by Dan Begley
Marie selects a mall even farther out west than her apartment, one I’m not familiar with, so it’ll be a bit of an adventure for me. The usual suspects are there—White House/Black Market and Abercrombie and bebe—but there are stores I’ve never seen before—Hollister Co., J. Jill, Torrid. Everything is done up right, all twinkly and bright and Christmasy, and the kids are visiting Santa and getting their pictures taken. We buy a few gifts for our families, and I see a sweater I want to get her at Ann Taylor, so I make her stand at the Starbucks kiosk while I double back and get it, and we have a great lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, and I’m filled with such a sense of felicity and well-being and joie de vivre that I’m certain this is another outing to add to our montage, and will, like most of the others, end with us in bed. And that’s what I’m thinking just after noon, as we stroll hand in hand past the scarf-wearing mannequin at Banana Republic, Dean Martin crooning “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” when I see someone I know coming straight toward me, saying my name, smiling, and there’s no way to avoid her, unless I want to knock Marie down and sprint the other way, but even that wouldn’t help, because Marie has already figured out that the woman’s talking to me. And far far too late, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I realize my guardian angel had nothing to do with getting me out of the way of scalding coffee this morning; he’s the one who knocked it over in the first place, aiming it straight for my crotch, so that I’d spend the day in bed instead of being here.
“Mitch. Hey, Mitch!”
It’s Hannah.
She stops right in front of us and gives me a hug and says she can’t believe it’s me, this far out west, and at a mall, and she’s so happy to see me. I manage to mumble something.
“Oh, and this is my friend Alex,” she says, presenting the guy with her. “Alex, this is Mitch, an old friend.”
I shake Alex’s hand. Alex has a firm grip. My grip isn’t firm. I turn to Marie, who isn’t blinking. “Marie, Hannah. Hannah, Marie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Hannah says. Marie just swallows.
“So how’ve you been?” Hannah asks me.
“Fine. Great.”
“Any word on the book?”
“Um, no, no word, nothing. Just a rejection.”
“Oh, sorry to hear that. But I assume you’re still teaching.”
“Teaching. Ha. That’s funny. Yep.”
She turns to Alex. “Mitch teaches at the university.” Alex looks impressed. I’m not sure what Marie looks like, since I don’t look her way.
“So… the two of you just out shopping?” Hannah says, moving things forward, beginning a new line of questions.
“We are. In fact, we’re on a bit of a tight schedule.” I scrounge up a smile for Alex and pat Hannah on the arm. “Great to see you both, but we’ve got to run.”
I sidestep both of them and the throng of shoppers, and pull Marie by the arm like a child over to the bench, where we plop.
“Marie, listen—”
“No. Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. Just give me a minute.” So I do. I give her a minute, but a minute turns into five, and still she’s still trying to breathe, or form words, or blink. Finally…
“Why’d she call you ‘Mitch’?”
“Because that’s my name.”
“Your name isn’t Jason?”
“No.”
“You’re not Jason Gallagher?”
“No. I’m Mitch Samuel.”
“And you’re not a pharmaceutical rep.”
“No. I’m a PhD candidate. And I teach and I write.”
What she’s trying to do, I assume, is process this, make sense of it, understand why I’d use a phony name and occupation, create a whole different person and life. Then she gasps. “Jesus, you’re married.”
“No, no, no. God no. Nothing like that. I’m as single as they come.” This relieves her momentarily, and gives me a little momentum, which I decide to run with. “Though there is something else you should probably know. Actually, it’s sort of funny.” I manage a nervous stab of laughter, in case it’s catching. It’s not. “I know your brother pretty well. In fact, we share an apartment. In fact, even better… I’m the best man at his wedding.”
I’ve never slapped a woman in the face before (no great accomplishment). This is what it must look like.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god. You’re Bradley’s Mitch.”
It’s clear I’ve miscalculated my momentum, since it’s obvious she wasn’t ready to hear that the guy she’s been dancing with and sleeping with and saying “I love you” to was actually her brother’s best friend. It’ll be hard to get a word in edgewise, as appalled as she looks.
“I need to get out of here,” she says, scrambling up from the bench.
