“That’s not what the note said. It didn’t say anything about you. Why would it say anything about you?”
“Because I liked you!” Somehow I am embarrassed admitting it, even after all these years. “You knew that.”
He shakes his head firmly. “Nope. Did not.”
“You must have forgotten.”
“I don’t forget shit like that. I have a bomb-ass memory. Your name was not in the note. See. I’d know because I liked you back then.” He peers at me from behind his glasses and then lights another cigarette.
“Bullshit.” I feel myself blush. It’s only Ethan, I tell myself. We are adults now.
“Okay.” He shrugs and inverts the cover of his matchbook. Now he looks embarrassed too. “Don’t believe me.”
“You did?”
“Big time. I remember always helping you out in four square so that you’d get to be king. I’d always pound the king when you were in the queen position. Tell me you didn’t notice that.”
“I didn’t notice that,” I say.
“As it turns out, you’re markedly less perceptive than I once thought…Yeah, I liked you. I liked you all through junior high and high school. And then you dated Beamer. Broke my heart.”
This is big news, but I still can’t get past the fact that my name wasn’t in that note. “I swear I thought Annalise saw it.”
“Annalise is a sweet girl but such a lemming. Darcy probably told her to say that your name was in the note. Or somehow tricked her into thinking it. How is Annalise, anyway? Did she have her kid yet?”
“No. But any minute now.”
“Is she going to the wedding?”
“If she’s not in labor,” I say. “Everybody is but you.”
“And you. Terrible thing about your spleen.”
“Yeah. Tragic.” I smile. “So you’re sure my name really wasn’t in the note?”
I am focusing on evidence from twenty years ago. It is absurd, but I ascribe all kinds of meaning to it.
“Positive,” he says. “Pos-i-tive.”
“Damn,” I say. “What a bitch.”
He laughs. “I had no clue that I was the man. Thought it was all about Doug Jackson.”
“You were not the man. It was all about Doug Jackson,” I say. “That’s the point—I was the only one who liked you. She copied me.” Again, I notice how juvenile I sound whenever I describe my feelings about Darcy.
“Well, you didn’t miss much. Going out with me consisted of sharing a few Hostess cupcakes. Wasn’t very exciting. And I still hooked you up in four square.”
“So maybe Dex will hook me up the next time we all play four square,” I say. “That would be really…” I can’t think of the right word. I can feel myself getting drunk.
“Nifty? Brilliant? Smashing?” Ethan offers.
I nod. “All of those. Yes.”
“Feeling better?” he asks.
He is trying so hard. Between his efforts and the beer I feel somewhat healed, at least temporarily. I consider that I am thousands of miles away from Dex. Dexter—who did have my name as an option when he chose, instead, to check the box next to Darcy’s name. “Yes. A little better. Yes.”
“Well, let’s recap. We determined that I never picked Darcy over you. And that she didn’t get into Notre Dame.”
“But she did get Dex.”
“Forget him. He’s not worth it,” Ethan says, and then glances up at the menu scrawled on a blackboard behind us. “Now. Let’s get you some fish and chips.”
We eat lunch—fish, French fries, and mushy peas that remind me of baby food. Comfort food. And we have a couple more pints. Then I suggest that we go for a walk, see something England-y. So he takes me into Kensington Gardens and shows me Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived.
“See this gate? That’s where they piled all the flowers and letters when she died. Remember those photos?”
“Oh yeah. That was here?”
I was with Dex and Darcy when I found out that Diana had died. We were at the Talkhouse and some guy walked up to us at the bar and said, “Did you hear that Diana died in a car crash?” And even though he could only have been talking about one Diana, Darcy and I both asked, Diana who? The guy said Princess Diana. Then he told us that she died in a high-speed crash while the paparazzi chased her through a tunnel in Paris. Darcy started bawling right on the spot. But for once it wasn’t the give-me-attention tears. They were genuine. She was truly devastated. We both were. Several days later we watched her funeral together, waking at four a.m. to see all of the coverage, just as we had done with her wedding to Prince Charles sixteen years earlier.
