Man of My Dreams

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “Look in my bag.”

  Hannah has taken a seat in her desk chair, and she doesn’t move.

  “Go ahead and look,” Fig says. “It won’t bite. You’ll get a kick out of it.”

  Hannah reaches for the bag. Inside are several one-dollar bills fastened with a rubber band to a driver’s license, a tube of lipstick, a pack of cigarettes, and a small silver picture frame containing a black-and-white photo of a woman in an apron and cat’s-eye glasses. “Who is this?” Hannah asks.

  “It’s Murray’s great-grandmother.”

  “Who’s Murray?”

  “The law student. I was trapped in his apartment until half an hour ago.”

  “I thought you didn’t like law students.”

  “I definitely don’t now. He was a total snooze. But he’s obsessed with me, so I threw him a bone.”

  “Does Henry know?”

  “It’s don’t ask, don’t tell. Remember? Anyway, after last night, no more bones for Murray.”

  “Do you think Henry is involved with any women over there that he hasn’t told you about?”

  “Mmm…” Fig seems to consider the possibility in an entirely disinterested way. “Nah,” she finally says, and Hannah feels a warm, surging relief. The idea that Henry could just find someone else and be whisked out of both their lives is worst of all. At least as long as he is bound to Fig, he’s trackable.

  “The picture’s so kitschy, right?” Fig says. “I couldn’t resist.”

  Hannah looks again at the framed photo. The woman has a broad smile and eyes that crinkle behind her glasses; she looks perhaps sixty. “Don’t you feel guilty?” Hannah asks.

  “I feel horribly guilty. Unspeakably guilty.”

  “You should.”

  “I’m wearing a hair shirt right now to punish myself. You can’t see it because I’m under the covers, but it’s itchy as hell.”

  “Fig, it’s his grandmother.”

  “Great-grandmother.” Fig grins. “And the sex sucked, so I thought I should get something out of Murray.”

  “It sucked? Really?” The idea of Fig having bad sex is novel.

  “It must have taken an hour for me to come. Speaking of which, any progress on your epic dry spell?”

  “I really don’t feel like talking about this right now,” Hannah says. The irony is that Fig has no idea how epic it had gotten, prior to Ted from the summer—she has never paid close attention to Hannah’s life. But to tell Fig about Mike, to tell her about him not as a joke, is unthinkable.

  “You’ve got to put yourself out there,” Fig says. “God gave you big ta-tas for a reason, Hannah.”

  Hannah closes her eyes. “Didn’t you say you had to get going?”

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Fig says. “I think I’ve met the man of my dreams.”

  “Fig, please.”

  “For real,” Fig says. “I’m serious.” She seems in this moment to be on the cusp of having genuinely hurt feelings.

  “I assume it’s not Henry or Murray?” Hannah says.

  “His name is Philip Lake. I met him over the summer at Tracy Brewster’s sister’s wedding—do you remember when I went home for that? It was when you were in Alaska.”

  Hannah nods.

  “I didn’t even talk to him at the wedding, but that was the first time I saw him. He was wearing a seersucker suit, which not every guy can pull off, but he has this air of total confidence. He was with a kind of clingy woman, so that’s why I didn’t go up to him. But after the wedding, I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I finally asked Tracy for his address, and I should have saved a copy of the letter I wrote. It was really good.”

  Did she enclose a photo, too? Knowing Fig, probably, and a dirty one at that. Also, thinks Hannah, it’s unlikely the clingy date was the reason Fig didn’t talk to this guy at the wedding. If she’d wanted to, she would have approached him. What she must have wanted instead was the mystery of contacting him later, luring him from afar.

  “He works in television in L.A., and it’s not like he brags, but I can tell he’s successful,” Fig says. “He wants to buy me a ticket out there. We were writing to each other for a while, and this week we’ve started talking on the phone. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You see this as a good idea? The guy is basically a stranger.”

  “Hannah, unless you go out with your own brother, everyone you date is a stranger at some point.” Hannah thinks of Mike—Fig is not wrong. “But I’ve thought about safety,” Fig is saying, “and I’ve decided you should come with me.”

