Dumping Billy

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “The weird thing is we had grown up together in Brooklyn just six blocks from each other, but we were introduced for the first time that night, and we haven’t been apart since. I mean, he took me out for a drink after the party and asked me out for the next night. And that weekend he came over for dinner with my parents and brother and . . . well, there we were, saying good-bye to each other for a very long time. So I thought it was appropriate to say I would miss him. And I thought it would be good to kind of, you know, get him started. I mean, we were finished with our appetizers and entrées. Did I have to wait until he popped the question?”

  “Men spook easily,” Brice offered. “I remember the time when Ethan Housholder told me—”

  “Not now, Brice,” Kate interjected.

  “Right, sorry. Continue, honey.”

  Kate had to admit that Bina couldn’t have two more sympathetic listeners than Brice and Elliot. And sometimes simply talking was the best therapy. But then, just when she thought they had gotten safely out of the water, Bina began to cry again. Elliot’s soft pats and Brice’s coos of sympathy only made it worse.

  “Well, it was like all the color drained out of his face. And then he said, ‘Bina, you know I have to be in Hong Kong for almost five months, and that’s not going to be easy.’ He kept touching his breast pocket, and the tension was almost overwhelming. I couldn’t help but think, Here it comes. Then he just sat there. I wanted to scream, Why don’t you just take the damn thing out of there and ask me to marry you? But, nothing. The man just sat there and then looked down and finished eating his fucking chicken Rangoon.”

  Chapter Ten

  What did you do?” Elliot asked.

  Kate was afraid that she would hear that Bina had become hysterical, attacked Jack physically, made a huge scene, or something even more dramatic. But Bina surprised her.

  “I went to the ladies’ room, of course.”

  “Of course,” Brice agreed. “I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could go there myself.”

  “So, anyway . . . ,” Bina continued. She opened her eyes wide and they glazed over, as if she could see the scene replaying itself.

  Kate, Elliot, and Brice all held their breath. Then the phone rang. “Shit!” Kate said, and grabbed for the receiver, peering at the number. “It’s your mother again,” she said. “I think you’d better talk to her.”

  “Kill me first!” Bina pleaded. Kate froze for a moment. She couldn’t bear to explain the situation to Myra Horowitz, and she didn’t have the heart to give the phone to Bina. But she couldn’t refuse the call again. . . .

  “I’ll take it,” Elliot said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kate told him, realizing he was getting deeper and deeper into her Brooklyn life. She pressed the answer button.

  “Katie! Thank God! Listen, do you know where Bina is?”

  “She’s fine. She’s right here with me,” Kate told Mrs. Horowitz, telling only one lie, not two.

  “Well, put her on.”

  Bina was shaking her head wildly, putting her hands in front of her face as if to ward off a blow.

  Kate was grateful for every moment she had spent at the Horowitz house, because even with her training it took more than therapeutic skills to talk Mrs. Horowitz down. Kate said soothing words, then distracted her with questions, then reassured her, then sent her love to Dr. Horowitz. All the while Elliot circled his hand, telling her to move it along, while Brice pulled his index finger across his throat, giving her the sign to cut it short. As if she wanted to be the middleman! Finally she hung up.

  “At last,” said Brice.

  “So you were in the ladies’ room,” Elliot prompted.

  “Yeah. You know, I just wanted to be by myself for a minute, just long enough to get it all together again,” Bina said. “So I fixed my makeup—and I still had to give the woman there a dollar, even though I hadn’t used the toilet—but I just looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘Bina Horowitz, this is the night that’s going to change your life. Be nice and be happy.’”

  “Good for you,” Kate said.

  “So I get back to the table and Jack stands up. He always does it when we’re in a fancy restaurant. So he leans over to help me into my chair, and . . .” She gulped. “The ring box slipped out of his pocket. It was like a car accident in one of those movies. I saw it all happening in slow motion. The ring box fell over and over and over. The moment the box hits the floor, Jack lets go of my chair. The ring flies out of the box and he scrambles to retrieve it. I’m as frozen as a Swanson TV dinner, and I see the ring skid across the floor, and that stupid bitch hostess bends all the way over and picks it up.”