Ethan and I meander through Kensington Gardens in a drizzle, without an umbrella. I don’t mind getting wet. Don’t care that my hair will frizz. We pass the palace and circle a small, round pond. “What’s this pond called?”
“Round Pond,” Ethan says. “Descriptive, huh?”
We walk past a bandstand and then over to the Albert Memorial, a huge bronze statue of Prince Albert perched on a throne. “You like?”
“It’s pretty,” I say.
“A grieving Queen Victoria had this thing built when Albert died from typhoid fever.”
“When?”
“Eighteen sixty-or seventy-something…Nice, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Apparently she and Al were pretty tight.”
Queen Victoria must have been sadder than I am now, I suppose. I then have a fleeting thought that I’d prefer losing Dex to illness than to Darcy. So maybe it’s not true love if I’d rather see him die…Okay, I wouldn’t rather see him die.
The rain starts to come down harder. Other than a few Japanese tourists who are snapping pictures on the steps of the memorial, we are alone.
“You ready to head back?” Ethan points in the opposite direction. “We can explore Hyde Park and the Serpentine another day.”
“Sure, we can go back now,” I say.
“Your spleen acting up in this weather?”
“Ethan! I have to go to the wedding.”
“Just blow it off.”
“I’m the maid of honor.”
“Oh, right! I keep forgetting that,” he says, wiping his glasses on his sleeve.
As we walk back to his flat, Ethan chuckles to himself.
“What?”
“Darcy,” he says, shaking his head.
“What about her?”
“I was just thinking about the time she wrote to Michael Jordan and asked him to our prom.”
I laugh. “She actually thought he was going to come! Remember how she was worried about how she would break the news to Blaine?”
“And then Jordan wrote back to her. Or his people did, anyway. That’s the part that I found unreal. I never thought she’d get a response.” He laughs. No matter what he says, I know he has a soft spot for her, in spite of himself. Just as I do.
“Yeah. Well, she did. She still has the letter.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yeah. Don’t you remember how she taped it up in our locker?”
“And yet,” he says, “you never saw the letter from Notre Dame.”
“Okay. Okay. You might be right. But where were you twelve years ago with that insight?”
“As I said, I thought we were on the same page there. The whole thing was pretty transparent…You know, for a smart woman you can be pretty dim.”
“Why, thank you.”
He tips an imaginary hat. “Don’t mention it.”
We return to Ethan’s flat, where I succumb to my jet lag. When I wake up, Ethan offers me a cup of Earl Grey tea and a crumpet. Lunch at a pub, a walk past Diana’s old pad, an afternoon nap where I don’t dream once about Dex, and tea and crumpets with my good friend. The trip is off to a good start. If anything can really be good with a broken heart.
Twenty-Two
That evening we meet up with Ethan’s friends Martin and Phoebe, whom he met during his stint writing for Time Out. I have heard muc
h about both of them: I know that Martin is very proper, went to Oxford, and comes from a ton of money, and that Phoebe hails from East London, once got fired for telling her boss to “piss off,” and has slept with a lot of men.
They are exactly as I imagined. Martin is well dressed and attractive in an unsexy way. He sits with his legs crossed at the knee, nods and frowns a lot, and makes a “hmm” sound whenever anyone else speaks, showing rapt attention. Phoebe is Amazon-tall with untamed, tomato-red hair. I can’t decide whether her orange lipstick clashes with her hair or complements it. I also can’t decide whether she is very pretty or just plain weird-looking. Her body is definitely not ideal, but she doesn’t try to hide it. One roll of her big white stomach shows between her shirt and jeans. Nobody in Manhattan would expose her stomach unless it was as hard as bedrock. Ethan told me once that British women are much less obsessed with appearances and being thin than American women. Phoebe is evidence of this, and it is refreshing. All night she talks about this bloke whom she wants to shag, and that bloke whom she has already shagged. She makes all the statements matter-of-factly, as you would tell someone that work has been very busy or that you are tired of all of the rain. I like her candor, but Martin rolls his eyes a lot and makes dry comments about her being uncouth.
