The Next Best Thing

by Kristan Higgins

Page 7

  Author: Kristan Higgins

  Being with him was being with a local celebrity—someone who was better looking than first remembered, who smelled better, who, when he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off my feet, made me dizzy with love. Everyone knew Jimmy, despite the fact that he’d just moved to town a year or so before, and he remembered everyone’s names, sent over complimentary appetizers, asked after children. Everyone adored him.

  He was a wonderful boyfriend, bringing me flowers, hiding notes in my dorm room on the rare occasions he made it to Providence, calling a couple of times a day. He constantly told me I was beautiful, and with him, I felt it like never before. He’d gaze at me as we lay in the grass in Ellington Park as the tidal river flowed past, the smell of brine and flowers mingling as the sun beat down on us, and he’d forget what he was saying, breaking off midsentence to reach out and touch my face with his fingertips or kiss my hand, or even better, lay his head in my lap and say, “This is all I’ll ever need. This and a little food. ”

  It was Jimmy who gave Bunny’s a boost when he suggested that Gianni’s buy their bread from us. He recommended us to other restaurants, too, and that side of the business mushroomed. My mother and aunts thought he just about walked on water because of it. “That Jimmy,” they’d say, shaking their heads, their dormant love of men peeking through the snows of their widowhood. “He’s something, that Jimmy. He’s a keeper, Lucy. ”

  They didn’t have to tell me.

  Jimmy waited till I was done with college to propose. He asked me to have a late dinner with him at Gianni’s one night, after everyone else had left. It was something we did once in a while, the restaurant only lit by a few candles. I still remember the taste of everything he made that night…the sweetness of the tomatoes, the yeasty tug of the bread, the smooth vodka sauce on the perfectly cooked pasta, the tender, buttery chicken.

  When it came time for dessert, Jimmy went into the kitchen and returned with two dishes of Marie’s famous tiramisu, a cool, rich combination of chocolate cream, sponge cake and coffee liqueur topped with the creamy mascarpone. He set my dish down in front of me. I glanced down, saw the engagement ring perched on top of the cream. Without missing a beat, I picked it up, licked it off and put it on my finger as Jimmy laughed, low and dirty. Then I looked into Jimmy’s confident, smiling, utterly handsome face and knew I’d spend the rest of my life crazy in love with this guy.

  Obviously things didn’t turn out quite that way.

  When we’d been married for eight months, Jimmy drove down to New York for a chef supply show. He’d gotten up at 5:00 a. m. to get there early, spent the whole day learning about new oven technologies, hearing how remodeling a restaurant kitchen could save time and money, looking at hundreds of new or redesigned tools for the chef. Then he and a bunch of other chefs headed out for dinner.

  It was past midnight when he called me from outside New Haven, nearly two hours from Mackerly.

  “You didn’t have too much to drink, did you?” I asked, cuddled up in our bed. I’d been waiting up for him, and in truth was disappointed that he was still so far away.

  “No, baby. One glass of wine at about five, that’s it. You know me. ”

  I smiled, mollified. “Well, you’re not too tired, are you?”

  “I’m a little beat,” he admitted, “but not too bad. I miss you. I just want to get home and see your beautiful face and smell your hair and get laid. ”

  I laughed. “Now that’s funny,” I said, “because I just want to see your beautiful face and get laid, too. ”

  I didn’t say, Jimmy, at least pull over and take a nap. I didn’t say, Baby, we have our whole lives together. Get a motel room and go to sleep. Instead, I said, “I love you, honey. Can’t wait to see you. ” And he said the same thing, and that was the last thing he ever did say.

  About a hundred minutes after we hung up, Jimmy fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into an oak tree six miles from home and died instantly, and the rest of my life was rewritten.

  “HOW’S THE CAKE?” I ask Ash, my seventeen-year-old Goth neighbor from down the hall.

  “It’s fantastic. You sure you don’t want any?”

  “I’m sure. I taught this one in class, remember? You can make it yourself. ” Ash, who doesn’t have a lot of friends her own age, helps out at my six-week pastry class from time to time.

  “Why bake for myself when I, like, have my own bakery right down the hall?” She takes another huge bite. “Anyway, stop stalling, Lucy. Get this done. ”

  Feeling the need for a little company, I’d bribed Ash with bittersweet chocolate cake and the latest James Bond DVD. Tonight, I’m registering on a dating Web site, and while it seems like the perfect way for me to find someone, my stomach jumps nonetheless. I drain my wineglass, then drop a kiss on Fat Mikey’s head. He blinks fondly at me, then, fickle as only a cat can be, pricks my knee with his claws and jumps down.

  “Lucy, I’m, like, aging rapidly here,” Ash reminds me. “I do have school tomorrow, and my stupid mother wants me home at like, eleven. ”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mutter. I need to do this. Aside from hitting a sperm bank, this is the way to get what I want. Find a husband. I glance at my young friend, who could also do with a boyfriend. As always, her hair is Magic-Marker black, her eyes ringed with eyeliner, her eyebrows painfully overplucked. Because she’s been eating, some of her black lipstick has been dislodged, revealing a Cupid’s bow mouth in the prettiest imaginable shade of pink.

  “What are you staring at?” she asks. “Get your butt in gear. The movie’s two hours long. ”

  I obey, entering my pertinent information, then click to the next screen and begin the questionnaire.

  “Heard from Ethan lately?” Ash asks with careful nonchalance. She’s had a crush on him for years.

