Five Things I Can't Live Without (15 page)

But back to my original point. Dan and I were happy.

As we stepped inside my old apartment, I was struck by how radically it had been altered. I felt a twinge of resentment, since I hadn’t been able to make a single change to the apartment in the nearly one year that I’d lived there. Not that Fara outright forbade me. It was just that the first time I brought something new into the living room (a small decorative lacquer box, to be precise), her response had been a most effective deterrent. Clearly aggrieved, she stared at it for an uncomfortably long time, then said, false brightly, “Next time, we can go shopping together!” She kept trying out different spots for it on the coffee table and then the end table, back and forth and back and forth. It was like watching Baby Jane. Fara was so pained by the box (and the thought of us shopping together was so odious) that I ceded the common areas entirely.

But Fara had allowed Bart to bring in his enormous black leather couch and easy chair, which even I could see had destroyed the feng shui of the living room. And I knew Fara cared about feng shui because she had books like
Feng Shui for Your Cat and You
. (Or maybe
Feng Shui for the Cat in You
?) The tapestry on the wall had been replaced by a framed poster of Van Morrison. Even the rug had been changed from the imitation Persian to one that was, get this,
fuzzy
and
green
. The Asian-inspired armoire was still there, with its doors open to reveal the TV inside; Fara had always been adamant about keeping it closed when the TV was turned off. Did that mean that Bart actually planned to watch television during the party? Or did he want to prove to his friends that he still had a television? My annoyance at Fara turned into pity. Was this debased decoration what she thought it took to hold on to a man?

“You came! You came!” Fara called. She launched herself at Dan and me, hugging him first, then me. She smelled like cheap booze. I wouldn’t have known the difference before Dan, but now it was overpowering. She smiled back and forth between us. “How are you?”

“We’re good,” Dan said. He casually put his arm around my waist, and I leaned into him. It was fun being so obviously, easily coupled.

“You look good together,” she said. “You look happy.”

“We are happy,” I said.

“Well, I’m happy for you.” Fara surveyed us as if we were her personal handiwork. “I don’t mean to brag, but I did bring you two together.”

“That’s true,” I said. Pity was already morphing back into annoyance.

“How’s the Internet dating thing going?” she asked. Before I could answer, she went on. “What’s funny is that Bart and I met over the Internet. I wonder who I would have met if you’d fixed my profile.”

Huh. “It sounds like your profile didn’t need to be fixed,” I said in an attempt at diplomacy.

“Yeah, well.” Fara looked down and away, and when she lifted her head, she’d plastered a smile back on.

“Are things okay?” Dan asked. He moved toward her with concern. Bless his heart, he cared. I was just curious to hear about her car crash of a relationship. Then I reminded myself that karma might exist, and I decided to care, too.

“It’s a process, you know?” Fara’s gaze was unexpectedly probing. She was looking for chinks in our armor. “I mean, you two must know, right?”

“It’s definitely an adjustment,” Dan said, his tone reassuring.

“Exactly!” Fara said as if he, alone, got it. It occurred to me that it was not impossible that if Fara had just a little more to drink that night, she’d try to seduce Dan and chalk it up to her emotional distress. I had no real evidence for this suspicion, but that didn’t stop me.

I draped my arm across Dan’s back. It wasn’t actually the most comfortable position, but it wasn’t about comfort. It was about establishing dominance.

At that moment, Goliath waddled over and rubbed himself against Dan’s right leg. Dan extricated himself and squatted down to pet Goliath.

“How great is he?” Fara asked, gesturing toward Dan.

“Pretty great.” My smile was tight. I wanted Dan to stop touching that beast, wash his hands, then thrust his tongue down my throat.

I was surprised by the sudden force of my jealousy, but I liked it. As Fara excused herself to greet other guests, and Goliath moved on to the futile task of stuffing himself under the coffee table, I looked at Dan and found his sex appeal had skyrocketed. I grabbed him and kissed him.

