I’m seeing kids on the streets of Terre Haute in masks and costumes & here are the messages I’m taking away: violence, gender bias, racism, missoginy, war, sexpot, Hollywood, commercial, commercial, commercial, so I started thinking of this 1 thing and couldn’t get it out of my head . . . where are those little boxes kids carry while Trick or Treating, where you ask for money for Unicef instead of candy? If your reading this and its not too late—ask your kids if they really need candy or do they realize that some children have never tasted one single piece of candy in their whole war torn life? Plus they have TB, malaria and worse.
Peace,
Stuart
Not feeling terribly indulgent, I commented, “You can’t just send kids out asking for money without the official UNICEF box. BTW, they get candy, too. What kid is going to ask for JUST money?”
Naturally, I was having trouble falling back to sleep. It was 11:45, too late to call one of the girlfriends I’d been neglecting since meeting Stuart, so I texted Joel, who’d had an all-important date—all-important because it was his first online venture—membership having been my birthday gift to him. How was tonight? I wrote.
I had to wait until morning for the return call, which I mistakenly took for a good sign. “No go” was his greeting.
“Okay. Tell me everything.”
“I get to the restaurant, and she’s sitting at the bar dressed like an Indian maiden—”
“You’re joking.”
“It was her Halloween getup, supposedly on her way to a party afterward. I walked over, and said, ‘Nice to see you, Pocahontas. I’m John Smith.’?”
“Good line.”
“Maybe. If she’d gotten it. But she had no clue that I was talking Jamestown. She thought it was my name even though my e-mails were all signed ‘Joel.’?”
“Then what?”
“I told her I was just making a little Virginia Colony joke. John Smith was an actual person, and supposedly Pocahontas saved his life. I could tell she was embarrassed so I said, ‘Well, I could’ve been another total stranger named John Smith. No harm done.’ I sat down, ordered a martini.”
“Then?”
“She asked what I did. I said I have my own business. ‘Such as?’ I said, ‘Plowing and towing.’ That did it. She had to go to her Halloween party about ninety seconds after that.”
“And you think that was it—your job?”
“I know it was. She actually said, ‘I’m a teacher with a master’s degree. I hope you understand, but I don’t see myself with a truck driver.’?”
“Then I hate her,” I said.
“Thank you. I will, too.”
“But don’t give up. Keep answering those winks, or smiles, or whatever they’re called.”
“I will if you will,” he said.
I asked him what that meant.
“Test the waters. See what’s out there. What’s the harm, with Stuart out of the picture?”
Maybe I didn’t correct that as fast as I should have; maybe I’d had the same thought myself but in a distinctly hypothetical way. “He’s only out of town. We’re engaged—”
First I heard an impatient huff, followed by a killjoy “Sometimes I wonder.”
I asked him how long he’d been having doubts about Stuart and me ending up together.
“You don’t want to know,” he answered. “The real question is are you having doubts?”
I could hardly admit that I’d suggested phone sex and had been spurned, so I told him that he was catching me when I was a little sick of seeing my fiancé with his arm around a different woman every day.
“Have you told him to cut that out?”
“He knows.”
“But he posts that shit anyway?” Before I could answer, Joel asked, “What would happen if you cooled it? I mean would Stuart say no way? Or would he say, ‘Babe, I didn’t want to be the one, but . . .’?”
“How do you know he calls me babe?”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“Do you think he’d be glad if I broke it off?”
“Jesus! Don’t ask me that.”
“I suppose, even if I was having doubts, there’s plenty of time to make a decision. He’s only in Indiana.”
“Which may say it all . . .”
“Like what?”
“Like he’s in no big rush to get to the Pacific Ocean, i.e., to reverse direction, get on a plane, and fly back to his fiancée.”
Had I not entertained the same thought? But who can judge how long it should take to hike from Massachusetts to Indiana? I said, “Everyone has doubts, right? In every relationship?”
“Did you send him photos of the house?”
“Not exactly.”
“Does he know you bought a house?”
I told him I was waiting to see if I was approved for the mortgage. No point in getting Stuart all excited and then having to break the news—
“Is he a child? You have to protect him from news like ‘I got turned down for the mortgage. How’d you like to throw some money into the pot?’?”
That’s when I admitted I didn’t want Stuart throwing money into the pot.
“Because he has no money? Or because you don’t want to own a house with him?”
“I can swing it myself” was the nonanswer I mumbled.
“Good. Dad would probably cosign if that helped. If he ever called anyone back. All the banks in town know him.”
I tried Stuart’s phone and got his long annoying voice-mail message that provided his website address and philosophy of life. “It’s Faith Frankel,” I said after the beep. “Would you mind calling me back someday?”
8
Excellent Friends
I DIDN’T KNOW BEFOREHAND why we’d all been summoned to the long mahogany conference table at eight a.m.—not just my officemate, Nick, but the school’s CFO; its headmaster, Philip “Dick” Dickinson; the school attorney, Amanda somebody, dressed in exceedingly corporate, asexual pant-suited fashion; and Reginald “Reggie” O’Sullivan, the undeserving head of Development.