into my pajamas, eat Frosted Flakes for dinner, and either reevaluate my life or watch Sullivan’s Travels on DVD.
Tricia answered on the third ring. “How’d it go?”
“Peter was just feeling me out.”
“Did you say ‘out’ or ‘up’?”
“Give me some credit.”
“Just asking.”
“Where are you guys? Please tell me you haven’t eaten yet.”
“Well, I can only speak for myself, but I am at Lotus and I am starving.”
“Where’s Cassady?”
“She left me.”
“To go to the bathroom?”
“To meet the physicist.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. I haven’t been abandoned so blithely since Doug Crandall, sophomore year of college.”
“I hear he’s bald and bitter now.”
“Thank you, but the fact remains, I’ve been tossed aside. Let’s meet somewhere for dinner and make a voodoo doll of the physicist with our breadsticks while we’re waiting.”
This was highly irregular for Cassady. There was a line between canceling out on girlfriends because you got a competing
offer from a man and leaving a girlfriend midevening to go to a man. A true girlfriend didn’t cross it without a very good reason. Cassady hadn’t offered a reason at all, simply left. And then there was the fact that, “She just had lunch with him.”
“Compounds the crime, doesn’t it.”
Hidden agendas abounded—Cassady, Peter, Ronnie Willis. I needed to sit down and ingest something fortifying before I attempted to make sense of them all. “I’ll be right there.”
“No, I want a change of scene. And dinner.”
“Where should we meet?”
“On the blasted heath around a cauldron.”
“Not with just two of us.”
“Then, we should at least go to the Village. Employees Only in twenty minutes.”
“Make it thirty.”
“You’re closer than I am.”
“You’re not making allowances for my lousy cab karma.” Cassady can stop a cab with less effort than it takes to blink. She barely gets her arm above her waist and they’re queuing up. Tricia has a more forceful but not much less successful approach. She flings her hand out like she’s starting a Matrix shockwave and a cab stops. Me—I raise, I fling, I lunge, I walk a lot. Cassady says I need to develop a more Zen approach. I was afraid that meant imagining myself as large, yellow, and peeling at the edges, but she said I didn’t have to picture myself as the cab, I had to project an aura of being worthy of a cab.
But here’s one of my big problems in life—worthy worry. I worry I’m not worthy—of cabs, cool boyfriends, great jobs. Which makes me try harder at all of the above, but also to fret pretty consistently about what’s poised to go wrong. At least it gives me a heightened awareness of where and why things can explode in relationships, which figures heavily in the column and in my investigations.
Now if I can just find some non-Freudian explanation for my dislike of the subway.
“That one’s not pathological, it’s practical,” Tricia assured me as I finally took my seat next to her—thirty-three minutes later. Naturally, she’d had no transportation trouble and had arrived well before me. “Now tell me about Peter and the interviews.”
“First things first. What’s up with Cassady?”
“Hormones,” Tricia sniffed. “It borders on the unseemly.”
“My father once told me never to play pool with a physics major, but he never said anything about having sex with one.”
“Which would be unseemly times two.”
“The sex?”
“Your father talking to you about such things. And I’m not implying that Cassady has already leapt into bed with the Unknown Scientist, I’m coming right out and saying she’s being adolescent.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“Nothing.” Tricia paused, eyes widening as she watched me absorb this information. “Not a word.”
This was huge. When Cassady met a new man, we got a complete dossier that would put the CIA to shame at the first debriefing. A physical,
Tricia answered on the third ring. “How’d it go?”
“Peter was just feeling me out.”
“Did you say ‘out’ or ‘up’?”
“Give me some credit.”
“Just asking.”
“Where are you guys? Please tell me you haven’t eaten yet.”
“Well, I can only speak for myself, but I am at Lotus and I am starving.”
“Where’s Cassady?”
“She left me.”
“To go to the bathroom?”
“To meet the physicist.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. I haven’t been abandoned so blithely since Doug Crandall, sophomore year of college.”
“I hear he’s bald and bitter now.”
“Thank you, but the fact remains, I’ve been tossed aside. Let’s meet somewhere for dinner and make a voodoo doll of the physicist with our breadsticks while we’re waiting.”
This was highly irregular for Cassady. There was a line between canceling out on girlfriends because you got a competing
offer from a man and leaving a girlfriend midevening to go to a man. A true girlfriend didn’t cross it without a very good reason. Cassady hadn’t offered a reason at all, simply left. And then there was the fact that, “She just had lunch with him.”
“Compounds the crime, doesn’t it.”
Hidden agendas abounded—Cassady, Peter, Ronnie Willis. I needed to sit down and ingest something fortifying before I attempted to make sense of them all. “I’ll be right there.”
“No, I want a change of scene. And dinner.”
“Where should we meet?”
“On the blasted heath around a cauldron.”
“Not with just two of us.”
“Then, we should at least go to the Village. Employees Only in twenty minutes.”
“Make it thirty.”
“You’re closer than I am.”
“You’re not making allowances for my lousy cab karma.” Cassady can stop a cab with less effort than it takes to blink. She barely gets her arm above her waist and they’re queuing up. Tricia has a more forceful but not much less successful approach. She flings her hand out like she’s starting a Matrix shockwave and a cab stops. Me—I raise, I fling, I lunge, I walk a lot. Cassady says I need to develop a more Zen approach. I was afraid that meant imagining myself as large, yellow, and peeling at the edges, but she said I didn’t have to picture myself as the cab, I had to project an aura of being worthy of a cab.
But here’s one of my big problems in life—worthy worry. I worry I’m not worthy—of cabs, cool boyfriends, great jobs. Which makes me try harder at all of the above, but also to fret pretty consistently about what’s poised to go wrong. At least it gives me a heightened awareness of where and why things can explode in relationships, which figures heavily in the column and in my investigations.
Now if I can just find some non-Freudian explanation for my dislike of the subway.
“That one’s not pathological, it’s practical,” Tricia assured me as I finally took my seat next to her—thirty-three minutes later. Naturally, she’d had no transportation trouble and had arrived well before me. “Now tell me about Peter and the interviews.”
“First things first. What’s up with Cassady?”
“Hormones,” Tricia sniffed. “It borders on the unseemly.”
“My father once told me never to play pool with a physics major, but he never said anything about having sex with one.”
“Which would be unseemly times two.”
“The sex?”
“Your father talking to you about such things. And I’m not implying that Cassady has already leapt into bed with the Unknown Scientist, I’m coming right out and saying she’s being adolescent.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“Nothing.” Tricia paused, eyes widening as she watched me absorb this information. “Not a word.”
This was huge. When Cassady met a new man, we got a complete dossier that would put the CIA to shame at the first debriefing. A physical,
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