Room for Love (33 page)

“Anything for you, beauty queen. You are a star!” He leans over the bar and plants a big wet one on my mouth.

“I wasn't too horrible?” I squeak, actually starting to cheer up a bit.

“You were fantastic,” he says, “gorgeous.”

“You didn't tape it, did you?” I say, embarrassed by how badly I want to see the show, in spite of everything.

He holds up a videotape. “I was going to take it home and let you lull me to sleep with your sordid tales, but I guess I can let you borrow it.”

“Pervert,” I tell him and push through the crowd until I find Jeremy and Courtney, who jumps up and throws her arms around me. She pulls away and looks directly into my eyes. “Oh, honey, sweetie, are you all right?”

“I'm okay, okay as you can be when your house has just burned down,” I tell her. “I'll find out more tomorrow. Can I stay with you tonight? Anthony and I had a huge fight when he found out about the article, and I think we broke up.”

“Oh, honey, of course you can.”

“Come sit with us,” Jeremy says, patting the seat next to him, which Napoleon reluctantly relinquishes and jumps on his daddy's lap. I keep standing. “You can cry on my shoulder. It might seem like small consolation, but I must tell you that you looked fabulous on TV. A real bombshell.”

“Thanks,” I say. “It does actually make me feel better.”

“I like this look. Terrific new accessory, bag-lady inspired, I presume?” I look down at the garbage bag I've been lugging around. “Which would be appropriate for your new living situation. Sorry. Really bad joke.”

“I have no idea what's in it. The guy who's been staying at my place rescued some stuff.”

I scoot into their booth and open the bag. When I reach inside it, the first thing I find is a thick photo album containing pictures of the trip Courtney and I took to Europe after college graduation. She ended up coming home after three months, purportedly because she ran out of money, but really because she missed Brad too much to stay away. But I wound up getting a job teaching English in Paris, the city I'd loved since I first visited it with my family at thirteen, meeting Philippe, and staying for two years until I moved to New York to go to grad school.

“Check this out,” I say, pushing the album toward Courtney. Jeremy scoots up next to her to look at the pictures, holding Napoleon in his arms so he can see, too. I cut out all sorts of magazine pictures and words and pasted in postcards to create a book-long collage of our trip and my subsequent life in France. “I'm so glad he saved it.”

“So fortunate,” Court says and holds it up to show me a spread of us, young and tan and grinning and topless on the beach in Mykonos. “We were so happy and carefree. Sometimes I do miss those days,” she says, and I notice that her face is drawn. I've never seen her so skinny.

“Hot stuff,” Jeremy says. As they continue ogling our bare boobs, I dig around in the treasure chest, which seems to contain another album, one of my jewelry boxes that happens to have my most valuable pieces, including the few I got when my grandmother died, my
Sex and the City
DVDs, five of my favorite books—
Eloise, The Passion, Franny and Zooey, Writing Down the Bones, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
—and all of my thirty-seven journals of various shapes and sizes, which I wrote in religiously from the time I was ten until the last few years, when I became a busy, flaky grown-up with less time to devote to pouring out the contents of my soul. I hold up my first one ever, a little Hallmark diary with a picture of two angels in an apple tree and a lock on it, and start to cry.

“What up with the blubbering,” says my sister, arriving on the scene.

“He saved all my journals. That was so nice,” I say. “God, I've been leaking from the eyeballs ever since I got here tonight. It's pathetic. I'm an emotional wreck.”

“You've just lost all your possessions,” Courtney says, reaching across the table to hold my hand. “Honey, it's completely normal.”

“All your CDs, books, furniture—oh, that amazing Persian rug,” Alicia says.

I picture my apartment and all the things in it that I'll never see again. I can't quite grasp the enormity of my loss. “I found it at a flea market for nothing,” I say, missing the rug intensely. “And that amazing red velvet armchair I lugged up from the street.”

“All your clothes,” says Jeremy. “You took that fabulous vintage coat over to Anthony's, right?”

“Oh, Jeremy, not my favorite coat.”

“You left it?” he says, flabbergasted. “What were you thinking?”

