Looking for a Love Story (25 page)

Alexandra and Pete picked up on that right away. “Instructor?” Pete repeated.

“He wasn’t a full professor?” my mother demanded.

“Didn’t you listen, damn it?” Dad said. “She liked doing it! And the teacher said she was good at it.”

“I suppose, if you wanted to major in English, you could switch over,” my mother said dubiously. She had always been opposed to what she called “amorphous liberal arts degrees for girls that don’t prepare them to do anything in the real world.”

“She could teach,” said my brother.

“Do you think you’d enjoy that?” Dad asked me.

But I was damned if I was going to get an airhead English degree. Or become a teacher. Not when my brother had just signed on as architect for a prestigious not-for-profit group. And there was a rumor that he might be presenting a paper at the UN.

“We just want you to be fulfilled in your work,” said my mother.

“To hell with that,” said Dad. “I just want you to stop crying!” And, amazingly,
his
usually stiff
WASP
upper lip twitched, and
his
eyes welled up.

“It’s okay, Daddy,” I reassured him. “I’m going to ace the rest of this year. And I’m going to ace the LSATs.”

I pulled myself together enough to graduate, but as for the acing part? I got the damn diploma, okay? As for the LSATs, you know that sad story.

I soon discovered that my degree in political science was about as much use as one in English would have been in the job market, so I went back to work for one of Alexandra’s friends. I continued living in her apartment on the Upper West Side. I continued falling in love with idiots. I did that until my father died.

Dad died quickly. People told me it was a blessing, because he’d had a massive stroke and if he’d lived he probably couldn’t have walked again. He would have spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, and everyone agreed he would have hated that. So it was better this way. For his sake. Personally, I thought it would have been better if he hadn’t had the goddamn stroke. He was only in his fifties, he exercised regularly, didn’t smoke or drink more than a couple of glasses of wine with his dinner, and he was as slim as he’d been the day he met my mother. He was in great shape. Except for one tiny son-of-a-bitching piece of plaque that no one even knew was there, which broke loose, clogged an artery, and killed him.

But my father was gone—unexpectedly and too young. Alexandra hunted down Pete—he was in a desert somewhere in Africa—and he and I flew to Los Angeles for the funeral, which I’ve already described and which I did my best to tune out. When I came home, there was a box waiting for me at the apartment. Dad had sent it the week before he died. Inside was a pile of brochures from every college and university in the New York City area that
had a writing class. My father had picked out one he thought would be good for me and put it on top of the heap. The class was called Write Your Bestseller! He’d inked in a big star next to the name.
Bet you’d like this one
, he’d scrawled in the margin.
No tests, no pressure
. (I learned later that he’d called and found out.)

I put the box in the back of my closet. I wasn’t ready to try the writing thing yet—and his note had done me in. I didn’t take the box out again until Sheryl started dating. Then I found out that the class my dad had picked for me was still in existence. I signed up for it, and I wrote
Love, Max
. I’ve already told the rest of that story. But what I’ve never told anyone is: I saved the brochure he sent me.

I walked into the bedroom, opened the bureau drawer where I keep my sweaters, and pulled that little pamphlet out from under the bottom of the pile.

There was something else Dad had written in the margin.
I’m so proud of you I could bust
.

By the time Alexandra and Sheryl came back with dinner, I knew I was going to finish Chicky’s book. And I realized I was more my father’s daughter than I had ever known. Because if I was going to do something that impractical, I wanted to be sure I could take care of myself first. And I knew exactly how I was going to make that happen.

“I have a Plan B,” I told Alexandra and Sheryl. “The interior decorator from the Dark Side was telling the truth when she talked Jake and me into buying all our furniture. I’ve been online searching a couple of websites dedicated to hideous household goods, and it looks like those two big sofas and the chairs and tables will bring in about two thirds of what Jake and I paid for them.”

“Francesca, you don’t have to get rid of your furniture,” Alexandra began, but Sheryl broke in fast.

“Yes, she does!” she said, as she looked around with a little shudder. “What about that clock?”

“It’s history.”

“Thank God,” said my stepmother.

“After I sell this crap I can replace whatever I need from a thrift shop—there are a couple of great ones on York Avenue—and I’ll still have money left over,” I went on. “And I have a Plan C.”

Alexandra and Sheryl were staring at me. I think they were a little thrown by this new resourceful Francesca. I know I was.

“Tomorrow morning, first thing, I have to see a woman about a dog,” I said.

Sheryl and Alexandra shot each other looks of concern. I could see where they were heading: Maybe the new resourceful Francesca was starting to crack. God knows, she’d done it before.

“It’s a Yorkie with anger issues,” I explained.

There were more looks exchanged.

“Stop worrying. I’m not getting ready to take another dip in the nut-job pool. I’m not going to cry for three weeks, or hole up with an industrial-sized drum of chocolate Häagen-Dazs. I’m simply going to have a job. Now can we eat our kung pao chicken?”

CHAPTER 24

When I told Abigail Barrow the next day that I was willing to hire myself out as Lancelot’s dog walker, her reaction was downright embarrassing.

“I’ll pay you anything!” she said, as her eyes welled up. “My firstborn if I ever have one. If you ever need a fresh kidney, I’m your girl!”

“How about three half-hour walks a day, five days a week?” I countered. “I’ll charge whatever a regular service gets.”

“Make it seven days a week, and I’ll pay you time and a half on weekends. I need to catch up at the office.”

