Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  Ah, the old college-meet. College, I’ve decided, is more about meeting your fiancé than about learning anything. Forget the whole liberal arts thing. It’s not about liberating your mind. It’s about hooking up with someone. If you don’t meet your fiancé in college, you’re hosed. Look at Wendy. Look at me. I was lucky to meet Rick after I graduated. And now I’m in that post-baccalaureate dating desert where only the strong survive and the bones of the lost litter the landscape for miles.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t teach you Spanish,” I say as we make our way past an outdoor café where hushed late-night conversations and timid laughter scamper around the edges of the lane.

  “Once she and my father split, she didn’t want much to do with all that,” he says, with no trace of bitterness. “His family was, well, less than reputable.”

  “You didn’t know him at all?”

  “Nope.” We stand on the edge of the water where lights flicker on the lapping waves, and boats gently rock to the beat of wealth. “And don’t cry for me, Argentina. I had a good life. Plenty of male role models. Some good uncles, great grandparents.” He puts his arm around me, and I think the obvious Freudian question—does Henry Castle seek in the arms of women the affection he never received from his absent father? Looking up at his untroubled face, I scratch that theory. If Henry Castle likes his women, it’s because he likes women. Period. End of story. Freud would find Henry Castle’s libido a straight line from desire to coitus with no pit stops for regrets.

  “What’s ‘less than reputable’ mean?” I ask. “From the wrong side of the tracks?” If blood lines are a prerequisite for dating Henry, might as well find out now. Mine are more along the mongrel variety.

  “Wrong side of the law. My mother was naive enough to think that wealth in Colombia can come from sugar cane.”

  “Oh.” So Henry’s father was one of “those” Colombians. “You know, a lot of our flowers come from South America.”

  “That’s how a lot of drugs get smuggled into the country. In flower shipments.”

  I don’t want to know how Henry knows this.

  Henry reciprocates my interest in family by asking me more about my own, so I end up telling him how Gina wants to have a baby and how my father had a thing for the ladies and how if he ever comes to dinner at my parents’ house he’ll be stepping back into the 1970s.

  “No problem, conchita,” he says, holding me tight. “I liked your sister. I’d probably like your parents.” Then he kisses me deep and tender, and it’s time to go back to the hotel room.

  There’s something about being in a hotel that ratchets up the sex drive. Maybe it’s the fact that people use hotels for assignations, or that hotel rooms are where brides and grooms have their first night (as husband and wife at the very least). Whatever. Henry and I end up having a veritable sex fiesta. Forget the early start the next day. By the time morning rolls around, we’ve tasted each other more than we’ve drunk from Morpheus’s cup, and we’re damned tired. When we finally do open our eyes, it’s nearly ten o’clock.

  “Damn!” Henry says and gets out of bed quickly. “Come on. We should get going!”

  I suggest showering together, but Henry wants to get on that boat now more than he wants me. Or at least, he knows he can get more of me later, but the boat won’t wait all day. While he showers, I order breakfast, something light that won’t slosh around in my stomach as we slosh around on the waves.

  We’re so efficient getting ready that we’ve both washed, dressed, packed and gulped down some toast, grapefruit and coffee in a little over half an hour. While I wait outside, Henry pays the bill. Henry never suggests I pay the bill. Even our first night at the bar—he paid. I don’t know if this is his usual procedure or if he’s sorry for me because I’ll be out of a job soon.

  It is one of those perfect spring days where the air is a touch of sweetness on your cheek, the sun winks behind cotton ball clouds, and tourists’ smiles spread like fairy dust the anticipation of good things to come.

  When we get to the boat, Henry gives me some rudimentary instructions on how to handle it. I remember some of it from when Rick took me sailing. Like Rick, Henry insists I wear a life vest, but he forgoes that equipment. Rick had worn one, though, and I can’t help looking at Henry and thinking that he doesn’t wear one not because he thinks he’ll look silly in it but because he’s so cocksure he would win any battle with the waves, and if he couldn’t, he wouldn’t want to be around to suffer the humiliation.

