This Love Story Will Self-Destruct

by Leslie Cohen

  “All right. All right.”

  He paused for a few, long minutes. I did my best to be patient, to wait for him to say something, and then he did. “He has a new girlfriend, you know.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, feeling my heart sink.

  “Yep. She works for a nonprofit and runs marathons.”

  “Wow.”

  “So she’s definitely a good person.” He snickered.

  I didn’t know what to say. “Well, good for him.”

  “They’ll probably end up engaged within the year.” He sighed. “Any day now, I’ll be buying them a pizza-making kit or a mango pitter or a picnic basket.”

  “Ah, the picnic basket,” I said, with a slow nod. “Why do people register for those? Do you think they really use them? I’ve never heard any of my friends express the slightest interest in going on a picnic, and yet, evidence suggests that picnics are a big part of marriage.”

  “Also, how often are you eating mangoes that you need a specific instrument for them?”

  “I agree. I feel like mangoes are a very once-in-a-while type of fruit.”

  “I don’t know, man,” he said, sounding tired. “Seriously, being almost thirty is just finding out which of your friends who you used to throw up with in the street is now registered for a picnic basket.”

  We stopped at the corner of Sixty-Ninth and Lexington and waited for the light to change. “So, not into the whole marriage thing?” I turned to him. His hands were in his pockets.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Haven’t found the right girl yet is more like it. Not everyone can handle me, Eve.”

  “Yeah, well, join the club.” We crossed the street, dodging a dog walker with six or seven small white puppies jumping at his ankles.

  “Eve. You didn’t do anything that bad,” he said. “You just wanted to blow up your life.”

  “What?”

  “You wanted to blow up your life,” he repeated.

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Oh yes, you most certainly did. People do what they want to do, and you wanted to blow up your life.”

  “Did Ben say that?”

  “No. Have you met Ben?”

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “It happens to everyone. Well, it happens to some people. For whatever reason, sometimes you just want to fuck shit up. I’m sure you had your reasons.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve thought about it and I’ve thought about it and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was just all going along so smoothly, and, I don’t know. Every relationship I’ve ever been involved in has been so tumultuous and . . . I guess, rather than wait for it to get messed up in some unexpected, out-of-the-blue way, I took matters into my own hands because I think on some subconscious level . . . I’m an idiot.”

  “No, I know what you mean though. It’s like that feeling on a roller coaster when you’re slowly going up higher and higher and nothing bad is happening yet but the fact that something is coming totally fucks with you. And sometimes, you don’t want to wait for it. Sometimes, you just want to get it over with.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.” I decided that Glick had an okay side to him, when he wasn’t drunk and destroying a fax machine that he found on the street.

  “Ben’s a good friend though,” he said. “Ben’s like an anchor and . . . I’m like a buoy.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of a buoy too. Wait, aren’t buoys also tied to something?”

  “I don’t know, man! This is my first maritime analogy. I thought they just floated around aimlessly, no?”

  “Oh, maybe you’re right.”

  “You know who would know the answer to this question?”

  We both said it at the same time. “Ben.”

  I looked up at the white brick building that took up half the block. “Is this it?” I asked. He nodded. When we got upstairs to the apartment on the seventh floor, I pretended to check everything out, the way I would in a realistic situation. The place had big windows overlooking Third Avenue. The bathroom and kitchen looked recently redone. That was why I couldn’t afford it. I’d never lived anyplace in New York with a bathroom or kitchen from this century and I had the feeling that I never would. But it was okay. I’d come to appreciate the black-and-white-tiled floor, the quirky fixtures, knobs and cut-off pipes sticking out of the wall for no reason.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” he said, standing in the middle of what would be the living room. “But only because I feel like we’ve bonded now.”

  “What is it?”

  I could tell that he was fighting off a smile. “Ben may not be headed to the altar as soon as I implied earlier,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I went over to the kitchen, opened and closed the fridge, then the oven, launching a fake investigation of all appliances.