  “Wow,” was all Kate could say.

  “Wow indeed,” Brice added.

  “What did you do?” asked Elliot.

  “I just sat there, like the turkey dinner that I am, and I realize that Jack, on the floor, can see up the woman’s skirt—well, it was so short, and she bent right over. And not from the knees like you’re supposed to, but from the waist. And she isn’t wearing any underwear.”

  “What?” all three said in collective amazement.

  “None. And Jack is on the floor, looking straight up her—well, up her—”

  “We get the visual,” Kate said.

  “So did Jack. Everyone was looking. I think that was when he lost his mind. It must have been then. So Jack manages to get off the floor and tear his eyes off that woman’s naked crotch, and she turns around and hands him the ring. He stands up and puts it in his right pocket. Then he scoops up the box and puts it in his left pocket.” Bina stopped for a moment and shook her head. “He walked back to the table.” She turned to Kate. “I couldn’t stay happy anymore, Katie. I told Jack that if he was trying to make it a memorable evening, he was succeeding. I mean, I could have smacked him, I was so mad. And you know what the asshole said?”

  “What now?” Kate asked.

  Bina, using her Jack voice again, said, “‘This isn’t how I want to remember you, Bina.’”

  “Uh-oh. Here it comes,” Brice said.

  “Wait for it,” Elliot warned him.

  “Please, you two—it’s like Tweedledee and Tweedle Very Dumb,” Kate admonished. “Let the woman finish her story, which, I pray, is almost over.”

  “Almost,” Bina said. “So, I was wondering which pocket my ring was in now. It made me think of that game, Katie, that my father would play with us when we were little girls. You know, when he would have surprises for us and we would have to guess which pocket they were in.”

  Kate nodded, almost smiling in remembrance. Dr. Horowitz had been so kind to her. He used to give his daughter her allowance every Sunday morning, and since her father was usually sleeping one off on Sunday and rarely gave her money, Dr. Horowitz always gave Kate the same allowance as well: A big Sunday event was going to the candy store and agonizing over Junior Mints or Bit-O-Honey. Not to mention the Betty and Veronica comics. Bina and her family were good people, and she hated hearing how she’d been subjected to this hurtful slapstick. But maybe the situation could be salvaged. After all, Bina and Jack had years of history and were made for each other. “So then what?” she asked.

  “Well,” Bina continued, “Jack then looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Bina, I have something I want to say to you.’ And I’m thinking at least someday we’ll tell our grandchildren about all this and laugh! But then Jack says, ‘I have to be honest; Hong Kong is far away from here. Very far away.’ Like I didn’t take geography, right? So I think maybe he’s going to want to elope. It would break my mother’s heart, and I want the dress and all, but I was like dying by now. I kept waiting for Jack to reach for the ring, but his hands are staying folded together on top of the table. He takes a deep breath, looks up to the ceiling, and says, ‘I think it would be unfair of me to leave and ask you to just wait for me.’ I told him I agreed, and I looked down at my hand to get my finger ready. But then he said, ‘I think this time apart might be a good chance
for us to . . . well, for us to . . . I think this might be a good chance for us to explore our singleness.’”

  “I could kill him, Bina,” Kate said.

  “Oh, me first,” Brice added.

  There was silence in the room. Kate, Elliot, and Brice sat there with their mouths opened wide, until Bina started sobbing again. All three snapped back into action. Kate moved closer on the sofa and held Bina. “Oh, honey,” she said. Brice got up, took a cushion, and put it under her feet as if she had internal bleeding. Elliot got up, went into the bathroom, and returned with a wet towel, a glass of water, and a blue pill. Ever neat—except in his clothes—he looked for a coaster. Before Kate could hand him one, he found a piece of cardboard.

  “Take this and drink all the water,” he told her. Bina did as she was told without question.

  “What was that?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, I just felt she needed a visit from cousin Valerie,” Elliot told her. It was his code word for Valium, and Kate knew a blue one was ten milligrams.