  We have a few close calls throughout the day—once when we head straight for another sailboat and Henry can’t get the rigging right, and once when we lodge on a sandbar for a quarter hour until we figure out how to use the wind and the motor to push us off. But even those moments are broken by laughter as we poke fun at our own lack of experience. Henry is happier than I’ve ever seen him, ever. He grins the entire time, even during the close shaves. And he takes my mistakes in stride, enjoying showing off to me his obviously studied knowledge of seafaring. For my part, I throw a few “ay-yay, maties” his way and beg to “trim the mains’l” since it’s the only sea jargon I know.

  By the time we reach St. Michaels, I’m surprised to realize that not once did I feel seasick and not once did I feel petrified. It’s a far cry from my expedition with Rick two years ago. I’d been so afraid of breaking something or being lost at sea that it took two weeks for me to loosen up the fake smile I’d plastered on my face that day. And, oh, yes, I’d even retched once.

  The bed-and-breakfast Henry’s scouted out happens to be the one from my dreams. After we check in, we hug and kiss and there’s something really sexy about the taste of sea-salted skin, but we resist the urge to fall into bed so that we can grab a bite to eat before the dining room closes in preparation for dinner. We’re the only ones in the restaurant and we laugh and giggle over crab cakes while Henry tells me he’ll order oysters later that night while winking at me. Oysters are sex food. I get it.

  Whether it’s the oysters or something else, Henry is in rare form that evening. After a late dinner and a walk along the waterfront, he does a slow-simmer routine on me in bed, until I begin to wonder if there’s something slightly sadistic in his languid pace. Is he waiting for me to beg him for it? We make love only once, but it’s good enough to last the whole night.

  As we lay in each other’s arms, Henry tells me more about himself.

  “I never wanted to be a burden to anyone,” he says, “so I worked damned hard in school to get scholarships. It became a habit—working hard.”

  “You’ve done well.” I stroke his cheek in the moonlight. “And you’re still young. Getting hired at Squires is a huge accomplishment.” Perhaps now I’ll tell him about Rick? But he’s opening up to me and I don’t want him to stop.

  “I’m forcing myself to enjoy life more,” he continues, “instead of just working. I don’t want to turn fifty and wonder what the hell goes on outside a wood-paneled office.”

  Forcing himself to enjoy life? Is that what I am—a component of his new program?

  “Didn’t you—you know—get out a lot before? I mean, in school or after.” What I really want to know is what his dating life has been. Here I’m not divulging my history with Rick but prying him on his history. But hey—the opening has provided itself and who am I to waste it?

  “I was never a party animal. And I never got dragged into a long-term relationship. Just a date here and there.”

  This is a good news/bad news confession. On the one hand, I’ve just learned that Henry Castle has no “baggage,” no ghost-of-girlfriends-past to haunt a new relationship. On the other hand, I’ve learned that Henry Castle could indeed be relationship-phobic.

  I wrestle with how to ask him exactly what he means by “a date here and there,” and also, does what we have fall into that category or does it fall into the “dragged into a long-term relationship” category, or does he plan to extricate himself before the dragging begins, Your Honor?

 
But his soft snoring tells me I’m too late. The witness has fallen asleep on the stand.

  I fall asleep that night feeling oddly disappointed by Henry’s nocturnal confession. It tells me nothing more than what I already know—that we have fun together, that he enjoys being with me. At the most, it tells me he considers me a good pal, a buddy, perhaps a dear friend. When he’d started talking, I’d begun to expect more.

  As if to herald our impending departure from this paradise, the weather on Sunday is less cheerful. More clouds roll in and we both are afraid we’ll be caught in a storm, so we hurry off after breakfast instead of antiquing as we’d planned.

  Knowing the limits of our seamanship, we’re a little nervous on the way back to Annapolis. Henry’s grin leaves him when a soft rain starts, but we manage to pull into the marina before the winds whip up and the storm thunders in. Because we outran it, we feel like savvy sailors now, proud of our skills and proud of our luck.

  To celebrate, Henry treats me to lunch at an outdoor café. We sit close to the wall, out of the breeze and damp, but enjoy smelling the water-laden air while we sip at a brandy.