  “He had a fight with his girl. We were making fun of him about it.”

  “Oh? What about?” I crouched down to look into a drawer below the oven. This is where the wrapping paper could go, I thought to myself, to make sure I had the right facial expression.

  When I lifted myself back up, Glick was tapping his fingers together, under his chin. He was enjoying this.

  “What?” I demanded. “The suspense is killing me.”

  He looked me up and down. “He said your name.”

  “Huh?”

  “He said your name.” He winced. “During . . . sex.”

  “Shut up.” I put my hands on my head.

  “You’re welcome.” He laughed and walked over to the window. I could see his reflection, squinting into the sun.

  “I can’t believe he did that,” I said. It was like a door that had been slammed shut now had a tiny sliver of light showing from underneath.

  “I know. And she flipped, obviously. It was pretty unwise. But classic Ben, right? I swear. Outside that iron-clad smart brain of his, there is a fluffy layer of marshmallow stupidity.”

  I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. The kick under the table at my father’s apartment. The yellow roses, gently used.

  “I just can’t believe he was talking, let alone during sex,” Glick said.

  “I wouldn’t call that talking.”

  “True. Anyway, she threw him out of her apartment. But I think they’ve recovered.”

  “Wait, but this is great news!”

  “Why?”

  “Because it means I’m in his head! It means I still have a chance.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  “Well, Michael, this leaves me no choice.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I have to go to the airport.”

  “What airport?”

  “To find Ben, of course! I have to chase him down and tell him that I love him and try to get him back.”

  “He’s not at the airport.” He gave me a puzzled look. “He’s at work, you dingbat.”

  “I know.” I smiled. “I was just kidding. I watch a lot of television. Everyone is always making big declarations at airports. And it’s always raining.”

  “Blue sky.” Glick pointed out the window.

  I shook my fists in the air. “I can’t catch a break!”

  “So what have you done so far? To get him back?”

  “Just a lot of calls and e-mails and one borderline insane handwritten letter. But I stopped about a month ago. I was trying to give him space, but not so much space that he could find a new girlfriend.”

  “Eve. We’re almost thirty. How hard do you think it was for Ben to find a girlfriend? Factor in that he has a job and a pulse.”

  “But I knew him back in his hooded-sweatshirt days!”

  “Oh, come off it.” He shook his head. “You didn’t like him back then either.”

  “Whatever!”

  “How about this.” He paused, paced around the apartment for a minute, deeply entrenched in thought. “I go out to a bar tonight with my boys. I know. I know. Very unusual occurrence for us on a Friday night. It’ll involve an ela
borate scheme of deception I’m sure. Anyway, I get Ben to come, and you show up.”

  I paused. Glick and I had never been close, to say the least. I’d always gotten the sense that he’d merely tolerated me, for Ben’s sake, but he often looked at me like he couldn’t quite place what I was doing there.

  “Why are you doing this for me?”

  He thought about it. “Because you made him happy, and then you made him miserable. But at least he wasn’t going on any picnics.”

  We walked out of the apartment and toward the 6 train stop on Lexington and Sixty-Eighth. I was descending the stairs to the subway platform, thinking about how Glick had really come up in the world, when he called after me, “And about tonight . . . wear something sexy.”

  * * *

  Glick texted me later that afternoon with details and, that night, I showed up to the bar on Second Avenue and Seventy-Eighth Street, in a black slinky dress, ready to ambush Ben. It was clear that I had somewhat lost my mind. If Ben had wanted to reach me, he certainly knew how to do that. And you couldn’t force someone into something. I knew that. But I didn’t allow myself to think too much about the weirdness of what I was doing. I realized the depth to which I’d sunk, but it was no greater than the depth of my mistake. That had been way more embarrassing, way more wrong than this. I had to break it down into small pieces. I’m just going to a bar. I told myself that this was a coincidence, a coincidence that happened to be orchestrated. It wasn’t a lie if you really, really believed it.