After Phoebe has carried on for a while about this guy Roger, who “deserves to have kerosene poured on his balls,” she turns to me and asks, “So, Rachel, how do you find the men in New York? Are they as bloody dreadful as English men?”
“Why, thank you, darling,” Martin deadpans.
I smile at Martin and then turn back to Phoebe. “It depends…widely varies,” I say. I have never thought in terms of “American men.” They are all I know.
“Are you involved with anyone now?” she asks me, and then blows smoke up toward the ceiling.
“Um. Not exactly. No. I’m…unattached.”
Ethan and I exchange a look. Phoebe is all over it. “What? There is a story here. I know there is.”
Martin unfolds his arms, waves smoke out of his face, and waits. Phoebe makes a hand motion, as if to say, come on, out with it.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Not worth discussing, really.”
“Tell them,” Ethan says.
So now I have no choice in the matter because Ethan has established that there is, indeed, something to tell.
I don’t want to annoy everyone with a long session of “it’s nothing,” “tell,” “really nothing,” “c’mon, tell,” and Phoebe does not seem the type to tolerate that evasive charade. She is Hillary-like in this regard—Hillary is fond of saying, “Well then, why’d you bring it up?” Only in this instance, Ethan brought it up. In any case I am stuck, so I say, “I’ve been seeing this guy all summer who is getting married in…less than two weeks. I thought he might call the wedding off. But he didn’t. So here I am. Single once again.” I tell my story without emotion, a fact that makes me proud. I am making progress.
Phoebe says, “Usually they wait until they’re married to cheat. This bloke has a head start, eh?…What’s his wife-to-be like? Do you know her?”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“A real bitch, is she?” Phoebe asks solicitously.
Martin clears his throat and waves away her smoke again. “Maybe Rachel doesn’t wish to discuss it. Have we considered that?”
“No, we haven’t,” she says to him, and then to me, “Do you mind discussing it?”
“No. I don’t mind,” I say. Which I think is the truth.
“So? The girl he’s marrying—how do you know her?”
“Well…” I say. “We’ve known each other a long time.”
Ethan cuts to the chase. “In a nutshell, Rachel is the maid of honor.” He pats me on the back and then rests his hand on my shoulder in a congratulatory way. He is clearly pleased to have offered his mates this nugget of transatlantic gossip.
Phoebe isn’t fazed. I’m sure she’s seen worse trouble. “Bloody mess,” she says sympathetically.
“But it’s over now,” I say. “I made my feelings known. I told him to call the wedding off. And he picked her. So that’s that.” I try to mask the fact that I am a rejected mess; I think I am doing a good job of it.
“She’s moving on marvelously,” Ethan says.
“Yes. You don’t look a bit ruffled,” Phoebe says. “Never would have guessed.”
“Should she be crying in her Carling?” Martin asks Phoebe.
“I would be. Remember Oscar?”
Ethan groans, and Martin winces. Clearly they remember Oscar.
Then Ethan tells them that he thinks I should blow off the wedding. Phoebe wants to know more about the bride, so Ethan gives the rundown on Darcy, including some color on our friendship. He even throws in the bit about Notre Dame. I answer questions when directly asked, but otherwise I just listen to the three of them discussing my plight as if I’m not present. It is amusing to hear Martin and Phoebe using Dex’s name and Darcy’s name and analyzing both in their British accents. People whom they have never met and likely will never meet. Somehow it helps put things in perspective. Almost.
“You don’t want to be with him anyway,” Phoebe says.
“That’s what I tell her,” Ethan says.
Martin offers that maybe he’ll still call it off.
“No,” I say. “He came over to my place the night before I left and told me in no uncertain terms. He’s getting married.”
“At least he told you outright,” Martin says.
“At least,” I say, thinking that was a good thing. Otherwise I would be filled with hope on this visit. I have to give Dex limited credit for telling me face-to-face.
