Dumping Billy

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Oh, please,” Bina responded in a world-weary voice.

  “Eat it,” Kate commanded, “and now tell me what happened last night.” She watched as Bina made an entire meal of the saltine, taking many tiny bites and washing them down with the club soda. The moment she was finished, Kate handed her another saltine and refilled her glass. “Good girl,” she said. “So what happened?”

  Bina lay back among the cushions and put a hand across her forehead. This time the tears were silent. Kate rose, went to her bedroom, and came back with a box of tissues. Wordlessly, she handed one to Bina, who mopped at her eyes and began to talk in an unsteady voice. “You know that I was meeting him at Nobu, and I was excited because it’s one of the kinds of places you go to.”

  Kate almost smiled. Nobu was one of the most expensive, stylish Asian restaurants in the city, and she couldn’t afford to eat there even on her birthday.

  “Anyway, the place was beautiful, and when I walked past the bar I could see that all the women looked better than I did. I don’t know why, because their clothes weren’t as good as mine—at least they didn’t look as good, but somehow they looked better, if you know what I mean.” Kate just nodded. “Anyway, when I got to the dining room, the hostess wasn’t there. I looked around, kind of self-conscious, then I thought I saw her. She had her back to me and was talking to some guy at a table and she was holding his hand up and laughing. When he laughed back, I realized it was Jack. I nearly plotzed.”

  Kate had a vision of Bina going into hysterics and throwing a scene in the middle of the Zen of Nobu. God, she thought, that would end a romantic evening quickly. Bina did tend to overreact. “So did you . . . ?”

  “For a minute I didn’t do anything,” Bina said. “I couldn’t believe it. Then I walked over to the table and—”

  The phone rang, and Kate looked at the caller ID. “It’s your mom,” she said.

  “Don’t pick up!” Bina nearly screeched.

  Kate let the phone ring until the answering machine kicked in. Mrs. Horowitz’s concerned voice came on, and Kate turned the volume down. “You will have to tell her what happened. After you tell me, of course,” Kate said. “And she must be concerned. Where does she think you are? Did she know about your plans last night?”

  Bina covered her eyes again. “I can’t talk to her now,” she said. “And I didn’t tell her anything because she would have nudged me to death. But I’m sure she knew about the ring, and I’m sure she knows Jack is leaving.” She stopped for a moment and began to wail. It was a high-pitched keen of misery. “He’s leaving tonight. Omigod, he’s leaving tonight.”

  Kate crouched at the edge of the sofa and took Bina in her arms. She felt her friend tremble against her, shaking with every sobbing breath. “Bina, you have to calm down and tell me what happened. We can probably fix this.”

  Bina shook her head silently but lowered the volume of her crying. Just then the phone rang again. Reluctantly, Kate left Bina and went over to it. It was Michael. Kate looked over at Bina, who had turned on her side and was sobbing quietly into a bunch of tissues. She picked up the receiver.

  “Kate, you’re home?” Michael asked.

  “Yes.” She didn’t need to tell him anything more. He knew that she was usually in her office by this time, and as a postdoc he might have had the brains to figure out that based on what he had reluctantly witnessed the night before, she might not show up at school.

  “Hey, Kate, I . . . I just wanted to apologize.”

  Kate softened. She sighed but covered the mouthpiece to be sure that Michael didn’t hear it. She had learned that there were two kinds of men: those who apologized and continued their behavior and those who apologized and stopped it. She hadn’t known Michael long enough to know which type he was. The way she looked at things at this point in her life, most relationships were compromises, and all men had to be looked at as fixer-uppers. “Okay,” she said to Michael with a voice as neutral as she could manage.

  “I’m sure I looked like an unfeeling jerk last night. You know, it’s just that . . . well, your friend was very dramatic.”

  That pissed Kate off. “I suppose a little drama is warranted when your entire life is ruined.” She purposely kept her voice low and looked over at Bina to make sure she went unheard. What good was an apology, she thought, if it was followed by a further injury?

  “I’ve done it again, haven’t I?” Michael asked. He might not be empathetic, but he wasn’t stupid, Kate reflected. “Look, let me take you out to dinner one night this week,” he said. “Let’s talk about it. I know I can do better.”

