26
That night in the hotel I lay awake staring at the ceiling, irrationally irritated by the sound of Dan’s snoring, as if his ability to sleep when I can’t is intentional, his snoring a deliberate intrusion, keeping me awake another boundary he’s recklessly disregarding.
The next morning is even worse. Dan insists on paying for the room, a gesture that annoys me for some reason, and while I wait for him to check out, I grab a local paper from the stack on the worn coffee table in the motel lobby for protection. I’ll read this in the car to avoid having to talk, I think to myself. But once we’re on the road I realize it’s one of those free papers that have a single two-paragraph story about a high school teacher’s retirement, and about thirty-two pages of ads and classifieds. Still, it’s the only armor I have against holding an actual conversation, so I pretend it’s the most compelling read ever, almost convincing even myself. I’m so engrossed in surveying the details of the Angelo’s Pizza two-for-one coupon for the tenth time that I practically jump when I hear Dan’s voice.
“The traffic’s so bad, it looks like Russia, don’t you think?” he says, glancing over at me.
What am I supposed to say to that? I already told him I’ve never even been to London. Why would he think I’ve been to Russia, of all places? He’s just showing off his fancy education, and his tuxedo and the dumb a cappella group he mistakenly thinks is cool.
“You would know better than I,” I say, stiffly.
“Huh?” he says, sounding genuinely confused.
“I’ve never been.”
“You’ve never been where?”
“I’ve never been to Russia,” I say too loudly. “So I wouldn’t know what the traffic is like.”
He tries to hide his smile, but fails miserably. “ ‘It looks like rush hour,’ I said.”
“Oh,” I reply in a small voice, and return to pretending to read.
James eventually called from L.A. and got his super to open his apartment and I retrieved my purse, Jane started work on a new movie starring Julia Hampton, and Dan and I spent the days wandering our respective floors of the apartment, separately restless. I could hear his footsteps pacing on the creaky floor below, could hear him open the refrigerator, could imagine him hovering in front of it, staring absently into its emptiness as if some new contents might suddenly have appeared since the last time he looked.
I come down the narrow staircase softly, not wanting to disturb him. I’m planning to take a walk, to leave another application at another restaurant, to go somewhere, anywhere.
“I’m blocked and unable to write,” he calls, from his usual place at the dining room table, hardly looking up from the computer screen.
“I’m agentless and unable to find employment,” I say from the bottom stair.
“Want to go to the movies?”
“Sure,” I say, and he closes his laptop with a thwack.
We leave the house without looking in the paper or calling ahead. The sun is shining and the tops of the trees in Prospect Park have turned bright green. We walk down toward Atlantic Avenue, our sneakers making no sound on the pavement. The bustling street in front of the theater is another world away from our sleepy neighborhood—full of commuters coming from the buses and subways, and shoppers flooding the discount stores. Only one movie fits our timing—a romantic comedy starring Cordelia Biscayne as a popular wedding photographer unlucky in love.
“Capturing Kate?” I say doubtfully.
“I hear she can capture love on film, but in real life she’s underdeveloped,” he says drily, reading from the advertising poster by the ticket booth.
I usually like these kinds of light Cordelia Biscayne movies—better than the ones where she’s bravely defending a wrongly accused criminal, or bravely fighting a losing battle with an obscure disease—but nothing about Capturing Kate rings true for me today. In the story, Kate is torn between two men: a handsome, slick, wealthy Manhattan art dealer who wants to make her famous and take her to parties, and an even more handsome but much more kind and unassuming photographer who works in the darkroom, who wants her to travel to third-world countries with him and be a photojournalist. After it’s over and she picks the guy you knew she would pick all along, the movie finishes with a cute photomontage of the pictures they take of each other in exotic places. I sigh in the dark theater.
On the walk back home, I’m feeling off. My head hurts from the giant diet soda I chugged and my eyes haven’t yet adjusted to being back in the sunlight. Dan seems unburdened, happy, and says he actually enjoyed the film.
