‘So who do you expect a proposal from?’ he asked. His face was pale, and the bruise seemed even darker against his livid skin.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘What kind of game were you playing with me?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t try to deny it because I heard all about it at the bachelor party. Those assholes called me “Dumping Billy” for most of the evening. And when one of them finally told me the score, I couldn’t believe it.’ Kate realized she was holding her breath but couldn’t seem to do anything about it. ‘Bina got that jerk-off Jack. Who are you expecting to get?’
For a moment Kate considered saying, ‘You. I want you,’ but knew this certainly wasn’t the time for an admission like that. She moved toward him and tried to take his hand but again he extended his arm as if to be sure she wouldn’t get close to him. She could see the anger on his face, but beyond that she thought she could see real pain in his eyes. He must really care for me, she thought. This, however, was not a way she had ever imagined finding that out.
‘It’s not what you think,’ Kate began and then tried to figure out how she could possibly explain all of the machinations and manipulations that had gone on since the fateful day of Bunny’s wedding. Before she could launch into an explanation, Billy started.
‘Did you all do research? You know, to find out about the women I’d dated in the past and what happened to them after we broke up?’
‘I didn’t,’ Kate said.
‘Don’t become a lawyer,’ Billy snapped. ‘If it wasn’t you it was someone in your posse.’
Kate looked away. She should have seen this day coming, but somehow she had just thought things would continue as they were going, or that he would tire of her the way he had with so many other women. She wanted to wiggle out of this, but she couldn’t lie. The problem was she also didn’t want to tell the truth.
‘My friend Elliot…’ she began.
‘Is he the one you expect to propose to you after we break up?’
‘Billy, he’s gay, hooked up, and my best friend. He’s a mathematician and, well, he noticed…he discovered that after you left girls they immediately got married. He thought there was a cause and effect. And he convinced Bina that…’
‘And you convinced me to go out with her. Repetition compulsion my ass. The whole thing was a set-up. And I have no goddamn idea why it worked, but Bina is marrying Jack and I figure you’ve got someone on the hook…’
‘Billy, you really have this wrong.’
‘Oh? I had three hours of bullshit from every guy at the party, all of them blaming me for their marriages.’
Kate felt herself begin to lose her own temper. ‘I think you made a reputation for yourself long before I came on the scene,’ she snapped. ‘I just didn’t know when you were planning to dump me.’
‘How about right now?’ he asked. ‘And best wishes on your upcoming nuptials. I hope whoever your victim is richly deserves you.’ He spun around, opened the door and virtually smashed into Mr McKay.
‘Am I interrupting something?’ Mr McKay asked, his eyebrows raised and his eyes darting back and forth between Kate and Billy.
‘No,’ Billy told him. ‘We’re finished.’ And Kate could only see his back as he strode down the hallway.
44
Kate cried for an hour in her office. Then, when Elliot found her and bundled her in his arms to take her home, she cried in the taxi all the way back to his apartment. She cried when Brice got in, and she cried over the dinner he made. At last Elliot took her to the sofa, sat her down and put his arm around her. ‘Kate,’ he said, his voice warm and compassionate. ‘I know how you hurt. And I hurt for you. But are you sure this isn’t just a Bina Horowitz impersonation you’re doing?’
Kate, despite her pain, almost laughed and choked, snorting tears up her nose.
‘You also have to consider my rug,’ Brice added, sitting beside them. ‘It’s a faux antique Tabriz.’
Kate took a shuddering breath. She couldn’t go on crying forever, though she felt as if she wanted to. But what was the point? She’d ruined her life. She’d hurt the man she loved and now he despised her. She had an empty summer yawning ahead of her. Still, she might as well stop crying. She managed a wet grin. ‘There’s my good girl,’ Elliot told her.
‘Why don’t you try to pull yourself together?’ Brice suggested. ‘Go on into the bathroom and clean up your face?’
Kate nodded and stood up.
‘Do you want me to help?’ Elliot asked but Kate shook her head.
‘I’ll brew up some teabags for your eyes,’ Brice told her and patted her arm in a comforting way. ‘It will take down the swelling. Believe me, I know.’
Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, Kate couldn’t help it: she began to cry again. Her face was a ruin, her eyes red and minuscule in the puff pastry around them. Her nose, especially around the nostrils, almost perfectly matched the color of her hair. God, she was ugly! She filled the sink with cold water, took a deep breath and lowered her face into it. The shock felt good and she stood, bent at the waist, her face in the sink for what seemed like a long time. Maybe, she thought, she could drown this way.
She thought of Billy in bed, his arms around her. She thought of him from the back, moving, shirtless, as he cooked breakfast. She remembered every book and picture in his apartment, their walks around Brooklyn and his garden. Without ever admitting it to herself, she had hoped that garden, that house, would be one they shared and that they’d fill it with children – children of their own.
Kate’s body shuddered for air and she lifted her face out of the sink. She looked back at herself in the mirror as she gasped for breath. She knew this, this breakdown was more than just about Billy. She had been crying because she hurt him, and because she herself was hurt. But she hadn’t cried for a long time, and she felt she had also been crying for her past as well as her future. All the tears she had held back in grammar school, on lonely holidays, in high school, through the struggle of college and graduate school, all of the unshed tears seemed to be leaking out of her now. She filled the sink again and immersed herself. She opened her eyes under the water.
She could see now that Billy had been a chance to regain the good part of her background, to heal a lot of her wounds. She had, perhaps, changed her style, but despite the education and the move to Manhattan, her roots were showing. She blinked. Only underwater, her eyes painful from crying, could she see that Billy had been a unique opportunity to love and be loved by an equal, by a partner who would truly know her.
Kate burst up out of the water like a submarine exploding onto the surface of the sea. She still looked dreadful, perhaps more so since some of her hair was now in long wet strands, but she might as well give up. She was about to begin crying again when she heard her cell phone ring. She ran out of the bathroom.
Brice framed her with two hands. ‘Ophelia. Drowned for Love and Answering a Phone,’ he said. ‘Pre-Raphaelite school,’ he added.
‘Want to stop running the marathon and help clean up dinner?’ Elliot asked.
She paid no attention. She got to her purse and began frantically scrabbling through it. Her phone was still ringing. Billy had changed his mind. Somehow he had realized that it had all been a mistake, that she loved him and wanted him and everything else that had happened was nonsense.
She was on her knees, her makeup bag and change purse and wallet spread all around her on Brice’s carpet. But when she finally managed to find the phone, the caller had hung up. She quickly punched in the request for received calls, but she didn’t recognize the number. It was a two-one-two area code, not the seven-one-eight of Brooklyn. It didn’t matter. It had to be Billy. He had come looking for her. She pressed the call button and waited, literally holding her breath. It would all be all right, she told herself. It had to be all right. In a moment someone answered the phone.
‘Hello, Kate?’ It was a man’s voice, but her stomach lurched when she realized it wasn’t Billy.
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‘Yes?’ Kate said, though she wanted to hang up and throw the phone not just into her purse but into the sink of cold water. If Billy didn’t call, what did she need a phone for?
‘Kate, it’s me. Steven.’
‘Steven!’ At the sound of his name both Elliot and Brice nearly dropped the plates and silverware they were clearing from the table.
‘That Steven?’ Brice whispered.
‘Drop the phone into this soup right now,’ Elliot said, holding out a full bowl. ‘I mean it, Missy.’
Kate motioned for them both to shut up.
‘Did I get you at a bad time?’ Steven asked.
Kate almost laughed aloud. She couldn’t remember ever crying for this long in her whole life. ‘The wrong time’ was a massive understatement but, ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can talk.’
Elliot shook his head wildly, but Kate paid no attention. She wasn’t particularly interested in Steven’s reason for calling but the deadness she felt talking to him was new and curious. She remembered how she had lived for his calls. Maybe in two years I could feel this way talking to Billy, she thought. Maybe she could learn eventually not to care about anyone. But where was the benefit of that?
‘Look, if you’re not busy, would you consider meeting me for a drink?’