Suddenly Phoebe gets this fabulous idea. Her friend James is newly single, and he loves American women. Why not set that up and see what happens?
“She lives in New York,” Martin says. “Remember?”
“So? That’s just a minor logistical problem. She could move. He could move. And at the very least, they both will have a good time. Perhaps have a good shag.”
“Not everyone sees a shag as therapy,” Martin says.
Phoebe raises one eyebrow. I wish I could do that. There are times when it is such an appropriate gesture. “Oh, really? You might want to give it a go, Marty.” She turns back to me, waiting to hear my position on this topic.
“A good shag can never hurt,” I say, to win favor with Phoebe.
She runs her hands through her tousled hair and looks smug. “My point precisely.”
“What’re you doing?” Ethan asks, as Phoebe retrieves her cell phone from her purse.
“Calling James,” she says.
“Fucking hell, Pheebs! Put your mobile down,” Martin says. “Have some tact.”
“No, it’s okay,” I say, fighting against my prudish instincts. “You can call him.”
Phoebe beams. “Yeah. You boys stay out of this one.”
So the next night, thanks to Phoebe, I am eating Thai food on a blind date with James Hathaway. James is a thirty-year-old freelance journalist. He is nice-looking, although Dexter’s opposite. He is on the short side, with blue eyes, light hair, and even paler eyebrows. Something about him reminds me of Hugh Grant. At first I think it’s just the accent, but then I realize that like Hugh, he has a certain flippant charm. And like Hugh, I bet he’s slept with plenty of women. Maybe I should let him add me to his List.
I nod and laugh at something James just said, a wry comment about the couple next to us. He’s funny. It suddenly occurs to me that maybe Dex is not very funny. Of course, I’ve always subscribed to the notion that if I want to laugh out loud, I’ll watch a Seinfeld rerun, that I don’t need to date a stand-up comic, but I contemplate revising my position. Maybe I do want a funny guy. Maybe Dex is lacking some crucial element. I try to run with this, picturing him as humorless, even boring. It doesn’t really work. It’s hard to trick yourself like that. Dex is funny enough. He is perfect for me. Other than the small, bothersome part a
bout him marrying Darcy.
I realize that I have missed what James has been going on about, something about Madonna. “Do you like her?” he asks me.
“Not especially,” I say. “She’s okay.”
“Usually Madonna elicits a stronger response. Usually people love her or hate her…Ever played that game? Love it or hate it?”
“No. What is it?”
James teaches me the rules of the game. He says that you throw out a topic or a person or anything at all, and both people have to decide whether they love it or hate it. Being neutral isn’t allowed. What if you are neutral? I ask. I don’t love or hate Madonna.
“You have to pick one or the other. So pick,” he says. “Love her or hate her?”
I hesitate and then say, “Okay then. I hate her.”
“Good. Me too.”
“Do you really?” I ask.
“Well, actually, yes. She’s talentless. Now you do one.”
“Um…I can’t think. You do another one.”
“Fine. Water beds.”
“So tacky. I hate them,” I say. I’m not on the fence with that one.
“I do as well. Your turn.”
“Okay…Bill Clinton.”
“Love him,” James says.
“Me too.”
We keep playing the game as we finish our wine.
As it turns out, we both hate (or at least hate more than we love) people who keep goldfish as pets, Speedos, and Ross on Friends. We both love (or love more than we hate) Chicken McNuggets, breast implants (I lie here, just to be cool, but am surprised that he does not lie in the other direction—maybe he fears that I have them), and watching golf on television. We are split on rap music (I love; it gives him headaches), Tom Cruise (he loves; I still hate for dumping Nicole), the royal family (I love; he says he’s a republican, whatever that means), and Las Vegas (he loves; I associate it with craps, dice-rolling, Dex).
I think to myself that I like (I mean, love) the game. Being extreme. Clear-cut. All or nothing. I do Dex in my mind, flip-flopping my decision twice—hate, love, hate, love. I remember that my mother once told me that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. She knew what she was talking about. My goal is to be indifferent to Dex.