True Love (and Other Lies)

by Whitney Gaskell

  Does this guy have some kind of a glandular problem? I wondered as I withdrew my now sticky hands.

  “How about a rain check when you’re feeling better?” Gary asked, so hopefully that I couldn’t bring myself to swat him down. True he had about as much sex appeal as a chunk of Velveeta cheese, and I had absolutely no intention of ever going out with him again, but he seemed relatively harmless.

  “Sure, maybe,” I said, hoping I sounded just nice enough not to hurt his feelings, while not giving him any encouragement.

  “Great,” he said enthusiastically—and loudly—right in my ear.

  And then I felt something wet and icky and . . . Oh. My. God. Did he really just stick his tongue in my ear? I wondered as I flinched away from him. It was the most repulsive sensation—it felt like someone was trying to bore into my brain with a flaccid wet pickle.

  “What was that?” I asked him, so outraged that all thoughts of sparing his feelings were lost. I rubbed at my ear, which felt disgustingly wet and saturated with his spit.

  “Just a special good-bye for you,” he said, winking. He then made a gun with his fingers and shot me with it while making a clicking sound with his tongue.

  “What? I cannot believe you just . . . how could you possibly think that’s . . . what the hell is wrong with you?” I said, so furious I was spitting my words out. Gary looked stricken, and started to reach out toward me—for what reason, I don’t know, and I wasn’t about to find out.

  “Don’t touch me! Just stay away, and don’t ever call me again,” I said. And with that, I turned on my heel and marched out of Hooters with as much dignity as one can have leaving such an establishment. I stormed over to the curb and immediately started looking for a cab, when all of a sudden I felt an unmistakably sweaty hand on my arm.

  “Why are you so angry?” Gary asked.

  Argh! What was this guy’s problem? Did he not understand that I was brushing him off? If he went around sticking his tongue in relative strangers’ ears, it could hardly be the first time he’d been shrieked at. He was just lucky that I hadn’t also slapped him across the face, like an outraged starlet in an old black-and-white movie.

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “You take me to Hooters to watch a freaking basketball game, and then when it’s obvious that I’m leaving early because I could not be having a worse time, you decide to say good-bye by sticking your tongue in my ear? Are you insane? Or is this really your idea of how to treat someone you’re on a date with?”

  As I spoke, my voice rumbled from an angry bark to a furious shriek, and Gary flinched, apparently afraid that I might just hit him after all. His round face creased in confusion, and he shrugged, spreading his meaty hands in front of him.

  “But Max said that you’re a huge Knicks fan, and that Hooters is your favorite restaurant. I don’t normally go there to watch the game, but he said you’d want to,” Gary stuttered.

  “Max told you that?” I asked, and alarms began blaring in my head. I should have known. Max had engineered this date from hell; it was just another one of his sick practical jokes. Max was, after all, the same man who had once filled out an Army recruitment card with my name and address, and I’d only just recently convinced the recruiters who had been stalking me ever since that I truly was not interested in a career change. I could have kicked myself for not seeing this coming, although I would have vastly preferred to strangle Max. And then another thought occurred to me.

  “And the ear thing? Was that Max’s idea, too?” I demanded. Gary just nodded, looking miserable and embarrassed.

  I smiled, and patted him on the arm, poor guy. Things had now become clear. Max had decided to play a little joke on me, and for that he must die. But I believed that Gary was completely innocent in all of it. He was not at all my type, of course, and there was no chance I would ever go out with him again (and it was beyond me how he could have possibly believed that any woman would want to have a tongue stuck in her ear, no matter what Max had told him), but we did part on friendly terms, even if Gary did still seem a little frightened of me. He hailed me a cab, and I collapsed in the back of the taxi, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my fingertips to my temples. The date had been horrible (although, sadly, not the worst blind date in my history), and rather than break me from my Jack addiction, all it had done was make me miss him that much more. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get home and call him. It was just too bad I couldn’t go into detail about my evening out. Under different circumstances, Jack probably would have gotten a big kick out of it.

  Chapter 12

  The phone began to ring almost as soon as I walked into my apartment, and before I had a chance to call Jack. I’d just kicked off one of my boots and was in the process of nudging the second one off, so I had to hop across the apartment in order to grab the phone before my answering machine picked up.

  “Hello,” I gasped into the receiver.

  “I think he’s seeing someone,” Maddy said.

  I was struggling to get out of my pea coat with one hand while simultaneously prying my other foot out of my boot, which had gotten stuck on my right ankle. I braced my boot against the edge of my couch and gave it a good tug, but in the process of freeing my foot, I lost my balance and took what probably would look like, to someone watching me, an exaggerated pratfall, tumbling to the floor in a graceless pile.

  “Ack!” I cried out as the cordless phone went sailing in one direction while my body flew in another. I recovered the phone, rubbing my ankle, which had twisted in an unnatural and painful angle from my body. “Shit! Ow! Maddy?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” Maddy said irritably. God, I was glad she didn’t get dumped very often. It made her really cranky.

  “I just got home from the date from hell,” I began. I limped over to my sofa and flopped down, peering at my ankle to see if it was swelling or turning black.