  Fair enough, Kate thought. But it couldn’t be in a restaurant. There should be a lot of talking, a lot of negotiating, and maybe some conciliatory sex. “Why don’t you come over for dinner,” she proposed. “But not tonight.” She looked over at the sofa again. Bina was just raising her head. “Gotta go,” she said. “Let’s talk later.”

  “I’ll call you this evening,” Michael promised, and Kate hung up. She returned to Bina’s side. Bina, her eyes red, but not as red as her nose, looked up at her.

  “How can we fix it?” she asked.

  Kate sat down and the wicker creaked. “Well, to know that, first I have to know exactly what happened.”

  “Well, I went over to the table, and Jack was laughing, and the Chinese woman—who was smaller than a size two and taller than I am—looks at me like I’m the busboy. But Jack, he jumps and pulls his hand away. ‘Hey, Sy Lin was just teaching me how to say hello in Mandarin. Nee-how-ma!’ So I look at him and say, ‘Me-how-ma, right back atcha.’ Then I turn to Sy Lin and said, ‘How do you say good-bye?’ So she just gives me this smile, does one of those look-overs—you know, the way Barbie does when someone is dressed really badly—and then looks at Jack and says, ‘Enjoy your dinner.’ Oh, and just to make it a really bad omen, she was wearing the color nail polish you picked out. I should always listen to you.”

  “Bina, don’t be silly. This isn’t about manicures. So what happened next? Did you pitch a fit?”

  Bina began to cry again. “That’s the worst part,” she said, gulping back her tears. “I didn’t do anything. It was Jack, Jack who—”

  The phone rang again. Kate stepped over and looked at the handset and saw that it was Elliot’s cell. “Wait a minute,” she told Bina, who ignored her anyway. Kate picked up the phone.

  “Okay. Don’t worry about a thing,” came Elliot’s voice. “We’ve got the situation under control. Brice and I are on our way with bagels, cream cheese, and lox. We also have two pints of hand-packed Häagen-Dazs,” he added. “Rocky Road and Concession Obsession. And that’s not all. I have a couple of ten-milligram Valium that Brice ‘borrowed’ from his mother’s medicine cabinet. We’re the rescue squad. Don’t try to get in our way. Besides, we’re practically at your door.”

  “Elliot, this is serious,” Kate admonished.

  “That’s why Brice and I took half a day off from work. Well, that and intense curiosity.”

  “The two of you are gossipmongers,” Kate said.

  “You betcha. Don’t let Bina say another word until we get there, because even though I’m a social idiot, Brice knows how to fix up anything that’s interpersonal. I hang the shelves.”

  Kate found herself holding a dead phone and looking at her almost dead friend. Maybe some food, ice cream, muscle relaxants, and diversions were just what she needed. But first she had to get the rest of the story.

  “Was that Jack?” Bina asked.

  “No,” Kate admitted. She sat down again. “Tell me what happened next.” And then the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Nine

  It’s Jack!” Bina shouted, and virtually levitated off the sofa. “Oh, my God! It’s Jack and look what I look like!”

  “It isn’t Jack,” Kate told her, and watched Bina struggle with both relief and disappointment simultaneously. “It’s Elliot. He’s the only one who can get into the building without my having to buzz. He has a key to the
downstairs door.”

  Kate went to the tiny foyer and looked through the safety peephole. There was Elliot, smiling and gesturing to Brice, who was beside him and holding up the promised goodie bag. Reluctantly, Kate turned the knob and opened the door. If she didn’t do it, the guys would come in anyway—Elliot had a spare set of keys for emergency purposes (like the time Kate locked her purse in the office and got halfway home before she noticed), and he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

  Kate opened the door, and Elliot and Brice almost tumbled in. “Is she okay?” Elliot whispered.

  “No,” Kate told him.

  “Well, is she better?” Brice asked.

  “No,” Kate repeated.

  “Then it’s a good thing we came,” Elliot said.

  “I told you,” Brice responded, and then the three of them stepped into the living room, like all those clowns emerging from a tiny car at the circus. At least it felt like a circus to Kate.

  “Oh, Bina! You poor girl,” Elliot said, and flew across the living room to sit beside her in Kate’s one good chair.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Brice said, and began unpacking the shopping bag onto Kate’s coffee table. “What’s the last thing you ate? And when was it?”