  “Um, not really. I saw him on the water today, though,” I say, looking at her again. “He was sailing. ” The truth is, I haven’t really talked to Ethan since that night.

  “So cool. ” She blushes, then picks at the sole of her engineer boot to hide her love.

  I hide a smile and look back at the computer. I’m only halfway done. It’s really too bad that I don’t live in a society of arranged marriages. The Black Widows could pick someone out for me…a nice enough man who didn’t have expectations of romantic love. That being fond of each other would be sufficient…he’d take care of me, I’d take care of him, we’d be the parents of the same children, rather than two people crazy in love.

  Fat Mikey heads over to the slider to gaze into the night. If I open the door, he’ll take the fire escape down to the street, then kill something and bring it back to me. His way of showing love, his soul as romantic as Tony Soprano’s. “Not tonight, buddy,” I tell him, clicking “maple” for the If you were a tree question. Finally I get to the screen that offers the available men in a twenty-mile radius. “And here they are,” I say. Ash lurches off the couch and peers over my shoulder.

  “Hey, there’s Paulie Smith,” she says. Paulie and I play in the baseball league.

  “I wonder if his wife knows he’s looking,” I murmur, clicking on the next choice. “Oh, it’s Captain Bob. Nice that he’s at least trying to score with someone other than my mom. ”

  “Totally gross,” Ash mutters. “Hey, look at this one. ” She taps the screen with her stubby black nail. “He’s cute. ”

  I look. Soxfan212. Nice eyes, lawyer, single, no kids.

  “Oops,” Ash says at the next bullet point. “That’s a deal breaker, isn’t it?”

  Soxfan212 likes to sail. Immediately, I picture him clinging to an overturned boat in high seas, rain pelting down, sharks circling, the rescue helicopter waving regretfully as they fly off, unable to make the save.

  “Sorry, Soxfan,” I say.

  This afternoon, the same images of death and drowning were strong in my mind when I saw Ethan as I was piloting for Captain B
ob. The wind was much too fierce in my opinion, and Ethan’s sailboat, a two-masted sixteen-footer, sliced through the water, tilting with speed, sails taut. Ethan waved, grinning, and it was all I could do not to radio the Coast Guard so they could tell Ethan to slow down. He’s a good sailor—won a few races and whatnot—but it just seems crazy, going out in the ocean over your head, alone, on a boat, in the wind. Though I guess that is the point of sailing.

  “Okay, let’s move on,” Ash says firmly. “Here. Type in your little message. ”

  “Right. ” I type dutifully. Thirty years old, no kids, widowed five years ago. Seeking long-term relationship, hoping to meet someone I won’t love a whole heck of a lot but won’t hate, either. Good teeth a plus.

  “What do you think?” I ask my friend. “Will they be lining up for me?” Ash just shakes her head. Fat Mikey rolls his eyes (I swear), then begins licking his privates.

  “You have three minutes,” Ash says, “and I’m starting the movie. And you can’t watch it if you don’t finish this. ”

  “Yes, Mother,” I say. I call to mind my tiny niece, the indescribable look on my sister’s face when she looks at her child, the wonder and pride and protectiveness. I remember Nicky’s wriggly hugs, how he danced in excitement yesterday when telling me about finding a woolly bear caterpillar. I look at Ash, the nicest kid I know, though she tries desperately to hide it in her hideous clothes and makeup.

  And so I delete what I’ve written and type something a bit more palatable.

  “Good for you, Lucy,” Ash affirms. “Now grab a Twinkie and come watch the wonder that is Daniel Craig. ”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “SO? YOU WANT TO DATE HER? She’s perfectly nice. A widow. Sure, she was sad when her husband, bless his heart, crashed into that tree, but none of the Prozac, you know what I’m saying? And as you can see, she has a nice figure. ”

  Aunt Iris has just dragged me from the kitchen, where I was taking out fifteen loaves of rye. A man in his forties, short, plump, balding, stands in front of the counter, frozen in terror. Was I wishing that the Black Widows would fix me up? I take it back.

  “Sorry about this,” I said. “Can I help you?”

  “Um…I just…I wanted a danish. ”

  “And you got a danish,” Iris says pointedly. She jerks her head toward me. “So what do you think?”

  “I need some change,” the man whispers to me.

  “Sure. ” I snatch the twenty from where it’s being held hostage in Iris’s hand and hit a key on the cash register. “Just one danish? Anything else?”

  “Nothing else! Uh, I mean, no thanks. ” He looks warily at Iris, then back at me. “I’m sorry. ”

  Iris bristles, swelling like an indignant and regal toad. “Oh, she’s not good enough for you, is that it? Why? What’s special about you, huh, mister?” She grabs me by my shoulders, gives a brisk shake. “Look at those hips. She was born to have children, and none of this epidural crap. Ask my daughter. She’s a lesbian doctor. ” Aunt Iris releases me, folds her arms and stares the man down. “I had two children, not a drop of painkiller for me. Did it hurt? Of course it did. It was childbirth, for heaven’s sake. I made do. I bore it. The tearing…not so bad. It didn’t kill me. ”

  I hand the man his change. “Have a nice day. Come again. ”

  The man won’t be coming again, I assure you. He scuttles out the door. I’d be willing to bet he never comes to the island again.

  “Iris, maybe you could…tone it down a little?” I suggest.

  “What?” Iris asks, wounded. She snatches up a rag and starts polishing the immaculate counter. “Tone what down?”