Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  Instead, I ask, “Send any flowers lately?”

  And incredibly, he says, “No.”

  So we talk for another twenty minutes. I tell him who Ripton is and he speculates about that job.

  “I hear they’re expanding,” he says of the college. “You must have impressed him if he remembers you.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m sure I left an impression.”

  “If you call him back from France, he’ll be doubly impressed.”

  “I can only hope.”

  “Let me know if you need any help,” he offers. “I think you left your résumé on my computer.”

  “Yeah. I’ll call you if I need something. I’ll be home in a couple weeks anyway.”

  “Where you going to stay?”

  “Wendy’s. She’s letting me sublet her place.”

  “That’s nice. Back in the city again, eh?”

  “I like the city.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Well, I’ll call you if I need something,” I say, waiting for him to say something significant, to send some signal.

  “Right.”

  When I tell Wendy about the call I funnel all my enthusiasm into reporting that I have a really good job prospect and hardly say a word about the conversation with Henry.

  Wendy sits on the terrace looking at a magazine and idly tapping her fingers on the wrought-iron table. She’s all in black today—black shorts and tank top, black sandals, black scarf around her hat. Come to think of it, she’s beginning to remind me of a blond version of Tess. This is creepy.

  “So you can call that guy when you get back! Sounds like you might have a job,” she says with appropriate delight.

  “No, I was going to call tomorrow.”

  “You’re kidding. From here?”

  “We have a phone.”

  “But you’re on vacation.”

  Uh-oh, she is becoming Tess Wintergarten—rich, spoiled, out of touch with the workaday world.

  “I think I need to jump on this lead while it’s hot,” I say. Then I switch topics. “What do you want to do for dinner? We have some leftover chicken.”

  “We could go out,” she says.

  Going out is not good for my pocketbook right now. Despite the fact that the major expenses of this trip are covered, Wendy’s propensity to do things in the most expensive way possible has meant my little pile of cash has dwindled significantly.

  As if reading my mind, she offers, “My treat.”

  “Okay.”

  Later, we head to a nearby café where we order shrimp in garlic and provençal vegetables. We drink too much wine and Wendy insists on buying an entire Cointreau-soaked cake to keep at the cottage.

  By the time we carry it up the hill to our abode, it has jostled around in its box and is mashed almost beyond recognition.

  In the kitchen, she opens the box. “Mmm,” she says, licking her finger, which she has sluiced through some frosting. “The French do know how to cook. When I get married, I’m getting a French cook.”

  Wendy’s desire to get married has reached obsessive proportions. Her mother keeps her abreast of the eligible bachelor population of Hartford and my guess is Wendy has a score sheet hidden among her lingerie.

  Later that night, we sit on the terrace eating cake and drinking brandy, and it’s nearly ten o’clock but the sky is a royal blue lit by a bright moon.

  “Here’s to a better next year,” I say raising my glass to hers.

  “Hip hip,” she says in return. “To finding another Rick.”

  For some reason, I don’t feel like drinking to that toast.

  “Henry,” she says confidentially, “was no Rick.”

  No, I silently answer. He wasn’t. Thank God for that. And I tell her, at last, about Rick’s desire to call off the wedding.

  Without missing a beat, she says, “The schmuck… Damn them, they’re all schmucks!” and she gushes for a half hour about how hard it must have been on me, and peppers me with questions about his family, and whether anyone else knew, and we talk long into the night.

  After she heads to bed, I change into my bathing suit and dive into the silent pool for one last lonely swim.

  The next day I wait until early afternoon to call Brian Ripton, calculating that he will just be arriving in his office by then. And when I tell him I’m phoning from France, he is suitably impressed. The college has decided to expand their public relations office, he tells me, and divide into a publications department and a public relations department. They want someone to head up the publications department, though, who has PR experience—not a graphic designer but someone used to working with graphic designers. Remembering my background at the ad agency and how well our interview went, he wonders if I’m interested in the job.

  It’s all I can do to keep from screaming hysterically. Am I interested in the job? Am I…

  “Yes,” I say smoothly. “Very interested.”

  “I’ll call Human Resources and get the ball rolling. We have to post it first, of course.”

  Of course. For internal candidates. Damn. It seemed so close. So close.

  No, dammit. I won’t let it get away. Not like I let Henry get away.

  “Mr. Ripton, why don’t I fly in tomorrow and we can talk about it?”

  “I’d hate for you to cut your vacation short.”

  “It’s just about over anyway. And I’m very, very interested in this position…” And then I go into a spiel about the college and how much I liked it there when I interviewed and what I saw in their current publications that could be improved and how I’d go about doing that using their current resources, and by the time I’m done I’m sure someone else has taken over my body because it doesn’t sound like me anymore.

  No, it does sound like me. The old me. Optimistic. Goal-oriented.