  Before searching for them, I went straight to the bar and got myself a drink. The bar had TV screens everywhere with sports playing. The place was filled with the abstract faces of men talking, streams of them moving toward the bar or sitting at tables. They were of all ages, and I passed through the crowd, with them whispering to one another. I had a strange feeling of being talked about, as they stood in small circles, wrangling one another. The voices made me ache for Ben, as I always did, among other men.

  Once I had downed some of my drink, I looked for them—Ben, and the three others—Glick, Danza, and Julian. I spotted them at a table in the back corner. A waitress walked over to them, observing first and then getting more involved. They were a familiar unit to me, but there was some strange feeling sinking in, a sense of power that they now had over me. I got very nervous for a few seconds, and then, I thought, Act. Do not think. Act.

  I went over to their table in a bit of a trance. Ben lifted his face when he saw me walking toward them. He looked innocent, slightly afraid. It reminded me of how he had looked to me in college, before I really knew him. Him watching me. I was received in silence. The others rose from the table. There was a confused pause. Glick tried to smooth it over.

  “Well, if it isn’t the devil herself,” he said.

  Ben then got up to greet me. He hugged me solidly. It wasn’t distant. It was friendly. It feels so good, but I thought to myself: Dismiss this thought. I was getting ahead of myself. I knew that, objectively, I had a long way to come back. But he said my name! And the hug! Quiet. Quiet. I thought of trying to call Ben while standing outside the synagogue that night, and it had a calming effect on me. It was a long way to come back.

  I sat down and the five of us talked together about some mutual acquaintances from college. After the first twenty minutes, things started to feel more normal. When Ben laughed at something I said, it was the best sensation I’d felt in a while.

  “Eve and I were just talking about your hooded-sweatshirt days,” Glick said.

  “That was a great hoodie,” Ben responded.

  “Yeah, except you wore it all the time,” Danza added.

  “My other clothes weren’t as comfortable.”

  “As what?” I said, laughing. “The pajamas you were always wearing?” The alcohol was kicking in. I was feeling unguarded, careless.

  “Hey, Ben. Why don’t you tell Eve about the fight with your girlfriend,” Julian said. Apparently, he was feeling the same way.

  Ben looked down, smiling slightly. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” he said. There was a moment of unbearable silence when the three of them got up. “Okay then, you two. Talk among yourselves,” Glick said to us.

  We sat there, watching them go to the other side of the bar, drifting farther and farther into a pack of people. “How’s it going?” Ben asked me.

  “I’m good! How are you?”

  “Pretty good.” He shrugged.

  “How’s work? Hey! I read something about glass panels being installed. . . . That’s a good sign, right?”

  “Yup. They’ve been doing that for about two months.”

  “That’s excellent!”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. What about you?”

  “Me? Nothing new . . . except, I’m all grown up now.” I motioned to myself and then smiled.

  “So you’re not writing songs about your socks anymore?”

  “Listen! I just think . . .” I looked down at the table, blushing. “I just think that the Laundromat must be a stressful place for socks. They could get left behind. . . . They could lose their other half. . . . I’m just trying to make the whole process easier for them.”

  He nodded, his mouth in a straight line.

  “Sorry. I know. It was a lot of craziness.”

  “Actually, I didn’t mind the craziness.”

  “You could have done without it.”

  “No,” he said, thinking it over. “That was just you. If I’d lost that . . . I would have been too afraid of what else I might lose.”

  “That’s a nice thing to say,” I said, and then shifted my dress and sat up on my knees all excitedly. I put my hand on his arm and my head on his shoulder as if that were a perfectly normal thing to do. I could feel him shift a tiny bit toward me, bend his head in my direction. I looked at him and noticed that his eyes were slightly closed.

