“We have?” I asked.
“You are?” both Ansel and the dark-haired girl said simultaneously.
The three of us waited expectantly for the punch line. But this time there was none.
Dark-haired Girl turned toward him. “This time it’s not funny, Henry.”
Ansel just looked hurt.
“I’m serious,” Henry said. “I just don’t want to have these thoughts and not share them with the three of you. I mean, I’m not an asshole, or I am an asshole but I don’t speak behind people’s backs and I don’t cheat. I speak in front of people and I speak the truth. Am I right, Belle?”
All three of them turned toward me. Was he right? Were we in love? I mean, I thought about him all the time, melted a little when we ate together or took classes together, and had even gotten to know his whole family when they made their frequent trips to campus, but I had resigned myself to a constant state of agitation. “What do you mean by right?” I asked, buying myself time.
“I’m out of here,” his girlfriend said just before weakly smacking his face. The three of us watched her go but Henry turned away first. I never forgot how he could move on like that without looking back.
“So what do you think, Amstel?”
“It’s Ansel.”
“Yes, sorry. What do you think?”
“About my girlfriend cheating on me?” he asked.
“I’ve been cheating on you?” I asked. The conversation grew weirder by the second. “Ansel, it’s not like you and I are even sleeping together—”
“Wait, you haven’t had sex yet?” Henry interrupted, making both Ansel and me feel like losers. “Haven’t you been together for, like, a year?” he asked.
“Well, we’ve talked about it,” I said weakly.
“I mean, we’re going to,” Ansel said pathetically.
“Oh my God, you waited for me,” he said softly, taking my hand.
“I didn’t wait for you.” Had I waited for him? I was so confused.
“Look, can we talk, Henry?” I asked.
“No, can we talk?” Ansel asked me.
? ? ?
Henry walked me away that night, away from Ansel and the party and everything safe. For the next seven years we were rarely apart, and when he left me, it was in that same way he left the others. Never once looking over his shoulder.
CHAPTER 12
The Day the Market Moved on Me
DURING OUR Four Seasons lunch, Henry acted as though we had never met, like I was some fresh-faced colleague brimming over with investment ideas for him and he was there to listen.
I stood to shake hands, an automatic business response of mine, and felt my knees weaken from the adrenaline overload. Hadn’t he been told whom he was meeting? I searched his face for some shrug of irony but Henry wouldn’t break character. Why didn’t he give me a heads-up phone call? This was much worse than the forced “Hi” we mutter on the preschool steps. This meant I would be calling Henry daily. He would be my largest client and I was going to be subservient to him. I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t touch my food as Tim rambled on about the new investment strategy Cheetah would be adopting under Henry’s leadership. I could barely keep my water glass steady when I held it in my shaking hand. I usually hit my stride at such moments, but not that time. Henry snapped open his napkin and proceeded to enjoy three courses with a ravenous appetite.
Everyone has someone they will never get over, where closure is not a possibility. Closure is made-up psychobabble. It’s not real. You just have to stay away from that person, because no amount of talking will ever resolve a thing. It’s not possible to actually work with that person and Henry was my person.
Henry’s boss didn’t seem to notice. He was enjoying himself so much he ordered a chocolate soufflé for desert. Soufflé. As in an extra-twenty-minute-waiting-time dessert. And wait we did, trading niceties. My hair began to flop into my face, my earring weirdly fell onto the table, I looked down to see an ugly run in my hose; I was melting.
Boylan said things like, “Henry went to Cornell and Columbia Business School.”
And I would nod my head with disbelief and answer with things like, “Really? I went to Cornell too.”
“I’d ask what year you graduated,” he said, “but I can tell it was well after me.”
Polite titter from me.
Henry kept the questions rolling. “Where did you go to business school?”