“I asked Jeff if you smoked,” Timothy said. “But he told me he wasn’t sure. I usually wouldn’t go on a blind date unless I knew for sure the woman wasn’t a smoker, but something about the way he described you made me think there was something there. Something, I don’t know…”
I wanted to finish his sentence. Something special. I hadn’t been a special anything to anyone since the days when Max Reardon had still loved me.
And I wouldn’t be anything to Timothy had Jeff been either unkind enough or aware enough to recall that I smoked. Or used to. Last night’s decision to quit might very well get me much, much more than a date to a wedding.
“So this is you, right?” he asked as we neared the steps leading up to the 81st Street crossover.
I nodded. How had we gotten here so fast? It wasn’t time for this date to end. It would never be time. But it was two o’clock in the morning.
“Are you free Tuesday night?” Timothy asked. “If you want to see me again, that is,” he added, the dimple flashing.
I felt like doing cartwheels. “Tuesday?” I repeated, pretending to mentally consult my datebook. “Yes. I’m definitely free.”
That was actually a lie. Blind Date #5, the very last one, was scheduled for Tuesday. Driscoll Something. But he could be unscheduled. Pronto.
“Tuesday, it is, then,” he confirmed. He reached out his hand and I slipped mine into his. His hand was soft and warm and big, his fingers strong and steady as a doctor’s should be.
We stood on the concrete overpass between the East River and East End Avenue, the FDR Drive and its nonstop traffic whizzing directly underneath us. Timothy looked at me. And then, ever so slowly, he tilted his face and kissed me, in front of everyone who was driving south. Then he took my hand and we walked across East End Avenue to my apartment building. And with one more warm, sweet kiss, Timothy Rommely was gone, speeding away in a yellow taxi.
“Ooooh! Oh yeah! More, more! Yeah, Ooooooh!”
As Opera man gave it to his Oh Moaner, I envisioned taking a shower with Timothy Rommely. Envisioned his thick, dark hair wet against his head, his golden chest glistening and soapy, his—
“Harder. Harder! Oooh! Yeaahhhhhhh!”
I stretched out, my hands behind my neck and strained to hear Opera Man’s girlfriend over the opera.
“Ooh! Yeah! Yeah!”
The phone rang and I snatched it. It had to be Eloise. Or maybe it was Gnatasha. I wouldn’t put it past her to call this late. She probably wanted to let me know she’d be five minutes early for our meeting on Monday morning to go over her revisions.
Nope. It was Eloise. “How’d it go?”
“I’m in love,” I breathed into the receiver.
“Tell me everything!” Eloise said. “Serge is sleeping, and I’m wide-awake.”
Opera Man turned up the volume, then lowered it a few minutes later. He always blasted the music just when the Oh Moaner was about to reach orgasm. I wasn’t sure if he did it so that no one would hear (as if I couldn’t hear everything leading up to it) or if it turned her or him on further.
Starting with the sangria and ending with the kiss in front of all those witnesses driving by on the FDR, I explained why I was in love with a guy I’d met eight hours earlier.
“Wow,” Eloise said. “Wow!”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Wow.”
“Don’t forget to call Driscoll and cancel Tuesday’s blind date,” she reminded me.
I couldn’t wait. That would be the happiest phone call of my life.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Eloise said. “Guess what I signed us up for today? A SmokeNoMore session at the Learn It Center.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “How much?”
“Sixty bucks,” Eloise said. “But if you don’t quit, you can come back for free, so it seems worth it.” Eloise then confessed that she’d ripped off the patch last night and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes by three o’clock today, mostly out of guilt that she was smoking. “It’s Monday night at six-thirty in our neighborhood. I’m gonna smoke my heart out till then, then quit on Tuesday.”
“El, you don’t have to, just because I am. You have to really want it.”
She laughed. “You don’t really want it.”
That wasn’t true, not anymore. I hadn’t realized it until now. For the first time, I wanted something more than I wanted to smoke. “I want the guy, though. Who cares what the motivation is, El? Whatever gets you where you’re supposed to be, right?”
“I guess,” she said. “Well, I’ll quit in the name of solidarity.”