“It's summer. I left all my winter stuff. Oh God, my pink parka, my agnès b. trench coat, all my cashmere.”

I'm about to get really depressed, until my sister cuts in. “I wonder what vibrators do when they burn. You have the Bunny, don't you? Poor barbecued Bunny Foofoo.”

“Luckily I put that personal stuff in a box in the basement when Serena moved in. Wish I'd done the same with my clothes.”

I look into the bag and pull out a couple of framed photographs that used to be on my bedroom wall, one of my mother as a little girl sandwiched between my grandparents. My sister squishes into the booth next to me, puts her arm around my shoulders, and squeezes. Then she takes the photo slowly out of my hand and kisses it. We turn our heads to face each other and when our eyes meet we look quickly away.

I reach back into the almost-empty bag and find a black, squishy thing at the bottom. “Oh my God,” I say. “He saved Chubby.”

“Another one of your sex toys?” Jeremy asks.

“No,” I say, whimpering again as I pull out the squished, pitiful-looking teddy bear who's helped me fall asleep since college. Napoleon growls at him.

“That was a lovely thing to do,” Courtney says. “Really thoughtful. Who is this man who collected these things?”

“Zach,” Alicia says. “Serena's perfect boyfriend.”

“Yeah, who burned down my apartment.”

14

Seeking short-term sublet, 3–6 mos, month to month would be ideal. Below 14
th
St preferable. Cheap. Take pity, my apartment (my whole life, really) burned down, I need to rebuild it. Call Jacquie.

Courtney and I take a cab back to her place in Park Slope. I'm so tired, I barely make it up her stairs without falling asleep on the banister. She graciously offers to carry the garbage bag containing my worldly possessions.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Courtney says while unlocking her front door. “It's not all lost. Remember, you do have quite a lot of things at Anthony's. We can arrange to pick them up later this week.”

“Where would I put them?”

“Here for now. We'll figure it out.”

“I don't know, getting my stuff from his place makes it all seem so final.”

“You're right,” she says, turning on the light and dropping the bag in a corner of the living room. “Let's not worry about any of that yet. You can borrow clothes from me, I have an extra toothbrush, use anything you need.”

“Thanks, Court.”

She goes into the kitchen to make a pot of chamomile tea, which she says will calm my nerves, and I plunk myself down on the couch next to Chaz, who purrs and rubs up against me. I pick him up and hold him against my chest and he gazes into my eyes soulfully.

Courtney returns with two steaming cups of tea and sits down next to us. Chaz glances over at her as if to say, “Sorry, Mom, Jacquie's needing some feline therapy tonight, I'll catch you later,” and then shifts around and rests his chin on my belly.

“Oh, sweetheart, are you going to be okay?” Courtney asks.

“Of course I am,” I tell her, not so sure myself.

“Jacquie, when I'm feeling down, it often helps me to remember all the things I do have. You weren't harmed. You have your health and your family and friends who love you and work that you're passionate about.” I nod my head. “Homes can be rebuilt and furniture and clothes are nothing but flimsy pieces of fabric and wood and metal. But the most valuable things remain.”

I have the sensation of being in a Lifetime movie-of-the-week where the girl's house burns down. I think I might have even seen that one. Or maybe I'm confusing it with an International House of Coffees commercial, the kind that actually sometimes makes Courtney dab at her eyes. “Apparently the Red Cross will give me a debit card for two hundred dollars for toilet paper and pajamas and prescriptions that burned,” I say.

“See, that's a start,” she says, all earnest. Courtney sips her tea and says, “How are you doing about Anthony?”

I shift around on the couch and Chaz shoots me a disgruntled look. I wonder if he'll abandon me for his more reliable, less squirmy mom. “Not so hot,” I tell her. “I feel like we were so great together, like he was the guy I'd been looking for all my life, and I somehow managed to screw it up anyway.”

“Jacquie, you know there are two people in every relationship.”

“Yeah, but this was my fault. This was a horrible betrayal on my part,” I say, choking up. “I always end up chasing them away.”

“Jacquie, maybe he's not the right man for you.”

“Come on, Court, he's gorgeous and smart and he makes me laugh. Remember all those things we talked about, my perfect divine romantic partner? He's interesting and loves film and the sex is good.”

