The Dictionary of Failed Relationships Page 5
“That sounds wonderful,” Rose said. But she couldn’t help thinking that if Matt had called her when he was supposed to, she would have had to tell Steve no, she couldn’t go, that she had a date. She even worried that if Matt called later in the day to ask her out for Thursday, she would have to say no to him. But she felt that one day’s notice would be way too inconsiderate, and in any event, the dinner could be an opportunity for her to live her life, stay busy, be her own person.
When Rose showed up at the restaurant the next night, her face was pale and her hair beginning to thin. She hadn’t been eating well and her mouth was dry. She kissed everyone hello and collapsed into a chair.
“What’s wrong?” asked Steve. She told them the story. “Maybe he meant you’d talk at the end of the week instead of make plans the end of the week,” said Steve.
“He’s not that dumb,” she said.
“Hmm,” said Steve. “I say give him till tomorrow, and then AMF.”
“What’s AMF?”
“Adios, motherfucker.”
“How much do you like him anyway?” said Richard.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t really know anymore.”
“Do you have his e-mail?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” said Richard. “If you did, you could send him something snarky.”
“Like what?”
“Like, ‘Did ya fall off the face of the earth or something?’ ”
“That’s not snarky!” said Steve. “That’s obnoxious.”
“That was just my first draft,” said Richard. “Give me a second.”
“Don’t listen to either of these guys,” said Jane. She was red-headed and gamine and always had at least five men in love with her. Because of this, she took great joy in playing den mother to other single women. “Don’t call. He knew he was supposed to call and he didn’t.”
“But it’s only Thursday,” said Rose. “Should he get a buffer?”
“When they like you, they call,” she said. “No buffer. Five years ago I might have advised you differently, but now that the Book has permeated our culture, it’s a different story. It’s done for women what Viagra’s done for men: ruined everything. Every other girl’s doing it, so if you don’t, you come off as a desperate freak. But anyway, he’s not worth your time. Palmolive!”
“What do you mean, Palmolive?” asked Rose. Jane mimed vigorously washing her hands.
The food arrived, and as Rose ate her salad, she had a thrilling thought—the kind so intoxicating that it is hard to keep it to yourself. Richard and Steve were engrossed in a conversation about basketball, so Rose tapped Jane on the shoulder.
“What if all I want is a sexual relationship with him?” Rose whispered.
“Oh,” said Jane, who was chewing a piece of endive. “Then a completely different set of rules applies.”
“Really?” said Rose. “What are they?”
“You can call whenever you want. Every decision is based on one single goal: the procurement of sex. There’s no ego, and full humiliation is acceptable.” Rose decided she would go to the bathroom and call him from inside.
“Though to tell you the truth,” said Jane, “when people say they only want a sexual relationship, they’re usually just saying it as a justification to do what they want to do. They can’t see any way to do something so humiliating and wrongheaded if they actually like the person, so they convince themselves that all they really want is sex when in truth they want much more. How was he?”
“That’s an awfully personal question!” exclaimed Rose.
“Just as I suspected,” said Jane.
Rose started to feel a little dizzy. She had sought more clarification and was only getting less. She decided to go to the bathroom—not to call, but to throw some water on her face.
The bathroom was at the back of the restaurant, and there was a woman in her sixties waiting outside the door. She had spike-heeled black boots, red lips, and a wild, crazy look, as though she had once lived a little. Rose stood behind her in line. “What’s the matter?” asked the woman. “You look like you’ve just been run over.”
Rose deliberated for a moment, and then told the woman about Matt. She knew this was an extreme move, but felt that maybe a stranger would be able to offer better advice than people who knew her well. Maybe a stranger would tell her to call.
When Rose finished the story, the woman said, “Have you ever heard of Ferrara Bakery & Cafe?” Rose hadn’t. “It’s in Little Italy on Grand Street, and they sell the best cannoli in the city. It’s so popular that every time you go, there’s a line out the door. Each new customer has to pick a number, and the bakery girl, who is a very attractive young lady, calls out the numbers one by one. When a customer hears his number, he steps up to the counter and she takes his order. If the girl calls number fifty-one and no one answers, she calls it once, maybe twice, and then she calls fifty-two.
