I managed a small, tequila-fueled laugh. “It isn’t an audition. It’s just…dinner and drinks.”
Too many drinks, at that. Was it getting warm in here, or was it just me? I felt flushed.
“Dinner and drinks is my favorite kind of date.”
The dimples made an appearance again, dammit. Whew…I was definitely warm, and he was definitely hot.
“Yeah,” I told him, “but dinner and drinks doesn’t always have to be a date, you know? Sometimes it can just be…dinner and drinks.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said with a shrug.
“That’s what I want.”
There was just one teensy problem with that.
A platonic dinner and drinks appointment wasn’t what I wanted. All at once, La Margarita was the Garden of Eden, and I had a fierce hankering for forbidden fruit.
“Sorry if I read you wrong,” said the forbidden fruit.
“No problem,” said Eve, staring into his bottomless black eyes, thinking that she always got what she wanted, and what she wanted right now was…
Stop it. Bad Eve!
He squirmed a little. “Do you want to leave?”
“No! Do you?”
“No. But I should warn you…I don’t know if I can do the platonic thing with you. I felt like there was something there, you know?”
“You mean like…?” I couldn’t think of a word that didn’t sound ridiculously corny.
Sparks…an attraction…a bond…
I just couldn’t bring myself to say any of those things without cringing.
“You know…like sparks,” he said.
He wasn’t cringing.
“You felt sparks?” I asked, hating that I felt them, too. Big, scary sparks.
“Yeah.”
We stared at each other for a second, and it was weird, but there was definitely a connection. It wasn’t awkward, and it should have been.
I wasn’t moved to flee, and I should have been.
An odd little sensation darted from my stomach to my lower back; the ultraresponsive region where I always feel the initial shivers of desire.
He exhaled, broke the gaze, shook his head. “How long have you been together?”
“What?”
“You and your boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, I couldn’t remember. That definitely wasn’t a good sign. “Um, awhile.”
“Months?”
“Yes. Er, years, actually.”
“Years? That’s…that is…great.”
I sensed from his tone and the look on his face that what he really wanted to say was that it sucked, and all at once, I wanted to tell him that I felt the same way.
I wanted to point out that if I didn’t have a boyfriend, we could be a couple, and wouldn’t that be fun?
What the hell are you thinking, Beau? demanded the part of my brain that was irritatingly immune to tequila and temptation, and stored preachy tidbits from Sunday sermons to spout at every moral impasse. This is wrong. Keep your mouth shut. Do you hear me? Do not say anything you’ll regret later.
“My boyfriend and I are kind of having a crisis,” said my voice, fueled by the part of my brain that soaked up tequila, thrived on temptation and relied on past issues of Cosmo for ethical guidance.
He leaned forward, clearly intrigued. “What kind of crisis?”
He was so close I could smell the cilantro and lime on his breath, and I found myself wondering how it would taste on his lips. I heard myself mumbling some convoluted explanation about Mike’s job offer out West, and my wanting to stay in the East, but the whole time I was blabbing I was wondering what it would be like to lean across the table and kiss him.
“So he’s a plastic surgeon?” Mike asked.
“Who?” I looked around.
“Your boyfriend.”
“A plastic surgeon?” I frowned. “No, he just got a master’s in computer science.”
Mike nodded, but he still looked confused. “And he’s living in a teepee?”
I wondered if he’d had a couple of extra drinks before I arrived. “A teepee?” I echoed. “He doesn’t live in a teepee. He lives in a condo in Long Beach. But he wants to move to Silicon Valley to take this job, so—”
“Wait a minute…were you talking about Silicon Valley?” A slow smile was spreading over his face.
“Yes. Why?”
“I thought you meant Silicon…you know…”
“No…What?”
“You know…”
“I really don’t know.”
He was laughing now, shaking his head. “Boob jobs.”
“Boob jobs?”
“Yeah, you know…silicon implants…boob jobs…plastic surgeon.”
“Oh!” I started laughing, too.
“But what about the teepee?”
“What about it?” I giggled, picturing Mike living in a teepee wearing surgical scrubs.
“I don’t know…I thought you said something about a teepee.”
Teepee…
Teepee…
Lightbulb moment.
“TCP/IP,” I announced, and screamed with laughter.
I guess you had to be there.
But trust me, I wasn’t the only one who was laughing.
When at last we stopped cracking each other up with various comments about boob jobs and teepees, it took us a few seconds to recover. You know how, after a really good laugh you wipe your eyes and shake your head and make those little sighing sounds? Well, we were both doing that, and grinning at each other, and it was then that I realized I was having a better time with this new Mike than I’d had at any point last week with my Mike.
In fact, I was having such a good time that I found myself wishing that this Mike were my Mike and the other Mike were…well, old Mike.
That was why, when he walked me to the subway, I asked him if he wanted to hang out again sometime.