“I love you, Eloise.”
“I love you, too.”
For the first time in five years, I drifted off to sleep fantasizing about a real possibility as the Oh Moaner moaned. Not Max, who I couldn’t have. Not Jeremy, who I’d never have. Timothy. Someone who I could have. Someone to whom I could be the main thing.
Nine
The Learn It Center was housed in an ugly junior high school on 92nd Street, off Lexington Avenue. The one and only SmokeNoMore session was in Room 214. Eloise and I sat down in the second row. Twenty people or so were dotted around the room. Everyone looked miserable.
“If I gain weight, forget it.” This from a very thin, gorgeous blonde.
“You might as well be fat if you have lung cancer.” That from the jealous chubby next to her.
“My dad’s giving me a thousand bucks if I quit for a month.” Teenager.
“I asked my six-year-old what he wanted for his birthday, and he said, ‘Mommy, I only want you to stop smoking.’” Mommy.
“Who can afford to smoke? They’re, like, $4.75 a pack!” Britney Spears look-alike.
I’m quitting so I can score a date to a wedding with the guy of my dreams. I wasn’t offering that tidbit. I’d prefer to wax health conscious and talk about the effects of tar on the delicate cilia of one’s lungs.
Eloise was fidgeting in the uncomfortable little chair-desk combination that we were forced to sit in. She was quiet. She hadn’t said much on the subway ride up to the Learn It Center. I figured she was nervous. I’d smoked more than she did, but giving up cigarettes when your boyfriend smoked like the clichéd chimney was a major nightmare.
“I wonder why the Gnat missed our meeting this morning,” I said to Eloise for the third time today. “I just don’t get it. It’s so uncharacteristic of her. I left her three messages today, and she never called me back.”
Eloise gave me the I’m-not-really-listening smile and continued fidgeting.
Why hadn’t Natasha shown up for the meeting? Or called? She herself had arranged the ten o’clock meeting with me days ago, then confirmed it with me on the phone yesterday—at home, of course. I’d been in the middle of a very important brainstorming session with myself over which name I’d go by if I married Timothy: Jane Rommely. Jane Gregg Rommely. Jane G. Rommely. Jane Gregg-Rommely. Jane Greggely.
Morgan, who’d ordered the Continental breakfast for this morning’s meeting, had buzzed me every twenty minutes to ask if she should put the butter for the bagels in the little refrigerator in the kitchen. I’d heard the usual triumph in Morgan’s voice, the you’re toast glee. If Natasha started missing meetings, Remke and Jeremy would pull me from the project. I’d never get promoted.
“Hello everybody!” A thin woman wearing a ton of chunky jewelry and carrying a bunch of pamphlets strolled to the small metal desk at the front of the class. “I’m Dinah, and welcome to SmokeNoMore!” She put her hands on her hips. “Okay, I’ll cut the crap. None of you is happy to be here. In fact, you all probably got here kicking and screaming. You’re dreading even the thought of quitting smoking.”
A lot of nods, laughs, and one “You got that right, sister.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you,” Dinah went on, “that quitting smoking does suck. It sucks as bad as you imagine it does. But—” she held up a hand “—quitting doesn’t suck as much as smoking does. And it’s not impossible. You can do it. I
did it, and so did countless other addicted smokers. I didn’t gain twenty pounds. I didn’t murder my mother-in-law. I didn’t burst into tears at my job. Okay, maybe once or twice. But I’ll tell you what did happen when I quit. I gained self-respect, whiter teeth and about two thousand bucks in savings. I have been smoke free for two years, eight months and four days.”
Everyone clapped.
Eloise burst into tears.
I put my hand on her arm. “El? It’ll be okay. We’re doing it together.”
As Dinah began handing out the pamphlets, Eloise covered her face with her hands. And that was when I noticed the teeny, tiny diamond ring sparkling on the third finger of her left hand.
My mouth fell open. “El? What’s that on your finger? It looks suspiciously like an engagement ring.”
“It is,” she whispered, and then burst into tears again.