“You need to think of yourself as the counter girl at Ferrara Bakery & Cafe. If you call a number and no one answers, you need to move on. You don’t have time to waste. You got a line of people waiting to be helped. They would not take it well if you kept shouting, ‘Fifty-one! Fifty-one!’ until the end of time. As a matter of fact, they would go somewhere else to get their cannoli even though they all knew Ferrara Bakery & Cafe was the best in the city.”
“Wow,” said Rose. “That’s the best advice anyone’s given me in my entire life.”
A thin, drawn woman in her thirties had taken her place next to Rose and was applying powder to her nose. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” she said. “Are you in call-hell?”
“I think I am,” said Rose. “This lady here said something very wise, but it takes a lot longer than one conversation to internalize the concept of healthy self-worth.”
“Tell me about it,” said the second woman. “I’m better at getting through call-hell now than I once was, but it’s only because I took up crochet.”
“Crochet?” said the red-lipped woman.
“Every time I’m about to call a guy who’s bad for me, I crochet a couple rows of a blanket instead. I keep doing it until the urge passes.”
“How big is the blanket?” said Rose.
“Which one?” said the woman. “I’ve made twelve.”
A muscular guy in a white fishnet cutoff top looked up from a nearby table. “I used to do stuff like that to control myself,” he said, “but now I just call. I took this course on radical honesty and learned that anyone I scare away by being clear isn’t worth my time anyway.”
“I hate the ‘not worth my time’ argument!” said a petite, spiky-haired woman dining alone a few tables away. “If she could accept the fact that this guy wasn’t worth her time, she wouldn’t be thinking about him all the time anyway! No one believes in predestination when they’re conflicted by matters of the heart. People get into ruts like the one Rose is in because the American ethos is built on an assumption of free will.”
“How’d you know my name?” said Rose.
“We were raised to think we could make our own fate, like Horatio Alger,” the woman barreled on. “So when our actions don’t lead to a desired result, we convince ourselves we must have taken a wrong turn.”
“It’s not about predestination or free will,” said the leggy, platinum-blond bartender, roller-skating out from behind the bar. “She shouldn’t have slept with him on the first date!”
The entire restaurant became hushed. Every face turned to stare at Rose accusingly.
“But he didn’t come!” Rose shouted. “I did, but he didn’t!”
The patrons began to murmur and talk among themselves. “It doesn’t matter,” said the bartender. “You ruined it. I’m Swedish, so you might think I’d have more liberal notions of sex, but in my experience, nothing long lasting ever comes of first-date sex. Even in Sweden.”
Rose felt a huge gust of wind from up above. Julie Andrews floated down from a hole in the roof, carrying a black paraso
l. “My vocal cords are broken, but I had to weigh in,” she said. “It all went downhill when you used that fake accent on ‘Cawl me latuh.’ He knew you were uncertain that he might not follow up, and though he wasn’t conscious of it, he decided you were too needy. What man wants a needy girl?”
The room started to spin very slowly, like the restaurant at the top of the Marriott Marquis. Rose felt nauseous and dizzy. A sleek, fit lady whom Rose hadn’t noticed before stood up from her table and put her finger in the air. “Narcissistic and uninterested in other people’s personal dilemmas as I usually am,” she said, “I can’t help but opine. I’m a lesbian and the rules are very different, but what I’ve learned from the Forum, which is not the same as EST, is that it matters not what you do but how you feel about what you do.”
“I don’t understand,” said Rose.
“If you imbue Matt with a power he’s not worthy of, then it doesn’t matter if you call or not. You’ve already lost, by defining yourself according to his view of you. Granted, this dilemma stems from a long history of patriarchal marginalization of women, but you have to rip those shackles off! Until you can stop elevating men so that they take over every aspect of your life, you’ll continue the same sad cycle of projection, obsession, and depression.”