And that was why, when he asked me if it could be a date next time, I hesitated only for a second before I said yes.
fifteen
The present
It’s been six days since Mike and I started e-mailing each other regularly.
Maybe often is a more apt way to describe it.
I guess constantly would be even better.
Or worse, depending on how you look at it.
Worse in the sense that I am a married mother of three and I really have no business whatsoever carrying on an electronic flirtation with an old flame.
The key word being electronic.
Because really, the whole thing is harmless, if you think about it. It isn’t as though anything can come of it, what with fifteen years and a thousand miles lying between us.
I keep telling myself that what I’ve been doing with Mike is the postmillennial equivalent of a seventies housewife batting her eyes at the Maytag repairman.
Less provocative than that, even.
It certainly isn’t as though we’re exchanging steamy missives laced with longing and innuendo.
All right, it’s not exactly like we’re exchanging recipes, either.
There might be a slight undercurrent of longing and innuendo, but believe me, it’s totally innocuous. Here’s a sample:
Hey, guess what? I dreamed about you last night.
Uh-oh. What was it about? Did you wake up screaming? Was it a nightmare?
LOL No! I woke up wishing I could go back to sleep and finish the dream.
So why didn’t you? It’s not like you have to go to work or anything.
No, but it’s not like we’re both single or anything, either. If we were, I wouldn’t just be seeing you in my dreams.
Naturally, being new to this cyber-shorthand stuff, I have no clue what means. I’m dying to know, but I refuse to come right out and ask. Not only am I reluctant to have him make fun of me, the way he did when I asked him what LOL meant, but I guess I’m afraid of what might mean.
The possibilities that have run through my head aren’t e
xactly harmless.
What if means erotic grope? Or, I don’t know…ecstatic groan?
I can’t help feeling that nobody other than my husband should really be groaning in ecstasy over me. Not even over the Internet, or in a dream. Not even if it’s somebody with whom I have shared many an ecstatic groan in person.
It might not be so bad if my relationship with Mike in the past hadn’t been simultaneous with my relationship with my husband. You know, if Mike were simply somebody with whom I’d had a meaningless fling long before I met the man I was destined to marry.
But I was seeing both Mikes at the same time before everything blew up in my face and I was forced to choose. If Mike—my Mike, aka father-of-my-children Mike—knew that I had struck up a correspondence with the man who almost stole me away from him…
No. He isn’t going to know. There’s no way he’ll ever find out. I’m certainly not going to tell him. I’m not going to tell anybody.
Except one person.
The one person I have always turned to when things get dicey.
As far as I’m concerned, things took a turn for dicey at . So here I am, taking advantage of the fact that all three boys are safely captivated by a Blue’s Clues video, flipping through my address book in search of a telephone number I’ve never quite managed to memorize.
That’s because I don’t dial it nearly as often as I should. Especially considering that it’s not even long-distance.
“Good morning, Valerie Kenmore’s office.”
“Is she there, please?”
“Who’s calling?” Valerie’s secretary asks crisply, as though she is a pivotal player in The Life and Times of Valerie Kenmore, and I am a mere extra.
“It’s Beau.”
“Beau…?” Clearly, she expects a last name.
“Just Beau,” I say, piqued. I mean, come on. The world is hardly populated by hordes of women named Beau. “She’ll know.”
She does.
Take that, snotty secretary!
Two seconds after she puts me on hold there’s a click, and Valerie’s voice exclaims, “Hey, stranger! How’s it going?”
She sounds so pleasantly surprised to hear from me that I instantly feel bad that I never think to call her just to chat.
Guilt, in case you haven’t noticed, is my specialty these days.
“Everything is great,” I say. “How about with you?”
“Same old thing. Although, I just got back from Denver.”
“Business?”
“Vacation.”
See, this is what I mean. There was a time in my life when I would have been privy to Val’s vacation plans. As a matter of fact, there was a time in my life when Val and I took annual vacations together.
Without fail, every spring, the two of us would jet off to some spa or resort for a long weekend. I swore, when I got married, that it wasn’t going to change. I promised her we would still do our girls’ weekend every year, no matter what. And, even though it was hard for me to leave Mike for three whole days, I always kept that promise…
Until Mikey came along.
If leaving Mike was hard, leaving his precious newborn namesake was impossible. That first year, I invited Val up from the city to spend a weekend at our house instead. She grumbled, but she came.
We gossiped, we shopped, we sat up late watching chick flicks and drinking wine—same things we had done a thousand times as roommates and on our getaway weekends.
But it wasn’t the same. For one thing, we no longer knew the same people; gossip isn’t nearly as scintillating when it’s about a total stranger.