“WITH THE OVERTIME
, that’s even more money than I thought it would be,” I told Annie when I was back in the apartment. “I figured someone who never gets out of the office until
after dark would at least take weekends off.” I grabbed my calculator. “With the Lancelot pay and whatever I get for the furniture, we can carry everything except our maintenance. And I’ve got a Plan D for that.” I was so excited I couldn’t stay in the apartment another second. I ran to the closet for Annie’s leash. “You’re going to have to suck it up, babe,” I told her. “You and I are going for a walk. It’ll get me in training for my new gig with Lancelot.”

And maybe it was my imagination, but I think Annie heard something new in my voice, because she began dancing around me the way she hadn’t since she was a pup, and when I snapped on her leash she actually pulled me to the front door. If you’re in a funk that lasts, say, five years and counting, can you depress your dog too?

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk, Annie,” I said, as I tickled her chin. “I’m going to do better. Try to think of me as a work in progress.”

When Annie and I came back from our walk, it was time to put the remaining piece of my survival strategy—that little Plan D I’d mentioned—into place.

“I have to make a phone call,” I said to my dog, as she collapsed on the sofa.

SHOW BIZ ANSWERED
on the second ring. “You caught me just as I was heading out the door,” he said.

“But your shift at the center doesn’t start for another two hours.”

“I have to give myself extra time. I don’t know whether it’s all those new budget cuts or what, but it seems like I wait forever for the train these days.”

“Funny you should mention your commute,” I said. “Can we have that cup of coffee today?”

“I get off work at three.”

•   •   •

“YOU WANT ME
to be your roommate?” Show Biz said, a few hours later.

“I have a big room with park views I never use, and I need someone to share expenses with me. You’re already paying rent out in Rockland County. Pay me instead, and you can stop making the trip from hell every day. Sounds like a win-win situation for everyone to me. Unless you hate dogs or watch reality TV.”

“No way, and I wouldn’t be caught dead. You’re offering me a chance to rent that fabulous room at the end of your hall that overlooks the park?”

“Say the word and it’s yours.”

He said the word—along with the amount of rent he was paying, which was enough to cover the maintenance on the condo. We closed the deal. Then Show Biz leaned back in his booth. “Have you ever had a roommate, Francesca?” he asked.

“Do my mother and my husband count?”

“Not really.”

“Then … no.”

“Sharing space has been a lifestyle for me. So let me outline the potential problem areas. There are three. The first two, the kitchen and the bathroom, can be handled with rigid scheduling.”

“I don’t cook. Unless you consider nuking cooking.”

“Never. So this means you won’t be trying to borrow my wok. You may be the roommate I’ve been looking for all my life.”

“You cook Chinese?”

“I’ve been told my dim sum is the best in the city outside of Chinatown.”

“I love Chinese. And I promise to do all the cleaning up.”

We smiled happily at each other. “What’s the third problem area?” I finally asked.

“Dating. And that one we just have to wing. You never know who a roommate is going to fall in love with.”

“No one—in my case. I won’t be dating.” He gave me a that’s-what-they-all-say look. “I am not a cute twenty-two-year-old. I am an overweight neurotic who is no fun—and believe me, when I was married, I tried hard to be.”

“Which kind of goes against the whole spirit—”

“Whatever. I’m a workaholic. I didn’t mean to be, but that’s how I turned out. When things aren’t going well for my work I forget to stroke the guy’s ego. Sometimes I forget he’s alive. I also forget to wash my face and brush my hair. Any man who wants me has serious problems.”

“I think there’s probably a straight guy out there who can handle that.”

“No dating for Francesca. Not without a prefrontal lobotomy.”

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

We ordered Diet Cokes to celebrate our new living arrangement, and then I grabbed a bus for York Avenue.

“I’M GOING TO
write the book,” I told Chicky. “And then I’m going to sell it, and I’ll split whatever I get with you.”

“I thought you said there wouldn’t be a market for it.”

“That’s negative thinking. We’re into positive now.”

“I see.”

“Success is our only option.”

“Whatever you say, Doll Face,” Chicky said demurely. Way too demurely.

“You knew I’d find a way to make this all work, didn’t you?”

She looked down at her hands. “I hoped you would,” she murmured.

“No, you knew it. How? Because this isn’t like me.”

“You sure?”

“Chicky, I’m a wuss. Everyone who loves me knows it.”

“Maybe they don’t know the real you. I have faith in you, Doll Face.”

“Why? I really want to know what you saw in me that no one else ever has.”

She paused. “Actually, I think about three thousand people saw what I saw in you, Doll Face. I caught your star turn on YouTube. The one where you dumped water on that skinny woman with the great dye job.”

“Oh—my—God. You saw that?”

“I said to Show Biz,
She’s a slugger
. That’s what sold me on you.” Chicky leaned over and patted my cheek. “See? Isn’t life grand? You do something off the top of your head, never thinking about the consequences, and bingo! Look where it leads. To me and my book—the best thing that ever happened to you!”

She was grinning at me like a pint-sized buccaneer, daring me to disagree. I took a deep breath—followed by a huge swig of Chicky Kool Aid—and I said, “You’re right. This is my lucky day. Now can I have the tapes back?”

“I’m still working on the last one,” she said. She handed me the plastic grocery bags I’d given to Show Biz a couple of days earlier.

“You never unpacked this. You
were
sure.”

“I’m never sure about anything. I just try to believe.”

IT SEEMED
LIKE old times later that afternoon when I finally settled down on my bed with my chocolate bars and diet soda. Lancelot had been a prince on both walks with me, and I had three hours of uninterrupted time before I had to take him out again. I had already listened to the tapes to reorient myself. I opened my laptop.

“After Joe proposed to Ellie and she accepted, they sat in the hotel room in New Palton for a long time without speaking,” I wrote. “Benny was gone. Ellie was carrying his child, and Joe was going to give it a last name. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.”

CHAPTER 25