The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir (16 page)

“Mom, wait. Can I have some ice cream after dinner?”

I smiled. Thirteen and he still made a point of asking first. “Yeah, buddy. You can have a small bowl.”

I tucked my phone back into my purse and walked toward the back room of the Tall Mouse store.

I laughed when I saw Heather, Bonita, and Valerie all wearing T-shirts and jean overalls. I looked down at my own overalls and mused that we hadn't even called to plan it.

We set up the materials and watched the painting lesson from the craft lady. Then Valerie, Bonita, Heather and I sat gathered around the table trying to create art for art's sake. Stencils and bottles of paint in each girl's chosen palette lay scattered across the table.

“So then what did he do?” Valerie loaded her brush and dabbed into a flower-shaped stencil.

“Nothing. He just laid on top of me,” I said.

“You're kidding?” Bonita paused and a drip of blue paint fell from her brush.

“He didn't say anything?” Heather asked.

“Nope.”

“Well, what did you say?” Valerie cast her stencil aside and dipped into her yellow.

“I just looked at him, nose to nose, and asked what he thought he was doing.”

“How embarrassing.” Heather reached to rinse her brush and knocked over the small jar of rinse water. Bonita grabbed the roll of paper towels, trying to absorb the wetness.

Valerie scrambled to move her work. “Dating sucks,” she said.

“Tell me something I don't know.” I sighed and turned back to my painting project.

a ghost from bankruptcy past

Friday, May 3

You know the prickly feeling you get when you sense someone is watching you? Well, that was the feeling that crawled up the back of my neck.

I looked across the aisle and locked eyes with David in the mirrored back wall of the main stage. He sat at the tip rail with his back to me, studying me in the reflection.

When he saw my transparent surprise, he broke the gaze by feigning concentration on the topless dancer on stage.

Two years go by and now you're showing up? You sleazy fuck.

“Excuse me,” I said to the customer I was sitting beside. “I see someone I need to talk to.” The man nodded and thumbed another lime into his Corona bottle. “You go ahead, but come back later. I enjoyed the company.”

I walked up behind David and leaned my hip against the chair next to him. “So, did you come in here to pay back the fifty thousand dollars you owe me?”

David chuckled in his trademark, sickeningly charming way. “I wouldn't say it's quite that much.”

“Funny, that was the amount on my bankruptcy papers.”

“You can't blame that on me. I didn't force you to give me that money. You did it of your own free will…because you loved me.”

“It was an investment in your business and you bailed, asshole.”

His eyes roved over my body: tan, lean, and exposed in a crimson velvet micro-mini skirt and halter-top. “You look good,” he said.

“You look like shit. You got fat and you need a haircut. What is that, a mullet?” He looked like a shaggy, grunge magazine model gone slightly soft.

David responded with an easy laugh. “So, are you single now?”

“Yes…um…no…it's none of your business.”

“Let me take you out to dinner,” David said.

“Why? Because you already ran your new girlfriend out of money?” I didn't wait for his response. It was my turn next on stage. I pivoted on my heel and brushed through the dressing room curtains.

Ballsy prick. What was he thinking? I peeked through the curtain, hoping he took the hint and left.

It was time to switch into entertainer mode. After five years, it was easy, but it wasn't always that way. For the first year, whenever it was my time to perform, I waited behind the curtain, shaking and feeling like I didn't know whether to pee or throw up. I was always afraid I'd fall in front of everyone. The only thing that would be more humiliating than falling—would be falling naked.

The DJ announced my name and started one of the songs from my playlist. I entered the stage with a slow strut, using the stripper drag-walk. Think Jessica Rabbit in eight-inch platform stilettos. My steps matched the tempo of the music.

David's eyes followed me across the stage as I flirted and played up to the customers at the tip rail.

I worked my way along the brass rail to David's seat. The plush, red thong of my outfit curved between the swell of my smooth, bare ass. I rolled and swayed my hips in front of him.

