Slightly Single

by Wendy Markham

  “My mother called me last night when I got home from the beach. She said Daddy took a hit the last time the stock market fell, and they want me to move into a cheaper place, or find a roommate.”

  “Wow, really?”

  I’m surprised.

  For one thing, I was sure she had asked me to meet her so that she could ask my advice about her new relationship with Billy.

  For another, I’ve never heard Kate speak so candidly about the fact that her parents support her. I mean, it’s no secret, but she doesn’t usually come right out and admit it.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know. I love my apartment. And I do have two bedrooms. I thought maybe…” She trails off, spinning the stem of her wineglass between the palms of her hands.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe you might want to move in with me. Not for July first,” she adds hastily. “That would be too soon. I know you’d have to give notice for your own place. But maybe on August first…”

  My mind is whirling. Move in with Kate?

  Her apartment is beautiful. It has a fireplace, and crown moldings, and a tiny terrace. It’s on one of the nicest blocks in the village.

  But what about Will?

  If I move in with Kate in August, I can’t talk to Will in September about us moving in together.

  “How much is the rent?” I ask Kate.

  “I couldn’t charge you half. That wouldn’t be fair, since I’d want to keep my bedroom, and it’s bigger than the other one.”

  She’s hedging. I can tell.

  “How much, Kate?”

  “Fifteen hundred,” she offers.

  So there’s no decision to be made.

  “I can’t afford it,” I tell her.

  Case closed.

  “Fourteen hundred?” she amends. “I can kick in the extra hundred from my temping money.”

  “Kate, that wouldn’t be fair. And actually, I think you can get more than fifteen hundred for the place. It’s a beautiful apartment.”

  “I know, but I wanted you to live there with me.”

  “I can’t,” I say, even though it’s tempting.

  “You said you were going to be doing some catering jobs over the summer. You’ll make a fortune, Tracey. Enough to make up the difference in rent between your place and mine.”

  Maybe.

  But it’s not the money.

  It’s Will.

  I can’t tell Kate that I’m counting on us moving in together when he gets back in the fall. Either she’ll think it’s just a big fantasy on my part, or she’ll think it’s not a good idea.

  “I really don’t want to ask a stranger to move in with me,” Kate says desolately. “Not after what you went through with Mercedes.”

  “That was fine,” I tell her.

  She raises an eyebrow at me. “Honey, the girl was a crack ho.”

  “Okay, it wasn’t fine. But who says you’re going to end up with someone like her?”

  “A stranger is a stranger, whether they’re like her or not.”

  “Look, why don’t you ask Raphael? He’s making more money now that he’s working for She. Maybe he’ll want to move in with you.”

  “I could never live with Raphael,” Kate says in a how-can-you-even-suggest-such-a-thing tone. “His lifestyle and mine would just never mesh. I mean, strange men—sailors—coming and going at all hours…Think about it, Tracey.”

  I grin. “You’re right. Well then, maybe you should move into a smaller place.”

  “But I love my place,” she wails. “What am I going to do?”

  I shrug.

  “Just think about it, will you, Tracey? Just give it some thought. Don’t say no right away. Okay?”

  “But, Kate—”

  “Wait and see how the catering job goes,” she insists. “You’re going to make a bundle. Why stay in your apartment when you can live in mine? We’d have so much fun.”

  I nod.

  We would have fun.

  And if it doesn’t work out with Will and me moving in together…

  Not that I think it won’t, but if it didn’t, I wouldn’t mind living with Kate. In fact, I would like that. Then I wouldn’t have to be lonely.

  But I won’t be lonely when Will gets back and he and I move in together.

  No, I can’t jeopardize my future with him.

  “Will you think about it, Tracey?” Kate asks.

  I say yes, to humor her, even though I have no intention of thinking about it.

  I pick up take-out Chinese on the way home, and eat it in front of a rerun of Ally McBeal.

  And surprise, surprise, the phone never rings.

  Eleven

  “You’re Tracey, right?”

  I nod at the pleasant-looking African-American guy who greets me as I step off the elevator and find myself in the entryway of a penthouse apartment on Central Park South.

  “I’m John Wilson with Eat Drink Or Be Married,” he says. “Milos asked me to train you.”

  The security guard who escorted me up in the elevator—after my name was checked off a list in the lobby and telephoned ahead to the penthouse—heads back down to his post.

  It’s all I can do not to look around with my jaw hanging open as John leads me through a vast sitting area to a room he calls the “atrium.” Three walls are made of glass, and there’s an incredible view of Central Park sprawled twenty stories below. But if you don’t look at that, you can almost convince yourself that you’re on some tropical terrace. Terra cotta, plants galore, antique-looking wrought-iron furniture, a trickling fountain. Several men are moving a grand piano through the wide double doorway from the living room.

  The entire apartment is filled with bustling people, all of them more attractive than I am, and all of them wearing gray Nehru jackets and black slacks like mine. At least I’m getting some use out of this boring pair of gabardine dress pants I bought more than a year ago for my great-aunt’s funeral. And at least they still fit—although they might not have, at this time last week. The waistband is snug, proving that I probably gained at least ten pounds since college—and that it’s a good thing I lost five or more of it this past week.