‘Now?’ Kate asked. She looked down at her watch. It felt like midnight but it was only eight fifteen. Typical Steven move: calling with no warning and expecting her to jump. But she felt no resentment. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘It’s really important,’ Steven told her. ‘I’m sure you have other things to do, but I have something I have to tell you.’
Kate couldn’t think of a single thing that Steven could tell her that would be of any interest, unless he had taken a job distributing Publishers Clearinghouse lottery checks and she was a winner. And even then, what would she do with the money? Buy a big apartment to be alone in? Thinking of her empty apartment made her say yes. ‘Where?’ she asked, while Elliot shook both his head and his finger at her.
‘Can you come downtown?’ Steven asked.
Typical. He wanted a favor but she had to go out of her way. She looked like shit and she felt like shit and she told him yes. What did she care? He gave her an address and she hung up.
‘Kate, don’t tell me that you’re going,’ Elliot said.
‘I am,’ Kate told him. She fumbled through her makeup bag, took out a mirror and smeared more concealer under her eyes.
‘Rebound therapy is not a legitimate approach to this,’ Elliot told her.
Kate stood up, threw her scattered things back into her bag and looked at Brice and Elliot. ‘I’m not going to rebound. I’m not a damn basketball.’ She walked to the door, then turned back to them, a happy couple in a world of couples. ‘I’ve already ruined my life,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry anymore.’
Kate sat beside Steven, her purse on her lap, her legs crossed. One foot was perched on the bar rail. She was actually grateful he had asked to meet at Temple Bar because it was probably the darkest boîte in Manhattan. It was so cool that the entrance, on Lafayette Street, didn’t even have a name. It was the kind of place that Steven would know about and go to. It was all dark velvet, elegant up-lighting, murmured conversation and seven-dollar Cosmopolitans. Nothing at all like the Barber Bar. It was pure Manhattan.
Steven hadn’t seemed to notice her disarray or, if he did, he had the good grace not to mention it. But as she sat there and looked at him, she realized that he was more about being noticed than noticing other people. There was something about the way he flipped the dark wing of his hair away from his face, the way he held his head, even the way he gestured that made Kate think he was always performing for an audience, real or imagined. Had she always thought that? She couldn’t remember. Now she simply sat there, tired and sad, and tried, as best she could, to listen to him. It was a long harangue and had gone on for some time now.
‘…and I deserved it. I really did,’ he was saying. ‘I know I hurt you and I know now that I was a fool. I guess I just wanted to prolong my childhood.’ He looked away from her but she could see his expression in the mirror behind the bar. She wondered, in a kind of disinterested way, why he was bothering to go through this again. Elliot didn’t have to worry. The good news was there was no way she was going to sleep with this player, no way she was going to let herself be hurt again. The bad news was she was so numb that nothing could ever hurt her again.
‘I’ve done a lot of soul-searching,’ Steven continued. ‘I didn’t really like what I found.’ Join the club, Kate thought, but only nodded. ‘I’ve been irresponsible,’ he said. ‘The fact is, I’ve behaved like a boy, not a man.’
You and five hundred thousand other single men in Manhattan, Kate thought. But again she just nodded. How could she have put up with him? The idea of beginning to date again, of having to meet new men and sit in bars like this and listen to their ruminations and take them seriously seemed not just more trouble than it was worth but a kind of torture that no one should be subjected to. Where was Amnesty International when you needed them? Kate supposed she could get used to going out again or she could simply give up, wait until the rest of her friends had babies and make a career of being a dedicated aunt.
Surprisingly, Steven reached out then and took her hand. Kate jumped a little but managed to keep her purse on her lap and her perch on the bar stool. ‘I know you’re not listening, and I don’t blame you,’ he said. That brought Kate’s attention back to him. Perhaps Steven was more aware of others than she’d given him credit for. ‘Kate, what I’m trying to say is that when we were dating we had different goals. At least I thought we did. But I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I spent most of that time regretting losing you.’
Kate looked at him, face to face, for the first time. What was he doing?