  Bina, a bit dazed, tried to answer him. “Well, I thought I was going to eat last night with Jack, but then I never finished the meal. I was too upset. Then I couldn’t find Kate. I remember having some vodka. . . .”

  “Well, you need one of these,” Elliot said, and took out a waxed-paper parcel and handed it to her.

  She opened it up. Kate winced at the poppy seeds that went rolling off the bagel, and onto the sofa, the floor, the rug, and places that wouldn’t be found for months to come. “Oh, I can’t eat,” Bina said.

  “You have to keep up your strength,” Elliot told her.

  Kate nodded. “It would be good for you to have some breakfast,” she coaxed. “Just take a bite.”

  Brice nodded, moved to the foot of the sofa, sat down, and rearranged Bina’s feet so they were on his lap and covered with the quilt. “Now, just tell Uncle Brice all about it,” he said, his voice a combination of mockery and sincerity.

  “I can’t believe yesterday was supposed to be your big night and nothing happened,” Elliot said. “You must be so distraught.” At that point Kate realized she was fairly distraught herself; she took a throw pillow from the sofa and sank to the floor on it beside the coffee table.

  “Tell me about it! I thought Jack was nervous. Like he was making sure the ring was still safe. Jack Weintraub was finally going to propose to me, and he was nervous. You know, he’s such a perfectionist—Barbie said he insisted on a perfect stone: flawless D color.”

  “Flawless D!” Brice said approvingly.

  “Right. See? I love him for a reason. He knows things. He wants things right. And I thought he wanted me to be happy. So I was happy, and I decided to forget about Tokyo Rose.”

  “Oh, forget the hostess,” Kate pressed. “Unless he asked her to marry him. You didn’t fight over her, did you?”

  “We didn’t fight at all,” Bina protested. “I was a little upset about the dragon lady—it just isn’t like Jack to flirt with strange women—but I couldn’t have loved him more. Anyway, he raised his glass of champagne, and I think he was about to make a toast when he realized I didn’t have a glass. So he tried to get a waiter or a waitress, and they were nowhere to be seen. So Jack says he has to go to the men’s room and on the way he’ll order me a drink. But I think he might have been looking for the hostess. . . .”

  “Her and many like her, the man-whore,” said a heated Brice. “I just hate it when a man—”

  “Hey. Don’t make this personal,” Elliot said, cutting him off with a meaningful look.

  “Focus, darling,” Kate said, touching Bina’s face. Kate was quickly losing hope that a simple phone call before Jack got on the plane might put things right.

  “Okay. So he excused himself and headed for the men’s room. I watched him walk away from the table. I couldn’t help thinking he was so handsome.”

  “I know. Men are so cute from behind,” said Brice.

  Bina nodded solemnly. “I mean, people are like ‘Jack is just ordinary,’ but that’s what I like about him,” she continued, either ignoring or oblivious to the sexual connotation of Brice’s comment. It seemed to Kate as though Bina were bonding with Brice the way she did with her girlfriends. “Jack reminds me of the Goldilocks story,” Bina went on. “He’s not too tall or too short, he isn’t too skinny or too fat, he isn’t too handsome or too ugly. He’s just right,” she said. “At least just right for me.” Then she realized anew where she was and what had happened. “He was just right, but I wasn’t just right for him. Maybe it’s me that’s ordinary.”

  “Oh, Bina,” Kate said, and put her arm around her friend, squeezing tightly. “You’re not ordinary.” That might not have been totally true, but that she was at the very least Jack’s equal was a sure thing. Kate had never met anyone more ordinary than Jack. “What happened then?”

  “Jack was gone for a little while. So finally that stupid hostess came back and asked me if I wanted a drink. I told her that my boyfriend was getting me something, and she said, ‘Your boyfriend? He said this was a business meeting. Otherwise I would have given him a more private table.’”

  “The bitch!” Elliot and Brice said simultaneously.

  “Yeah. The beautiful, thin, exotic bitch,” Bina agreed bitterly.

