Scot on the Rocks (2 page)

R
eally, I blame the breakup on Trip’s wedding. That’s when everything started to go downhill between Douglas and me. And what’s worse, everyone I know thought that I shouldn’t have gone to the wedding in the first place. Somehow, everyone who knew me
just knew
that Trip’s wedding would be the end of Douglas and me. (Except little old me, of course.) I really hate being a foregone conclusion.

When I told my mother that I was going to Trip’s wedding, she said, “Trip’s wedding? Trip who?” (As if Jewish girls from Long Island know that many men named Trip.) “Trip from law school Trip? What woman, in her right mind, would want to go to that?”

Vanessa, my best friend from law school, initially RSVP’d no to the wedding, since she assumed that I wouldn’t want to attend. When she found out that I wanted to go, she later called Trip to tell him that her “big case” had settled and that she and her husband, Marcus, would be there — but not before asking me approximately 472 times if I “wanted to talk about it?”

And when I told the partner I worked for at my firm that I would be out of town for a four-day weekend to take my boyfriend to L.A. to go to Trip’s wedding, even he asked me, “Why the hell would you want to do that?”

I could have sworn that I even saw my therapist look at me sideways when I told her that I was going to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding.

Okay, so I understand that this isn’t exactly your typical “girl goes to wedding” kind of situation. But, just because Trip is my ex-boyfriend from law school doesn’t mean that I care more about this wedding or am more nervous about this wedding, or that this wedding is any different from any other wedding in any way at all! Because it’s not. Trip’s wedding is just another wedding. And Trip is just another friend of mine. Even if he is my ex-boyfriend.

What’s an ex-boyfriend anyway? Everyone has an ex-boyfriend. Everyone. I mean, even some lesbians I know have them. Nothing special about them, right? I don’t care any more or less about him just because he’s my ex-boyfriend. He’s just a person. And staying friends with your ex is a piece of cake. I barely ever think about him and how he may or may not have been my last chance at happiness in this cruel and unforgiving world.

Really. I have the satisfaction of having a great career and a great independent life filled with fabulous friends and, of course, even more fabulous shoes. I am such a woman of the new millennium that I can go work a full ten-hour day, keep in touch with friends through e-mail, do a few errands on the way to meet my friends for dinner, and then go meet cute guys over martinis at the bar after I eat. All in three-and-a-half-inch heels. I am such a woman of the millennium that I can do anything, even things that previous generations would have thought completely impossible — Betty Friedan be damned! I can even stay friends with an ex-boyfriend.

And it’s not like Douglas was jealous or anything. Douglas wasn’t really the type to ever get jealous. He was far too manly and European for such things.

When I told Jack, my best friend from Gilson Hecht, about Trip’s wedding, he simply said, “You and Douglas are going to break up.”

“What?” I practically screamed as I slammed the door to his office shut and sank into his visitor’s chair. His computer screen was turned slightly off center and I could see in the reflection of his window that he was working on his fantasy football league.

“Ignore me. I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he said, one eye still on his computer screen as he flipped it back to the brief he was drafting. “I think it’s great if you can go to your ex-boyfriend’s wedding. In fact, if we had dated and then broke up, I would fully expect you to come to my wedding.”

“We did date and break up,” I reminded him, picking up the silver paperweight from his desk and turning it slowly in my hands. It was engraved
Congratulations on Your Graduation
and signed
With Love
from all three of his older sisters.

“One kiss does not constitute us dating and breaking up,” he said, baby blues now burning into me, as he brushed his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. This particular conversation always made Jack nervous for two reasons. The first was that he was the one who called things off, and being the gentleman that he was, he never liked to do anything that would make a woman unhappy. The second was that he hated the implication that he would ever act in such an unprofessional manner by running around kissing associates who were junior to him.

I love bringing this conversation up with him.

“You say potato….” I said as he snatched the paperweight from my hands. I moved my attention to the sterling-silver picture frame that housed a photo of Jack and his parents at the swearing-in ceremony to the New York State Bar. It always struck me as so odd that Jack’s father was the only one smiling.

