The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (11 page)

“Hel-lo,”
Tammy said. “Does one of you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on, Tammy,” I said, staring at Charlie. “My boyfriend here is cheating on me.”

Tammy’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Omigod! You’re two-timing the Dating Diva? With me?”

Now, that was one for the tabloids.

“Zoe, can we please talk—in private?” Charlie asked.

“Don’t you think you owe
me
a talk, too, Charlie?” Tammy asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “You asked
me
out. You’re supposed to be on a date with
me.
I think you owe
me
an explanation.”

Suddenly Tammy was quite concise.

“Look, Tammy, I’m really sorry. But I need to talk to Zoe right now.”

“Asshole!” she snapped. “I hope she dumps your sorry two-timing ass.” She grabbed her purse and stormed off.

Again, she was quite to the point.

“Zoe, hear me out, okay?” Charlie said. “Please?”

It made no sense. I knew Charlie. Or at least I thought I did. There were guys you knew were capable of lying to you, of cheating on you. Charlie wasn’t one of them.

Yes, and that’s why he’s here, Zoe, meeting another woman for a date.

“Zoe, I’ve been asking you to marry me for eight months. But you’ve been putting me off, and putting me off and two weeks ago—” He shook his head and sat down at the bar.

I sat down next to him. “Charlie, if you want to marry me so badly, what are you doing on a date with another woman?”

He took my hand and I grabbed it back. “I asked her out because she’s not the least bit my type. When I met her, she rambled on about astrology for ten minutes. I asked her out because she was safe.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Zoe, if you’re not going to commit, I’m going to date other women. Period. I used to think you were really commitment phobic, that I could work on you, but I’ve started to think that it’s not you—it’s me. Maybe I’m just not the one for you.”

Was he?
I love you, I love you not. I love you. I love you not.

“Do you love me or not, Zoe?” he asked.

I don’t know. I don’t know!

What the hell was wrong with me?

“Charlie, I don’t know what it is. I just know I’m not ready. I’m only twenty-six years old. Maybe that’s it.”

“No, Zoe. Maybe it’s that I’m just not it for you. And you didn’t answer my question, either.”

“It’s not you,” I told him. “It’s ambivalence.”

“Well, I don’t want the woman I love to be ambivalent about me. I want her to want me as much as I want her. Look, Zoe, I’ve really had it. It’s either yes or no.”

“Well, I can’t give you an answer right now. I have to be on a plane to New York in two hours. I have to get to the airport.”

He shook his head. “Wait a minute. You’re going to New York? Tonight? And you didn’t even bother to tell me?”

Shit.

“Charlie, it all happened really fast, and I didn’t have time today to call you, and—” “You know what, Zoe? I’ve had it. You couldn’t see me last night because you were working. You couldn’t see me tonight because you were working. And now you’re flying off to New York for who knows how long, and you didn’t even think to mention it. Whatever. I’m sick of it. You know how many women come on to me a day? Between work and the gym and hanging out with my friends?”

“Goodie for you, Charlie,” I said.

“Yeah, goodie for me, because now that I’m a free agent, I can make up for lost time. A waste of time.”

“You can start right now,” I countered. “There’s a bar full of single women right here.”

“Maybe I will,” he said.

“Fine,” I said.

“Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here, Zoe. This conversation could have gone a lot differently, but you led us here.”

“You’re the one on a date with another woman, Charlie.”

But he was right and I knew it.

“Whatever, Zoe.”

And then he turned and walked out.

In a city of eight million people, how was it possible that the first person I saw when I landed at LaGuardia Airport bright and early Sunday morning was Danny Marx, who’d asked me out at least a hundred times between junior high and high school?

I’d never said yes.

“Maybe that’s why my standards are high,” Danny said, grabbing my suitcase from the carousel the moment I reached for it. “No one I meet lives up to you. Not even my new girlfriend. And she’s spec-tac-ular.”

“How’d you know I needed an ego boost?” I asked, trying to suppress a yawn. The red-eye from L.A. to New York was a killer itself without adding a few hours of crying to the mix.