He was definitely an ass man. That I knew.

“I've been there,” he taunted so only I could hear.

I turned like a coiled serpent. “And you'll never be there again.”

I crossed to center stage and arched against the pole. Pulling the strings of my top, I let it fall to the floor. I locked eyes with David, challenging his gaze. Then I dismissed him with a flick of my lashes and ignored him while I finished my routine.

At the end of the song, I put on my top and went along the rail to collect my tips. When I reached David's seat, I brushed his money off the rail into his face. “Fuck off,” I said, as the bills fluttered onto the floor.

I worked my way around the room collecting tips from the customers at the tables and offering private dances. When I reached the far side of the room, David leaned over my shoulder just as I stopped to chat with a customer.

“Excuse me, can I get a private dance with you?” he said. A twenty-dollar bill stood erect between the two fingers of his Boy Scout pledge.

I started to say no, but changed my mind and snatched it from his hand. “Yeah, I'll take your money.” I walked away from him toward the lap dance area.

He followed behind. “Are you going to take your top off during the dance?”

“You know that's against club rules.” I shot him a withering look over my shoulder.

“I thought you might make an exception—for me.”

I ignored him and continued walking.

David walked fast to catch up with my stride. “Aren't you going to hold my hand to guide me there?” he asked.

I spun around to face him. “Talking will cost you extra.” I pointed to the couch. “Sit down, shut up, and don't touch me. Those are the rules.” I leveled the ultimatum. “If you don't like it—leave. And I keep the money.”

David mimicked zipping his lips and lifted his hands in surrender.

The next song had a slow grind tempo: “Pony” by Ginuwine.

Perfect. One of my favorites.

I arched and undulated, my body moving to the music while he watched. I snaked my hips low and rhythmically just inches above his lap. So close, but not close enough for contact. David drew in a deep breath, letting it expel slowly. I knew he was fighting to control his response to me.

Time to turn up the heat.

I leaned in close and locked eyes with David. My gaze slid to his lips. The tip of my tongue left a damp shimmering trail along my bottom lip and I leaned in closer. I tilted my head slightly, letting my lashes brush my eyes almost closed. I dipped in to hover with my lips just a millimeter from his. The slightest move from either of us would cross the line to a kiss.

“Your three minutes are up.” I pushed away from him with my hand in the middle of his chest.

“That was unfair.” His eyes studied the floor. “You get off on having the power, don't you?” he said, looking up into my eyes.

David stood up and slid his hands down the thighs of his jeans, adjusting the fit.

“Maybe,” I said fiercely. I tucked the twenty into my moneybox and snapped the clasp. “I know that's all you have in your wallet, now get lost.”

David stepped deep into my personal space. “Annette, you're a smart girl. You and I both know hate isn't the opposite of love. Apathy is.” A smile played around his lips. “I can tell you still care about me or you wouldn't be so mean-spirited right now.”

“You're just a thief and I don't give a shit about you. Get out of my club,” I said.

David pressed his business card into my hand. “Call me tomorrow. I just want to tell you something.” He turned and walked toward the exit.

“I'm not buying whatever you're selling,” I yelled after him.

reach out and smack someone

Saturday, May 4

I sat by the phone staring at David's business card cupped in my hand. Should I? I couldn't decide if I really cared what he had to say or not. Maybe karma had finally bitten him in the ass.

When I met him, David owned one business shirt. He washed it in the kitchen sink of his apartment each night, ironing it in the morning before going to work. So thin in the elbows, that shirt was nearly transparent. Not exactly the successful image a financial consultant at a major firm would try to cultivate.

David had just started with the company. He came from the same blue-collar background I did. We both had college student loans to pay off and dreams to be so much more than where we came from.

When his apartment lease was up, David moved into my rented condo and we often talked late into the night about our future. He knew, without a doubt, that within two years of building his business, he would be making a million dollars a year.

One evening, after returning from a business seminar, David had told me to close my eyes and hold out my hand.