“But what about kind and generous?” she asks. “What about openhearted? I don't know how generous he is with himself or his time, for example. He hasn't made much of an effort to get to know the people that matter to you. And, more important, you're not happy. You've been so anxious and you've told me several times you were fighting.”

“It leads to great sex,” I say, forcing a smile.

“That's not good enough,” she says.

Maybe she's right, I think, but I'm still not willing to let go of Anthony, whom I picture walking away sad and hurt tonight, looking so gorgeous in his baggy cargo shorts.

“It was so amazing in the beginning,” I say.

“If you'd gotten to know him before you moved in with him, this all might have gone differently,” Courtney says. “It's Jake all over again, really, only in disguise. Anthony made your heart dance, so you dove in before you even knew if he was the kind of guy who would hold you if you were bleeding to death. Would he?”

“Of course he would,” I say, then crack a smile. “I mean, if he wasn't on deadline.”

Courtney smiles at me weakly. “Anthony's a lot of fun, but he might just call 911 and get back to chasing bad guys around with his camera.”

I grab a piece of my hair to search for split ends, then go for my wrist, but I'm not wearing the rubber band. I wonder what happened to it. I'm not sure if Court is right about Anthony, but it occurs to me that I don't really know him that well.

“You know, Jacquie,” Courtney says, “if you were to let a man get to know you, really get to know you, before starting some mad, passionate affair, he'd still be smitten. You are a wonderful person. You don't have to sleep with a guy or stir up some great drama to make him like you. He'll like you when he gets to know you, too, if he's the right guy.”

I look into her green eyes, mystified.

“Sometimes I think you don't realize that,” she says, taking my empty teacup from my hands and carrying it into the kitchen.

When we're lying in bed a few minutes later, I feel uncomfortable. It's not just the big lump of Chaz draped over my ankles or even his claws randomly digging into my shins through the blankets. I know I haven't been a very good friend to Courtney lately and here she is being so nice to me, taking care of me and patiently listening to my woes like she always has.

“Court, I'm so sorry that I haven't been around lately,” I tell her. I'm shivering lightly, knowing that I have to proceed. “I got so caught up in Anthony, I think I just neglected a lot of things in my own life and unfortunately you were one of them. I'm really sorry.”

“Thank you, Jacquie,” she says. “I have been feeling like you've checked out on me lately. I needed to hear you say that.”

“How's everything with Brad?” I ask. I can hear her breathing, but she doesn't say anything.

“We're—” She pauses. “Jacquie, I don't know how to say this. I'm, I'm thinking I might leave him.”

“WHAT?!” I sit up, scaring Chaz off the bed.

Court sits up, too. “It's been really hard with him touring,” she says. “At first, we talked every day and I tried to be supportive and we still felt like the old us. But lately it has shifted. Brad feels like a different person to me. He's so high on the excitement and the crowds and maybe even the female attention and I can't say I blame him, but it's begun to affect us.”

“How?” I croak.

“Well, for one thing, you know we've been trying to have a baby.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, acknowledging my least favorite topic of conversation.

Court pulls the blanket off her and pushes it to the end of the bed with her feet. She's wearing an enormous white men's T-shirt over plaid boxer shorts.

“Well, Brad let me know recently that he doesn't want to have a child. He doesn't think it fits into his schedule, his ‘vision' of how his life should be.”

“That doesn't sound like Brad,” I say.

“I know,” she says, tears creeping into her voice. “He's different. He can be so cold and distant, in ways I've never seen before. It's made me feel like maybe we've only gotten along so well because we've never been tested, like we were fine when everything was coasting along smoothly, but maybe we're not equipped to deal with discord or we just don't know how to disagree. It is possible that we want different things out of life. Maybe we were always going to falter as soon as life tested us, and this has been our test. Brad's getting what he's always wanted, a career as a musician, and it is in direct conflict with the things I want: a quiet life in brownstone Brooklyn with my husband and a child. I've felt so alone, like I don't know him anymore, now that he's out there leading the glamorous life he's always been meant to lead and I'm here, completely alone.”