“I’m sorry I said that you would break up with Douglas. If you want, to make it up to you, I will tell you your fortune,” he said, picking up the Magic 8-Ball that was at the end of his desk. He’d had that Magic 8-Ball since I first came to the firm. While most people would be satisfied to let it sit nostalgically on the edge of their desk, Jack actually used his. Since coming to the firm as a first-year associate, Jack and I had been staffed together on nearly every case I worked on — me the junior associate and he the senior for five years running — and we would often consult the Magic 8-Ball for our most pressing decisions:

“Magic 8-Ball, should we order in Chinese for dinner tonight?”

“Magic 8-Ball, are we going to have to work this weekend?”

“Magic 8-Ball, should we include a cause of action for nuisance in this complaint?”

Sometimes, if a case was particularly difficult, we would cross-reference the Magic 8-Ball with our horoscopes for that day (mine: Cancer, Jack’s: Scorpio). I can only assume that the head of the litigation department, who affectionately referred to Jack and me as his “Brain Trust,” did not know this little fact. Or maybe he didn’t really care, as long as we billed our Miss Cleo time to the appropriate client.

“Magic 8-Ball, will Brooke have a happy life?” he asked and then studied the ball carefully. Looking up at me, he said, “You can be certain.”

“Good,” I said.

“See, I told you this thing is good,” he said to me. “Magic 8-Ball, will Brooke have four children and move out to the suburbs?”

“That thing had better say no,” I said. “Why would you ask it that?”

“Not likely,” he reported. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran my hand theatrically across my forehead as if to say
phew.
Like how Bette Davis would have done it. If Bette Davis ever worked in a large Manhattan law firm and played with Magic 8-Balls, that is.

“Thank goodness,” I said.

“Will Brooke…”

“Get to the part about the wedding, Nostradamus,” I interrupted.

“Magic 8-Ball, will Brooke have fun at Trip’s wedding?” he asked and gave the ball a vigorous shake. I pulled my hair out of its bun and twirled a strand of hair with my finger. He looked at the answer, and after a dramatic pause, triumphantly told me: “Signs point to yes.”

“You didn’t ask it the important question,” I said, grabbing the Magic 8-Ball from his hands. “Will I break up with Douglas?” I gave the ball a little shake and slowly, carefully turned it over. I remembered how I would actually get nervous when we would ask the Magic 8-Ball if we would be working over the weekend, somehow thinking that whatever the ball told us would be gospel. I felt my stomach tighten.

“What does it say?” Jack asked me.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t say yes,” Jack told me. “The Magic 8-Ball doesn’t talk like that. Let me see.” I slowly showed it to him, careful not to let the insides move. “Yes,” he repeated.

“Oh, my God, I’m going to break up with Douglas?” I asked him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Brooke,” Jack said. “These things are stupid.” Whenever the Magic 8-Ball told us we’d be working over the weekend, Jack would always say that the Magic 8-Ball was stupid. Nine times out of ten, the Magic 8-Ball called it.

“Do it again,” he told me. “Best two out of three.”

“Magic 8-Ball,” I said quickly, “will I break up with Douglas?” I shook it twice and turned it over.

“What’s it say?” he asked, leaning out of his seat to try to steal a look.

“Yes — definitely,” I told him, and quickly put the Magic 8-Ball back onto the edge of his desk as if the mere act of holding it would make its fortune come true.

“Well, it doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “How will I have fun at Trip’s wedding if I break up with Douglas?”

“Let me try,” he said, picking the ball back up.

“Magic 8-Ball, now I am being very serious. This is an important matter we are discussing here, so don’t screw with us.” He looked up to me and I shook my head to show my support of his chastising the Magic 8-Ball. “So, Magic 8-Ball, tell us now — are Brooke and Douglas going to break up?” He shook the ball over his head and closed his eyes. He drew the ball down and looked inside.

“What?” I asked him, barely able to wait, like a defendant getting her sentence. He didn’t respond at first, just kept staring at the answer.

“Jack,” I said. “What does it say?”

“You may rely on it.”

“You may rely on it?” I parroted back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, Brooke,” he said. “I only read the fortunes.”

I didn’t necessarily blame the Magic 8-Ball for the breakup with Douglas. Not entirely, anyway. But I did blame it on Trip’s wedding.