  I get a quick tour of the spectacular apartment as John tells me about the event. It’s a cocktail party in honor of some guy’s fortieth birthday, thrown by his wife. I glimpse a prominently framed portrait of an attractive couple over the mantel, and assume they must be the birthday boy and spouse.

  I wonder what they do to be able to live in a place like this. We’re talking Trump meets Vanderbilt. I want to ask John if they’re celebrities or foreign royalty or something, but that’s so…Brookside. So I try not to gape as he shows me around, pretending I’m totally accustomed to the trappings of vast wealth.

  Priceless paintings? Private gym off the bedroom? Walk-in dressing room twice as big as my apartment?

  No big deal.

  Right.

  John shows me how to carry trays and offer appetizers to the guests. How hard can it be? I wonder, until I practice with an empty silver tray and realize that it’s heavier than it looks.

  I’m told to be polite and personable.

  “Remember,” John says, “the guests aren’t here to talk to the wait staff.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask gravely. “Because I was practicing some new knock-knock jokes earlier and—”

  He looks horrified.

  “Relax, I’m kidding!” I say, laughing.

  “Oh!” He’s obviously relieved. “I thought you were—”

  “Some kind of nut?”

  “Well, we’ve gotten some nuts, believe me. People who don’t know how it works. A lot of catering people are in show business. Once, when we were doing a party for a record producer, I had a new waitress break into song while she was serving him his sorbet.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nods. “She was hoping to be discovered.”

  “Well, I’m not. And trust me,
I know how this works,” I tell him. “Will’s told me enough about it. I’m strictly background, right? Quietly efficient.”

  “Will?”

  “Will McCraw. My boyfriend. He works for Milos.”

  “Oh, I know Will. We work together all the time.” But he looks and sounds surprised. “He has a girlfriend?”

  “What? Wait, I know. You thought he was gay?”

  “No! It’s not that….”

  So if he wasn’t surprised because he assumed Will was gay…

  Then he was surprised because he didn’t think Will was in a relationship.

  “Then what is it?” I ask pointedly.

  “Nothing! I just never knew he had a girlfriend.” John isn’t making eye contact with me. “Come on, let’s go back to the butler’s pantry to help with the food.”

  Why isn’t he making eye contact with me?

  All sorts of paranoid thoughts enter my head.

  All of them involve Will having cheated on me, and John being aware of it. Maybe everyone here is aware of it. Maybe people are whispering behind my back, pointing at me and saying, “Look, there’s Will McCraw’s girlfriend. She’s so oblivious. She thinks he’s actually been faithful.”

  I pretty much convince myself that that’s the case as I help load silver trays with feta and artichoke crostini and smoked salmon and dill tartlets with creme fraiche.

  I keep checking out the other waitresses, wondering which of them would be most likely to seduce Will. They’re all potential femme fatales: Sheila with her glorious long red hair, Kelly with the model’s cheekbones, Zoe with the boobs that are even bigger than mine and the body that’s tiny everywhere else.

  I rule out Sue, even though she’s adorable, with an outgoing personality. For one thing, she’s a fellow newcomer—not just to Milos’s catering place, but to New York; she’s just moved here from Pittsburgh. For another, she’s super-friendly to me, unlike Sheila, Kelly and Zoe. I’ve known her twenty minutes, and she keeps saying we should hang out sometime. Either she’s super lonely or she’s hitting on me. Maybe both.

  Every time John introduces me to someone, he says, “This is Tracey. Will McCraw’s girlfriend.”

  Everyone is surprised.

  Everyone reacts with a Will has a girlfriend? expression even if they don’t come right out and say that. Which some of them actually do.

  Luckily, once the guests start arriving and we start working, the evening flies by.

  My stomach was rumbling as I put the canapés on the trays before the party. But by the time everyone is gone and we’re engaged in clean-up, my appetite has passed. John tells us to help ourselves to what’s left—and there’s a lot. But even the marinated grilled Gulf shrimp wrapped in basil does nothing for me.

  Finally, I’m on my way home in a cab, more than a hundred dollars richer, wondering how I’m going to get up for work in six hours, and alternately rubbing my aching feet and shoulders all the way downtown.

  The message light is blinking when I get upstairs to my apartment.

  I press the button and start getting undressed as the tape unwinds.

  I’m too lazy to unfasten all the buttons on the Nehru jacket, so I just undo the top one and start pulling it over my head. It’s caught around my ears when I could swear I hear Will’s muffled voice saying, “Tracey? Tracey?”

  For a split second, I stupidly think he’s here, in the room.

  I know. Crazy. What can I say? It’s late, and I’ve got low blood sugar.

  Of course, I realize a moment later that it’s a recorded message from him—that he must have thought I was screening my calls.

  That he must have thought I couldn’t possibly be out at…

  “It’s midnight. Where are you? Okay, I’ll try you back another night. Hope everything is okay.”

  There’s a click, and then the machine beeps twice and a disembodied mechanical voice says “End of messages.”

  I try to pull off the damned jacket so that I can look at the clock and see if it’s too late to call back.