  After a few seconds, I took my hand off him and sat back down, properly. “Anyway, I was reading this article about the Freedom Tower and I learned all this stuff about shoring and false work! Like what you do when something is unstable and might collapse, expanding the foundation to make it structurally sound. I learned what underpinning means!”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “When a building is collapsing, you put a new building next to the existing building so that when you create a basement level, the building next to it will fall over into the hole.”

  He smiled. “Not even close.”

  “What?”

  He stood up suddenly and put his hand on my bare shoulder and I felt the movement of his fingers. It was nothing, and yet it made me miss him even more. My body went completely still. His fingertips felt warm. “Do you want another drink?” he asked, looking a bit exasperated. I was wearing him down. Maybe. But in a good way? Maybe.

  “Sure,” I said, looking up at him. My name. The hug. Another drink. This is going to be okay.

  He tapped my shoulder two times and then walked toward the bar. I sat there for a few minutes, looking at the table, both taking in what had happened so far and in a frenzy to plan my next move. I decided that I couldn’t waste any more time. When he came back, I was going to put all my cards on the table. I felt a sudden burst of bravery about what I might say. I was spinning inside, like my thoughts couldn’t fit inside of my skin for much longer. I couldn’t wait to be sitting next to him again, how good it would feel to be next to him. For the first time, it all made sense. I believed that I could get him back. It was only a matter of getting him alone again, just one more time, and that was all. Another drink. He’d asked about another drink and that was a good sign. I could work with that.

  After a few minutes of waiting, and then a few minutes more, Glick came over to me looking guilty. I could hear my own heartbeat. I don’t know why I had such a bad feeling from the second I saw his face, but I did.

  “I’m sorry, Eve,” he said. “Ben left. He told me to say good-bye to you for him.”

  I was dissolving inside
. All my hopes fell, in a single instant.

  All I heard was Ben says good-bye.

  BEN

  * * *

  450 WEST END AVENUE, APARTMENT 4E, UPPER WEST SIDE

  I had one last drink, standing at the bar, then got out of there, and kept walking until I got to the west side. I had to just get away from Eve. That was my main objective. To physically get away from her. The rest would follow. Sanity would follow. She was like a stimulant. Seeing her was like a shot of espresso to my system. And I didn’t want that, the way I used to. I wanted to go back to my natural state of calm.

  Natalie and I had been together for only a couple of months, not exactly “show up at the door drunk” territory, but I felt the need to be in her vicinity. Eve was not going to suck me back into her dysfunctional world, where nothing meant just one thing or whatever the hell you thought it meant. I texted Natalie as soon as I got outside the bar. She texted back that she was in bed but that she’d leave the door unlocked for me.

  Great. Perfect. All I really needed was the ability to get in the door.

  The block where she lived, Eighty-Second and West End, was deserted. Natalie’s neighborhood, in the evenings, was like a refugee camp for recovering from the city and the madness that was life in the East Village with Eve. It was quiet, no traffic, few noises, no matter the time of day. It was like looking out at a lake with water that wasn’t moving, not even a ripple. A little strange for the city, but I’d take it.

  The lobby of her building was lit with half-hidden bulbs that released an amber glow. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Once on the landing, I examined myself in the hallway mirror. I was dressed for work, pulled together from the outside. The only thing that gave me away was that my eyes were red, the way they got when I drank.

  There were five apartments on her floor. Her door was the only one propped open by a sneaker. I pushed the door in and felt my way through the dark entranceway. I was hit immediately by the smell of oranges. Natalie’s apartment always smelled like that, like some perfume she’d just sprayed, citrus-scented. All I could comprehend was the light from the living room window. The walls of her apartment were cream-colored but they looked darker now. My eyes were adjusting to see the fireplace with a long mantel, and framed pictures lining it. She had sheer, gold curtains, which made the living room a place of dignity, with a brown velvet couch and an old piano that had been left by the previous tenants of the apartment but that Natalie said she couldn’t bear to give away. I took off my shoes and locked the door quietly behind me. I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water, quickly.