When I opened my eyes, I found in my palm, a rubber stress ball colored blue and green like the Earth with the continents and oceans molded into the foam.

David looked into my eyes and said, “I know I don't have anything now, but I will. My business is closer to taking off than your writing, so if you help me now, when I make it, I'll help you so you can write full time.”

And I believed him. I paid all the rent and the utilities. I bought the food. I gave him money for gas, put tires on his car, bought software for his work computer, and dressed him from head to toe in a brand-new Alfani business wardrobe with Jerry Garcia ties.

Monday through Friday, I woke up with David at four o'clock in the morning, cooked a hot breakfast while he was in the shower, and sent him to work with an ice chest full of food packed neatly in Tupperware. For lunch: a deli sandwich that took two hands to hold closed, a salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette on the side. And for a snack: Globe grapes cut in half with the seeds taken out. The dinner containers held baked, boneless and skinless chicken breasts, steamed veggies, and red potatoes or white rice. Everything he wanted for his diet, and enough food to last through his long days and into the evenings of cold-calls when he solicited for new clients.

David told me his coworkers in the other cubicles teased him about the ice chest—just once—until they saw what was inside.

“All the guys wish their wives were like you,” he said.

It felt good to hear. I continued to play the perfect pseudowife; I wanted to be that perfect.

Time and distance gave me a different perspective. I must've been totally delusional to think that farce was really headed toward happily-ever-after.

After so much time had passed, did it even matter what David had to say now? What could he possibly say to make up for using me? Nagging curiosity made me pick up the phone and key in the numbers from his business card.

David answered on the third ring and I jumped right to the point. “So, what did you want to say?”

He chuckled warmly. “What? No hello? No how are you today?”

“Cut the shit. If you have something valid to say, then say it.”

It was easy to be a bitch to David. I could still feel the sharp sting of his words when he left me.

“Look, I wanted to tell you something because it's just something I feel like I have to do.”

“And?” I said. I had no intention of making it easy for him.

He took a deep breath and launched into his explanation. “When we were together, I was really stressed about succeeding with my business. And you were so amazing. You did everything for me.”

My time. My encouragement. My love. My money. He took it all. I met him at the club, but after our first year together, he decided I should quit. “You need to get a decent job where you use your brain instead of your body,” he told me.

I quit for him, but I couldn't support David, Josh, and myself in South Orange County on seventeen dollars an hour as an executive assistant. Within six months, the collection agencies began calling. I was paying the rent with one credit card, buying groceries on a different credit card, and paying the credit card payments with cash advances from another.

That's when David left. He said my anxiety attacks about the bills made it hard for him to concentrate on his business. He hadn't given me a dime in almost two years together, but he had saved up enough money to get his own apartment at the beach when he moved out.

I snapped out of my reverie of the past. “Why don't you try telling me something I don't already know?” The pain of being taken for a ride never quite went away.

“Annette, try to listen for a few minutes so I can tell you how I really feel. I know you still think I'm a piece of shit, but let me just say what I have to say.”

I tried to decide if I really wanted to hear it.

He took my silence as a sign to continue. “I've finally realized I was a total jerk and I'll never find another woman like you. I made a mistake. I hope we can be friends. I miss having those long talks with you and laughing with you.”

He paused dramatically as if he were going to say something significant. “And I miss making love to you,” he said quietly.

“Are you finished?”

“Well, yeah…I guess so,” David said.

“Okay, now, I'm going to tell you something.” Despite the bitterness tightening my throat, my long dormant anger sprang to life. “It's nice that you've had your little epiphany and maybe if it came with an offer to repay me, I might be more accepting. But since it's just a way for you to clear your conscience and try to get back in my pants, you can just shove your apology up your ass.” My torrent of thoughts continued. “I don't want to be your friend. I don't even want to pretend I know you. You don't fit into my life anymore. Got it?”

I could hear his breath release in a soft sigh. “If you ever change your mind, you have my number…”