The Frog Prince

by Jane Porter

  “Provence,” I correct. “And it was beautiful. Very formal. The wedding cost my mom a fortune.” I think of the bridesmaids, the fresh flowers everywhere, the seven-tier wedding cake with delicate spun-sugar blossoms spilling down the side, and remembering makes me sick inside. So much money for so little love. “We should have just run away. Eloped. Done something private and cheap.”

  The corners of Katie’s mouth lift. “But you’re a princess, and you know it.”

  Once this might have made me smile, but it doesn’t, not now, not after the past horrible year. I wanted to stay in the valley. I never intended to be living in the city. I like farm towns, and cows, and simple things. I wanted marriage and babies. How does that make me a princess? How did I become a princess?

  I didn’t go to an Ivy League college. I don’t wear designer clothes. I don’t own any nice jewelry. I don’t even care about the kinds of cars men drive.

  But I did want a “happily ever after.” I did want the storybook ending. I wanted happiness. I just don’t know how to get it.

  Monday at work, there’s another team meeting, but this one is long and intensive. There are lots of upcoming events, lots of client appointments, lots of potential sales meetings. Olivia dispatches duties swiftly. We’re all to bring in new accounts by the end of the quarter.

  After the meeting Olivia takes off for an appointment with David. I don’t know where they’re going, and I don’t really care. But once they’re both gone, the office relaxes, and Tessa and Josh head downstairs together. I briefly wonder what’s up with them before I check my e-mail in-box.

  There are some boring business e-mails, and then—surprise, surprise!—an e-mail from Brian Fadden.

  It’s short, so short it shouldn’t even be called an e-mail, but it makes me smile nonetheless.

  “How’s life in the jungle?”

  He didn’t sign his name, but it’s there in his signature line, including all his various work contact numbers. “Life in the jungle,” indeed. I smile at the computer screen. Chew the tip of my nail, wonder what I should say. I don’t want to say too much—his e-mail was very short. And I can’t be boring, as his e-mail was amusing.

  So not too wordy, not too dry...

  I think about it a little longer and then decide just to go for it. I type a quick reply. “It’s actually a zoo, Mr. Fadden. We have one of everything here.” I hit “Send,” watch the e-mail disappear in my out-box, and as I do, I feel a flutter of nerves and anticipation.

  Let’s see what happens now.

  Then I do something I should have done ages ago: I go through my e-mail address book and delete Jean-Marc’s e-mail addy. I delete every record of his phone number and mailing address from every place I’ve written it. I delete him from my cell phone. I delete him as much as I can from my life.

  Finished, I sit back and look at my desk, stacked with folders and files, Post-it notepads filled with scribbled scrawl, and I feel better.

  I feel good.

  Mom was wrong. I wasn’t lucky to have Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc was lucky to have me.

  I leave my computer, grab a diet soda from the break room, and take the elevator downstairs, in need of fresh air.

  Tessa’s nowhere in sight, but Josh is still downstairs, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey,” I say, joining him on the blue-painted railing. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  He exhales a stream of smoke, shakes his head. “I used to, years ago; then I quit, but started up again this week. It’s disgusting. It’ll kill me, I know.”

  We’re silent a moment, and then Josh asks, “So what ever happened with Paul? Didn’t you two go out on Friday night?”

  “Yeah.”

  He taps the end of the cigarette, knocking off ash. “That good?”

  I nod.

  Josh shoots me a narrowed glance. “He can be a bit of a prick.”

  “Yeah.”

  His eyes narrow further. “What happened?”

  I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to involve Josh. They’re friends. No need to complicate things. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, as in not good? Nothing as in, didn’t go out? Nothing as...?’

  “Nothing.” I close my eyes, lift my face up to the sun, and suddenly it feels like forever since I was together and on top of the world. I want to be on top of the world again. I want that radiant, joyful, I’m-so-glad-to-be-alive feeling back.