  When I finish, Ripton says he looks forward to talking to me and I know if I manage to get to him in the next forty-eight hours I can probably bypass Human Resources. He’s a VP, after all, and he can tell them who he wants. After all, if Sister Mary Altamont could do it, surely he can.

  “I’m going home,” I announce to Wendy when she wanders into my room after lunch. Already, I start throwing things into my suitcases.

  “Why?”

  “That job—it looks like it’s coming through for me.”

  “Oh.” She pouts. “It can’t wait? I was thinking we could rent a car and drive to Monaco at the end of the week.”

  “Sorry, Wen. This is a big chance for me.” I open my wallet and am disappointed to see that I’m lower on cash than I thought. I ended up tipping the waiter the night before when Wendy didn’t have a small-enough bill. I don’t think it would be politic of me to ask for the money back, even though it was her idea to go out. It’s a good thing I’m leaving. Too much friendship can be expensive.

  Zipping my suitcase shut, I turn to her. “I called and I can catch an evening flight. If I hurry, I can be at the airport in time.” There’s a small airport nearby that connects to larger hubs. From there, I’ll zoom home. It will take every single last cent I have to do it. When I concocted this plan in the five minutes after I got off the phone with Brian Ripton, I figured I’d borrow money from Wendy to make it home.

  But now, looking at her mouth twisted into a frown and her leg twitching angrily in front of her, I realize that Wendy is no longer the kind, generous woman who invited me on this trip as a way of thanking me for helping her. Wendy is now…her mother’s daughter. She wants what she wants when she wants it. And she wants me to stay. Better not to ask for money. I’ll make do. I have a few bucks left on my credit card limit.

  “Well, whatever…” she says, and leaves.

  After tucking my passport into my purse and my sunglasses on my nose, I call for a taxi to meet me at the bottom of the hill. I’ve noticed they charge an exorbitant amount more to come up to the cottage. Then I find Wendy in the kitchen and give her a big hug, which seems to melt the crust she’s formed and makes her return to her o
ld self, at least for the moments we say goodbye.

  “Hey, it’s been great fun, Ame,” she says, sniffling. “Don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “Well, you go get ’em, tiger,” I say. “I expect a wedding invitation in the mail by Christmas.”

  “I’ll be working on it.”

  Excited, I tramp down the hill and wait, and end up cutting so close to the bone with my expenses that I have exactly two dollars and twenty-three cents in my purse when I finally board a jet home. I didn’t even have enough money to buy myself dinner at the airport, consequently I get on the plane with a splitting headache and no pills. I used up my last one a week ago.

  I settle into a seat and listen to two college grads nearby giggling and chattering for hours about how great their two weeks in Paris were and how funny it is that the roast beef dinners they’re serving on the plane taste like chocolate. I don’t have the heart or the stomach to tell them that the roast beef has Grand Marnier in it, which is a liqueur used in some French chocolates.

  The smell of the stuff nearly does me in and I have to head for the can twice during the trip, but nothing comes up. I try to think of other things. The whole random-thought thing: images of pools, myself diving in, coolness, slickness surrounding me, a feeling of weightlessness. By this time I realize I haven’t made any arrangements for an airport pickup, and I don’t have enough money for a cab or an airport-to-city limo or anything. I can’t think about that. All I can think about is my headache.

  Hours later—or is it decades—the plane bumps and rocks its way through heavy cloud cover on its way into BWI. I alternate between prayers to stay alive and prayers to not vomit on those nicely dressed girls next to me.

  When I head down the narrow walkway into the airport, I look for a phone. I don’t know what time it is, only that it’s light outside. I’m still on European time.

  No answer at Gina’s. What the hell—I call Henry. I try his office and punch in his extension after the electronic directory comes on. No receptionist, no secretary. He answers the phone himself—he’s there!

  “You said to call if I needed anything.”

  He recognizes my voice instantly. “I did.”

  “Well, I need a ride from the airport.”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  He laughs. “I’ll be glad to come get you.” He tells me where he’ll meet me and that he’ll be there in about a half hour.

  After getting off the phone, I have just enough money to afford a Coke. With it, I sink onto a black-cushioned bench in the waiting area where Henry said he’d meet me, and swallow about half the Coke while I find a Motrin bottle on the bottom of my bag. Only three left, but they’ll have to do. I’ll get my magic pills refilled in the morning.

  Maybe I’m dehydrated, because the Coke starts to revive me. Or maybe it’s the Motrin. Or maybe it’s being home again. Or maybe, or maybe…

  Maybe it’s the sight of Henry, ten minutes late, rushing down the walkway with a big grin on his face. And his heart on his sleeve.

  Funny how I never noticed it there before.

  In his hand is a huge bouquet of flowers. Tulips. Garish red tulips. Declaration of love. And I know he knows what they mean.

  “Welcome home, conchita,” he says and swallows me up in a big, fat kiss.

  LOVES ME, LOVES ME NOT

  A Red Dress Ink novel

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-3132-0

  © 2005 by Elizabeth Sternberg.

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