendy restaurants filled with thirtysomethings dressed in fashions that were at least a year behind New York’s, he draped his arm over my shoulder. “You’re a trooper to put up with me, R.,” he said.
It was as if Sensible Girl heard that remark from her beach cabana and sent me a telepathic message cross-country. “You’re an idiot if you put up with him. Don’t let yourself backslide!”
Needy Girl, on the other hand, did a little tap dance on the sidewalk next to us. “Oh, yes, The Doctor likes you; he likes you!”
Ignoring them both, I pretended, for a minute, that everything was as it should be in my world. That the handsome man with his arm around me was my Jewish doctor husband, the one I’d been programmed to marry since birth. The one who would support me while I wrote my books and raised our children. The one all of my grandparents—were they alive—would be celebrating! Oh, yes, my granddaughter R. She’s so beautiful and smart. She’s writing a novel and she married a nice Jewish doctor!
I reluctantly let go of the fantasy when we got to my car. Hope-a-noma would not control me this time. It would NOT. I fumbled for my keys for an extra-long time, hoping the sexual tension that hung in the air would magically disappear by the time I’d found them in my purse.
It did not.
“Kiss him.” Needy Girl’s voice was breathy.
Sensible Girl was silent in her hammock, or wherever she was.
“Well, good night,” I said, my voice artificially perky.
“Good night, R.,” he said. Why did he have to keep saying my name like that? Every time he said my name, I lost a little bit more of my willpower. Then he leaned over to hug me.
I took a deep breath as his arms went around me. He was so tall, so strong, so—
I pulled out of the hug quickly. “I’ll see you soon,” I said, trying not to pant. If I’d let myself go for a fraction of a second longer, I would never have escaped.
“Yes, you will, R.,” he said.
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POST A COMMENT
Noooo! Not The Doctor! He’s evil!
The Girl from Maine | Homepage | 3/18/03–3:11 P.M.
Oh, come on, give the girl a break. She needs some distraction! I’ve been hoping he would come back. I want to find out if he has a big c*ck.
Delilah | Homepage | 3/18/03–6:04 P.M.
As a longtime reader, I have determined you have an addiction to men. You are always looking for that next fix. It’s great for us readers, but I am worried about B.B.
A Reader Who Cares | 3/18/03–10:31 P.M.
Okay, that’s it. You’re definitely moving into our basement where we can keep an eye on you.
Worried Yet Again | 3/19/03–9:00 A.M.
Have any of you considered that maybe this time The Doctor is sincere? I say she should give him a second chance!
Little Princess | Homepage | 3/19/03–11:47 A.M.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sunday, March 23, 2003
9:38 PM Breakup Babe
Dear Breakup Babe readers,
This morning, I woke up surrounded by my demons. Five days after our glorious reunion, The Doctor still had not called. My euphoric mood (Day 1, postdate) had given way to cautious optimism (Day 3), then to doubt (Day 4), then to utter despair (today).
“Ha!” said Boredom as soon as I opened my eyes. He was dressed from head to toe in ill-fitting beige castoffs and held a rifle pointed straight at me. “This is it for you, girlie. No guy, no job, no nothing. You might as well die of boredom right now!” He turned to Loneliness, who stood next to him with another rifle, and they high-fived.
“Yeah!” said Loneliness, who was attired in an oversized Mariners T-shirt and a pair of O.P. shorts circa 1983, “You have no one to hang out with today, do you? You’ve got no one to hang out w
ith tonight either.” His voice got even more shrill and grating. “No one except your own loser self! Why even get out of bed?”
“Just lie there until the state comes to cart you away! It won’t be long now,” Anxiety chimed in. He wore a green Izod shirt of the type that had been popular when I was in the seventh grade and too-tight jeans. He stood on the side of my bed opposite Boredom and held a revolver to my temple.
Then a loud thump startled everyone. General Celexa burst into the room, trailing a cloud of cigar smoke. He looked suspiciously tan. Had he been off vacationing with Sensible Girl? I didn’t have time to ponder this question because as soon as he entered the room, the demons pointed their weapons at him.
“Stop it right there,” barked Anxiety in a high, quavery voice. He did not sound the least bit authoritative, but he was wielding a large weapon. General C. stopped abruptly, his bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. I could almost hear the sound of the brakes squealing, as in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.
“Whoa!” The sound of his gruff voice was reassuring. It had been so long since I’d heard it! Where the hell had he been?
General C. stared at the demons. They pointed their weapons at him. He backed off slowly, hands in the air.
“Crap,” he muttered. “Are you okay, sister?” he asked, not taking his eyes off them.
“No,” I whimpered. How could I possibly be okay? I was about to die of loneliness and boredom. I hoped they could at least shoot straight so that I would die right away. They didn’t look overly capable to me.
“Jesus,” said General C., looking at me with pity. “I didn’t know things had gotten this bad.” He continued his slow backward retreat toward the door. “You have to do something for me,” he said. “I can’t fight these guys alone anymore. If I do, I’ll die trying.”
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