The walls were spinning faster, and although Rose stayed still, the other patrons moved along with the walls, oblivious to the motion. “It all comes down to women and men!” shouted a small terrier in the lesbian Forum grad’s shoulder bag. “You were too aggressive early on. He felt his role being usurped and had to flee. Male fear leads to male exit. It was doomed from the moment you paid him to come over.”
“Everyone here is full of it,” said a member of the Australian women’s Olympic bobsledding team, who was drinking a Foster’s at the bar. “If you’re spending so much time thinkin’ about him, you should just call him. Get it over with. That’s what I’d do. If you got a question you want answered, get it answered. Call him! Call him! Call him!”
A couple dozen other patrons joined in with the Australian’s chant. The anti-call lobby inserted quick “Don’t”s in the spaces between the “Call him”s, in a deafening oom-CHA-CHA rhythm. The terrier was now yapping, high-pitched and angry. Julie Andrews was parasoling above Rose’s head, lip-synching so she wouldn’t further hurt her vocal cords. The walls began spinning faster, the faces blurred together, and the voices became an inaudible jumble. The floor shook violently, and a jagged portion of it dropped out beneath Rose’s feet, causing her to be sucked down with an enormous whoosh into the blackness below.
Rose found herself traveling a thousand miles an hour through a twisty, narrow tunnel. She clawed the sides to stop her downward motion, but her fingers slid helplessly down the slick walls. As she came around a bend, she felt an invisible though stable surface materialize beneath her feet. She abruptly landed on her rear and rubbed it in pain. There was a warm patch of light in front of her, so she stood up unsteadily and headed toward it. She came to a large wall of Plexiglas. Behind it, she saw Matt in his apartment, as if he were an exhibit at a museum. He looked healthy—by no means dead—and he was pacing around with great agitation.
He went to the desk, pulled out the garbage can below it, and began strewing refuse onto the floor. He sifted through the cards and scraps, and when he didn’t find what he was looking for, he opened his wallet and emptied it onto the blotter. As he removed bits of paper, he would inspect them desperately, longingly, insistently, and then return them to his wallet. When he had gone through every paper he had removed and had still not found what he was looking for, he ran his fingers through his messy hair and lowered his head to his desk with a moan.
“The blotter!” Rose shouted.
Matt got down on his knees and searched under the desk. “MR. LINGUS!” she cried. “It’s UNDER MR. LINGUS!” She knew she sounded ridiculous, like a spectator at a horror film telling a heroine to run the other way, but she didn’t care. As Rose pounded against the Plexiglas, the prostrate Matt, his desk, and his entire small apartment began to disappear, becoming more and more faded and imperceptible, like a Polaroid in reverse— until finally they were no longer there.
The surface Rose was standing on lurched forward in the manner of a moving sidewalk. Rose half expected the theme song to The Graduate to start playing. She was conveyed forward to another sheet of Plexiglas, once again with Matt’s apartment behind it. She was alarmed to see that Matt was not at all distraught. He was leaning against the refrigerator, kissing a blond girl who was the spitting image of a young Cybill Shepherd. Young Cybill lifted her leg up over Matt’s ass, and Rose heard him say, “Oh, Melissa, I’m so glad we met the other night. You’re the hottest girl I’ve ever seen.”
“I know,” said the girl. “And to think I almost didn’t go to Johno’s party.”
“I’ve never felt so instantly intrigued by anyone before,” said Matt. “I know this might sound hasty, given as how we hardly know each other, but how would you like to become my wife?”
“Oh, Matty!” she exclaimed. “You’ve made me the happiest woman alive!”
Matt lifted the girl up and carried her into the bedroom with great ease, despite his weak frame. Rose scooted to the left as they moved, so that she could see. He gently placed the blond on the bed as if she were a china doll, then he began dry-humping her and whispering terrible things into her ear—things like, “I love the color of your hair,” and, “I’ve been commitment phobic my whole life, but now I feel I can stop running,” and, “You’re so different from all the other girls I’ve dated.” As Matt whispered, the girl nodded with great certainty and joy. Matt kissed her repeatedly on her white neck, then removed her skirt, revealing her hairless thighs, which miraculously had the same width as her calves.