  “She’ll sleep for a week,” Kate said.

  “What a good time for that,” Elliot told her.

  “Okay, Bina. Tell us what happened next.”

  “I just ran out,” she said. “Well, ran as best I could in my heels. I went straight to your apartment, Katie, and when I couldn’t find you, Max helped me. You can’t believe how hysterical I was.” Kate silently disagreed with her on that. Bina blew her nose and continued. “Max was home. And he told me he thought you were out to dinner and where Elliot lived, and I went straight there in the pouring rain, and . . . Omigod!”

  “What! What is it, Bina?” Kate cried.

  Bina reached over to the coffee table and picked up the coaster for the water. It was Bunny’s wedding invitation. “Bunny? Bunny is getting married?” she asked.

  “Is that a bad thing?” Elliot wanted to know.

  Bina ignored him. “Why didn’t you tell me, Katie?”

  “I just found out. I got the invitation yesterday.”

  “Oh, this is it! I’m glad I didn’t see my mail. But this proves I’m a loser,” Bina wailed. “Bunny! She just broke up with a guy. That one I showed you on the way to getting a pedicure.”

  “The guy was getting a pedicure?” Elliot asked. Kate gave him a look.

  “Bunny is going to be a bride, and Jack is off to become the Marco Polo of singleness. Why don’t I just open my veins?”

  “Well, it’s very messy, for one thing,” Brice told her. “And it’s almost impossible to get blood out of clothes. Very cold water and hydrogen peroxide—”

  Bina put the pillow over her face and wailed into it. It wasn’t that she was competitive with Bunny, Kate knew. It was just that Bunny had been the last to join their group, hadn’t had a date to the prom, had never been pinned. Bunny didn’t do well with men, picking a string of bad boys and scoundrels. One she had lived with had stolen everything—even her sofa and kitchen table—when she went away for the weekend. “How can Bunny be getting married? She just got dumped by that guy we saw in SoHo. She’s only just met Barney or whatever.” Bina squinted at the card. “And how did they get invitations so quickly? They must be Xerox copies.”

  How had Bunny met someone? Kate wondered why it was so much more complicated for her than for Barbie and Bev and Bunny. When Kate found a warm man, he was often devoted to her, but just a little . . . dull. Or second-rate. And when she found a man with a first-rate mind and an engrossing career, a man like Michael, he lacked emotional heat. Of course, she reflected, Bina’s father, a successful chiropractor, had doted on her. So in spite of her current troubles, it seemed only natural that she would eventually find a successful accountant who doted on her. Kate sighed. It didn’t bode well for her. “Bina, everything is going to be okay,” Kate promised.

  “Fine for you to say. You’ve got that doctor Michael to go with. What am I going to do? Go with my brother?”

  “Oh, I don’t think Katie will want to bring Michael all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge,” Elliot began. He turned to Kate and gave her a little smirk. “Unless you want to prep him for his journey to Austin, you know, a little bit at a time.”

  Kate grimaced at him. Elliot turned back to Bina.

  “Anyway, if my calculations are correct—and they always are—we have here two women who need dates,” he announced, “and two men with an insatiable curiosity for the customs and rituals of deepest, darkest Brooklyn.”

  “Really?” asked Bina.

  “Not only that, but I have fabulous formal wear. I’ll definitely be better dressed than the bride,” Brice said.

  “In a dress?” Bina asked, her voice about to rise into hysteria again.

  “No. A great tux. Armani. And I’ll do your makeup. You’ll look absofuckinglutely great, and all your friends will want to know who the great-looking guy you’re with is. You can tell them whatever you like. I once passed as the prince of Norway.” Brice turned to Elliot, gave him a loving but exasperated look, and then stared at Kate. “I know what he looks like in a rented tux,” Brice told her. “You’re on your own.”

  “Thanks,” Elliot said. “No offense meant, I’m sure, and none taken. So it’s set. Brice and I will take you two girls, and we will all have a wonderful time.”