“Marie, hold on. Let me explain—” I grab for the arm of her sweater and get it, but she spins around and pulls with such force and anger that I’m shocked into letting go, which sends her stumbling over her own feet and onto her backside, in a painful-looking spill. We’re both stunned.
I get off the bench to help her, but she scoots the other way, kicking out at me. “Don’t touch me,” she screams, getting to her feet. “Don’t you dare touch me!”
I hold my hands up to show her, and all the gawkers, that, indeed, I have no intention of touching her or coming any closer. She’s free to do exactly as she pleases. Which, for her, means pushing her way through the crowd till I have no idea where she’s gone.
I retreat to my spot on the bench, alone, since none of the other shoppers seems interested in joining me. This did not go as planned. In fact, the only way it could’ve gone any worse is if we’d had an earthquake, or we’d struck an iceberg and the entire mall began to sink. But I try to look on the bright side: Hannah was genuinely glad to see me. Which means bygones are bygones. Marie must’ve seen that too, that Hannah was not freaked out by the sight of Mitch, but actually excited and happy by the sight of Mitch. This has to be to my advantage. Plus, Marie ran off without any of her packages. Or her coat. And I drove. She has to come back.
So what’ll happen, I decide, is that she’ll take a stroll—probably down to the Macy’s end of the mall—cool off, realize this is all a silly and ironic misunderstanding, and come back. She won’t be happy, and she’ll have a ton of questions, and there may be some accusations and finger-pointing, but at least I’ll have the opportunity to explain. So I wait. For fifteen minutes. Twenty. Thirty. At forty-five I get off the bench and limber up: just because we had a spat, I don’t need to be doubled up with back spasms for the rest of the weekend. At fifty I try her cell phone, but she doesn’t answer. At an hour I reach this conclusion: she’s not coming back.
I gather up all the packages and make my way out to my car, which I have trouble finding, since, if you want to know the truth, I’m a little rattled and can’t remember exactly where I parked. But I need my mind to work. What’s logical here? What’s logical is that she found another way home. So I drive to her apartment. But her car is gone, which means she got home, figured I’d come looking for her, and split. That’s disturbing. And now I have a sharp pang of regret that I didn’t sit her down when I had the chance and make her listen to me, because now that she’s had a chance to go off and brood and let monstrous thoughts whisper in her ear and tell her all sorts of horrible things, who knows what she’s thinking? I need to find her, quick.
I call the salon first, but I’m careful to disguise my voice, use a British accent, pretend to be a customer, in case she’s already warned them she doesn’t want calls from me. But Samantha tells me, pleasantly, that Marie isn’t working today. I call the studio. Adonis’s voice is on the recorder saying the studio is closed for the day, but will be open for regular hours tomorrow. I don’t know her parents’ number, but I do know her father’s name—Barnaby, a tough one to forget—so I dial information and get it. They put me through, and again I use the British accent and pretend to be someone from the salon, asking for Marie. I speak to a woman, her mom I su
ppose (fitting that the first time I speak to her, I’m pretending to be someone else), but she’s not there. I’ve struck out. That’s when the panic sets in.
Where else could she be? Anywhere, of course. It’s a fucking city. But maybe I don’t have to comb the entire city. Maybe my accent was too obvious, or she said she didn’t want calls from anyone, Mitch or British guys, and she’s actually at one of the places I already tried. So I go to the salon, but Rosie is there and smiling and teasing me about the state of my hair, which is shit right now, and no way could she be so glib about this if her best friend were hiding out in the back. Then I look up her parents’ address and drive by the house, but there’s no Volkswagen in the street or the driveway or in the garage, which is open. I even go by the studio, because maybe she just wants to sit in the lot; but the lot is empty. Gone without a trace. So I call Bradley, an option I’d forgotten about entirely, but his phone is turned off, which isn’t surprising since he’s in Colorado and probably out skiing or hiking with Skyler. At least Marie hasn’t gotten to him either. Unless she has, and she’s told him everything, and he also doesn’t want to be reached by me. Jesus.