  Instead every day feels a decade long, and I know it’s because I think so much. Does everyone think this much? Does everyone want as much as I do?

  Does anyone else worry that there won’t be more? Worry that maybe this is it, maybe this will be all there ever is?

  I open my eyes, look down the street at the heavy traffic streaming past the convention center. There has to be more magic still, I think. Somewhere. All the happy endings and good things can’t just be at Disneyland. Adults need happy stories, too.

  Josh leans over and smashes his cigarette in the sand. “You’re not going to see him again, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  I look at Josh. “I thought you were friends.”

  “I am. But that doesn’t mean he’s good for you. He’s a pain in the ass. So stay clear, okay?”

  I wonder how much Josh knows. Probably more than he’ll ever say. I nod, grateful Josh is on my side for this one. “Okay.”

  I stop by the gym on the way home and jog away on the treadmill. I will never be a real runner, but today I’m so restless that I can’t seem to stop moving. By the time I’m finished, I’ve run for nearly thirty-five minutes, a new record for me.

  At home I boil water for Cup O’ Noodles and try to settle down with a cable movie but can’t relax. Cup O’ Noodles is not a satisfying dinner. I want chewy and chocolate, like frosted brownies, but have only peanut butter on my shelves, so I spread some of that on crackers.

  I need to grocery-shop.

  And I need to buy a desktop computer for my apartment. I spread more peanut butter on another cracker, thinking about the computer I used to have in Fresno, an old laptop that Jean-Marc gave me but took back when we parted. That was so cheap, I think, chomping on my cracker. He had a computer at the university, a brand-new laptop in his study at home. He didn’t need his old one. He didn’t have to take it back.

  Jerk.

  Another week goes by, and I manage to get into the gym only twice, but walking through my neighborhood one evening I notice that the small flower shop is still open, and I purchase a big bouquet of lilies and gerbera daisies for my apartment.

  I keep sniffing the sweet, heady fragrance of the lilies as I walk back to my apartment. I’m feeling really cosmopolitan at the moment. Single city girl doing her shopping, buying fresh sourdough bread at the corner bakery, and flowers on her way home...

  I hum a little and smile at people as I pass them.

  I’m doing okay, I think. I’m actually beginning to like living on my own.

  Brian Fadden and I have been talking on the phone for a few minutes every couple of days for the past week, and our sporadic, brief e-mails have gotten more frequent, as well as longer.

  Today I get an e-mail from Brian asking if I want to get a beer with him after work.

  The e-mail couldn’t have come at a better time; after another weekend alone, I’ve reached that desperation point. The point where almost anything is better than nothing, where Monday night beer nights are better than Monday night going home after a bad day at work and sitting alone.

  I know that in general, Monday night dollar-beer nights are best avoided. Monday nights are not great date nights, but when you’re sitting there at your desk at ten thirty on Monday morning and you hate your desk and hate your cubicle and hate the computer and hate that you have to work and that you’re going to be sitting here for the next five days, a date for that evening actually sounds good.

  Fun.

  Why the hell not? I ask myself, staring at the computer screen,
studying Brian’s e-mail invitation. I don’t feel like going to the gym after work. Mondays are already long enough and hard enough, and I don’t really want to go home to an empty apartment: And Brian’s e-mails are fabulous. Brilliant. The guy has a way with words.

  I chew on my thumb, stare at the screen, insides warm and fizzy. I love the warm fizzies. But is it Brian giving me the warm fizzies, or his cleverness? I’ve always liked dry humor, smart men, but am I physically attracted to him?

  It is just drinks at this point. I mean, Brian doesn’t have to be “the one,” but of course I always wonder when I meet a man, is he possibly Mr. Right?

  And Brian does fit the requirements for a Mr. Right (not that I’m looking). He’s clever in e-mail, funny over the phone, educated, sophisticated, and he knows how to make me laugh.

  But what would he be like in bed?