  But the jacket is hopelessly wrapped around my head, rendering me not only half deaf, but completely blind.

  And anyway, I realize as I try to work it back down to my neckline, I can’t call Will back. I don’t have his phone number.

  This sucks.

  It really sucks.

  I try telling myself that at least he called, but that doesn’t help.

  He didn’t say “I miss you,” much less anything else that would help to erase the bad feeling I got when I discovered that nobody he works with at Eat Drink Or Be Married seemed to realize I existed.

  Obviously, Will doesn’t discuss his love life at work.

  And okay, maybe that doesn’t mean anything other than that he’s a typically close-mouthed guy.

  I mean, my brothers never like to discuss their relationships with anyone. Back when everyone lived at home, my mother would always ask—make that pry, because there’s nothing low-key about my mother—and my brothers would invariably clam up and escape. We never even knew my middle brother Joey had a girlfriend until he asked my oldest brother Danny if he could borrow money to buy an engagement ring for her.

  So maybe Will hasn’t mentioned me to his co-workers because guys just don’t do that.

  Or maybe he hasn’t mentioned me to his co-workers because he wants them to think he’s single so that he can screw around behind my back.

  You’re probably thinking this is my imagination getting carried away with me.

  And yes, it very well could be.

  But I can’t help wondering whether there’s a part of me that’s been blind by choice, and for too long.

  Now that there’s some distance between me and Will, I can see our relationship more clearly.

  I’ve always known there were problems. For one thing, I’ve been scrounging for a commitment for ages, while Will seems content to coast along without regard for our future as a couple.

  But suddenly, the problems that were there before seem to be symptoms of something huge and pervasive.

  I tug the jacket down past my shoulders and slowly work on the buttons as I ponder this turn of events.

  Maybe Will isn’t who I thought he was.

  Maybe he’ll never be who I need him to be.

  Maybe the very thing that draws me to him—the fact that he’s different from everyone I ever knew in Brookside—is the very thing that makes him unattainable.

  Like me, he’s done his best to shed that small-town, middle-class background. But I can’t imagine him ever looking back and feeling homesick, the way I did last week. He wants none of the trappings that go along with that kind of life.

  Maybe that includes marriage.

  And I…

  Well, I want marriage. Someday. And I can’t pretend that I don’t. I want to know that I belong to someone and he belongs to me. That he’s never going to leave me.

  Granted, marriage doesn’t always give that guarantee.

  Look at Mary Beth and Vinnie.

  But I wouldn’t marry a creep like Vinnie. I would only marry someone who loved me as much as I loved him—someone I trusted as much as he could trust me.

  Like I said, I don’t know if Will can ever be that person.

  “But I can’t let you go, Will,” I whisper. “I can’t.”

  Not yet.

  Maybe not ever.

  And maybe…

  Just maybe…

  I’m wrong.

  But that possibility doesn’t help me to get much sleep. I watch the clock hit three, then four, then five. The next thing I know, the alarm is bleating and I’m tempted to call in sick and roll over and go back to sleep…until I remember that I might have to use a sick day to visit Will at some point.

  I manage to go through the motions of getting ready, and I drag myself to work.

  I’m on my way into the deli in my building when I hear somebody calling my name.

  Naturally, it’s Buckley. I look up to see him looking fres
hly pressed, well-scrubbed and neatly combed, carrying a steaming paper deli cup and a brown paper bag. Today I’m too exhausted to be flustered, much less turned on.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he says.

  I manage a polite chuckle.

  “How’s it going?” he asks.

  I yawn in response.

  “Late night?”

  “Yeah.” I don’t elaborate. Let him think whatever.

  “Listen, I’ve been wondering about something ever since I saw you yesterday.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Really? What have you been wondering?”

  “Whether you deliberately gave me a wrong phone number.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you never wanted to hear from me again.”

  “That’s crazy. I was actually hoping you’d call because I had fun hanging out with you,” I hear myself say.

  “You’re kidding.”

  It’s dangerous, being this numb with exhaustion.

  The next thing I know…

  “Then why don’t we hang out?”…I’ll be saying something really stupid.

  Like…

  “Sure. When?”

  Did I just say that? Or am I still in bed, dreaming?

  Unfortunately, it’s not the latter, because Buckley hands me his very real business card with his very real home phone number on it, and says, “Great. Why don’t you call me?”

  “I will,” I lie.

  I shove the card into my bag, give him a fake-friendly wave and head back out to the street. This calls for something stronger than deli coffee.

  I cross the avenue and walk down a block to Starbucks, where I order a double espresso. I need to wake up before I do something really scary.

  As I wait by the counter for my beverage, I pull Buckley’s card out of my bag again and look at it.

  It just says his name, address, phone number, and e-mail. No job title, but there’s a small, tasteful drawing of an old-fashioned quill pen and inkpot in one corner. Suitable for a copywriter.

  My espresso comes up, and I carry it over to the counter to add skim milk and sweetener. As I toss the empty blue Equal packet into the trash, I realize I’m still holding Buckley’s card in my other hand.

  I should just throw this away too, I think, holding it poised over the garbage. After all, I’ll never call him. And I’m supposed to be reducing clutter in my life.