I drive around and look for silver VW Bugs and see a couple and tail them, get right up on their bumpers, till I can pull up alongside, but none is hers, so I go back to her apartment and the salon and the studio and her parents’ house, and I sit in front of each one of them, all the while trying to stifle the sickening thought that she’s doing all this—not answering her phone, not trying to get in touch with me, disappearing into thin air—because she has no interest in talking to me or hearing my side of the story, that she thinks I’m a jerk and a creep, and she never wants to see me or hear from me again. What part of “It’s over” don’t I understand?
My apartment is dark and freezing when I get back, but I don’t turn on any lights, don’t flip on the heat, don’t even close the front door. I sit on the sofa. After a while my teeth begin to chatter, and I’m shaking, and I haven’t peed for hours, and my bladder is about to explode, but I’m pretty sure this is the best I’ll feel all evening. How can the planet continue to spin in moments like this? How can there be traffic outside, and planes, and how can the people in the unit above me just be going about their business, watching TV, like nothing’s wrong? Then my cell phone rings and I nearly jump from the sofa. I stab my hand into my pocket and snatch it out.
“Marie, god, let me explain…”
There’s a pause. “Sorry, Mitch. It’s Katharine. Bad time?”
“Katharine, hi. No. I thought you were someone else, is all.”
“I can call back.”
“No, this is fine.” I rub the skin on my forehead. “What’s going on?”
What’s going on, she tells me, is that she’s finished the book and loves it, though a few issues need to be addressed, and even though it’s short notice, and Thanksgiving weekend, maybe I can come up this weekend to discuss them. I’m sick and desperate and unhinged, and I need to shut my mind off and stop replaying the afternoon with Marie, and it’s clear nothing is going to happen tonight, or anytime soon, or ever, and if I stay here, I might just do something stupid, like pee all over myself, or worse, so I tell her I have a better idea: I’ll catch a flight and head up there tonight. Which I do. And then I promptly hop into her bed.
Here’s a bit of good news/bad news for all you ladies who’ve had boyfriends or husbands or otherwise significant others jump right into bed with another woman after an argument. Bad news first: he jumped right into bed with another woman. No matter how you look at it, that’s a bad thing, and to pretend otherwise is foolish and ultimately counterproductive. But here’s the good news: he may have done it because he’s desperately in love with you.
When a man loves a woman (and yes, we all hear Percy Sledge crying out in that lovesick man-wail voice of his right now) and he thinks it’s over, especially because he’s done something stupid, he’s liable to be off-kilter and unbalanced and do any number of ill-advised or rash or destructive things. He might drink till he’s sick, or drive his car off a bridge, or slam his fist into a wall. He will do these things because he’s down on himself. Because he thinks he’s an ass. Because he has sunk to the bottom of a dark pit and there’s really no way out, and he needs to grasp onto something that will make him feel better about himself. Sleeping with the first available woman is often just the thing.
I’m not saying it’s like this in all cases. Sometimes the guy really is just a prick, and he’s had this other woman on the back burner all along, and your argument or breakup is just the excuse he needs to get to knocking the boots with her. But I do know that there are guys who go out and screw random women because they can’t stand the thought that they’ve just gone and ruined the best thing that’s ever happened to them, and they need to escape that feeling quick. That’s how it is for me.
Here’s what happens in Chicago. Katharine picks me up from the airport and we go straight to her place. We talk about the novel and have drinks. We get comfortable on the sofa. I get buzzed. I tell her she looks great. She kisses me, I kiss back, we get to touching and stripping and end up in her bed. I don’t want to say much about it—Katharine has been very good to me and doesn’t need her preferences between the sheets broadcast to the general public—but I will tell you she does things that a forty-two-year-old celebrity millionaire really doesn’t need to do to a twenty-eight-year-old nobody, but she seems to enjoy herself, and my body, despite itself, seems to enjoy it too. Of course, I’m thoroughly disgusted with myself afterwards, which thankfully I manage to hide from Katharine by pretending to be asleep, and it’s only later, after she’s asleep and I’ve gotten up to pace, that I throw up.