“How weird is this?” the blond cried. “We just met, and now we’re going to take this beautiful leap?”
“I know!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had one-night stands before, but usually afterward I want to kill the girl. It wasn’t like that when we slept together at all! With you, I feel like making a baby!”
“You took the words right out of my mouth!” she cried. “Let’s get to it!” He tore off his shirt and dove down on top of her with great relish. She giggled loudly, and as he mauled her, they slowly disappeared.
Rose felt a huge lump in her throat. Even when she swallowed, it didn’t go away. The moving sidewalk lurched forward again. She came to a third version of Matt’s living room and sighed nervously.
This time, he was sitting at the desk, talking to a brown-haired man, who was leaning against the kitchen sink, his back to Rose. “I don’t know,” Matt was saying to the back, “I feel like I keep dating the same girls over and over again. They’re all so aggressive. It really harshes my mellow.”
“I know what you mean, dude,” said the back.
“The last girl I did it with I was into at first, but then she came on so strong it freaked me out. She chased me down and forced me to kiss her. I should have known not to mess with her. Her underwear was Skank City and then she told a really nasty joke.”
“But you laughed!” Rose cried.
“What party did you meet her at?” said the back.
“Some Valentine’s thing in the East Village, where they give out fake money. She gave me ten bucks to make out with her and then yelled at me when I didn’t come over right away. I was like, Whoa there, cowboy.”
“I’ve been to that party,” said the back, taking a step forward and heading toward the desk. Rose saw that it was Sam, the muscular Jewish painter. She let out a choked sob. “And I just got a bad case of the zacklies.”
“What do you mean?”
“ ’Zackly same thing happened to me last year. Chick was all on my tip and I was like, Girl, you need to chill. I tell you, man, women in this town are des-per-it!” He slammed his fist down on the desk.
“I know,” said Matt. “I need to find a girl who’s relaxed, who does her own thing.”
“Maybe I should move. Maybe I should.”
“Did you call this girl after you did her?” asked Sam.
“Yeah,” said Matt, “but only so she wouldn’t think I was an asshole. When you don’t call at all, they think you’re an asshole. But that’s it. I did the I’m-a-nice-guy call and now, as far as I’m concerned, she’s dead to me. D-E-A-D dead. I’m never calling her again! NEVER!”
He threw his head back and laughed maniacally, and Sam did, too. They looked like evil swallows, their tongues flickering in the air, their Adam’s apples bobbing with glee. As the image evaporated, Rose felt a terrible melancholy rise to her chest. It was as though she had just watched a ship with all the world’s most valuable possessions capsize in a monsoon. She was helpless and angry, and the combination felt like being in mourning.
Suddenly, the invisible floor beneath her dropped out, and she was sucked down into the tunnel again. Rose was certain that when she stopped, she would be dead. But after just a few seconds, she landed with a huge thunk on something soft and very familiar.
She felt her warm comforter beneath her, opened her eyes, and saw the cracks in her ceiling. She was bone-tired, but calm. She spotted the poster of Don’t Look Back across from her, Bob’s eyes low-slung and cynical, and next to it the framed photograph of herself at her Bas Mitzvah, surrounded by her four brothers and her parents. Her breathing slowed and came from her diaphragm, even though despite three years of yoga she had never been able to master this style of breathing. She felt her vision begin to sharpen, her senses begin to return to normal. She rolled over onto her side. Her nightstand was still in place, her phone still sitting in its stand.
And then it began to ring.
The sound was high-pitched, birdlike, and sweet. To Rose, the ringing was different from all other times, as though it contained some bright good news. She was not afraid and not at all uncertain. She was filled with an overwhelming, all-encompassing sense of relief and calm, as though every cell in her body that had ever been unsettled, every neuron in her brain that had ever felt unsure or lonely, was about to be massaged into a sublime state of completion.