“I can’t believe you liked it,” I say, hugging my arms around myself even though it isn’t cold out.
“Why, because I’m a guy?”
“No, because it was so dumb. It wasn’t even well written.”
“I thought some of the dialogue was pretty sharp, actually. A real-sounding romantic relationship is the hardest thing to write.” He lumbers along, face turned up to feel the sun, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“But the relationships didn’t sound real. That love triangle. So unrealistic! She’s choosing between a rich jerk and a good guy who seems to be poor, but eventually turns out to be rich, too. That took two hours to figure out? I mean, the whole ‘love triangle’ thing bothers me. Who even thought of that? I’ve never been in a love triangle. Especially one where the girl is torn between the obviously right guy played by the more famous actor and the obviously hideously wrong guy played by the slightly less famous actor. And also, why does the heroine always have a sassy best friend? And why is she always a brunette?”
“Um, Franny, you have a sassy best friend who’s a brunette.”
“Wrong. I’m her sassy best friend who’s a brunette.”
“Well, I suppose you have a point there. It’s a toss-up between you two for the part. Look, the romance in these movies, it’s not supposed to be some sort of dark mystery. It’s a conceit, a way to show different sides of the main character, what she’s struggling with. It’s a way to make an internal struggle dramatic. People see themselves in that struggle. They keep using that structure because it’s familiar to most people and makes sense to them.”
“Well, it isn’t familiar to me. Anyway, why is it always a triangle? Why isn’t it a square or an octagon? That seems more realistic.”
“You’ve been in a love octagon?”
“No, but, you know, if you aren’t with one person you really love, it’s more complicated than a stupid triangle. The problem isn’t because of one other person you wish you were with. In life, there’s a million people you might have feelings for, depending. There’s either one person you love and you’re happy or there’s a bunch of people who could be right, if only the timing was better, or they didn’t still have feelings for an old girlfriend, or whatever. It’s mostly timing. I’m in a good relationship, but I pass three people a day I could imagine going on a date with.”
“You pass three people a day you could imagine going out with? That’s being in a good relationship?” Dan is smiling, which frustrates me even more.
“You’re twisting my words. I don’t mean I’m in love with the random people, but I think about the random people and wonder about them, whether it’s the guy on the subway or, you know …” Dan looks at me expectantly, but I trail off, suddenly worried that we’re not just talking about the movie anymore. I press on, determined not to let go of my point. “And then there’s work, too—I mean I have a very strong attachment there, too, you know, so maybe that gets mixed in … and, anyway, you see how quickly one could get to a love octagon.” I stop abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, causing an old lady pushing a little trolley with her groceries on it to nearly crash into me. “Excuse me,” I say to her, suddenly flustered. “Anyway, I’m not talking about us.”
Dan’s eyebrows raise a little, and he stops on the sidewalk, too. “I didn’t say you were talking about us.”
“No. Right. I know. I’m not. I’m just trying to illustrate how ridiculous the love triangle concept is.”
“I understand,” he says.
“By saying there are potentially other shapes.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he says, nodding sincerely.
“Other unique shapes. Other shapes that feelings take. Other feeling shapes,” I say idiotically, as if randomly rearranging the order of the words helps strengthen my point.
“But you’ve never been in a love triangle?”
“Definitely not.”
“You’ve never had feelings for two people at the same time that were confusing?”
“No,” I say, but I can’t look him in the eye.
“Can we talk about the wedding?” Dan says gently, after a pause.
“No. What? Why? What is there to talk about?”
“I held your hand, and it seems to have upset you.”
“Oh God, I haven’t even thought about that.”
“No? You haven’t thought about the night at Sardi’s either?”
“No—hardly—not at all, really. I just had that weird anxiety thing at the wedding for some reason.”
“I know. You started sweating.”
“Did I?”
“And shaking.”
“Oh, well—”
“Because I took your hand …?”
