Instant Love (27 page)

Occasionally the baby monitor spurts and fits, Laura in the other room sighing, breathing, shifting. Twice Gareth has to leave the table, first to refill her water pitcher, and once for an unexplained reason; she just called—“Gareth, I hate to interrupt your meeting, but…”—and he rushed off to the bedroom, stayed for a few minutes, and then came back smiling, shaking his head.

“What a sense of humor that woman has,” he says.

“What does she do all day in there?”

“Reads to the baby. Reads to herself. Watches television. Hates her life while trying not to hate the baby.” Gareth smoothes one edge of a sketch. “I play a lot of cards with her. She’s quite good. I’m inclined to send her to Vegas after the baby is born. The college fund needs a little padding.”

“I can’t imagine sitting still all day long,” says Sarah.

“She’s hanging in there,” says Gareth. “She’s simply remarkable. The love of my life, you know. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met her. I dated so many crazy women in New York, I was starting to turn crazy myself. The smart ones are always a little crazy,” he says, and winks. “And then, there she was, in the midst of all these sad and miserable and just—
confused
people, there was my Laura, sane and joyful with a voice and mind as clear as a bell.”

The baby monitor emits a thick cough, and then a long wheeze.

“And she was funny and beautiful and she liked the same books, the same music, and she wanted everything I did, was in the exact same place I was in life, and just like that, add water and mix, instant love.”

These are the things we do sometimes, she thinks. We remind ourselves of why we’re in love, so that we can stay that way. It’s not a permanent state, remember that, she tells herself.

“You’re lucky,” says Sarah. She is warmed by Gareth’s effusion, but sometimes another’s excess of love reminds her of her absence. She is all alone in the world, she thinks.

“Oh, please, my dear. Everyone is in love with you!” He shoots it out of his mouth and starts to laugh, it’s a short noise, then gets her more coffee, makes her take another brownie, won’t take no for an answer, he made them especially for her, after all. The baby monitor whirrs, Sarah Lee makes a note on one of the sketches, and the room is suddenly full of air again. Gareth has two months left until his life is changed forever, for the better, she knows it, and Sarah Lee wonders how long it will take until that moment arrives for her.

“By the way,” says Gareth later, as Sarah Lee bundles herself up to leave. “I believe Mr. Carter Michaelson seeks an audience with you.”

“So I hear,” she says.

“It seems inappropriate for me to tell you what to do,” says Gareth. He sucks in his breath, the wall of his body rising high. A buttress. “I don’t like to get in other people’s business.”

Sarah concentrates on the bejeweled buttons of her coat.

He exhales, inch by inch, the wall collapses. “But you should call him,” he says. “Because he loves you.”

Love.

     8.     

SHE STOPS ON
the front stoop of Gareth’s apartment building, she sits, she takes out her cell phone, she puts the cell phone away, she gets up, dusts off the back of her coat, walks to Avenue A, turns right, walks to the café where she orders a cup of coffee to go, asking them to leave room for milk.

In the cup of coffee she empties one packet of sugar, delicately shaking it so no granule is wasted. Then she pours milk into it, fills it up to the top of the cardboard cup, until the coffee is cooled. She takes a sip. She pours more milk. She repeats the process. Now it is perfect.

The café is full, so she walks to the park, past the cops lingering near the front entrance and the nannies with their charges in the playground and the junkies haunting the benches and the indie kids taking pictures of the dead trees in the winter with their digital cameras. She sits in the center of the park on the wide half moon of benches that surround an island of trees that poke up through the concrete. A committed hippie rides by on his bicycle. A slender man with high cheekbones in a long swinging fur coat walks two West Highland terriers. The dogs are adorable. Sarah Lee makes a kissing sound at them, and one turns toward her, ears pert.

It is still early in the day, but it seems late. The sun will set soon, the sky is already graying, the blues of it sucked away like water down a drain. She thinks of the noise a drain makes as it sucks in the last bit of water. It is vaguely satisfying. She is vaguely satisfied; in fact she is on the cusp of complete satisfaction, she teeters there, undecided. To give into complete satisfaction is to allow that it can disappear as quickly as it arrived. Once you feel it, you will want it forever. And you cannot have it forever. Because life is not perfect.

     9.     

HE ANSWERS
on the first ring.

“Stop telling people you love me,” she says, and she starts to cry, tears so rich with salt her cheeks sting on impact.

“But I do love you,” he says.

“Here is what I want,” she says. “I want you to stop fucking other women. If you leave town, I want you to take me with you. If we go to a party, I want you to stay by my side until I feel comfortable being by myself. And tonight I want you to buy me a steak dinner because I am so fucking sick of eating rice and beans.”

“Yes,” says Carter. “I can do that. Where are you? I will come and find you right now, and we will go and eat steak.”

“I’m in Tompkins Square Park.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I love you. I’m going to kiss you as soon as I see you.”

“OK.”

She hangs up her cell. The next kiss I get will be the best one of my entire life, she thinks. It will never be better than this moment. But I will have it, I will have this moment. It will be mine.

     10.     

IT IS NIGHT NOW,
and Sarah Lee sits and waits for love.

Acknowledgments

PORTIONS OF THIS BOOK
appeared in
Pindeldyboz
(“The Perfect Triangle”) and
Bullfight Review
(“Instant Love”). “He Gives Pause” was originally released as a zine, and I thank Joni Rentz and Dave Savage for their visual contributions to it.

     

I also enthusiastically thank: Josh Abraham, Sarah Balcomb, and Paul McLeary for their thoughtful readings of early and late drafts; Bernie Boscoe and John Levenstein for their generous provision of the time and space to write; Megan Lynch and Whitney Pastorek for their enthusiasm and support; Cinde Boutwell and Kerri Mahoney for putting up with all my crap; Doug Stewart for guiding me through this process with such care; and Sally Kim for her exceptional patience and wisdom.

     

As always, love to my family.

About the Author

JAMI ATTENBERG
’
S
work has appeared in Salon,
Nylon, Print, Pindeldyboz,
the
San Francisco Chronicle,
and
Time Out New York
. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her at
jamiattenberg.com
.

Copyright © 2006 by Jami Attenberg

Illustrations by Emily Flake

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Shaye Areheart Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Attenberg, Jami.

Instant love : fiction / Jami Attenberg.

1. Love stories, American. 2. Loneliness—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3601.T784I57    2006

813'.6—dc22    2005022743

eISBN-13: 978-0-307-34588-2

eISBN-10: 0-307-34588-2

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