In the morning there’s no repeat, or suggestion of a repeat, or kisses like we’re a couple. She doesn’t refer to it again, other than to say she enjoyed the evening, and I smile, even though that vomit taste is working its way up my throat again, which I swallow back. We go to breakfast, then she drives me to the airport because I want her to think I’m going home. But I don’t. I get on the El and ride it around the city, then get off and wander around for most of the afternoon, and finally wind up at the art museum, standing in front of Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, the painting from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I stare at it, like they did, and wish I could climb inside, because everyone in the painting looks so jolly and happy and light in their parasols and top hats and sailboats, or maybe I could just be one of the dots of color, since that wouldn’t be so bad, and I wouldn’t feel like shit, or anything at all.
Only when I’m back on the ground in St. Louis and in my apartment do I turn my cell phone on. It rings immediately. Bradley, from Colorado.
“Finally. Where the fuck’ve you been?”
“Um, out. Doing stuff.”
He gives a short, mirthless laugh. “You got that fucking right.”
From the intensity and frequency of his f-bombs, I’m glad he’s in Denver and I’m in St. Louis. So are my nose and the other breakable parts of my face.
“So you’re Jason,” he snorts. “This is fucking unbelievable.” I know what he’s doing: trying to piece it together, connect the dots, string together conversations he’s had with Marie and me about boyfriends or girlfriends to make sense of it all. Good luck with that. “Jesus, Mitch. Do you even want to try to explain why you’ve been posing as a goddamned pharmaceutical rep and shtupping my sister behind my back?”
In truth, no. But since I wouldn’t put it past him to send a guy over with a tire iron to make sure I do—and, more importantly, since we’re way past the point where he deserves to know—I tell him. I keep it short, sweet, an exercise in economy: I hate dancing, Jason was an out, I got in over my head. Then I fell in love with Marie.
“Christ. I can’t even believe I know you.” He’s disgusted, of course, but I think the whole falling-in-love-with-your-sister got him, because when he speaks again, I don’t feel his hands clamped around my throat anymore. “Why didn
’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to. I should have. I didn’t.” Because I was a fucking chicken. “I’m sorry, Bradley.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you are. But save those apologies for Marie. You’re gonna need them.”
Neither one of us says anything for a good long time, mostly because, though Bradley and I have been through a lot together, the one where I pose as a dance-loving man of medicine and, uh, date his sister behind his back is new to everyone. Finally, he speaks.
“Mitch, this is my last evening in Colorado with my fiancée’s family. I’m going to get back to enjoying that now. As for your … situation, I wouldn’t mind seeing your ass twist in the wind for a while on this one. You deserve it. But my sister’s involved, so I’m not going to do that. I’ve got a few ideas. But before I do anything, and I mean fucking anything, I need to know something, and you better not give me any of that lying through your teeth Jason bullshit. You hear?”
“I hear.”
“What you said before about loving Marie: is that true?”
I couldn’t lie about that one even if my life depended on it. “Bradley, she’s the one.”
He lets it sink in for a minute. “Okay. Then what you need to do is just lay low for a while. She’s a mess right now, really confused. Give her some time to calm down, sort this out, get a perspective on things. In the meantime, I’ll talk to her, tell her I know you and you’re not some loony, just a part-time schmuck. Who knows: it just might find a way of working itself out.”
After we hang up, I’m buoyed by the thought that maybe he’s right, maybe I just need to lay low for a while, give her time to sift through this and realize how silly it all is, let her see that whatever I may’ve called myself—Jason or Mitch or Twinkle Toes—it doesn’t matter, since I love her and she loves me, and that’s why this will all work out. Love Will Keep Us Together. Love Is the Answer. All You Need Is Love. But somewhere between taking my Chicago clothes out to the Dumpster—I don’t need to see that shirt or those jeans again—and taking a shower—I already took one this morning, but that was in Katharine’s shower, with her soap, and I’m sure there’s still some trace of her on me somewhere—the bubble bursts and my umbrella of cheery pop-song optimism snaps itself inside out (You Give Love a Bad Name; These Boots Are Made for Walking; Hit the Road, Jack), and a tidal wave of clear-headed, sober-eyed, grizzle-toothed reality crashes down on top of me, and I realize that Bradley’s advice about laying low, though well-intentioned, is, if you’ll pardon the French, shit.