Steven sighed. ‘I can’t believe how stupid I was when we met for coffee,’ he said. ‘It was arrogant of me to think that an apology would be enough to put us back where we left off.’ He looked away for a moment. ‘Sometimes I lack…well, there’s probably a lot that I lack. But because I lack you I’d like to try, slowly, to prove I’ve changed.’
Kate, despite her pain, tried to remember if he’d been more stupid than usual. She supposed asking her out at all had been a little arrogant, but nothing she would not have expected from him. The problem with Steven, she realized, was that he had always had everything easy. He had never had to suffer or work to get anything he wanted so it was only to be expected that he believed he could get whatever he wanted simply by asking for it. Kate took her hand back from his. He looked down at the bar for a moment as if he had recognized a rebuke.
‘Kate, you shouldn’t waste your time on any man who doesn’t value you. Who isn’t willing to commit to you.’
Tell me about it, Kate thought, and idly wondered whether Steven had decided to become a counselor for single women. Maybe he wanted her as a client. But, once again, he took her hand in his. Kate felt nothing. But because of her purse and her unsteady seat she couldn’t easily pull back.
‘Kate, I’m asking for your hand.’
‘You have it,’ she said.
‘No. I mean…I mean I’m asking for your hand in marriage.’
Kate couldn’t – didn’t – believe what she’d just heard. Was she having an aural hallucination, projecting this onto Steven or was he making some bad taste joke? But, to her utter amazement, he reached into his pocket and took out a ring. Before she had a chance to do anything, he slipped it onto her finger. Kate stared at the diamond, flanked by two smaller emeralds, her favorite stone. ‘Do you like it?’ Steven asked.
She stared up at him. What in the world was he thinking of? His audacity, his presumption, was enough to infuriate her, but then she stared down at her hand. The diamond seemed to wink at her in the reflected light of the hundreds of bottles behind the bar. And then she began to laugh. Once she started she couldn’t stop. Her foot slippe
d and her purse fell to the floor but she couldn’t silence herself. She wasn’t trying to be cruel – she had lost control.
At first, as she began to laugh, Steven looked at her with a smile. Then, as her laughter continued, he stopped smiling. Other patrons’ heads began to turn and look in their direction. She didn’t want to humiliate him, but he had already done it for himself. Why is life like this? Kate thought. Whatever you wanted was wrong for you, and you didn’t get it anyway. Then when you did, you didn’t want it anymore.
With a tremendous effort she got herself under control. She stopped laughing and even stopped smiling. Even Steven deserved at least that. She thought about all the things she could say, all the things she could tell him but decided his education and therapy was none of her business. She simply took her hand from his, pulled the ring off and handed it back to him. ‘I’m afraid not, Steven,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be good for either one of us.’
His face immediately took on the stricken look she knew all too well. But that wasn’t her business, either. In a few days he’d find some other woman who would comfort him, trying to get that look to change. Good fucking luck to her, Kate thought. Then she stood up and patted Steven on the shoulder. ‘I have to go,’ she told him. Her empty apartment seemed more like a haven now. ‘Be well,’ she told him. Then she turned and walked down the long bar to the door. It wasn’t the best exit line, but it would certainly do.
45
Kate lay on her bed. The oppressive heat had closed down on New York and although it was only June the temperature and stagnant air felt more like August. Kate was unprepared for the heat. She felt unprepared for everything in her life right now; she had an air conditioner stored in the basement but hadn’t asked Max to help her bring it up to her window; she hadn’t folded and put away her school clothes and refilled her tiny closet with her light summer things; she hadn’t made plans for the July Fourth weekend. In fact, summer had come and Kate felt as unprepared for her whole life as she did for her vacation. Somehow without planning any of it she had wasted too much time with Michael, revisited a ridiculous relationship with Steven, inappropriately fallen for and been blown off by Billy. Meanwhile, everyone she knew was moving forward with their lives. Brice had gotten a promotion, Elliot was teaching a course at the New School, the two of them had rented a share in Fire Island, Bina was preparing for her wedding, Bev’s baby was keeping her busy, and the latest news flash was that Barbie was pregnant. It seemed as if everyone had a direction – good or bad – but she was rudderless.
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