  “To L.A.?”

  “We’ll get a hotel room. I know you’re stressing about money, so we can split the cost.” Does Fig think she’s making a generous offer? “If everything goes well, I’ll stay at his place. If he turns out to be some Mark Harris–type scumbag, which I’m almost positive he won’t, then I’ll stay at the hotel with you. We can stalk movie stars together.”

  “How are you so sure Philip Lake isn’t another Mark Harris?”

  “He’s practically related to the Brewsters. He used to be married to Mr. Brewster’s sister.”

  “He’s divorced? How old is this guy?”

  “He’s forty-four.” Fig smiles lasciviously. “Hannah, trust me, older men know what they’re doing. Maybe we should try to find one for you, too.”

  “When would this trip be?”

  “Undecided, but probably the second or third weekend in October. You don’t have Friday classes, do you?”

  “No, I do this semester.”

  “Then live a little. You’ve never been to California, right?”

  In spite of herself, Hannah feels the rise of flattery she experiences whenever Fig issues an invitation. As much as she pretends otherwise, she knows she will go. She will always go. Fig might change her mind and not want Hannah’s company, and Hannah still will go.

  Fig sits up in bed and swings her feet onto the floor. “Just think about it,” she says. She raises her arms into a Y, stretching; clearly, she’s about to leave. She looks around the room. “It’s so cute that you still live in a dorm even though you’re a senior,” she says.

  THE WEIRD PART is that Hannah and Mike continue hanging out. He keeps calling her, and as with their first date, there is never a reason to decline his invitations. Their second date is a movie; after no physical contact during the entire evening so far (unsure what to do, Hannah waved hello when they met up), in the last five minutes before the credits roll, he reaches over and takes her hand. On their third date, they eat at a Vietnamese restaurant, on their fourth they get cheeseburgers. He always pays, which she appreciates now more than she once would have; he ignores her halfhearted protests. On their fifth date, they go to Harvard Square, then walk along the Charles, which Hannah imagines will feel fake-romantic, like they’re trying too hard, but instead it just feels nice. Also, after their relatively chaste first encounter, every single subsequent night ends with them in Hannah’s dark dorm room (he has roommates), both of them stripped entirely naked. He does not try to convince her to have sex, but he often tells her how attracted to her he is; this is pretty much the extent of their conversation during these sessions. When she’s on the verge of falling asleep, he’ll say, “Is it okay if I take care of myself?” and when she nods, he’ll roll onto his back, take hold of his penis, and pull his wrapped fingers up and down. She lies on her side against him, while he keeps his other arm around her and rubs her top breast. He does this until he comes. She would expect the arrangement to seem either gross or extremely awkward, but he is so matter-of-fact and unself-conscious that it’s neither; in the middle of the night, with her curled up to him and close to sleep, it actually feels tender. Sometimes she thinks if she were Fig, she would do it for him, but then she thinks if she were Fig, this would be unnecessary because they’d probably be hanging upside down from a trapeze somewhere, licking whipped cream off each other.

  More and more, she does touch him. He’ll
say, “You don’t have to be gentle. You’re not going to hurt me.” But his tone in making these remarks is always—this is very weird and she has no idea why—one of enchantment; he seems to find everything she does highly cute, endearingly girlish. The first time he kisses a trail from her sternum down her belly to between her thighs, she says, “You don’t need to.”

  He says, “I know I don’t need to. I want to.”

  She says, “I thought guys didn’t like it.”

  In the dark, he raises his head. He says, “Who told you that?”

  At first she doesn’t mention that she’s a virgin—she’s learned her lesson—but one night more than two weeks in, when things have tapered off and he is spooning her from behind, she says into the silent room, “I was thinking about it, and I was wondering how many people you’ve had sex with.”

  He doesn’t hesitate. He says, “Four.”

  A silence begins to build on the other side of this exchange.

  She cuts it off. She says, “The number of people I’ve had sex with”—she pauses, then keeps going—“is zero.”