Six hours later I still wasn’t sure why I was crying: because Charlie and I had broken up, or because I was beginning to really wonder if something was wrong with me? I’d had a good guy. A great guy. Why would I just let him go?

Because there’s something wrong with you, that’s why.

“Geez, what do you have in here?” Danny mock-complained, hefting my suitcase as we walked toward the exit. “Dating Diva reference manuals?” He laughed. “And c’mon. Who are you kidding—Zoe Solomon needs an ego boost? Impossible.”

That was pretty much the reason I’d never said yes to Danny Marx. He’d put me on a pedestal in the eighth grade and I didn’t want to get knocked off.

Which meant I could never be myself around him.

Which was the real reason I’d never said yes.

“The Dating Diva in the flesh,” Danny said, wiggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “I read the article about you in
L.A Magazine
last year. I wanted to call you, but I also read about your boyfriend. You see how skinny I am—I figured he’d kick my ass if I asked you out.”

He might have, until eight hours ago.

Besides, Danny wasn’t all that skinny. He’d filled out. And he was tall. He was sort of cute, with his puppy-dog brown eyes and light brown mop of hair. But he’d always be Anthony Michael Hall in
Sixteen Candles
to me. Sweet and goofy and immature, yet just slightly wise enough to make him tolerable.

“Well, Danny, you don’t have to worry about getting beat up. The boyfriend and I are history.”

I said it aloud to test out how it felt to say it, for it to be a true statement. It felt funny, sounded funny. A year was a long time for your life to suddenly change in an instant.

“One minute you’re married and your life is great or even just fine and status quo,”
my mother had said a few months ago,
“and the next, your husband is running around with a woman who was in diapers when he had his first child. Some people say that’s just the way life is. But I say screw that! Life is what you make it. Not what it is!”

My mother always made sense up until a certain point. And then you wouldn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Life wasn’t what it was? What?

“Let me put it this way, Zoe,”
she’d said.
“Someone drops a bomb on your life, what are you going to do? Live in a ruin? Or are you going to fight back?”

“What if there’s nothing to fight?”
I’d asked.
“What if you’re simply defeated?”

“That’s what seeking vengeance is all about, dear.”

And that was what my mother was up to this minute. I knew it. There was nothing and no one to fight, because my father couldn’t be less interested in having a casual or serious conversation with his ex-wife. That left my mother one option: retribution. What
kind
of retribution was beyond me, though. Phony phone calls in the middle of the night? Phony calls to Giselle claiming to be his gal on the side?

Daniel dropped my suitcase and froze in mock shock. “Zoe Solomon is a free agent? Figures that I’m taken now. Because I know if I weren’t, you’d be panting to date me.”

I laughed. Danny Marx had elicited my first smile in eight hours.

“And it’s
Daniel
now,” he said. “I stopped being Danny when I turned the tassle on my high school cap.”

“Ah, yes,” I said in my best Queen’s English. “Daniel it is.”

“Daniel is an architect now,” he said. “What do you think of that? Class clown Danny Marx ended up doing pretty well, eh? My firm opened a New York City office a few months ago, and I volunteered to transfer and
voilà.
”

“Very impressive,” I agreed. “I remember you used to draw buildings all the time. Tall, New York buildings.”

His eyes lit up. “Zoe Solomon remembers anything about me? Unbelievable. Next you’ll tell me you always had a secret crush on me in high school.”

“No such luck,” I said, grinning. “I remember the drawings because I always dreamed of moving to New York one day, and you used to draw New York.”

“Well, fancy that,” he said as we followed a throng of people toward the exit. “And here you are.”

“Well, I’m not really here. I’m chasing after my mother. Ah, it’s a long story.”

He glanced at his watch. “Well, my friend’s flight is delayed a half hour, so I’ve got time for a long story.”

“My parents got divorced last year,” I said. “Another woman.”

Daniel nodded. “That’s what got my parents. A long time ago, though.”

“Well, now my father’s marrying that other woman, and my mother flipped when she saw the engagement announcement. My father actually
sent
her one. He was married to the woman for twenty-five years and didn’t know her well enough not to do that?”

“Sounds like he just got caught up in his own excitement,” Daniel said. “It was pretty insensitive, though.”