Six weeks before the wedding, Douglas and I had been in total domestic bliss, living together in Douglas’s apartment — a space that I had single-handedly transformed from a spare-looking, modern bachelor pad into a warm, inviting home. Okay, fine, so he wouldn’t really let me change anything, from the mammoth sixty-inch TV down to the leather-and-chrome couches, but I did bring in fresh flowers every week. Well, maybe not every week, but whenever I could think of it. Or could find flowers that Douglas wouldn’t accuse of being too “girlie” (which is not easy, I assure you). Okay, okay, so I didn’t even really ever do the flower thing, but I thought about it. And furthermore, I already told you that I am a big-time lawyer at Gilson Hecht, so get off my back. It’s not exactly as if I have that kind of time on my hands. And anyway, that sort of thing isn’t billable.

We were getting ready for work one morning. I was in the bedroom getting dressed while Douglas was in the bathroom shaving. Like I said, total domestic bliss.

“Very funny,” I said.

“What’s very funny?” he asked, calling from the bathroom.

“It’s very cute. It’s funny,” I said, walking into the bathroom.

“For fuck’s sake, would you please tell me what you find so goddamn amusing?” he asked, still shaving. Douglas used to shave with a straight blade, like at a barber’s shop. How sexy is that?

“What you just said,” I explained, looking over his shoulder as he shaved. “That you’re taking your kilt to the dry cleaners to be ready for Trip’s wedding.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding me. “Well, you need to give them a couple of weeks. It’s a very special cleaning they have to do. That’s a two-thousand-dollar kilt that I’ve got.”

Suddenly, I was not laughing anymore.

“Oh, my God, you were serious.”

“Well, of course I was serious, girl. What did you think I was going to wear to a black-tie wedding?” he asked. This conversation was not going anywhere good.

“Here’s a crazy idea — a tuxedo?”

“Well, fuck me! Why the hell would I want to do that?” he asked, laughing as if I’d just asked him to go to the wedding naked or something. Actually, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. Douglas had an amazing body…but, I digress.

“Because it’s a black-tie affair…” I explained.

“Right,” he said, sounding very Scottish.

“Right,” I said, sounding very confused.

“Right.”

“Wait, are we being serious or are we joking?” I asked.

And with that, Douglas stormed into the bedroom, leaving the towel and razor he had been using in his wake, with me following closely behind on his heels. I hated when his face got that menacing look to it. In fact, I lived most of the two years we’d spent together doing anything I could just so that his face would not get that menacing look to it.

He tore the stepladder from its hiding place and brought it over to the closet. Slamming the stepladder down, he then stepped up and pulled down a large box. He gently placed it on the bed and took off the cover, revealing a jacket. I smiled. He was joking all along. Those crazy Scots! As I put my arms around his neck, my hands inching up to his wavy black locks, he picked up the jacket, only to reveal a kilt.

“Oh, my God,” I cried, my arms falling from his neck. This was no time to mince words.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked, oblivious to the look of horror now crossing my face. “This tartan’s been in the family for over two hundred years.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Go on, take a proper look, would you?” But I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to do anything that might suggest that I approved of my boyfriend wearing a skirt to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Don’t panic, I thought. Be cool. Use your super litigator skills to make this man realize that he does not, in fact, want to wear this skirt. He wants to wear pants. But, be so smart as to make him
think
that he came to this conclusion himself. The sort of Jedi mind trick young single women everywhere are forced to use on their boyfriends every day.

“You can’t wear that,” I instead blurted out. Yoda would not have approved.

“What do you mean, I can’t wear it?”

“I told you, ex-boyfriend’s wedding, trying to be low profile…”

“But I’m Scottish,” he told me. Did he think that I didn’t notice that or something? Did he think that American men excessively used the expression
Fuck me,
or that American men obsessively watched World Cup soccer or that American men had such thick accents that I could barely understand what they were saying half of the time? Were people on the street accusing this man of being American and this was why he was explaining that he was, in fact, Scottish to me? Anyway, that’s not really the point. The point is that no matter what nationality you are, in America, we encourage men to wear pants. Especially at our ex-boyfriend’s weddings.