  There is a millisecond of stillness, of frozen time. She remembers Ted from over the summer. Then Mike tugs at her shoulder to turn her over. When they are facing each other, the length of his body against the length of hers, he takes her arms one by one, slipping the first under him and pulling the other around his back. Then he wraps his own arms around her in the same position. He doesn’t say anything.

  IN THE STUDENT center, Hannah runs into Jenny. “I never see you anymore,” Jenny says. “Where are you hiding?”

  Hannah bites her lip. “I’ve been hanging out with this guy.”

  Jenny’s face lights up. “Who?”

  “I doubt you know him. And it’s not serious.”

  “Are you free right now? Want to get yogurt?”

  After buying the frozen yogurt, they carry their Styrofoam cups to a table among the clatter of other students checking mailboxes, walking in and out of the bookstore. Hannah describes the sequence of dates. “He’s nice,” she says. “But he’s not really my type.”

  “What’s your type?”

  “I don’t know. Taller.”

  Jenny makes an appalled expression. “Seriously,” she says, “I don’t see what the problem is. He sounds great.”

  FOR THE MOST part, they have just been tumbling onto the mattress and groping each other until they fall asleep—not changing into pajamas, not washing their faces or brushing their teeth—but that night Mike pulls out a new toothbrush, still in its packaging. He holds it up. “Okay?” he says.

  She nods.

  “Cool,” he says. “I guess we’re taking it to the next level.”

  When they are getting into bed, he climbs over Hannah, and his penis brushes her knee, and this contact seems utterly ordinary. That their bodies, it turns out, are just bodies is either deeply reassuring or deeply disappointing. He lies flat on top of her, and they both are still, and after a minute he says, “Am I your first boyfriend?”

  “You’re not my boyfriend.” She says it flirtatiously, she pats his butt twice. But she is not really kidding. “I could never have a boyfriend.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m Hannah.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Are they having the relationship talk? As much as she’s heard about it, she’s always seen it as akin to going on safari or joining a bowling league, an activity practiced by others that she herself would probably never participate in. That she is now participating does not feel like a relief, it does not feel like proof of anything she yearns for proof of. It feels unreal, and provokes that sense of being actors in a play.

  “So how should I introduce you to people?” Mike asks.

  “As Hannah,” she says.

  FIG CALLS ON a Tuesday afternoon. “I just got off the phone with a travel agent,” she says. “I need to call her back by five o’clock. You’re coming, right?”

  It is four forty. “Tell me again what weekend this is.”

  “Hannah, does it really matter? What else do you have going on?”

  She just can’t give Mike to Fig to destroy. She says, “Maybe I’ll have a paper due.”

  “It’s the third weekend in October. The ticket is a little over three hundred.”

  Hannah sighs. Now that she’s in debt, money has started to seem pretend—what’s the difference between being $11,000 in the hole and $11,300? “That’s fine,” she says.

  THE THIRD WEEKEND in October—the Saturday—is Mike’s twenty-second birthday. He says, “I told you that. It’s when we talked about going to my mom’s.”

  He’s right. Once reminded, she remembers the conversation perfectly. She says, “Well, at least it’s not a big birthday, like twenty-one.”

  “It’s nice to know you care so much.”

  This is the first time he has been displeased with her, and his petulance seems childish. She rises from her bed, where they have been lying clothed above the duvet—they are about to go have dinner—then takes a rubber band from the dish on her dresser and pulls her hair into a ponytail; it’s an excuse to move away from him.

  “Based on how you talk about your cousin, it doesn’t even sound like you like her,” Mike says. “You make her sound awful.”

  “She is,” Hannah says. “But she’s great, too.”

  Mike looks disbelieving.

  “Once when we were little, someone gave Fig’s parents chocolate truffles for Christmas, and we snuck the box up to her room and ate the entire thing,” Hannah says. “Afterward, we realized they had some kind of liqueur in them, and Fig convinced me we both were drunk. She believed it herself. We started stumbling around her room, sort of rolling on the floor—we had no idea how drunk people really acted. And I was all freaked out, but it also was fun. Fig is never boring, and life is never boring when you’re hanging out with her.”

