Something New (38 page)

“Ellen! Ellen! Come over here!”

I paste on a surprised smile and move toward them.

“Oh my God!” Nina cries again as if the three of us being in the same place at the same time is comparable to George W., Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein having a tea party together. “This is unbelievable! It’s like old home week. All we need are a couple of balls!” She turns to Ben and snorts with laughter. “
Soccer
balls, that is.” She snorts some more and I can tell she’s a few vodkas short of a Russian militia.

“Ben,” she coos, “you know Ellen! From soccer!”

I manage to nudge my way between them, placing myself behind my former bar stool, my sweater just out of reach. Ben gives me a guarded smile.

“You’re Matthew’s mom, right?”

Now call me crazy, but Ben’s pretense of not knowing me makes me suddenly furious.

That’s right
, I think.
Matthew’s mom! The one whose vagina you were just inspecting!

“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. Two can play at this game. “And you’re Liam’s dad.”

“Right.” Cool as a cucumber.

“What are you doing here?” Nina asks me. “I didn’t know you liked music.” As if I am some kind of tone-deaf mutant who doesn’t own an iPod.

“I was supposed to meet my cousin. But she just called to tell me she can’t make it.” Forget that my cell phone is drying out on a rag on my kitchen counter. The lie slides effortlessly out of my mouth.

“Oh, too bad!” Nina says. “Well, you should stay and have a drink with us, right, Ben? The kids are with my ex, the bastard, so I’m free all night.” She leans in to Ben and jabs him with her bony elbow. I take the opportunity to quickly snatch my sweater from the bar stool and covertly tie it around my waist, giving silent thanks that Nina didn’t see it. Then I step back and watch her hail the bartender with a coy “Yoo-hoo!”

As the barman moves toward us, Nina seems to notice my drink for the first time. “Whose is this?” she asks Ben suspiciously.
Oops.

“It was there when I got here,” he quickly assures her, and once again, I feel a stab of anger toward him. Nina pushes the drink out of her way and smiles at the bartender.

“I’ll have a Cosmo and he’ll have another Heinie.” She laughs at herself, then turns to me. “What are you having, Ellen?”

“I’m going to go,” I say, hoping that Ben will follow suit and beg off the
Heinie
.

“Oh, come on,” Nina pleads. “Just one?”

Say something
, I telepathically urge Ben.
Thanks, anyway, Nina, but I’ve got to be going, too. That was my last beer. Got a stakeout tomorrow, can’t drink too much, blah blah blah.
But Ben says nothing.

“Thanks anyway,” I hear myself say.

“Well, if you
have
to go.” I detect a note of relief in her words, a hint of victory, as in
I have him all to myself!
I wait a fraction of a moment longer for Ben to make some kind of an excuse, but he remains where he is as the bartender hustles off to mix Nina’s Cosmo.

“Good to see you,” I tell Nina, and as she turns and watches the bartender shake up her drink, my eyes find Ben’s. I am expecting to see regret or frustration or irritation or a glimmer of the desire he expressed five minutes ago, but his expression is flat.

“Bye.”

With that single syllable, I turn on my heel and march to the door of the T Bar. I am about to glance back, want to give Ben one last opportunity to communicate something to me,
anything
, but I don’t. Instead, I push through the door and wander aimlessly into the night.

T
he
drive back to my neighborhood is a blur of sensory recall. I can still see the lust shimmering in Ben’s eyes as he pushed me against the bathroom door, can taste his tongue, can feel his lips on my breasts, his fingers probing my core. I can hear Nina Montrose’s drunken cackle and her conspiratorially whispered words, “I guess it’s just the two of us,” upon my departure. I am so immersed in these thoughts that I don’t remember how I came to be leaning against the counter of the 7-Eleven.

I want to disappear. I want to shrivel up into nothingness and be carried away on the ocean breeze. I want to be a character in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
and have all memories of the last three weeks erased from my brain. Hell, I’ll even settle for a lobotomy. But since none of the above is an option, I will have to make do with being comforted by the only two men I have always been able to count on for solace. Ben and Jerry.

When I arrive home, Sally greets me at the door and I allow her to trot to the front lawn to do her business. Once properly drained, she follows me up the stairs, sniffing at the brown bag in my hand, and jumps onto my bed for a better view of my striptease. I set the bag on the night table, then tear off my clothes and shove them straight into the trash. I root around in my dresser drawer for my most conservative flannel nightie, pull it over my head, and collapse onto the bed next to my faithful dog. I should take a shower. I should brush my teeth and wash my face and apply my gaggle of creams and magic tonics. What I do instead is turn on the TV, pull the pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk out of the bag, along with a plastic spoon, and dig in.

I consider my reinvention, all of my recent hard work that has made me feel so good about myself. I think of my stomach, which has flattened considerably. This pint of ice cream will set me back four hours on the treadmill at least.

But who the fuck cares?

They say that chocolate is a perfect substitute for sex. Once again,
they
are full of shit.

