How Did You Get This Number (27 page)

“About what?”

“You look skinny,” he said, still holding the tuffet against his chest like a teddy bear.

He didn’t mean it as a compliment. I cocked my head at him. Daryl’s beard was growing in everywhere except over a white scar and some pockmarks on his chin. His nose, perhaps once in proportion to his face, had become oddly narrow in adulthood, and he sniffed a lot. His forehead had one big wrinkle across it that touched down on both temples like a fleshy rainbow. I can still picture that face perfectly.

“Pull up a chair, Daryl,” I said.

He placed the tuffet gingerly on the pavement. I looked around me. I had not yet run into Ben. I couldn’t shake the feeling that such a run-in and requisite awkwardness were inescapable. The same love affair runoff that had melted New York into a quaint town had become worrisome once I stepped back over the line. Or, rather, once I was pushed. Ben could be anywhere. He could be sitting on the next crowded subway car I squished my way into. And I would have to stand there, my crotch in his face, his face in a folded magazine, his magazine still warm from his back pocket. Though he never was on the subway cars. Or the street corners. Or anywhere else outside the confines of my brain. I longed for invisibility but was sincerely shocked when I got it.

Daryl tugged at his pants until he could sit comfortably in them. I told him everything, starting with the moment I slid the stool away from the bar, and when I was through, he said, “That’s some Jerry Springer shit right there.”

“There wasn’t any pulling of the hair or applying of Vaseline to the face.”

“Some Ricki Lake shit, then.”

“I’ll give you that. But people are fucked up, Daryl. They bring their own stories and their own issues to the table. Part of growing up is realizing that love isn’t everything.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“You know.” I smiled and gave up. “I don’t.”

“Good.” Daryl seemed satisfied that I had not crossed over into the bitter and black-hearted. “So now I’ll tell you what no one else will.”

For all the many bits of trivia I knew about Daryl, I did not know if he was in a relationship. I knew nothing of his track record with women, only that they probably weren’t homeless pygmy computer owners. Besides, I already knew what no one else would tell me. I had known it forever. You shouldn’t wear anything you can’t afford to lose. Which is exactly what I did when I put all my eggs in Ben’s bottomless basket. I had the citrus carnage to prove it, dried and rotting in my kitchen trash. Daryl looked up at me from his cushion, a sidewalk Buddha.

“What won’t people tell me?” I asked him, bracing myself for another cliché about chocolates or fish.

“It wasn’t as real as you thought it was. Whatever anyone else tells you is bullshit.”

Then he slung the tuffet under his arm in headlock position and we waited in silence on the corner until a cab came. He closed the door slowly behind me, making sure it didn’t smash the delicate and already-scuffed legs of the tuffet. What a tragedy it would be to drag it all the way out here for nothing.

 

 

 

 

TIME PASSED, AND I FOUND MYSELF WANDERING into Out of Your League—where I was apparently wearing an outfit that indicated I should be followed around like a fourteen-year-old shoplifter. I took the elevator up to the third floor. The inlaid pine still reflected the lights of the chandeliers above it. The layout was the same, but a few new items had come in, including a line of bath products. Just in case you wanted to smell as expensive as your oven mitts. I went over to the carpet wheel and spun, but I couldn’t find one to fall in love with. I think I had just outgrown my fascination with the store in general. A thin, older saleslady in pearls lowered her glasses and asked me if she could help me with anything. But I could tell she didn’t mean it.

“I think I’m set.” I waved, repeatedly pressing the button for the ground floor while she pretended not to judge me.

What can you do? Time grabs you by the scruff of your neck and drags you forward. You get over it, of course. Everyone was right about that. One mathematically insignificant day, you stop hoping for happiness and become actually happy. Okay, on occasion, you do worry about yourself. You worry about what this experience has tapped into. What will be left of it when the surface area shrinks? How will you make sense of it after the compulsion to have others make sense of it for you has faded? There is one thing you know for sure, one fact that never fails to comfort you: the worst day of your life wasn’t in there, in that mess. And it will do you good to remember the best day of your life wasn’t in there, either. But another person brought you closer to those borders than you had been, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Knowing what you can afford is useful information, even if you don’t want it. It dawns on you that this is what’s in that last nesting doll that won’t open. Somewhere in the center of all that bargaining and investing and stealing is meaning and truth and the lessons you have always known. You hope so. Because without meaning, it was all just a bunch of somebody else’s stuff.

It’s pretty awkward when you write a normal-size book but have a lot of people to thank. It says everything good about the generosity of the thankees and nothing good about my ability to dress and feed myself. So here’s to the people without whom I would be less of everything:

At Riverhead: Sean McDonald and Emily Bell (patron saints of Preventing Me from Looking Stupid), Geoff Kloske, Kate Stark, Michael Barson, and Katie Grinch. It is a privilege to be published by people who laugh at the same things.

At WME: Jay Mandel (a living retort to the “No one will care about your baby as much as you do” adage), Lauren Heller Whitney, Erin Malone, and Jake Sugarman.

At Vintage: Russell Perreault, Jennifer Jackson, Lisa Weinert, Anne Messitte, Sonny Mehta, Chip Kidd, and every editor, publicist, and author who has looked up from their own manuscripts to ask, “How is yours coming?”

At home: Luc Sante’s
Low Life
was invaluable when learning about the door policies of nineteenth-century brothels. Also helpful but not as good a read:
In Flight Portuguese.

At 3 a.m.: Dana Naberezny, Elizabeth Spiers, Kate Lee, Paula Froelich, Josh Kendall, Ethan Rutherford, Kimberly Burns, Sean Howe, Chris Wilson, Chris Tennant, Mickey Rapkin, Boris Kachka, Leigh Belz, Eric Lovecchio, Elizabeth Currid, Megan O’Rourke (for the sharp eye), Nick Stern (for the title), Heather Gould, and Angela Petrella (for the permanent loans), and L.D. (for wherever you are).

Thank you.