listened badly. I had a weird haircut, getting weirder every day, and a tendency to fall up subway staircases, like a fish trying and failing to evolve. All my clothes came from the Salvation Army. And according to Vic’s calculations, I was a slut.
“I mean, I can’t find one I really want. I guess. That’s all. Or one who really wants me, either, actually. I don’t mean to sound arrogant.”
“Hell, darlin’, it’s a tall order to find one that measures up to you,” he said, and grinned. I was stymied.
I reminded myself that he was just being nice. He had, after all, been an actor before he’d been a writer. He was acting. Acting! I must have looked pretty pitiful, if he felt the need to buffer my self-confidence in such a way. I reminded myself that this man was not just a writer, not just an actor,but a writer-actor. Both of my nemesis professions, rolled into one. I repeated “writer-actor” seventeen times in my head, talking myself out of having any form of a crush on the Playwright. I took a deep breath and searched for a new topic. A depressing, unromantic one. Eugene O’Neill, how about? The Iceman Cometh ?
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Early flight tomorrow. It was nice to meet you.” And then he shook my hand.
Thank God.
I wasn’t hitting on the Playwright, and he wasn’t hitting on me. I wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to steal someone else’s man. It was bad form, and though much of my life was an exercise in bad form, that particular thing was outside my limits.
Besides, I didn’t want a man with that much baggage. I had my own baggage: five or six broken-zippered duffel bags crammed full of anvils. The last thing I needed was a man who wanted a lackey to lug his overstuffed set of Samsonite. And kids! No thank you. Me, a stepmother? Almost as implausible as me getting elected president of the United States. Being a stepmother required mothering skills, and it was up for debate whether or not I could even take care of myself. I alternated between adult and child on a daily basis. And then there was the age difference. When he was thirty-five, I’d still been on training wheels. Sure, he was my kind of guy, but it was becoming clearer every day that my kind of guy was not the kind of guy I should be with.
So, I frog-marched my attraction to the Playwright into a barricaded vault in the corner of my brain. I knew myself well enough to know that, despite all of my objections to him being a writer and actor, despite my horror of his children,had the Playwright been single, I would’ve thrown myself at him. With the reality as it was, though, the man was nothing I wanted to deal with. Unavailable. End of story.
I congratulated myself on my newfound maturity. I hadn’t fallen ridiculously for something I couldn’t have, just because he possessed a few traits that seemed ideal. I could be friends with him, and that would be great. I’d send him a letter, a puritanical letter that would absolve me of my embarrassing comment about a better class of men.
I got on the train the next morning and went back home to deal with the rest of my year. Maybe the next day, I’d meet the man I’d been waiting for. Or maybe not. I had nine months to go. Something better could happen at any moment. It couldn’t get any worse.
I was so, so wrong.
Le Petit Cornichon
In Which Our Heroine Learns that Nothing is Greener on the Other Side of the Pond…
“CAN I ASK YOU A FAVOR?” Baler leaned over the café table, a movie-star grin on his handsome, weathered face. I’d met him in line at the grocery store, forty-five minutes before, and now we were drinking espresso and eating sandwiches. He was from Cyprus. I’d never met anyone from Cyprus before, not too surprising, considering that they usually introduced themselves, as Baler had, as either Turkish or Greek. They assumed that, being an ignorant American, you wouldn’t know where Cyprus was. Not that he was wrong. I had only the
“I mean, I can’t find one I really want. I guess. That’s all. Or one who really wants me, either, actually. I don’t mean to sound arrogant.”
“Hell, darlin’, it’s a tall order to find one that measures up to you,” he said, and grinned. I was stymied.
I reminded myself that he was just being nice. He had, after all, been an actor before he’d been a writer. He was acting. Acting! I must have looked pretty pitiful, if he felt the need to buffer my self-confidence in such a way. I reminded myself that this man was not just a writer, not just an actor,but a writer-actor. Both of my nemesis professions, rolled into one. I repeated “writer-actor” seventeen times in my head, talking myself out of having any form of a crush on the Playwright. I took a deep breath and searched for a new topic. A depressing, unromantic one. Eugene O’Neill, how about? The Iceman Cometh ?
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Early flight tomorrow. It was nice to meet you.” And then he shook my hand.
Thank God.
I wasn’t hitting on the Playwright, and he wasn’t hitting on me. I wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to steal someone else’s man. It was bad form, and though much of my life was an exercise in bad form, that particular thing was outside my limits.
Besides, I didn’t want a man with that much baggage. I had my own baggage: five or six broken-zippered duffel bags crammed full of anvils. The last thing I needed was a man who wanted a lackey to lug his overstuffed set of Samsonite. And kids! No thank you. Me, a stepmother? Almost as implausible as me getting elected president of the United States. Being a stepmother required mothering skills, and it was up for debate whether or not I could even take care of myself. I alternated between adult and child on a daily basis. And then there was the age difference. When he was thirty-five, I’d still been on training wheels. Sure, he was my kind of guy, but it was becoming clearer every day that my kind of guy was not the kind of guy I should be with.
So, I frog-marched my attraction to the Playwright into a barricaded vault in the corner of my brain. I knew myself well enough to know that, despite all of my objections to him being a writer and actor, despite my horror of his children,had the Playwright been single, I would’ve thrown myself at him. With the reality as it was, though, the man was nothing I wanted to deal with. Unavailable. End of story.
I congratulated myself on my newfound maturity. I hadn’t fallen ridiculously for something I couldn’t have, just because he possessed a few traits that seemed ideal. I could be friends with him, and that would be great. I’d send him a letter, a puritanical letter that would absolve me of my embarrassing comment about a better class of men.
I got on the train the next morning and went back home to deal with the rest of my year. Maybe the next day, I’d meet the man I’d been waiting for. Or maybe not. I had nine months to go. Something better could happen at any moment. It couldn’t get any worse.
I was so, so wrong.
Le Petit Cornichon
In Which Our Heroine Learns that Nothing is Greener on the Other Side of the Pond…
“CAN I ASK YOU A FAVOR?” Baler leaned over the café table, a movie-star grin on his handsome, weathered face. I’d met him in line at the grocery store, forty-five minutes before, and now we were drinking espresso and eating sandwiches. He was from Cyprus. I’d never met anyone from Cyprus before, not too surprising, considering that they usually introduced themselves, as Baler had, as either Turkish or Greek. They assumed that, being an ignorant American, you wouldn’t know where Cyprus was. Not that he was wrong. I had only the
Similar Books