“Mmm,” he said when our lips parted.

“You want to do it in my old room?” I said, in what I hoped was a sultry voice.

Dan shifted away from me slightly. “That would be a little rude, wouldn’t it?”

“To Fara?”

“To the party.”

“You really think they’d miss us that much?”

“Maybe later,” he said. He pecked my nose in a way that told me we would not be retiring to my old room that night.

I felt a little rejected, but mostly relieved. I sometimes made bold suggestions, and then when I was taken up on them, I spent the whole time worrying that we needed to hurry up, that someone was going to walk in, that I’d mess up my dress, that we’d miss the opening credits. The theory was always better than the practice.

“Nora.” It was Sabayu. She was working a geisha look that night, and on anyone else, it might have been stupid or even kind of tasteless. But not on Sabayu. Not my Sabayu.

“Sabayu!” I hugged her. I knew I was being too enthusiastic. It was part of why I could never join their ranks.

“Hi, Sabayu,” Dan said, clearly underwhelmed by her arrival.

“Hey, Dan.” She turned to me. “I am so jealous.”

“Are you serious?” I could not have given a lamer answer if I had all night to come up with one.

“Of course I’m serious. You did what I wish I had the guts to do. Just march in there and quit.”

“I always thought you had a great job.” Sabayu is a curator’s assistant at the Museum of Modern Art.

“I’m speaking metaphorically,” she said.

“Oh.”

“So you don’t want to quit your job, you just think that if you did, it would be something you wouldn’t necessarily have the guts to do?” Dan interpreted, with just the slightest hint of derision in his voice.

“Precisely.” Sabayu smiled at me. “What’s it like? Escaping the grind?” She somehow made ordinary phrases sound exotic, like she’d coined them.

“I love it,” I said.

I wasn’t just trying to keep pace with Sabayu. It was true. The first month had been lean and I’d panicked, but once I’d picked up enough clients to pay my bills, I relaxed and settled into my new lifestyle. In the morning, I answered the e-mails and calls of prospective clients, caught up on some reading, or ran errands that I used to hate because the stores were jammed with other people doing their shopping after work. I’d discovered a wonderful produce market, and I began to grocery shop like a European: every two or three days, everything fresh. I made regular lunch plans with friends; I even revived some old friendships to keep my dance card full. In the afternoon, I might meet a client, but it was more common to meet them in the evening. Most of my clients were in San Francisco, so if I was going to see a client at night, I would often go early and roam the city like a tourist. I’d visited Grace Cathedral, eaten dim sum in Chinatown, toured Alcatraz, walked the Golden Gate Bridge, and watched the sea lions sun themselves on Pier 39. I planned to walk the Crookedest Street in the World, Lombard Street, sometime soon.

“So you write dating ads for people, right?” she asked. I nodded. She had the silkiest voice. “What sort of people do you meet doing that?”

I cast her an appraising glance. There had been a note of condescension in her question, as if she were inviting me to mock my clients for her pleasure. “I’ve been lucky. I’ve met some great people,” I answered honestly.

She nodded, seeming ever so slightly disappointed. So I hadn’t misread her intentions. Now it was my turn to be disappointed.

We kept talking long enough for the end not to seem too abrupt. I asked questions, she gave me elliptical answers, and then she disappeared into the crowd. I was okay with seeing her go.

I spied Larissa across the room, deep in conversation with one of Fara’s ex-boyfriends. I felt a moral responsibility to rescue her. Any man who had seriously dated Fara was not part of the dating pool.

I interrupted with a smile, saying that Larissa and I needed to go outside for a smoke. Neither of us smoked, but she followed me. She wasn’t protesting, so maybe she’d decided on her own that he wasn’t a viable prospect.

“Want to walk?” she asked. “I could use the air. I think I’ve been drinking a little too fast.”

“Sure.”

We instinctively headed toward the lake. There weren’t too many walkers on the path and there were none who were dressed like us. Larissa was wearing sort of a bustier contraption and had about a yard of cleavage. She grabbed hold of my arm as we walked. She wasn’t kidding about drinking too fast.