The phone rings at twenty after twelve, and I groggily reach past the empty carton of ice cream for the receiver on the nightstand. My head feels like it’s full of cotton, my mouth feels tacky, and my stomach feels like I swallowed a vat of guppies. Can you say
Ben and Jerry’s hangover
? I knew you could.

“Hello?” I croak.

“Hi.”

Jerk cretin bastard motherfucker!

“Hi.”

“I’m so sorry.”

There is an unwritten rule about apologizing. If a man apologizes to you more than once in any given week, you should realize that there is a problem with your relationship. Jonah averages about twice a month. Ben has apologized to me every single day for the past three days, more than once. But apologies from men are akin to stays of execution. We women are so grateful for them, so surprised to hear the words
I’m sorry
uttered from the mouth of someone with testosterone, that we tend to overlook the underlying reasons for said apology. For example, it doesn’t matter that he beat me unconscious and broke three of my ribs. He
apologized
! I am not that kind of woman, mind you. I won’t be taken in by two simple words of remorse. I need more.…

“I’m really sorry.”

Sigh. Well, he didn’t just say he was sorry. He said he was
really
sorry.

“It’s not your fault,” I say.

“That woman! Someone needs to put her out of her misery.”

“And everyone else’s,” I mutter, hoisting myself into a sitting position.

“I’m sorry about calling your landline, too.” Uh-oh. Apology number three in the same conversation.
Warning!
“I tried your cell a couple of times, but you didn’t answer.”

“It’s fine,” I tell him, and in truth, I am relieved to hear his voice. Despite his protestations about annoying, surgically enhanced women, I had an irrational fear that he would use Nina Montrose as a replacement—the “Love the One You’re With Syndrome,” I call it. I did my best to swallow this fear
with every creamy chunky chocolate spoonful, but nevertheless, it lingered. “I’m glad you called,” I admit.

“I was kind of worried about you,” he says solemnly.

Worried? About what? That I would drive my car into a cinderblock wall over sexual frustration? That I would empty a fifth of Jack Daniels down my gullet because I didn’t get to have an orgasm? Nope. Ben and Jerry’s for me. Equally dangerous, but far less permanent.

“I’m a big girl, Ben,” I say. Bigger now that the pint is gone. All four million calories have settled on my thighs, hips, and abdomen.

“I know you are.” He is quiet for a moment and I have a strong sense that he is about to invite me to meet him, right now. And if he does, I suspect that I will say yes, although if I do anything even remotely strenuous in the near future, I will almost certainly puke Ben and Jerry’s all over anything and everything within close proximity to my person.

But he doesn’t ask. Instead, he says, “Look. I have that surveillance thing tomorrow. And it’s going to be a long day. But maybe we could meet on Thursday. At the, uh, PD’s apartment.…”

I am nodding to my empty bedroom. Thursday. Good. I can work off the ice cream between now and then.

“If everything goes well tomorrow, I’ll be off. Linda’s working from home, uh, so she’ll be with the boys. We’d have all day.…”

I don’t say anything because I am busy rooting through the nightstand drawer for something to write with. Ben mistakes my silence for hesitation.

“Maybe it’s a bad idea,” I hear him say as my hand closes around a pen.

“Give me the address,” I say.

I
blame my cousin Jill for ruining my life. Or saving my life. It pretty much depends on my mood. I will let you draw your own conclusions. But for now, I will just tell the tale with as much objectivity as possible.

Jill has punctuality down to a science. She could give symposiums on it. She could be the punctuality ambassador to any country on the planet. If she says she will be somewhere at a certain time, you can bet your last dollar she will be there. And if
you
say you will be somewhere at a certain time, and you’re not—regardless of the reason, like a tsunami wiping out your house or your arm falling off because of flesh-eating bacteria—Jill will boycott you for a month only after she’s given you a scathing verbal reprimand. Which is why I am more than a little surprised to be sitting in the Lexus in front of her house five minutes after our designated meeting. Her car is nowhere to be seen, and my knock on her door, thirty seconds before “go time,” was greeted by echoing silence.

I would call her cell phone if mine weren’t the equivalent of six feet under. I consider, as I sit, inconceivably waiting for my cousin, how attached I have grown to my cell phone. After my futile attempt to blow-dry the little bugger, I realized it was a goner and I immediately called up our phone store to ask about getting a replacement. I was informed that not only am I
not
due for a replacement, but the local outlet is out of stock on my particular model and it will be at least forty-eight hours before the shipment comes in. I was then asked if I would I like to try a different model. (
Are you kidding?
I practically screamed.
It took me a decade to figure out the one I’ve got!
) The poor operator had to suffer through my hostility and disdain, which I admit was over the top. But in my defense, being sexually frustrated, concerned about the possibility of spending all eternity in hell, and cut off from instant communication with the very person who is the reason I might be going to hell had me in a bit of a snit. I hung up the landline (what good is
that
anyway?) and went in search of more chocolate.