  When we finally get back in the car to head for Baltimore, I feel like I did on the way home from school field trips—tired and happy and sad at the same time, eager to preserve these memories in a scrapbook or with a friend who didn’t go along.

  A friend. But of course I can’t share them with Wendy. The contrast factor would hurt her. Henry was great to me, while Sam…you know what Sam is.

  As we pass Federal Hill, I call Wendy on Henry’s cell but she doesn’t answer so we go to his condo. We’re both hungry and weary so I manage to cook some scrambled eggs—an omelet’s beyond my skill level—and Henry opens a bottle of chardonnay.

  He unlatches windows to let the spring air in, and we enjoy a quiet meal in his kitchen.

  “Here’s to your sailing ability,” he says, toasting me.

  I blush. “What ability? I just followed orders.”

  “You were a good sport. Not every woman I know would sail to St. Michaels when she hasn’t sailed before.”

  Ouch. Two pinpricks here. One, “not every woman I know” is an allusion to all the other women he does know, the “dates here and there.” And second, I have sailed before but I haven’t told him. I hate this feeling. Maybe I should tell him a little.

  “You know, I was engaged a couple years ago.”

  He does not stop eating. “Oh?”

  “And he died. In the accident I told you about.”

  “I’m sorry.” He looks up at me. Is he staring at my forehead, at the “fragile” tattoo there?

  “That’s when I broke my leg and arm.”

  “I remember you telling me.” He pours himself more wine and offers me some. “That must have been very hard.”

  “Took a while to recuperate.”

  “I mean getting over your fiancé’s death.” He stares at me as if scouring my soul for remnants of Rick. He has stopped eating and so have I. It is as if time has stopped and whatever I say next will determine the fate of the world.

  “It was hard,” I say at last, “very hard. But my family and Wendy—they helped me a lot.”

  He pauses a moment, and I wonder if he’s the one now trying to form the appropriate questions. Is he going to ask me if I’m over Rick? Is he going to ask me if I have fully recovered? The same panicky feeling that gripped me when I saw Beautiful Dreamer shining in the sun now grasps my throat, making swallowing difficult and obvious. I don’t want Henry to know the answers to those questions—because, goddammit—I don’t know them myself!

  “I’m trying to do what you’re doing,” I say quickly, “enjoy life.”

  He reaches out and strokes the line of my jaw. Smiling sadly, he leans back. “Is the accident where you got the other scar on the back of your leg?”

  Although I’ve shown him the jagged white line on my calf from my leg break, I have a very thin scar, hidden behind my left knee. Henry must have discovered it when he was discovering other things about my body.

  Blushing, I nod. “Yes. I didn’t know you noticed.”

  “I notice lots of things. I like to notice things.” He stands and takes his empty plate to the sink where he runs water on it.

  “Wendy’s got a one-bedroom, right?” he asks with his back to me.

  “Yup.”

  “That must be awfully tight.”

  “It’s okay.” I feel like a spy who’s avoided detection, grateful that the subject has changed. “I have more room. You should consider moving in with me.”

  chapter 14

  Honeysuckle: Generous and devoted affection

  When I first met Rick, he was living at home and searching for an apartment. On Saturdays, and sometimes after work, he’d take me with him on his flat-hunts. He looked both in and around the city and came closest to a deal on an apartment in Towson where the perfume of sweet honeysuckle bewitched you as you walked up its drive. Right before he put down the deposit, he confessed that he would prefer to live in the city but was tired of looking. That’s when I suggested we live together, in my tiny apartment on Calvert Street. At first, he laughed and said his parents would hate the neighborhood, but then he quickly agreed and moved in the next weekend.

  Sometimes when life presents me with questions, I wish I could think like a computer. Computers are based on the binary system, right? Which really comes down to breaking everything into “yes or no.” So when you open a program and start typing away, the computer isn’t thinking, “Oh, she wants this letter or that word or that sentence.” The computer is thinking “a equals yes, every other letter in the alphabet equals no” for every single keystroke.