“Are you okay?” she asked with concern.

“What do you mean?” I responded, confused.

“I mean, are you still happy?”

Her question hit me hard. Yes, her timing was peculiar from the drink, but she knew me inside out. My rent was cheap; my man was wonderful; my business was picking up speed. I could pay my bills twice over, and I made my own schedule. This was a good life. This was
the
good life. But for how long could I sustain happiness?

I hadn’t even formulated an answer, when Larissa blurted, “Well,
I’m
miserable! I hate single life. I can’t be alone. Debbie thinks I’ve taken a huge leap backward in the past week, but she’s wrong. I had never taken any steps forward. I’m working constantly because I can’t stand to be idle. I can’t stand to be with myself.” She bumped against me as we walked.

“Why don’t you want to be with yourself? You’re one of my favorite people to be with.”

“That’s just it. If I met me, I think I’d like me a lot. If I met me back at that party”—she motioned in the direction of Fara’s apartment—”I’d think, ‘She’s funny, she’s smart, she’s a fucking lawyer!’” Larissa seemed like she was about to cry. “But that’s around people. By myself, I crumble. All alone, there’s nothing funny about me, and my intelligence is all in service of making myself feel like utter shit.” She looked at me. “What am I going to do?”

“Oh, Larissa,” I said. “I wish I knew.”

We walked along, not speaking. “I want to turn around,” she said. “I want to go back. If Collin’s still there, I’m getting his number.”

“I told you, he dated
Fara
. It could never work.”

She jutted her chin out. “Well, I don’t need something that’ll work forever. Dustin was supposed to be forever. I need someone to take up my time. I need someone to take up my mental space. I need someone to find me charming. I need someone I can be good company for.” She spun around on her heel, and I followed her as she headed back to the house.

“I just think you should be with a man who’s worthy of you,” I said. But even as I said it, I realized I was just spouting what I was supposed to say. Why should we wait around for people who are worthy of us? If we like ourselves most when we’re with someone, anyone, should we be alone to prove a point? Alone didn’t seem to be working for Larissa. My smart, attractive, capable friend was drunk and stumbling around a lake that smelled like sewage, and if what she wanted was a man, who was I to stand in her way?

I caught up with her. “That was a stupid thing to say. You don’t need to be with someone who’s worthy of you.”

“Really?” she asked, eyes shimmering with gratitude.

“Yes. If you want to be with someone who’s plainly beneath you, you won’t hear a negative word from me.”

She hugged me, then started chattering as we walked. She was the only person I knew whose mood swings rivaled mine. That’s the kind of thing you can build a friendship on. “You want to hear a confession?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Remember that dating site that’s supposed to do the matching for you, based on surveys?”

“The one that gave you all the total losers.”

“Well, what I didn’t tell you was I lied the first time around. I tried to answer things the way that would get me the best men.”

I thought of Candace. How common was lying in a dating market this tight?

“And it just came to me last night: I got the men who were doing the same thing! I got the men who had also lied to look good. So at two am last night, I filled the whole thing out again, completely honestly.”

“I’m surprised the Web site lets you fill it out again. I mean, you were supposed to be telling the truth the first time, and they already gave you your matches.”

“I made up a false identity.”

“You used another name?”

“No, I’m still Larissa. But I set up a new e-mail address and I used a different credit card and little things like that. I had to, if I wanted to finally be honest.”

“Could you get in trouble for that? I mean, is it fraud?”

She waved a hand. “I know fraud. This is just dating.”

We started laughing, and soon we were back at the party. Fara’s ex-boyfriend had clearly moved on to another girl, but Larissa handled it well. I set her up to talk with Dan while I approached Alex, a friend of Fara’s whom I knew to be a decent photographer. At least, I knew he’d taken the only good pictures of me on record. I’d hoped he’d be there tonight because I had a proposition for him.