  “Claire! Didn’t you hear me? I think Harrison is seeing someone,” she said.

  This time, she had my full attention. My first thought was, She’s found out I’ve been seeing Jack. My second was, She couldn’t possibly have found out . . . so who in the hell, other than me, is he dating? I wasn’t prepared for the swell of jealousy I felt. I mean, I had wondered if he might be dating others, and used it as a justification for going out with Gary. But I had only gone out with Gary in order to forget about Jack—I’d never considered dating for romance.

  “Claire, are you there?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m here. Sorry, I just . . .” I said, trying to think of how to finish that thought. I just had my heart torn out? I just thought that your ex-boyfriend was falling in love with me, and it turns out he wasn’t? “Had to turn off the television. Um, what were you saying? About Jack?”

  “Jack? Why are you calling him that?” Maddy demanded.

  I froze. “Um . . . I, um . . .well, isn’t that his name?” I gabbled stupidly, feeling ridiculously like a man whose wife has discovered lipstick on his collar.

  “Yes, but . . . well, never mind, it doesn’t matter. But listen, I think he’s seeing someone! In fact, I know it. I was out last night, and I ran into someone who works with Harrison, and she said she’d heard that he went out of town to visit some woman last weekend,” Maddy said. “How do you think he met her? Do you think she’s someone he works with, or just some whore he picked up somewhere?”

  Despite being called a whore (and after all, Maddy didn’t know she was talking about me), relief flooded through me. Jack wasn’t seeing anyone else! Were it not for my injured ankle, I’d have felt like dancing around my apartment, flipping my hair from side to side like the little girls on the old Charlie Brown cartoons.

  “Where did he go?” I asked, wanting to be supportive and yet feeling like complete crap for the joy bubbling up inside me. Especially since the news that Jack had moved on was so devastating to Maddy. If she only knew the whole story, I thought grimly, and then winced when I remembered that I’d promised Jack I’d tell her. Clearly this was not
the moment to do so.

  “Huh? I don’t know. Do you think it matters? Oh my God,” Maddy said, and stopped abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Do you think it was someone he was seeing while we were still together?” she whispered.

  “Oh, no. I’m sure he wasn’t cheating on you,” I said, finally on comfortable ground.

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh . . . I don’t. But, I just don’t . . . think there’s any reason to assume that,” I stuttered. Could I sound any more guilty? I wondered. A covert-ops position in the CIA was clearly not in my future.

  “I know, you’re probably right. Still,” Maddy said thoughtfully, “I do want to know who it is. And I know just how I’m going to find out. You’re never going to believe this, but,” she said, and then paused for dramatic effect.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to hire a private detective,” she announced triumphantly.

  “What?” I repeated, hoping against hope that I had somehow misunderstood her.

  “You know, someone to follow Harrison around, and who can give me a dossier on everyone he sees. That way, if he is dating someone, I’ll find out who my competition is,” Maddy said gleefully.

  “Maddy, you can’t do that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a complete violation of his privacy.”

  “Oh, give me a break. Ex-boyfriends don’t have any rights. That’s what you’ve always said,” she retorted.

  She had a point. I had said that, back in college when we were making prank phone calls to Craig, a creep that I didn’t even like who’d kept pestering me to go out with him until I finally agreed, only to have him stand me up (this was back before the advent of Caller I.D., of course—that little technological advance, while useful for screening out stalkers and parents, has made it difficult for dumpees everywhere to strike back at their dumpors). But a few, harmless crank calls to a frat rat are a far cry from the extreme measure of hiring someone to conduct surveillance on your ex.

  “I think it’s a really, really bad idea,” I warned. I hesitated before my next comment, because although on the one hand it was entirely self-serving, I actually did believe it was good advice. “This kind of obsessing, of wanting to know everyone he sees . . . it’s not healthy, Mads. And it’s not conducive to getting over him.”

  “I don’t want to get over him. And I am going to hire the detective,” Maddy said. Her voice was a little shrill.

  “But what if he finds out?”

  “Well, then he’ll know how much I love him, and maybe it will make him come back to me,” she said. “What do you think?”

  What I thought was that she was starting to sound a little loony-tunes, but I couldn’t think of a nice, supportive way to tell her that, so instead I said, “I think you should try to move on. There are, what, about a thousand guys beating down your door? Why don’t you at least start dating some other men?” I asked.

  Going out with someone else hadn’t exactly gotten my mind off of Jack, but Maddy has more discriminating taste than I do, and she would never have let herself be fixed up on a blind date with the likes of Gary the Tongue. Maddy would only date London’s most eligible bachelors, and, knowing her, she’d meet some gorgeous, wealthy aristocrat and would end up becoming the next Duchess of Whatever. I could easily picture her courtside at Wimbledon, decked out in an outrageous hat and sitting next to Prince William in the royal box.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding gloomy. “I thought you’d think the detective was a good idea.”

  “I don’t,” I said firmly. And hoped that would be the end of it. But knowing Maddy and her stubborn streak as I do, I doubted it.

