24
You have three messages.
BEEEP
Frances, it’s your father. I hope you’ll still recognize me when we see each other at the Finnegans’. You’re still coming, right? With Jane? Call me back, please. I’d like to—there’s something—call me, please. Also, one of my students says there’s a show called E.R.? I think that’s the name of it. About doctors, I suppose? Anyway, that’s supposed to be a good one you should apply to.
BEEEP
Frances, Joe Melville calling. I’m sorry to leave you a message, but I’m not going to be reachable for a few days, during the, uh, transition. I want you to know that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with you, but I’m moving on to a more exclusive, er, a smaller agency, and I’m only able to take a very few of my clients, who are the, uh, top—well, only bigger names, you understand, are making this transition with me. I want to thank you, and wish you luck in all of your endeavors.
BEEEP
Franny, it’s Richard, from Joe’s office. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed working with you. I really tried to convince one of the other agents to take you on, but everyone’s freaked out about Joe leaving, and no one’s taking new clients right now. I’ll still just be the assistant at the new office, or I’d represent you myself. Take care and keep in touch, okay? I wish I could be more helpful. Maybe someday in the future? Anyway, good luck.
“Pinkeye?” I keep repeating the phrase as if that will somehow make it disappear from Jane’s face. “Pinkeye? You have pinkeye? How can you be sure?”
“Well, by looking in the mirror, for one thing.”
“But maybe you just have something in your eye? Or allergies?”
“Sorry, Franny. I’ve had it before. This is what it looks like. It’s really contagious. There’s no way I can go.”
Jane was going to be my date for Katie’s wedding. Jane had arranged the rental car in her name. Jane has pinkeye.
“If you can’t go, I can’t go. Metro-North is on strike, so I can’t take the train. I have no wallet, no driver’s license. I can’t pick up the rental car.”
Two nights ago on the way home from James’s, I arrived at our front door just as our downstairs neighbor was leaving, and Dan and Jane were home with the door to our place already open, so it wasn’t until I went to get bagels the next morning that I realized in my rush to leave, I forgot my purse at James’s apartment. I left him a message, but he must have already taken off for Los Angeles.
“Shit. I forgot about the license thing,” Jane says, her good eye widening in sympathy. “I know. Maybe I can give you my I.D. and you can pretend to be me?”
“Good thinking. Where can I get colored contacts, an olive complexion, and darker, straighter hair in about an hour?”
“I’m just brainstorming here.”
“It’s fine. Forget it. I just won’t go.”
But it feels terrible to even speak that possibility out loud. I’ve never missed a Finnegan wedding. I haven’t seen my dad in months, haven’t even really spoken to him. His messages have had a strange sound to them lately. I think he’s lonely.
“I can rent the car. I can take you.”
I look over to see Dan hovering in the doorway of the kitchen, and I blush at the thought of him escorting me to the wedding. “Oh, thanks. Really. But this is a very crazy, giant wedding. It would be awful for you. This family is insane. And there’s no time to get you a tux.”
“All families are insane. And I have a tuxedo. In my closet.”
I’ve only ever seen Dan in a T-shirt and jeans. He has no coat or blazer that I know of. In the winter he wears this sort of windbreaker-type blue jacket that can’t possibly be warm enough, but if you ever ask him if he’s cold, he says no, he’s fine. He has one white-collared shirt and one blue-collared shirt that he used to alternate when he went out to dinner with Everett. I’ve never seen him wear a belt or a tie or socks that aren’t white tube socks. Yet, Dan owns a formal tuxedo?
“But there’s only one, ah, room, you know, in the motel,” I stammer. “Just the one. So …”
I can’t imagine bringing him into this party. The thought of it makes me unaccountably nervous. Our lives have gone back to normal: back to simply co-existing here in this apartment, the three of us going out occasionally to the upstairs Chinese place, or sitting on the couch and guessing who the killer is on Law and Order. The daily routine of being roommates has almost eclipsed what happened that one night out after the theater. I don’t want to go outside these familiar surroundings, don’t want to leave Brooklyn let alone spend a night with him in a motel—even one with two beds. But the thought of missing Katie’s wedding, and not seeing my dad, makes my heart ache.
“This is silly,” Jane pipes in. “We already got a double room for the two of us. So, what’s the big deal? It’s not like you two aren’t already used to sleeping under the same roof. Make a wall out of throw pillows or something. It’s Katie Finnegan’s wedding, for Chrissakes! You’re going! Yay, Dan!”
Jane smiles at me, as if it’s all been decided.
“But how will I explain it to James?”
“Just tell him the truth.”
“But don’t you think leaving my purse, plus a Metro-North strike, plus pinkeye, plus Dan happening to have a tuxedo seems, I don’t know, fishy?”
“No. I think, ‘I’m shooting in the desert and I don’t know when we’ll talk’ sounds fishy. He could’ve been your date if he’d wanted to.”
“Jane. He’s working,” I say, but she rolls her eyes.
“Okay, Dan, listen.” I turn and reach up to put my hands on Dan’s shoulders, looking him in the eye like a football coach giving a pep talk to a player who is on the verge of winning the big game. “Really. I’m fine if I don’t go. Are you sure you want to do this? You’re sure this is how you want to spend your Saturday night? With a bunch of crazy drunken Irish strangers?”
My coach move was meant to be mock-serious, to lighten the mood and make it easy for Dan to laugh and say no, sorry, on second thought I really don’t want to go. But with my hands on his shoulders, which are stronger than they seem under his slouchy T-shirt, my face tilted up to his, way up, because he’s so tall, making me feel almost dainty by comparison, his big brown eyes free of bangs for once, gazing steadily into mine, that night at Sardi’s comes tumbling back, and all this time I’ve spent convincing myself I never kissed Dan is wasted because I remember it all as if it happened five minutes ago.
I’m going to tell him he shouldn’t come with me to Katie’s wedding. I’m going to call my dad and say I’m sorry, that I’ll make it up to him another weekend. I’m going to take my hands off Dan’s shoulders and never, ever put them there again.
“Yes,” he says without blinking. “Let’s go.”