Plus, I had to bring Mikey shopping because he was nursing and a militant La Leche League lady had brainwashed me regarding the evils of pumping breast milk into bottles. So my girls’ weekend with Valerie was a threesome. A cumbersome threesome, at that. You can’t take the stroller on escalators at the mall, so we had to keep waiting for elevators. The stroller didn’t fit in changing rooms, so we had to take turns trying things on. And I hadn’t lost all my baby weight, so unfortunately for Val, I was more interested in browsing through the racks at Baby Gap than Neiman Marcus.
The evenings were even more challenging. Mikey’s rigorous wee-hour-feeding schedule had left me so zapped that I couldn’t keep my eyes open past the opening credits of even the most compelling chick flick, especially after two sips of wine—which was all I was allowed to have, lest my tainted breast milk transform my suckling offspring into a drunkard.
The following year, when I invited Valerie to join me in mommyland again, she was prepared with an excuse. Thus, the pattern was broken. I think we were both relieved.
In the past, our friendship had worked despite our major differences. Valerie was overweight and underemployed and perpetually lovelorn; I was thin and career-driven and had a steady boyfriend (or two at once). But somehow, the two of us shared acres of common ground.
These days, the chasm between us is considerably more vast than the mere fifty-minute Metronorth ride that separates my suburban raised ranch and her East Side co-op.
She’s a workaholic marketing manager; still single, still struggling with her weight, still searching for Mr. Right even as her biological clock prepares to toll its final hour. She’s also still the first to admit—without resentment, which has always amazed me—that she desperately wants what I have.
Sometimes, I look at her solitary life with a shudder and I think, There, but for the grace of God…
But once in a while, especially lately, I look at her solitary life and I think I wouldn’t mind trading places with her for a day. Maybe two.
If I were Valerie, and single, I would be able to sleep late on weekend mornings. I would always have the remote control to myself. And I would probably know what means.
“Val, what does mean?” I ask, because preamble is largely unnecessary with Val, which is one of the reasons I love her.
“E.g. stands for the Latin phrase exempli gratia, which means for example,” she says promptly.
“No, not that e.g. I know that one. I’m talking about the kind of with those greater-than/less-than signs around it. The kind people use in e-mail.”
“You mean an emoticon?”
“A what?”
She laughs. “An emoticon. You know…like a little smiley face made out of a colon and a parenthesis.”
Yes, I think. Like:)
“The emoticon stands for evil grin,” Val informs me. “Why?”
Evil grin.
Evil grin?
What a relief. Evil grin is far more innocent than erotic grope.
Then again, when I think about what Mike wrote—it’s not like we’re both single or anything…if we were, I wouldn’t just be seeing you in my dreams—and I picture his handsome face wearing an evil grin while typing that—there’s nothing innocent about it.
“So spill it, Beau. Who is grinning evilly at you?”
“You’re never going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“Mike.”
“Mike?” Clearly disappointed, she says, “I thought it was going to be something juicy.”
“Oh, it’s juicy.”
“I hate to break it to you, but exchanging e-mails with one’s husband isn’t exactly juicy.”
“Who said I’m exchanging e-mails with my husband?”
Silence.
Then, “You mean, Mike, Mike?”
“I mean Mike, Mike.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I know. He found me.”
“I didn’t even know you were hiding.”
“I wasn’t. I just…we lost touch after that last summer. You know how it is. I had no idea whatever happened to him, and then, bam. He Googled me.”
She snickers. “Scandalous! So where is he?”
“Florida.”
“Good. I was hoping you weren’t going to say New York.”
“Why?”
“Because if he was in New York, you
might be tempted to see him, and that would be…well, wrong. Thou shalt not Google thy neighbor’s wife.” She snickers again.
“I’m glad you find this so amusing.”
“I can’t help it. Is he married?”
“Divorced.”
“So he’s available.”
“Yes, but—”
“Mommy, I want French toast,” Mikey announces, appearing in the doorway.
“In a second, sweetie. Go back and watch Blue.”
“But I saw this one before, Mommy. It’s the one where Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper take baby Paprika to—”
“Mikey, please. This is a very important conversation.” He doesn’t budge, so I add, “If you go in the other room right now, I’ll give you chocolate.”
“Okay.”
I give him a handful of Hershey’s Kisses I keep in the top of the plate cupboard for bribery. “Half of these are for your brother.”
“Which brother?”
“Josh. Do not give Tyler any candy. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Are you going to give Tyler any candy?” I ask, because that’s how these things work.
“No, Mommy.”
“Are you going to share half your candy with Josh?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“And are you going to make sure Josh doesn’t put his chocolate into his pockets for later?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Okay, go.” To Valerie, I say, “Sorry.”
“Chocolate in his pockets for later?” she asks, laughing.
“It’s a habit he’s picked up lately. He stashes food away like a little squirrel. Which isn’t so bad when it’s not chocolate and ninety degrees out.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“This whole Mommy thing. It’s so stressful.”
She doesn’t know the half of it.
“Get back to the Mike thing,” she urges. “He’s available?”
“He’s available. But I’m not, and he knows it. So don’t worry.”