  “Maybe that’s a good idea,” Bina said. “But right now I think I have to take a little nap.”

  Kate watched as Bina’s eyes fluttered shut. “You guys must be joking,” she said. “No way.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Kate and Bina, both carrying presents, were waiting for Elliot and Brice three blocks south of St. Veronica’s Roman Catholic Church, the place where Kate had made her First Communion in the dress Mrs. Horowitz had sewed for her. Kate, all grown up now, was unaware that in the simple calf-length navy blue dress that set off her fiery hair, she looked stunning. She didn’t think of her Communion dress; she was just grateful that she didn’t have to wear one of the loopy bridesmaids’ gowns she was usually stuck in.

  Bina, at Kate’s side, looked totally Brooklyn and smelled like fear. She wore a pink dress that poofed at the skirt. Her dark brown hair was done up in lacquered swirls of French twist curls as if she were going to their senior prom. Sal, the hairdresser who had “done” both of them for the prom, had probably done Bina this time, too.

  “Is it going to be a high mass?” Kate asked, remembering her boredom at the standing, the kneeling, and the standing again in the interminable services of her youth.

  “Mass, shmass,” Bina said dismissively. She craned her neck, looking for the guys. “I’m safe during the ceremony. It’s afterward that I’m dead meat.”

  “Bina, this isn’t a firing squad. These women are your friends,” Kate tried to assure her. “You’ve known them forever. They’re not going to judge you.”

  Bina turned back to stare at Kate. “Are you kidding?” she asked in amazement. “That’s exactly what they’re going to do. That’s what friends are for.”

  “Hey, look: We got a great strategy,” Kate reminded her. “Everyone may assume that Elliot is Michael; it will take a while to straighten that out, which will distract them. If Bev opens her big mouth and calls him Michael, I can do half an hour of material to make it look like I’m embarrassed. And everyone knows Jack left. So showing up with Brice will just daze and confuse them, or maybe even blow them away. I mean, he is gorgeous.”

  “Yeah,” Bina agreed dispiritedly, “but he’s no Jack.” Jack had gone to Hong Kong without calling, and Bina had heard nothing from him since. Now, she looked up and down the street again. “Where are they?” she whined.

  “They’ll be here,” Kate reassured her, looking down the all too familiar Woodbine Avenue. She felt slightly dizzy, and she wasn’t sure if it was the heat or the location. Returning to Brooklyn and the old neighborhood gave her a kind of vertigo.

  “But what if they don’t show up? I’ll have to go in alone. I can hide in the back during the ceremony, but if at the reception I have to go J
ackless and ringless, they’ll all want to know the reason he broke up with me, and—”

  “Bina, calm down,” Kate said with more than a bit of concern in her voice. For the past two weeks, Bina had been spending every day and almost every night alternating between Max’s and Kate’s. After a few days, Kate had remonstrated, but Bina refused to cross the bridge. “I can’t go home. Everything reminds me of him,” was Bina’s first excuse. Kate had been happy, at first, to provide Bina with a safe haven, but after four days she’d insisted that Bina call her father and mother herself and break the news. Dr. Horowitz had threatened to fly to Hong Kong right then and there to “knock that pisher’s block off,” but Bina had implored her father to stay in Brooklyn and had thereby kept Jack’s block safe. Mrs. Horowitz, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, remained convinced that her daughter was engaged.

  “I can’t take this,” Bina said. “I’m melting from nervous perspiration. I’ll never wear this dress again.” Kate thought that was probably a good thing. Just then, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled up and Elliot and Brice emerged.

  “You’re late,” she said in place of a greeting, but she was happy to see the two of them.

  “Well, hello to you, too.” Elliot smiled, his usual cheerfulness intact. “Who’s late?” He looked at his watch. “You said the ceremony was three o’clock. It’s two fifty-seven.”

  Kate sighed. “Being on time is late in a situation like this.”

  “Haven’t they heard of fashionably late?” Brice asked.

  “This is Brooklyn,” Kate reminded him. But as she looked both men over, she couldn’t be angry.