All You Could Ask For: A Novel (9 page)

I WOULDN’T SAY I’M looking for a man.

I wouldn’t let
you
say I am, either. It aggravates me to no end to answer questions about the lack of men—or a man—in my life. It isn’t as though my world is incomplete because I do not share it with a man, nor do I feel a husband would validate anything about me. I am a smart, successful, single woman and I am wholly unapologetic about that. I don’t need to explain myself to the men I compete with professionally, nor to the happy wives I encounter regularly—those bejeweled and be-Birkined grown-up sorority girls who compete with each other over matters like which summer camps their children attend. And I
certainly
don’t need to explain myself to my mother, who is in no position to lecture anyone on the subject of marriage. The truth is, I have everything I need in life and what I do not have I am more than capable of supplying myself.

Which is not to suggest it wouldn’t be nice to have someone to share it with. Of course it would. It would be lovely to be checking my watch late in the business day, smiling wickedly because tonight is my birthday and I know
he
has something devilish cooked up for me. It would be heavenly to come home to a dimly lit room, an open bottle and two glasses sparkling on the table, Billie Holiday singing in the background. Those would be delightful. Frankly, it would just be nice to have someone ask me how my day was and actually care about the answer. The only people who ever ask me about my day work for me.

But that’s it.

What I do not accept is the antiquated notion that somehow I am less of a woman—or less of a person—because I do not have a man in my life. It is not as though I have never been with a man. I have been with more than my share, both before and after Phillip, and aside from the time I Maced one who wanted to marry me there have been very few catastrophes.

That came during the era I refer to as BP (Before Phillip). I was quite a different girl then, not only because I was so young but because I had the common girlish belief that men came in an endless supply. I may not have been the prettiest girl but I did all right—I always have; I’ve always known just the ways to hide the worst and accentuate the best, just where to wrap a sweater, or drape a scarf, or toss a ponytail. I knew how to be coy, how to be flirtatious without betraying the air of standoffishness any girl worth her salt can carry. I could carry that air with the very best of them, even the very prettiest, and I was always very bright, which in the time of BP was generally received by boys as an attractive quality. (I have found that the older men get the less interested they are in your intellect, which years ago I assumed would be the reverse. It seems to me the more confident a man becomes in himself the more he should welcome the challenge of an intelligent woman. Some part of that assumption is obviously flawed. Maybe it’s the part about men becoming more confident as they grow older. I’m not sure. )

Anyway, I had my share of boys tell me they liked me in high school, and then in college I had one tell me he loved me. That was Christian, the boy I Maced. I do regret that; not that I wish I’d married him, but the poor guy didn’t deserve to be temporarily blinded. All he ever did was love and deflower me and I was a willing participant in both of those, even if I didn’t ever really consider marrying him. I told him I did, though, perhaps because I was eighteen, and when you’re eighteen and someone is talking about forever, you naturally assume they don’t really mean it, because next Thursday feels like an eternity from now.

I met Christian at a fraternity party, wearing a baseball cap backward and holding a plastic cup spilling over with stale beer. (I should be clear:
he
was wearing the ball cap and holding the beer. I was wearing a pale blue sweater set and holding a Coach bag.) He was handsome and huge, a lovable lug in a football player’s body, only he didn’t play football; he didn’t play much of anything when he didn’t have to. He was raised by an alpha-male father, who only wanted his boy to be a jock and never appreciated his genius. Christian hid his intelligence the way you might cover a scar on your face; he caked makeup over it in the form of drunken tomfoolery, varsity wrestling, and overall goofiness. But every now and again, the makeup would smudge and the scar would show beneath it. Truthfully, he had a head for numbers unlike any I have encountered even to this day on Wall Street. He was also the top wrestler of his year in the Ivy League despite the fact he never trained and rarely practiced. He had such natural ability he coasted on it; I will always believe he could have been an Olympian had he set his mind to it.

He was attracted to me immediately, I think because I was precisely the sort of girl of whom his father and meathead friends would disapprove. I didn’t drink to excess, I didn’t use the word “party” as a verb, and I didn’t wear jeans so tight I had to lie down to zip them up. We dated casually for a time, beginning in my freshman year (he was two years ahead of me), and then became more serious. He was my first lover and he knew that, and he was very tender and kind the first time, grinning clumsily through the whole thing and constantly asking if I was all right. I cared deeply for him but was certainly not in love with him, though I told him I was when he professed his love to me, mostly because he took to saying it all the time and it would have been rude and uncomfortable not to respond in kind. I never imagined I would break his heart. I always envisioned us parting tearfully after his graduation and then remembering each other fondly, perhaps meeting by chance ten years later and shacking up for a weekend if neither of us was married.

The day before he graduated, I had final exams to finish and was thinking of him already in the past tense. I lived in an apartment off-campus by myself, and unbeknown to me, Christian befriended my superintendent and persuaded him to unlock my apartment while I was out taking my last exam (Twentieth-century American Literature; we read
The Great Gatsby
). I came home relieved and ready to spend one final night with my boyfriend. The last thing I was expecting was to find anyone in the apartment, even if that someone was kneeling just inside the door, holding a ring in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. All I recognized when I pushed open the door was a person where a person ought not to be, and instinctively I reached for my bottle of Mace. I think Christian was either professing his eternal love or he was on the verge of doing so; either way, he wasn’t focused enough on what I was doing to avoid the spray aimed directly into his eyes. It was around the moment he hit the ground, his howl of pain still echoing, that I realized who he was and what he was trying to do. Needless to say, it wasn’t the neatest of breakups. His eyes were bright red from the Mace
before
I turned down his proposal of marriage, but to this day I’ve never been quite certain where in his eyes the crying ended and the Mace began.