  I close my eyes, try to remember what he looks like. Tall—I remember that much—broad-shouldered, relatively lean. Basketball-player build. Athletic. And if he’s athletic, he’d probably be quite comfortable with his body. In bed.

  That’d be good.

  I e-mail back: “Okay. Meet you there at 7.”

  He replies almost immediately, and we’ve got plans. I’m thrilled this is just drinks, not dinner. Dinner means serious conversation, requiring a level of sincerity not necessary for drinks.

  Dinner means possible romance, while drinks mean light, nonthreatening... fun.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Drinks with Brian are fun.

  He isn’t exactly as I remembered. He’s actually leaner and taller—much taller—but the conversation is light, easy, with lots of banter. On our second beer (we’ve now spent a total of four dollars), Brian asks me about the ball. “How are the plans coming?”

  “So-so. We’ve picked up a couple of sponsors, and I’ve got a small piece coming out in the San Mateo paper, but that’s it.”

  Brian looks at me for a moment, his sandy hair flopped down across his forehead, and he looks both wry and serious at the same time. “I’ve got someone who might be willing to interview your boss, Burkheimer, as part of a look at AIDS, twenty years after. It’d get you a lead into promoting the ball.”

  It’s an amazing offer, but I don’t know that David will agree to the interview. “I don’t know if David will discuss Tony in an interview like that.”

  “I don’t know, either.” Brian leans on the table. “Especially since Tony was Antony Pelloci.”

  The name’s familiar, but I can’t figure out why, and I look at Brian blankly.

  “He was an actor, very talented, one of those serious actors who does only theater, no film or television.”

  “Would anyone recognize his name?”

  “Lots of people would, at least those that read the pink section.” The pink section being the San Francisco Chronicle’s weekend arts-and-entertainment section, where all the pages are a pale bubble-gum pink for easy identification.

  “How do you know so much about Tony?”

  He gives me that frank, appraising glance again. “Olivia.”

  “Olivia?”

  “She brought this to me a couple years ago, wanted me to help massage this angle into a story.”

  “And you wouldn’t?”

  “Not after the shit she pulled.”

  But he’d do it for me, I think, and I’m not sure if I’m nervous or excited. It could be a great story, could be a really wonderful human interest piece, but David might not want to do it, and Olivia...

  Olivia wouldn’t be happy if she knew the idea came about because, well, it came from Brian down to me.

  But I say none of this. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Tuesday morning at the office I shoot Tessa an e-mail. “Can we talk?” I write.

  I get an e-mail back a little later. “Are you still hiding from the big bad wolf?”

  I’m grimly amused and wait for Olivia to head off for lunch before I drop by Tessa’s office. I report the details of my conversation with Brian, and Tessa is nodding thoughtfully. “It’d be a great story,” she says. “A wonderful human interest piece that would get the focus off the craziness of the ball and back onto the Hospice Foundation.”

  “Will David do the interview?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe we don’t need David’s permission. Maybe we just authorize the story on Tony, kind of a retrospect on the local talent lost since the AIDS epidemic began.” Tessa reaches for the phone. “I’ll give Brian a call.” She smiles at me. “Thanks. This could be good.”

  Brian gets a staff reporter on the story, but since David can’t be interviewed, the story gets bigger, becoming a true feature about the tragedy of AIDS, and a sampling of the great local artists lost in the past twenty years. Staff members at the paper have compiled a list of dancers, designers, painters, writers, actors, models, and more. Stark black-and-white photos will accompany the text.

  The story keeps its San Francisco focus, and on the same page where the feature ends, there’s a lead-in blurb for the Leather & Lace Ball.

  Sunday the story runs, and it’s a terrific story, tautly written and yet deeply emotional. Brian and I celebrate by going to a Thai restaurant, and then we’re to head to a jazz club to hear some music. But after dinner we stop by Brian’s apartment first.