  From: Max Levy

  To: Claire Spencer

  Subject: Hot Date

  Date: Monday, December 9

  Where have you been? How did your big date go?

  From: Max Levy

  To: Claire Spencer

  Subject: Where are you?

  Date: Monday, December 9

  What’s going on? Why won’t you respond to my e-mails? Or return my phone calls?

  From: Max Levy

  To: Claire Spencer

  Subject: Come on . . .

  Date: Monday, December 9

  Okay, I just talked to Cooksey, I guess I’ve been found out. It was a joke. JOKE. You can’t possibly still be mad about it???

  From: Max Levy

  To: Claire Spencer

  Subject: Hello?

  Date: Monday, December 9

  Please talk to me . . .

  From: Claire Spencer

  To: Max Levy

  Subject: Re: Hello?

  Date: Monday, December 9

  No. Go away.

  “Is this Claire Spencer?”

  “Yes, it is,” I said absentmindedly. The phone call was interrupting my daily hour of computer solitaire, which I play every workday from four to five p.m. I know this might not be considered by some to be a valid use of company time, but I considered it crucial to my mental health. One can focus on the needs and plights of the elderly for only so many hours per day before getting burned out.

  “This is Kit Holiday from Retreat magazine. We received your résumé, and our hiring committee would like to meet with you,” the woman said.

  I was so surprised, I nearly fell out of my nonergonomical chair. Retreat actually wanted to interview me? How was that possible?

  “Great. That’s . . . great. When would you like me to come?” I asked, grabbing for my calendar.

  “This week, if possible. I know it’s short notice, but if you’re free, we could fly you out on Thursday evening, have the interview Friday morning, and then you could fly back that night. If that’s okay with you, I’ll go ahead and make your reservations,” Kit said.

  Under the Friday, December 13, spot on my calendar (which meant my interview would be on Friday the thirteenth . . . would that be bad luck?) there were already two entries—“Staff Meeting” and “London Article Due.”

  “No, Friday is fine,” I said brightly. As far as Robert would know, I’d have a raging case of measles and be safely quarantined at home lest I infect everyone at the office.

  “Great. I’ll call you back later this afternoon to confirm your itinerary,” Kit Holiday said. Wow, what a great name, I thought, if a little ironic considering she worked at a travel magazine. Her name sounded like the moniker of a clever girl detective, or maybe a female adventurer or aviator from the thirties.

  I wrote down the interview in my date book in bright red ink and added three exclamation points to it. Not only did I have an interview, they were flying me in! That must mean that they were interested, right?

  “Guess what?” I said when Jack called me that night.

  “You’re coming to visit me over Christmas?” Jack said.

  This announcement caught me a little off guard.

  “What?” I said.

  “Don’t you have some time off for the holidays? You could come and spend a week—or longer, if you can,” Jack said eagerly.

  “Well. Um. Actually, yeah, I will be off. The office closes down from December 24 until January 2.”

  “Just say the word, and I’ll make all of the arrangements,” Jack said.

  “I didn’t know men were capable of making travel arrangements,” I said, hedging. I was still a little freaked out. Why was it that every other guy I had ever met was terrified of making plans for the next weekend, and yet Jack seemed perfectly comfortable making plans to spend Christmas together? Was he some kind of a freak, a laboratory experiment concocted by mad women scientists intent on creating a man incapable of playing mind games?

  “We’re not. When I said
, ‘I’ll make them,’ I actually meant I was going to call my travel agent and have her make them, as she always seems delighted to do,” he said.

  I’ll just bet she does, I thought darkly, immediately imagining the travel agent to look like one of the British invasion go-go dancers from the sixties—blonde hair teased up into a sexy, Austin Powers–style shag, nonexistent skirt, long legs encased in tall, white patent leather boots. This was the problem with a long-distance relationship—all I knew about Jack’s life was what he told me. It wasn’t like I’d met his co-workers, or neighbors, or had seen any of the dark places that opportunistic women lurked.

  “Do you have other plans to go see your family or something?” Jack asked.

  I pondered this, and had to admit that the prospect of spending the holidays with Jack sounded vastly preferable to my other alternatives—dinner out with my dad and stepmom (who I could tell really didn’t like me, even though she bared her teeth in a fake smile whenever we saw each other), or flying down to Florida to spend it with my mom and her new husband, who I swore was an alcoholic, although Mom insists that just because he and “the boys” enjoy a few beers while they’re golfing does not mean he has a drinking problem. I didn’t disagree, but when you add on the two cocktail-hour vodkas on the rocks, the half bottle of wine with dinner, and a couple of “dessert” beers, it’s a different story.

  “No, I don’t, really. Don’t you?”

  “Nope. My dad always spends Christmas in Aspen, with family number two. And my mom likes to spend the holidays with my little sister and her family,” Jack said.

  “Oh. Well. Can I think about it?” I asked.

  “Yes, and while you think about it, I’ll have Jenny make the reservations,” Jack said.

  “Jenny?”

  “My travel agent,” he said easily.

  Grrr, I thought. Curses on Jenny and her slutty miniskirts.