Mike, Mike & Me (11 page)

“Upset? Me? Why would I be upset?”

“I don’t know. One minute you were laughing, the next you weren’t. Is something bothering you?”

Yes.

But where do I start?

I’ve never even mentioned Mike to Laura. Isn’t that strange? She’s somebody I see almost every day of my life, but I never realized until this moment that our interaction is all about the present: playdates, PTO meetings, soccer practice, leads on new babysitters.

The past just doesn’t seem to come up. She’s probably my closest friend in the world now, and yet I don’t even know her maiden name. How very odd that is. Odd, and disconcerting.

I shake my head, gazing around at the frolicking kids, the baby monitor, the house, the SUV parked in the driveway.

This is my life now, and it’s a life that has nothing to do with the person I once was. I’ve lost touch entirely with her. To Laura, and to my children, she never even existed.

“Mommy, Adam’s washing his hands in the pool!” Chelsea shrieks.

“I told him to.”

“Yuck! I’m getting out.”

“At least nobody pooped in the pool this time,” I comment, wriggling my toes in the shallow water, which now has a purplish ice-pop slick floating on the surface.

“Oh, ick. Remember that?”

We laugh about it, and I wonder why it is that any time I’m chatting with one of my fellow mommy friends, the conversation always gets steered around to bodily functions. Maybe I need to broaden my horizons, expand my circle of friends beyond the neighborhood and the PTO.

Not that I don’t have other friends.

I think about Valerie, who is still living in New York but caught up in her job and the search for Mr. Right.

I think about Gordy, who is also still living in New York, but is currently doing summer stock in the Berkshires.

I think about Gaile, who’s living in Beverly Hills, producing reality television programs for cable, and married to a casting director who has three kids from two ex-wives.

Thinking about Gaile leads naturally to thinking about e-mail, because that’s how I found her again.

Thinking about e-mail leads naturally to thinking about Mike…

And no sooner does the thought of him cross my mind than the cordless-phone extension rings.

It’s him, I think as I scramble to pick it up, not wanting it to wake Tyler just yet.

But of course it can’t be him, because that would be far too coincidental. I mean, to think of him and have him call in that exact second?

What are the odds of that happening?

“Beau? Is that you?” a male voice asks. A voice so familiar that it’s hard to believe I haven’t heard it in fifteen years.

My heart stops.

Yes, it’s me.

And yes…it’s
him.

twelve

The past

“B
eau? Where the heck have you been?” Valerie called from our tiny kitchenette as I trudged into our apartment a few days after Mike returned to the West Coast.

“I went to see a movie with Gordy after work,” I told her, dumping my shoulder bag on the floor. “I swear, it was my favorite movie ever.”

Valerie said from the other room, “I thought
Say Anything
was your favorite movie ever.”

“This is my new favorite movie ever. You have to see it, Val. It was called
When Harry Met Sally
. Meg Ryan was in it, and Billy Crystal.”

“Mike’s been trying to reach you. He called twice.” Valerie emerged from the kitchen in an oversize T-shirt and black leggings that had a run in the knee. Her teased, product-lacquered hair towered vertically above her head as usual. She was carrying a can of Diet Coke and a bag of fat-free oat bran pretzels, which she offered to me.

I took a handful despite the fact that I wasn’t even hungry, having devoured a large popcorn and the rest of Gordy’s Sno-Caps at the movies.

“What did he say, Val?”

“He wants you to call him back. He said it was important. He has good news.”

“Did he get a job offer?”

“I don’t know.” She handed me the cordless phone. “Call him. I’m dying to know. He sounded excited.”

I finished crunching as I dialed. The phone rang once on the other end. I helped myself to a swig from Valerie’s soda can and checked my watch after the second ring. It was only seven-thirty on the West Coast. Too early for him to be sleeping, too late to be out to dinner, according to him.

“Hello?”

“Mike! I just got home. What’s your news?”

“I just got a job offer.”

“Which one? The software place?”

“The TCP/IP research place.”

“What TCP/IP research place? And what the heck is TCP/IP research?”

“It stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol,” he said, as if that helped in the least. He might as well have been speaking in Swahili.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mike,” I said, shrugging in response to Valerie’s questioning look.

“Have you heard about the World Wide Web?”

“Oh! You mean that U.S.A. for Africa thing?”

“What?”

“You know,” I said impatiently, “the video from a few years ago with Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner and all those other stars singing?”

“He met Michael Jackson?” Valerie croaked at my elbow. “Oh my God!”

I shushed her, shaking my head.

“That’s ‘We Are the World,’ Beau,” Mike was saying flatly.

“Right.” I paused. “So this is something different?”

“Yeah. This is something different. You know Bradley?”

Bradley Masterson was his professor at school; the one he was helping with that research project.

“Of course I know Bradley.” It was Bradley’s fault Mike wasn’t already back in New York. I hated Bradley.

“One of his colleagues is going to be working on something called the World Wide Web, which is a new concept in blah, blah, blah…a global hypertext database that could be blah, blah, blah…”

Okay, I admit it. I tuned him out, as I always did when he got too technical.

When he paused for breath, I said brightly, “Hey, that sounds great.”

“Great?” Was it my imagination, or was he disdainful over my choice of adjectives? “This could be hugely excellent, Beau.”

“So how was the package?” I was determined to show him that we were on the same page after all.

“It was rad.”