  I’m not exactly sure how or why we ended up at his apartment. I think we returned for a coat or tickets, but once inside, I remember little but being shocked by his Spartan apartment. There’s no way this man could have been married ten years. He has nothing. Nothing. Ancient milk crates packed with ancient vinyl records. Black-and-white photographs of India and Nepal, matted but not framed, lean against the baseboard. A futon-type mattress on the floor without even the benefit of a cheap futon frame. The one thing he does have is books. Bookcases of them, boxes, stacks.

  Books are everywhere, and Brian steps over a stack to head into his minuscule kitchen. “A beer?” he asks.

  I keep doing slow circles, checking out his place. “No, thanks.” Sounds rude, but I didn’t want to stay.

  I like Brian, but his apartment feels so empty and sad.

  Brian returns from the kitchen, hands me a soda instead. “Sorry about the mess.” He nods at the boxes and crates. “I need to get more bookshelves, I think.”

  You think?

  “Have kids?” I ask, and I don’t know why. There’s just something so lonely about a small apartment without furniture, blinds at the window, without a feeling of home.

  “No.” He uncaps his beer, takes a drink. “We spent too many years fighting to ever make love.”

  “I’m sorry.” And I am. Brian Fadden just feels so big, so real, so imposing that this little apartment strikes me as wrong. “How long have you been here?”

  “Nearly four years.” He flashes me his wry smile. “Ever since I returned from Fresno.”

  “I thought your divorce was only recently finalized.”

  “It was. I waited a couple years to file. She said she didn’t care. She said I could do whatever the hell I wanted. So I took her literally and didn’t bother to do anything.” He gestures to the brown futon hunched pathetically on the floor. “Have a seat.”

  I perch on a windowsill instead. “She went down to Fresno with you?”

  “For a while.” He takes another sip of his beer and grabs a milk carton, drags it forward, and sits down on it, his denim-clad legs looking a mile long. He’s wearing loafers—with tassels—but the loafers are so old and scuffed and water-stained, they look fine.

  “Do you want kids?” I persist.

  “Maybe. Someday. You?”

  I circle my soda, the can so cold against my skin. Yeah, I want kids. I want two, three—you know, the usual. “I did. My husband didn’t.” And it feels so funny even to call Jean-Marc my husband now. I’ve been in San Francisco only five months, and yet our life together—that brief span of time—seems light-years away.

  It probably doesn’t help that Jean-Marc never acted
like my husband, either.

  “Is that why you divorced?”

  “That and—” I break off, shocked that I almost blurted, He didn’t want to do me, as if that’s something you can say.

  “And?”

  I hesitate. “He didn’t want to be married to me.”

  “He’s a fool.”

  I shake my head, bite my lip.

  “Maybe he’s gay,” Brian says.

  It’d be convenient to believe, and it’s what everyone likes to suggest, but I don’t think it’s true. I think it’s me. I did something to Jean-Marc’s libido. I killed whatever attraction... desire... love existed.

  Brian leans forward, grabs my hand, and he’s pulling me to my feet, moving me toward him, and I resist only a little. I don’t want him, but I could use comfort.

  Yet do I want comfort from him?

  No. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I want from Brian. I like him; I enjoy his company; he’s interesting and he makes me laugh. But part of me is still numb and chilly on the inside, as if I were standing one person removed from myself and couldn’t quite figure out how to get back inside my own body.

  But Brian brings me between his knees. He’s sitting on a crate, sitting low, but he’s still so tall, we’re nearly at eye level. “How old are you, Holly Bishop?”

  He’s combing his fingers through my hair, and I feel a little colder. Someday someone will have to touch me. When will that someday be? When will I enjoy skin again? I’m trying not to panic, trying to tell myself to relax, and this is Brian, and you like him, but part of me wants to cry.

  “Almost twenty-six.”

  “I’ve got at least ten years on you,” he says.

  And he’s still touching me, and I’m still standing here, and everything inside me is quiet. It’s as if I had gone to sleep and just handed myself over to him.

  He combs through my hair, pushing my long bangs off my face. “You’re just a baby.” He pulls me down to sit on his lap.