“Wow, you must really be a heavy smoker,” said the redhead sitting to Eloise’s left. “I only smoke a pack a day and I’m sort of excited about quitting. It’ll be okay, hon.”
Eloise fled the room. Dinah gnawed her lower lip.
“I’m sorry,” the redhead said to me. “I didn’t mean to upset her even more.”
“The poor dear,” Dinah murmured, her expression full of empathy. “Class, excuse me one moment. We have a very nervous quitter apparently—”
I shot up and grabbed our pamphlets. “Oh, um, no, Dinah, she’s nervous about something else. I’ll go talk to her.”
Dinah nodded. She held up a ten-by-twelve glossy of a blackened lung. “Who knows how many cigarettes it took to turn this once-pink-and-healthy lung into this cancer-waiting-to-happen? Huh? Who can tell me? Anyone?”
I slipped out the door and found Eloise slumped down against a locker, her hands still covering her face, the tiny diamond gleaming against the cool metal gray of the locker.
I slid down onto my butt next to her. “So I guess congratulations aren’t in order?”
She dropped her hands. “I’m happy, I really am.” She turned her tearstained face to me. “I’m just nervous, I guess. Being engaged, getting married. It’s just so overwhelming.”
Yeah, especially when you: A) didn’t want to get married and B) didn’t love the guy.
“Eloise, I don’t understand. You don’t even want Serge staying over too often during the week. Now you want to spend every night with him? For the rest of your life?”
She stared at the diamond. “I love him, Jane. I really do. Serge is a great guy. He’s sweet, he loves me to death, he’s fun, he’ll be a good father.” She burst into tears, the hands flying up to her face.
“And you’re crying because…?”
She dropped her hands and wiped her eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just nervous. Overwhelmed.”
“El? Can I be honest with you?”
She nodded and pulled a tissue out of her purse.
“I think you’re crying because you said yes when you mean no.”
“That’s not true,” she insisted. “I did mean yes. I’m engaged. That’s something to be really happy about.”
“It is, yes. But do you want to marry Serge?”
Eloise leaned her head back against the locker. “He proposed, Jane. He told me he loved me more than anything in the world. And I know he does. He treats me like I’m a princess. Not one guy I’ve ever been with has treated me even close to how Serge does. He makes me feel like I’m the greatest thing since fat-free cookies.”
“Yeah, but do you want to marry him?”
“What I want, Jane, is to go home, okay?” Eloise stood. “Go back inside. I’ll be fine.”
I stood up too. “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving.”
“’Kay,” Eloise said in a shaky voice, staring at the dirty gray floor.
I put my arm around her and led her past the long display case of sports trophies against the pale green cinder-block wall.
Eloise needed an EngagedNoMore seminar. And I, the person least qualified to teach it, was all she had at the moment.
“I’ll have a bacon and American cheese omelette with a toasted bagel, just a little cream cheese, and a Coke,” I told the waitress at the Comfort Diner.
“I’ll just have dry toast and a chamomile tea,” Eloise said.
“That’s all you want?” I asked her.
“I don’t even think I can eat that much,” she replied.
The waitress put her little pencil behind her ear and left; a busboy plunked two glasses of ice water on our table.
“So when did this happen?” I asked. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Saturday night.”
“El—we talked on the phone Saturday night! I told you all about my date with Timothy, and you never mentioned it. You didn’t mention it last night either.”
Eloise gnawed her lip. “I just wanted to sit with it for a while, you know, get used to it myself before I told anyone.”
“What did your grandmother say?” I asked her.
Eloise sipped her water. The waitress delivered our drinks.
“El?”
“I haven’t told her.”
Of course she didn’t tell her grandmother. Because she herself couldn’t believe it was true. “So tell me about his proposal,” I said. I had to tread lightly here, I knew. If I started squawking at her, she’d run out. What Eloise needed was support, someone to talk to, someone she could be honest with who wouldn’t judge her. Then she’d see that she couldn’t marry Serge.