So that was the boy who wanted to marry me. There have been any number of others who came later, after Phillip, when I was no longer quite so certain of my footing, and I suppose I’d have to admit I’ve occasionally allowed myself to occupy a place in relationships that I’m not so proud of. Let me give you a few examples and you tell me if these sound like a woman whose self-esteem is in the right place.

There was Alan, who dumped me in couples therapy. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that being in couples therapy before we were even engaged should have been a sign.

Henry was adorable. I once cooked dinner for him and he arrived, broke up with me, and then asked if he could still stay for dinner and perhaps watch a bit of television until the traffic died away, and I let him.

Jack was even worse. I tried to end it with him one evening while we were out for dinner. Tearfully, he talked me out of it. Then we went home and had sex, and then he told me I was probably right and we should break up.

But none of them hurt the way Phillip hurt. Hell, all of them put together didn’t hurt the way he did. And to have to see him now, as I do every day, is sometimes more than I think I can bear. I suppose that’s why I start every morning with the words “fuck him.” I assume healthy, well-adjusted people have a more optimistic way of greeting the new day.

Perhaps tonight will be different. Perhaps this will be better. Perhaps this fellow Marie has arranged for me to meet will be unlike the others. Perhaps we’ll have great chemistry and he’ll be funny and smart and handsome, though that’s the least of it for me so long as he’s not repugnant. If I can tolerate the sight and scent of him (if he smells, it’s over) he doesn’t have to look like Pierce Brosnan. In fact, I think I’d prefer he did not. If he looked like Pierce Brosnan, I would spend every moment we were in public acutely aware of everyone wondering why this guy who looks like Pierce Brosnan isn’t with a woman who looks like Sandra Bullock. I would be wondering myself. There
is
such a thing as being too good-looking, as far as I’m concerned. You can’t be too rich but you can be too handsome.

Maybe this one will look more like Matthew Broderick (so funny) or Denis Leary (so manly) or Stephen Colbert (I know I am not the only one who is attracted to him). And he’ll be sweet and smart, and appreciate how hard I work, and maybe he’ll love old movies and Italian food, and he’ll drink dry vodka martinis and wear elegant suits and just a hint of facial hair, not a beard or anything, maybe just long sideburns or a neatly trimmed goatee. Maybe he’ll be hugely successful and we’ll be a power couple, and he’ll send me naughty texts during a break between meetings in Hong Kong, telling me all the fun things he’s going to do with me when he comes home.

Maybe the start of a new decade will really be a new beginning for me. Maybe forty will be my new thirty, or better yet the thirty I missed out on because I was moping over Phillip. Maybe this night will be one I always remember, a night that changes my life. Those were the thoughts going through my mind, and really those are the worst possible thoughts to have, headed into a blind date. How much more pressure could you possibly place on someone you have never met than to expect him to change your entire life? Unrealistic, unproductive, unreasonable, and yet that’s where my head was all the while that José was blowing out my hair, and then while Anastasia was making me up, and then still as I selected from my wardrobe (Chanel lambskin blouse and fantasy fur pants, Christian Louboutin Madame Butterfly booties, Christian Dior Chantilly Lace coat). There was a tremble in my stomach when Maurice shut the door to the car, and as we began downtown, I poured myself a short glass of Chardonnay from a bottle I’d grabbed from the fridge upstairs. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and raised the glass in a toast.

“Get a hold of yourself,” I said to my reflection. “He’s only a man and it’s only your birthday. There’ll be plenty more of both to come.”

I was finishing my second glass when we pulled up to the restaurant. My watch said it was four minutes past eight, which meant I had two minutes to kill. I have always believed in arriving six minutes early for a business meeting and six minutes late for a date. In both cases, I like the message it sends.

“You ready to go?” Maurice asked.

“Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be ready?”

“I dunno,” he said. “I just haven’t seen you like this in a while.”

“You mean
this
glamorous?” I asked grandly.

“I mean
this
nervous.”

I had hoped it wasn’t that obvious. “Don’t be ridiculous, I am
not
nervous.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Maurice,” I whined, “I’m serious. I am
not
.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” he said with a disapproving sniff. “You ready to get out?”

“Yes, I am,” I said, and downed the rest of the wine.

He came around quickly and opened my door. The air rushed in. It was a windy night, and I instinctively raised my hand to protect my hair. There was something exciting about the briskness of the air, the darkness of the evening falling across Manhattan.

“I’ll be here,” Maurice said as I stepped past.

I tapped him on the cheek. “Take the rest of the night off,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“What are you talking about? How will you get home?”

“There
are
taxis, you know,” I said. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, Maurice, but not every person in New York has a driver.”

“Don’t do it, Katherine,” he said. “Don’t get cute on me.”

“What are you talking about?” I glanced at my watch. It was six minutes past eight o’clock, time to go in. “How am I getting cute?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “When I pick you up tomorrow morning you better not still be wearing this same outfit, if you know what I mean.”

I laughed. “Maurice, as of today I am officially an old lady. If I want to have tawdry, meaningless sex with a stranger, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” I winked and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Keep your fingers crossed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Go get him,” Maurice said, and then he was back in the car, out of the wind.

I paused in front of the restaurant and took a deep, cleansing breath.

Then I pushed through the revolving door and before my eyes had even adjusted to the light I saw the blue suit making a beeline for me. My date smiled warmly as he approached, striding confidently through the crowd, extending his hand to shake mine.

“Oh my god,” I said softly. “You have
got
to be kidding me.”

BROOKE