  Mike still appears unimpressed.

  “Also,” Hannah says, “she once tried to set me up with a guy at BU.”

  “I don’t know if I want to hear this.”

  “It was the beginning of last year. She was going to a fraternity formal, and she arranged for me to go with a friend of her date. I’m sure my date imagined I’d be really pretty because I was Fig’s cousin. She told me if I drank a lot and didn’t say anything weird, he’d definitely hit on me, but that I shouldn’t go back to his room unless I was prepared to have sex. And he sort of pawed me on the bus, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through with it.” Hannah also cannot remember the guy’s name. He was a lacrosse player, and his defining characteristics to her were that he wore a tight, ropy necklace with brown wooden beads and that he told her he hoped to be making a hundred Gs—that was how he phrased it—within five years of graduation. “The night was a bust,” Hannah says. “But this is the thing: Fig brought me a corsage. She knew the guy wouldn’t, so she got me one herself, an iris with baby’s breath. Fig’s not all bad.”

  Mike shakes his head. “First of all, you are really pretty,” he says. “And you know what else? You’re your own worst enemy.”

  MIKE ATTENDED AN all-boys’ Catholic high school, and Hannah suspects it is particularly gratifying to him to be at such a liberal university: He is a registered member of the Green Party, and he doesn’t eat grapes because of the migrant workers who pick them. She says, “Because of what about the migrant workers?” and he provides a detailed response, which surprises her; she asked partly because she doubted he’d be able to. But she’s not sure if the fact that his idealism is well informed makes it better or worse. It just seems a little silly. Growing up, when she still lived with her father, any given day was about not stirring the pot, and so people who stir the pot voluntarily, who define themselves in these vocal ways—she can’t shake the sense that they’re playing a game, even if they’re not aware of it.

  Mike also seems to get a particular kick out of the fact that one of his closest friends is a lesbian named Susan
who has a dainty black cross tattooed on the back of her neck. The night they go to a bar with her, Hannah thinks she can hear in Mike’s voice an extra catch of pleasure while he comforts Susan about having just run into her ex-girlfriend.

  But then—they do this a week early, because of Hannah’s trip to L.A.—Hannah and Mike take the bus to his mother’s house in Worcester, and it turns out his mother is a lesbian, too. So, no, that evening at the bar when Mike was talking to Susan, the subtext wasn’t Look how down I am with your gayness.

  MIKE’S MOTHER’S HOUSE is a tidily maintained two-bedroom colonial with white aluminum siding. Mike, Hannah, and Mike’s mother eat dinner on the back deck, and when Hannah calls his mother Ms. Koslowski, she says, “Don’t be silly, Hannah. Call me Sandy.” She is an accountant, divorced from Mike’s father since Mike was four. She’s short, like Mike, and trim, with chin-length gray hair and a mild Massachusetts accent. She’s wearing a sleeveless plaid button-down shirt, jeans, and penny loafers. She owns a lethargic bulldog named Newtie, short for Newt Gingrich. “Is that a tribute or an insult?” Hannah asks, and Mike’s mother says, “To the man or the dog?” A certain wiliness in this exchange—on Mike’s mother’s part, both a withholding of information about herself and a suspension of judgment of Hannah, or a pretense of suspension—makes Hannah realize that his mother sees her as a rich girl. Which, though it feels untrue these days, is not entirely wrong.

  Mike touches Hannah frequently in front of his mother, and when they are finished with dinner, he moves next to her on the bench and drapes his arm around her shoulder. When he stands to clear—he won’t let Hannah help—he holds up her left hand and kisses the back of it. They have ice cream for dessert. “Hannah, do you want mint chip or butter pecan?” Mike asks as he carries the pints out from the kitchen, and when Hannah says, “Can I have a little bit of both?” Mike’s mother says approvingly, “Atta girl.”

  She lets Hannah and Mike sleep in the same room, in his boyhood bed; Hannah assumed she’d end up on the living room couch. In the middle of the night—they both are wearing boxer shorts and T-shirts—Mike says, “Let’s take off our clothes. I want to feel your skin.”