Sisterhood
Perhaps these two beautiful Italian women chatting with their backs against the toilet mirrors would be so kind as to step aside so that the less naturally fortunate among us might have a chance to disguise our many flaws.
Boy
Now all my friends have left, but I’m still here and have somehow slipstreamed into a conversation with a young man, a poet and playwright. (He tutors wealthy children for money.) He is twenty-three years old, with eyes so big and intense I can hardly bring myself to meet them, and a name I can’t get right, no matter how many times he tells me — Calum or Caleb or Conrad; it becomes a running joke in which he keeps changing it to confuse me. He’s earnest, idealistic, and his hair curls perfectly, as though for me alone, and he’s listening to everything I say with something that feels close to awe, as though he’s never met anyone like me before; and he laughs at all my jokes with his head thrown back so that I can see the baby-pink ripple of his palate, and he touches my shoulder, my elbow and (once) the small of my back with feather-light fingertips — as if he wasn’t really touching me at all, but rather wanted to show the impulse was there, one I understand because I’ve felt it too; not romantic, of course, because I have Luke, who I love and who I only haven’t mentioned because it simply, honestly hasn’t come up, nothing more sinister, however, being equally honest, there is nonetheless an attraction in the purely scientific sense of two discrete entities drawn together; but when he mentions a film by a director from Hong Kong, a film Luke made me watch, about yearning and forbidden love, I go, “Oh! That’s my—” and I’m about to confess, about to say boyfriend’s favorite film, but I so don’t want this boy’s attention to curdle, because when do I ever get to feel this good, this charismatic and this un-monstrous? So, I say like a traitor, “That’s my favorite film,” though I found it in truth a little slow, but no, credit where it’s due, still beautiful; and right now I love that he loves it. I love that he loves it more than I care that Luke loves it, because this boy is new and full of possibility, he is a poet who thinks I am “rare” (it glows like a coal in the pit of my stomach), and he thinks I know things, such as WHO I AM and WHAT I WANT, whereas Luke, good, old, devoted Luke, knows I don’t know anything, and not only that, he also knows all my faults and bad habits — he has seen me on the toilet, seen me squeezing my pores at the mirror, kissed me despite putrid morning breath, made love to me despite all the horrors of my body, heard me say mean, bitter things about people, about himself, to his face for nothing, less than nothing — for being supportive, patient, constant, too loving, too accepting; for simply sticking with me even when he knows what a hollow person I am, and, “Um…” I’m saying to the boy, daring to look into those huge bovine eyes, to steady myself with a hand on his shoulder, “um, just…I’ll be…Give me one minute,” and then I get out of there, plowing through bodies, and tumble into the first taxi I can find, my insides humming, disappointed but grateful, ultimately, that I never did get a proper handle on his name, so that I can’t spend tomorrow, or next week, or next month Googling him and in turmoil about what might have been.
Taking advantage
“Good morning! Seemed you had fun last night.”
“I did,” I say, struggling for specifics, beyond the where and the who (noisy bar, girlfriends). “Sorry I was home later than I said.”
“You certainly made waiting up worth my while,” Luke says, grinning.
“Shit.” I throw my arm across my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”
“I hope you’re not,” says Luke. “I was on fire. ‘Best ever’: that’s a direct quote. You do remember the excellent sex, don’t you?”
I can’t tell whether he is having me on and look at the bin for a condom wrapper. The bin isn’t in the corner where it should be, but by the bed — no wrapper and, mercifully, no vomit.
“I’m not falling for that,” I say.
“Which part? Best ever, or that it happened at all?”
I nod at the bin. “Where’s the condom wrapper, then?”
He freezes. “Claire, are you kidding me? You said you were ready to stop using protection — in fact, you insisted that we didn’t! Please tell me you weren’t so drunk you can’t remember making that quite-major life decision.”
Everything is tingling and not in a good way. “Yeah, no, of course I was kidding. That was a joke. Of course I remember.” But now he’s openly laughing, so I whomp him with my pillow. “You’re such a dick! Don’t do that!”
“Sorry, sorry, that was mean,” he admits.
“Ugh. I must have been in a complete state.”
He laughs. “Are you going to tell me the great epiphany now?”
“The great epiphany…Is this another joke?”
“You said you’d understood something fundamental about life, but when I asked you to tell me what it was, you wouldn’t.”
“ ‘Couldn’t’ might be more accurate,” I say. Now that he’s mentioned it, this does sound awfully familiar. I do recall a state of vivid revelation, a sense that the fabric of the world had burst open and exposed some essential truth about human existence. That, I do remember.
“What a tragedy,” I say bravely, “to have come so close to the meaning of life and yet have nothing to show for it.”
“We are indeed much the poorer,” agrees Luke, nuzzling my shoulder.
Moderation
I wish I liked myself a bit more, and wine more than a bit less.
Spinning
Dismounting the exercise bike post-class, heaving and dizzy, I vow to myself it’s the last one I’ll take. All this energy into going nowhere is starting to take its toll.
Fast
I get an email from Sarah at work: Can you meet tonight?
Everything OK??? I ask, but she only confirms the time and place, and for the rest of the afternoon I speculate about what could possibly be wrong: Paddy’s moving out; he’s seeing someone else; she’s pregnant; one of her parents is gravely ill…
She’s already at the bar when I get there, sipping Prosecco. She slides a glass across to me as I sit down, and I strike pregnant from my mental list.
“How are you?” she asks.
“How are you? Are we celebrating? Have you got a new job?”
She holds up her left hand, where a diamond ring now sits.
I smile, shaking my head. “What?”
“What do you think?”
“You’re engaged?”
“I’m engaged!”
“To Paddy?”
“Of course!”
“Oh my God!”
“I know!”
“Oh my God!”
“Yeah!”
“Oh my God.” I say it more quietly this time, glass at my lips. Her forehead wrinkles a little. “And, of course, congratulations!” We both look at the ring, the way it glitters when she moves.