  Everything comes down to a yes or a no.

  I know we like to think that all of life’s questions are more complicated than that, with a few juicy “maybe’s” thrown in to spice things up. But I have this theory that even they can be turned into “yes” or “no’s” if broken down into smaller questions.

  So the question before me now really isn’t the obvious one: should I move in with Henry? That question’s answer is a clear-cut “maybe.” No, the small questions behind that big one fall more along these lines:

  Do I need a place to stay? Yes.

  Would Henry’s place be convenient? Yes.

  Would Henry’s place be comfortable? Yes.

  Do I like Henry? Yes.

  Will moving in with Henry change our relationship? Uh-oh, another maybe.

  Every time I come up with “maybe,” I deconstruct again. The smaller questions behind that one “maybe” are ones I don’t want to even articulate right now. They deal with things like whether I care for Henry, whether I want to ratchet up the relationship, whether I think he does, etc., etc., etc. They’re questions I just don’t want to face. So my internal computer crashes and I’m left with no guidance, no electronic voice telling me yes or no and I can only kick and sputter and wish I knew more about computers.

  As it turns out, it’s a good thing Henry offers to take me in, at least for the night, because Wendy doesn’t return until nearly midnight. I know because I phone her every half hour. I’m worried sick about her, envisioning her careering down the road, sobbing, her vision blurred, an accident waiting to happen. When she finally answers the phone, she apologizes right and left for not being there. Her parents had friends over for dinner and insisted she stay, which meant she wasn’t on the road until nearly eight o’clock. Translation: she’s getting money from her folks so she must do their bidding.

  “Are you at Henry’s?” she asks sleepily.

  “Yeah. How are you feeling?”

  “Not so bad. Only one queasy moment this weekend—when my mother insisted I taste-test her calamari appetizer. Blech. Still makes me gag.”

  “I think that would make me gag even without being pregnant.” I’m not big on eating slimy fishlike things. Slimy to me means this creature was meant to slide on by and not be caught.

  “So, this is g
reat that you’re with Henry,” she says. But there’s no girlfriend exuberance in her voice, just a placid good will.

  Henry is in the bedroom sleeping. I am on the phone in his kitchen.

  “He wants me to move in with him.”

  It’s a measure of how much Sam has hurt her that she doesn’t start shrieking for joy at this news. If anything, she is cautiously happy, as if she isn’t really happy at all but knows that I am.

  “Is that what you want?” she asks.

  “I…I think so. I don’t know. It’s so sudden.” I’m not sure what I think. All I know is Henry has two baths, two phones, and he cooks like Emeril. Oh, yeah, he has two keys, too. He already had me put one on my key ring. So lots of “yeses” there. “I can stay with you, though. I promised I’d help you.”

  She laughs softly—a positive sign. “You’re a great friend, Ame. But I don’t think that’s necessary. Besides, I have a cat allergy.”

  “But you love Trixie and she loves you!”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t have allergies.”

  “Well, I’ll come get her and my stuff tomorrow.” Now I’m feeling guilty for foisting my feline friend on my allergic friend.

  “Okay. I’ll probably be here all day. I’m calling in sick. I have that doctor’s appointment in the afternoon.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “That’s sweet of you. But no.”

  “It might be kind of fun.”

  She laughs again. “Maybe some other time.”

  By the time I get off the phone, it is going on one. Henry is sound asleep, his arms sprawled out over his king-size bed. His body is smack in the middle of the sheets. What a strange man—a gentleman, a go-getter, a wild and sensitive lover. Yet still—he’s not used to sharing. Perhaps, Dr. Freud, it is due to the fact that he is an only child raised by a doting-yet-aloof mother with no paternal influence.

  But hell, Wendy is an only child and she’s a sharer. It must be a guy thing.

  I remember what he said when he asked me to move in—Wendy only has a one-bedroom while he has two. Maybe I should sleep in his second bedroom? Maybe that should be the deal? I use his second bedroom just until I get a job and a place of my own. And if things work out between us in the meantime, I forgo the search for a new apartment.