skipped work again and he wanted me to walk the dog?
“And I want you to tell me all about your day,” he said.
I allowed myself to be persuaded. Especially when the word gelato was raised. I changed into sneakers and a pair of pedal pushers and out the door we went—my roommate, my dog, and me. We were taking little Max to the park together for the first time.
Wendy was right. This business of having joint custody of a dog did feel intimate. But what was wrong with that? I knew it was dangerous to think this way—to let myself get carried away—but Fleishman and I did go way back. So I occasionally had a, shall we say, fondness for him…was that so bad?
Whenever I saw Wendy or one of my sisters shaking their heads over my relationship with Fleishman, it made me want to scream. Was this or was this not the twenty-first century? In their minds—especially my family’s—there was simply no complexity allowed when it came to relations between the sexes. But surely we had progressed to the point where a man and a woman could be friends.
Mind you, this enlightened attitude of mine did not prevent me from periodically holing up by myself and something Sara Lee and weeping over the fact that Fleish just didn’t love me. I wasn’t made of stone. The mere thought of When Harry Met Sally, a film most women thought of as the best feel-good movie of the past century, was enough to send me into a week-long funk. I knew, knew it in my bones, that there wasn’t going to be any big New Year’s happy ending scene for us at the end of the last reel.
Nope. Wasn’t going to happen.
See? I wasn’t completely unrealistic.
It’s just that meeting Fleishman had changed everything for me.
Okay, actually it was losing forty-five pounds that changed everything. But Fleishman was the first guy who ever saw me as I wanted to be seen—in other words, not as a big fat loser. Maybe it was the case of the baby duckling latching onto the first creature it sees, but when Fleishman and I paired off during our first year in college, it felt right.
Likewise, when we split up the next year, it felt wrong. But I was willing to deal with that. To play it cool. You don’t spend eighteen years of your life feeling like one of society’s castoffs without developing a teeny bit of self-protection. Just friends? Okay, I could handle that.
The truth was, if I tried to envision waking up on a weekend morning without him, it felt like a crater was opening up in my chest.
“So what happened at work?” he asked.
I told him he didn’t want to know. He insisted he did. I hedged. He cajoled. We stopped for ice cream.
And then it all came spilling out. I told him all about Luanne, the pedophile cover, Cassie’s treachery, having to call all the authors who had been told I was an idiot, then Janice Wunch and the late list. It was good to get it off my chest.
All the while, Fleishman sat across the wrought iron café table from me, barely touching his plastic lavender tulip cup of gelato. I really didn’t expect anything more from Fleishman than what he was giving me—a sympathetic ear and a few understanding nods.
But when I was done, and was scraping at the last bit of rum coconut raisin in my cup, I was surprised to find myself getting an earful.
“This is just outrageous!” he exclaimed. “You need to march up to that Cassie woman tomorrow morning—first thing, Rebecca—and tell her to give you those authors back!”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Of course you can. Tell her where to get off.” He squinted. “Who did she take? Anybody good?”
I lifted my shoulders. “I’m not sure. I still don’t know who most of these people are. And anyway, I’m obviously swamped. I’m not sure I should go chasing after more work.”
His jaw dropped. “It’s the principle of the thing, damn it. At the very least, you need to tell your boss what’s going on.”
“Squeal, you mean?”
“You have to squeal.”
“But
“And I want you to tell me all about your day,” he said.
I allowed myself to be persuaded. Especially when the word gelato was raised. I changed into sneakers and a pair of pedal pushers and out the door we went—my roommate, my dog, and me. We were taking little Max to the park together for the first time.
Wendy was right. This business of having joint custody of a dog did feel intimate. But what was wrong with that? I knew it was dangerous to think this way—to let myself get carried away—but Fleishman and I did go way back. So I occasionally had a, shall we say, fondness for him…was that so bad?
Whenever I saw Wendy or one of my sisters shaking their heads over my relationship with Fleishman, it made me want to scream. Was this or was this not the twenty-first century? In their minds—especially my family’s—there was simply no complexity allowed when it came to relations between the sexes. But surely we had progressed to the point where a man and a woman could be friends.
Mind you, this enlightened attitude of mine did not prevent me from periodically holing up by myself and something Sara Lee and weeping over the fact that Fleish just didn’t love me. I wasn’t made of stone. The mere thought of When Harry Met Sally, a film most women thought of as the best feel-good movie of the past century, was enough to send me into a week-long funk. I knew, knew it in my bones, that there wasn’t going to be any big New Year’s happy ending scene for us at the end of the last reel.
Nope. Wasn’t going to happen.
See? I wasn’t completely unrealistic.
It’s just that meeting Fleishman had changed everything for me.
Okay, actually it was losing forty-five pounds that changed everything. But Fleishman was the first guy who ever saw me as I wanted to be seen—in other words, not as a big fat loser. Maybe it was the case of the baby duckling latching onto the first creature it sees, but when Fleishman and I paired off during our first year in college, it felt right.
Likewise, when we split up the next year, it felt wrong. But I was willing to deal with that. To play it cool. You don’t spend eighteen years of your life feeling like one of society’s castoffs without developing a teeny bit of self-protection. Just friends? Okay, I could handle that.
The truth was, if I tried to envision waking up on a weekend morning without him, it felt like a crater was opening up in my chest.
“So what happened at work?” he asked.
I told him he didn’t want to know. He insisted he did. I hedged. He cajoled. We stopped for ice cream.
And then it all came spilling out. I told him all about Luanne, the pedophile cover, Cassie’s treachery, having to call all the authors who had been told I was an idiot, then Janice Wunch and the late list. It was good to get it off my chest.
All the while, Fleishman sat across the wrought iron café table from me, barely touching his plastic lavender tulip cup of gelato. I really didn’t expect anything more from Fleishman than what he was giving me—a sympathetic ear and a few understanding nods.
But when I was done, and was scraping at the last bit of rum coconut raisin in my cup, I was surprised to find myself getting an earful.
“This is just outrageous!” he exclaimed. “You need to march up to that Cassie woman tomorrow morning—first thing, Rebecca—and tell her to give you those authors back!”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Of course you can. Tell her where to get off.” He squinted. “Who did she take? Anybody good?”
I lifted my shoulders. “I’m not sure. I still don’t know who most of these people are. And anyway, I’m obviously swamped. I’m not sure I should go chasing after more work.”
His jaw dropped. “It’s the principle of the thing, damn it. At the very least, you need to tell your boss what’s going on.”
“Squeal, you mean?”
“You have to squeal.”
“But
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