“He came over to make me dinner, an American feast. He learned how to make meat loaf, mashed potatoes and apple pie in his citizen class. So he made me dinner, and then he wanted to go for a hansom cab ride in Central Park, so we did, and we were just going past Tavern on the Green when he took my hand, told me he loved me more than the world itself and asked me to be his wife. Jane, it was like a dream. It was everything I’d ever wanted to hear. And in that moment, I realized that it was everything I wanted. I do love Serge. I do. And I said yes. I didn’t even hesitate, Jane. That’s how I know I really want to marry him.”
The waitress slid our food on the table. I didn’t know what to make of what Eloise had just said. Who was I to tell her how she felt? No one had ever proposed marriage to me. How did I know how that felt? Or what went through a woman’s mind? Who I was to tell Eloise that she didn’t love Serge? If she said she did, maybe she did.
She burst into tears. The diamond twinkled over her eye.
But she didn’t. She didn’t love Serge. And she didn’t want to marry him. We both knew it.
“I’m engaged, Jane. I want to be engaged. I want to be getting married. And Serge is a great guy. No one else is ever gonna love me the way he does. No one.”
I forked a cheesy bite of omelette into my mouth. “You don’t know that, Eloise. That’s like saying if you don’t marry Serge, you’ll never marry anyone.”
“I’m thirty years old,” she snapped. “I haven’t married anyone yet. By the time I meet someone else, go through a relationship and he proposes, I’ll be who knows how old. Thirty-two? Thirty-five? No thank you. Who needs that kind of embarrassment or pressure to find somebody.”
“Eloise…”
“I love him, Jane. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have said yes. I want to get married.”
Did she realize that she kept saying I want to get married but that she never once said I want to marry him? I believed that Eloise loved Serge—the way you loved a dear friend. But she didn’t love him the way you loved the man you wanted to marry.
“Do you love Serge the way you loved Michael?”
“That’s totally different,” Eloise said, biting off a piece of toast. “I was twenty-five and stupid. And everyone knows romantic love isn’t the same as love-love. Every woman goes through a Michael who breaks her heart. You did with Max, Amanda did with Gary from college. You don’t marry those guys. You don’t marry the ones you’re madly in love with. You marry the guy who’s gonna love you, the guy you don’t ha
ve to worry about, the guy who’ll make you feel safe and secure. You know what I’m talking about, Jane.”
Who cares what the motivation is if it gets you where you’re supposed to be….
I did know what she was talking about. I knew very well. But it still sounded wrong. It was wrong. Wasn’t it?
“Serge is a great guy. And I’m ready to settle down. End of story. Be happy for me, okay?”
I would be. I really would. If only settle weren’t the key word.
“Morgan, I’m just saying that the revision letter is a little harsh. A few words of praise for the guy’s style would go a long way—”
“Well, I thought his style staaank,” Morgan said.
“So why are you asking him to revise his memoir?” I asked, losing patience with Horse Face. I had a lot of work to do this afternoon, and Morgan had taken up way too much of my Tuesday as it was. I’d spent the entire morning reading over her rejection and revision letters and making very thorough and thoughtful comments. Fifteen minutes after I’d returned the stack to her, she’d trotted into my office, more defensive than usual.
“The guy has dyslexia, Jaaane. That’s what his memoir is about. I’m not going to lie and tell him he can write when he can’t. That doesn’t mean the memoir itself wasn’t moving and worthy of being published. But he has to work harder or make it ‘told to.’”
“Morgan—”
“Look, don’t tell me like you know, Jaaane. I grew up with a learning disa—” Morgan clamped her mouth shut. I could see the pink tinges coloring her cheeks, and the anger in her eyes. She hadn’t caught herself in time.
“Morgan, there’s nothing wrong with—”
“I don’t need your words of wisdom, Jaaane. All I care about is that you keep that to yourself.”
Sympathy hit me in the stomach. Morgan had grown up with a learning disability and had clearly overcompensated with her attitude her entire life. I pictured her as a little kid getting picked on and teased by mean kids in her class. Teachers and parents constantly looking at her with concern. You had to develop a thick skin to deal with a learning disability. That was all Morgan’s insecurity and bitchiness was: self-protection. Didn’t I know a thing or two about that very subject? “Morgan, you can trust me.”
See Jane Date Page 15