“Yes—well, no. Because of what it meant, I suppose.”
“There’s something here, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know …” I say, involuntarily walking backward away from him on the sidewalk.
“Well, I feel something. I do. And, I’ve thought about it since … watch the mailbox—”
“Can we not talk about this?” I say, and turn, sidestepping just in time, narrowly avoiding the big blue mailbox on the corner, and start walking fast, head down, wanting to put distance between us.
“I don’t know either,” Dan calls after me. “That’s all I wanted to say. I don’t know what it means either.”
I’m stopped on the sidewalk by the sound of Dan’s voice, but by something else, too—something more specific that’s caused me to come to an abrupt halt. With a start, I realize that what stopped me in my tracks was disappointment. I realize I’m disappointed to learn that Dan isn’t any clearer than I am about what happened, or what didn’t happen. I expected he was for some reason. I pivot on my heels and start to walk slowly back to him.
“I mean,” Dan says, looking sheepishly at his feet, “I haven’t really recovered from the fact that I was engaged not that long ago. And I’m still not able to work, not really, and so I feel like I’m all over the—”
“Dan,” I say, planting my feet, noticing a strange hint of sarcasm in my voice. “Puh-lease. You don’t owe me an explanation. After all, I have a boyfriend.”
Dan’s face reddens a bit, maybe in response to my tone. “Is that what he is? A guy I’ve never met even though I live with you, who calls you to come over late at night? That’s your boyfriend?”
And even though James hasn’t ever used the word to describe himself, and I’ve never called him that to his face, I don’t like Dan’s insinuation. “Yes,” I say with as much certainty as I can summon.
“Franny, if this was the movie of your life, and you happened, in the movie, to be in a love triangle, which I know is impossible given your very valid shape theories, can you say he’s the guy our heroine ends up with? Can you honestly say he’s the obviously right guy in the movie?”
“Why are we making a movie of my life at all?”
“For the sake of argument.”
“Who would go? Nothing happens in it. What would we call it? Counting Tips? Unemployed Actress? Losing Joe Melville?”
“Maybe I’m wrong. I’m just wondering if perhaps what’s bothering you about the movie we just saw is that you recognize something of yourself in what you claim is an unrealistic cliché.”
Dan isn’t trying to be mean, he never is, but his words sting as if he meant them to. The worst part of having this discussion is that it can’t be over, not really, because now we both have to walk home to the same place. I wish I could just go home and tell my roommate about this strange afternoon I spent with a guy I know, and how he insulted me with his preposterous theories about me, but I can’t, because they’re the same person. We walk the rest of the way in silence.
What a mess. Maybe I should move out, I think to myself. I’m amazed it hasn’t occurred to me before. I guess because generally I’m so happy to come back to the apartment and sit on the sofa and watch something on TV with Dan while he balances a beer between his legs. What if I moved out? Jane and I would still see each other all the time, I’m certain of that. It would be hard to find a new place, especially one as big and relatively inexpensive, but maybe it’s time. Things have become too complicated. What would it feel like if I didn’t live in our apartment? I wonder.
I would miss the place itself. I would miss the way the light floods my room in the morning, would miss the view of the rooftops of other apartment buildings, would miss watching our neighbor Frank predictably have the same day over and over, would miss the beautiful creaky wood floors that broadcast whoever is coming up the stairs by creaking in direct proportion to their weight and mood.
And I’ll admit, I would miss Dan in some ways. I like watching Law and Order with him, even when he ruins the ending by guessing who the killer is before I do. I’ll miss his overly elaborate explanations of why the director is moving the camera in a certain way. I’ll miss his comments on a piece of dialogue he finds particularly poetic. I’ve learned a lot from seeing those kinds of things through his eyes. But the feelings I have for him are confusing, and having to see him all the time makes figuring them out impossibly complicated.
Whether or not my deadline runs out, and whether or not I stay in New York, I have to face the fact that living with Dan has become an uncomfortable proposition.
I think I should move.