“My mother thought so too. And she flew out yesterday to destroy his life. Or so she said.”

Daniel laughed. “I always liked your mother. Very theatrical.”

“How do you know my mom?” I asked.

“Are you forgetting that I was an esteemed member of the Desmond Hills High School’s thespian group?”

Ah. My mother had been a little too involved in my school. She was assistant director and head set designer for the drama club, which I had never joined for that reason. Couldn’t act, sing, dance or memorize lines, for that matter. I’d graduated from Desmond Hills eight years ago, yet she still donated her time to the school.

“Do you know where she’s staying?” he asked. “I’m sure you’ll be able to talk some sense into her. I remember Mrs. Solomon as being very dramatic but ultimately reasonable. One year we did
Romeo and Juliet,
and your mother spent an hour trying to convince the head director to let them live at the end. She’s just a romantic, Zoe. Maybe once she sees that your dad is happy, she’ll back off.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “My father’s happiness isn’t number one with her. And I don’t know where she’s staying. I don’t even know where to look.”

“I’d look in your father’s closets,” Daniel said.

I laughed. “That’s probably exactly where she is.”

“Hey, can I hire you while you’re in town?” he asked.

“Hire me? I thought you said you were taken.”

“Well, I am, sort of,” he said. “She’s on the way to
becoming
my girlfriend, but she’s not there yet.”

“And what’s stopping her?”

“A lack of serious interest in me,” Daniel said.

I laughed again. “Well, that would stop her, yes.”

“We’ve gone out a few times and I really like her,” he said, “but you know when someone’s being halfhearted and ambivalent. Even a dolt like me knows.”

“Your ambivalence isn’t exactly confidence-building, Zoe,”
Charlie had said a few times.
“You’re halfhearted about us.”

“I’m not,”
I would tell him.
“This is just how I am. I’m not Miss Burst of Enthusiasm.”

“I’ve seen you enthusiastic, Zoe. I’ve seen you bursting with enthusiasm.”

Oh.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” Daniel continued. “Once or twice—okay, more than once or twice, I’ve seen her eyes glaze over. You could accuse me of a lot, but being a killer bore isn’t one of them.”

I bit back my smile. I could imagine Daniel on a date, trying to impress a woman, going a bit overboard with his shtick.

“How long have you been seeing her?” I asked.

“We’ve gone out five or six times. I think she’s at the point where she’s gonna dump me or commit—to sleeping with me, at least.”

I glanced at him. Sex and Danny Marx didn’t seem to belong in the same sentence. I couldn’t imagine even kissing him on the lips.

He shifted my suitcase to his other hand as we headed outside to the taxi line. “And once we’re, shall we say, intimate, I can work on her from there. It’s easier to make a woman fall in love with you once she’s slept with you.”

My eyebrow shot up. “Where’d you read that crap?”

“It’s a known fact,” he said with a grin. “You see why I need your help?”

“Oh, I see, all right.” I grinned back at him and punched him on the arm as I untied my sweater from around my hips and slipped it on. “You need a lot of help, Mr. Marx. So what exactly do you want—a critique of your relationship?”

“Not the relationship, just my skills at relating. I want the Dating Diva’s gentle brutality.”

I laughed, which I’d been doing a lot of since running into him. “Sounds like you relate just fine, Daniel.”

“I would have gotten her into bed by now if that were the case.”

He got another punch on the arm. “Maybe she’s just the wrong woman for you. Did you ever think of that?”

“Nah, no chance,” he said. “I really like this woman. A lot. She’s special, you know?”

I stopped and looked at him. “You really like her, huh.”

He nodded.

“I’ll tell you what, then, Daniel. I’m not too sure what my schedule will be over the next few days or how long I’ll be staying in New York, but if I find some spare hours, you’ve got a critique on me, for old times’ sake.”

He grimaced. “Ack, don’t say that. Old times’ sake. I was every girl’s best friend. ‘You’re so nice, Danny. I wouldn’t want to ruin our
friendship.
I just like you as a
friend,
Danny. You’re such a
sweetie.’
Well, screw that horseshit. I’m trying to perfect my inner jerk.”