  “This is not productive,” Kate said. No matter what the story was, she was going to be sure they didn’t criticize Jack too much, because when he and Bina patched things up—and they would—Bina would forever remember any criticism. Kate had learned that lesson the hard way with Bev, before she married Johnny. “Bina, you are so beautiful. Any guy in the world would be lucky to share the same air as you,” she told her friend, and meant it. Every bit of Bina’s soul was generous and giving. Her heart was loyal and loving. And she had an adorable, round little face and a curvy figure. Kate stroked Bina’s dark, shiny hair. What the hell was wrong with Jack? It must have been a panic attack. Commitment was a very frightening prospect. “Didn’t you tell me just last week that Jack said he found you beautiful in so many ways?”

  “Honey,” Brice said with a tilt of his head, “greeting cards can tell you that.”

  “No, he said I was too beautiful and too good for him,” Bina corrected.

  “Uh-oh,” Brice and Elliot said again in unison, and exchanged a look.

  Kate gestured to them behind Bina’s head. “Well, anyway, Bina, you are beautiful, and I am sure Jack still feels the same way.”

  “Yeah? You haven’t heard the end of the story,” Bina said.

  “We’re trying to,” Kate told her, attempting not to snap.

  “Go on. Get it all out,” Elliot advised.

  “Well, of course I was hating this . . . woman.” Bina paused, and Kate was pleased that she didn’t stoop to any slur. “So I told her to go away. Jack finally came back with my drink and said—and you won’t believe this.” Bina mimicked Jack’s deep Brooklyn baritone voice: “‘I looked at you from across the room. You looked good from over there.’ Was that a compliment or a diss?”

  Kate pursed her lips but refrained from speaking. It seemed clear that her theory was right—Jack needed distance in both senses to see Bina. But up close and intimate, his anxiety paralyzed him. If only he could have stayed at the bar and proposed by cell phone, Kate thought ruefully.

  “I just gave him a look,” Bina continued.

  “And what did he do?”

  “Well, I think he saw my reaction. He asked if something was wrong. He sounded so sincere, so concerned, that I felt bad, and I figured I had to let up on the poor guy. I thought he was a nervous wreck about proposing. Also, to tell the truth, Jack has never been . . . well, let’s just say he’s careful with his money.”

  “Oh, hell,” Brice said. “Let’s say he’s cheap.” Bina o
pened her eyes wide, and for a moment Kate thought her friend was going to giggle.

  “Go on,” Kate said.

  “Well, I just shook my head and suggested that we make a toast. And all he said was, ‘To us.’ I waited for more, you know, like ‘And to our future as Mr. and Mrs. Jack Weintraub, the perfect married couple,’ but there was nothing more.” A tear slid down her cheek, and Brice took her hand.

  “So?” Kate prompted. She wondered what time Jack’s plane was actually taking off, whether he planned to be on it, whether he had called the Horowitz household, whether he had called his cousin Max across the hall.

  “Then he said he really wished he didn’t have to take this trip, but said some of that stuff about markets misbehaving. So I suggested that in the future maybe we’d make the trips together.”

  “What did he say to that?” Kate asked.

  “Well, of course then the waitress shows up before he can answer. Just my luck. And you know it takes Jack a long time to order. And then he has to make sure none of the things on his plate are going to touch any of the others.”

  Kate had forgotten about that phobia. She nodded to Bina.

  “So we had our drink, and it seemed that the dinner was going fine until I told him how much I was going to miss him. I mean, that’s okay to say, right? The guy is going away for months and it’s halfway around the world. Jack and I haven’t been separated by more than ten miles since we first started dating.”

  “Really?” Brice asked. “That’s so romantic!”

  “It’s true, right, Kate? She was there the night Max—you know, Kate’s neighbor who now lives across the hall—had the party where I met Jack.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. Bina had a habit of playing what her friends called “Jewish geography.” Kate had gotten her apartment because Bina’s brother knew Jason, the building owner’s son, from summer camp and he had told Bina, who had told Kate about it. Kate got the place. Later she and Bina had been invited to a Manhattan party by Bina’s brother, which had been thrown by Max at his old apartment. And Bina—on one of her infrequent trips across the East River—met Jack, Max’s cousin, there. . . . Well, it could go on endlessly, between Hebrew schools, summer camps, bar mitzvahs, weddings, cousins, and on and on and on.