Rad?
First
dude,
now
rad.
Good Lord. The sooner I got him back to the East Coast, the sooner I could banish that annoying surfer lingo from his vocabulary. Anything was better than rad. Even the lackluster
great
. Even the Long Island–tainted
oh-awe-some.

“So did you take the job?” I held my breath.

Valerie squealed in a high-pitched whisper, “He got a job?”

I nodded, holding her off with a raised hand as Mike said, “I wanted to talk to you first.”

I laughed. “Take it. Definitely take it. When do you start? Maybe I can fly out and drive your stuff back with you.”

Silence.

Not good silence punctuated by page-flipping as he checked his calendar for a suitable date. No, dead silence as he obviously tried to figure out how to break some horrible news to me.

I knew, before he spoke, what the horrible news had to be. I knew the job wasn’t here.

“It’s in L.A., isn’t it, Mike.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s in L.A.?” Valerie echoed in dismay, hovering at my side. “Tell him that’s out of the question.”

Before I could do that, Mike shocked me by saying, “No, it’s not in L.A.”

“It’s not?” My heart soared higher than the top of Valerie’s hair. Of course it wasn’t in L.A. Of course things were going to fall into place. They always did, didn’t they? Why did I ever doubt it?

“What a relief,” I said, feeling giddy. “For a second there, I thought for sure you were going to say that it—”

“It’s in Silicon Valley.”

Okay, I was no computer geek—not by a long shot—but even I knew that Silicon Valley was nowhere near Manhattan.

“Isn’t that in California?” I asked Mike slowly.

“Yeah. But not L.A. It’s in northern California. You’d love it up there.”

No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t love it anywhere other than here, I thought stubbornly.

Then again…was he asking me to move with him?

“Maybe if I take the job, after I get settled you can come out and visit for a few days and I can show you around. Then down the road you might want to come out.”

Maybe? Might? Down the road?

Could he be any more noncommittal? I wasn’t necessarily hoping for a marriage proposal, but the least he could do was be a little less vague about our future.

“You’re so quiet,” he said.

“Yeah. Because I think you really want to take this job.”

“Well, it could be a major waste of time. There’s no way to tell. Or…”

“Or…?” I nudged when he fell silent.

“Or it could be the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Which do you think it is?” I asked, thinking he had just pretty much summed up how I felt about our relationship at that point. Major waste of time? Or opportunity of a lifetime?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”

I noticed he wasn’t asking me to tell him what he should do. Which was a shame, because I would. Gladly.

“I guess I’ll sleep on it,” he mused aloud.

“That’s a good idea.” Hopefully, while he was sleeping on it, he’d dream about me. And New York. And being with me in New York. Hopefully, he’d see that that was the way things were supposed to be.

As he went on about the job and technical computer stuff, I closed my eyes and tried to send
Beau-in-New-York
vibes to his subconscious.

When he paused for breath, I said brightly, “So how about those Yankees?”

“They suck,” was the prompt response. “I’m a Mets fan, remember?”

“Oh, right. I forgot.”

He went on and on about the Mets for a few minutes, which wasn’t exactly fascinating but better than all that technical World Wide Web stuff. I couldn’t imagine living with that on a full-time basis if he took the job.

We chatted for a few more minutes about baseball, and eventually, we hung up after exchanging our usual
I love you
’s. Mine was laced with more silent
Beau-in-New-York
vibes. His wasn’t very reassuring.

I mean, if you love someone, you want to be with them. Right? If you love someone, you don’t consider taking some stupid Tee-pee-something or other research job three thousand miles away.

I tossed the cordless phone onto the laminate countertop with a curse.

Valerie peered into my face. “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” I burst into tears. “He wants to take a job in Silicon Valley.”

“He wants
you
to move to Silicon Valley?”

“Did I
say
that?” I knew I was being bitchy. I also knew she understood. That was the great thing about Valerie. Not much fazed her.

“You mean he wants to move to Silicon Valley
without
you? Pretzel?” she asked almost as an afterthought, offering the bag.

“No, thanks.” I sniffled and reached for the pack of cigarettes we kept on top of the microwave. I wasn’t technically a smoker—mostly just when I was out drinking, or depressed.

I puffed away and vented my frustrations about Mike while Valerie crunched her way through the bag of pretzels, alternately offering consolation and salty pats on the shoulder.

Whenever Valerie was depressed, she ate.

Whenever
I
was depressed, Valerie ate.

“The worst thing about it,” I said, lighting a new Salem Slim Light from the stub of my old Salem Slim Light, “is that that horrible ‘We Are the World’ song is now stuck in my head.”

“I like that song.”

“You would. You like New Kids on the Block and Richard Marx, too.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

I shot her a pointed look and an “Ew.”

“I’m insulted,” she said mildly, obviously not the least bit insulted.

The falsetto pop chorus to “We Are the World” sang in my head.

“Did he say when he has to let them know about the job?” Valerie asked.

“No.”

I couldn’t get that damn song out of my head.

“I can’t take it anymore. I have to go turn on some music,” I said abruptly, heading into our bedroom. “Anything is better than this.”

In the bedroom, I headed straight for the boom box, which had been moved from the milk-crate bedside table to the desk, which was next to the wastebasket, which was beside a pale blue cardboard rectangle that lay on the floor.

It must have fallen out when Valerie tossed the trash the other day.

I reached down to grab it, realizing what it was in the instant before I picked it up and turned it over.

Mike.

Stylin’ Mullet Mike from the airport.

“What’s that?” Valerie asked, and I looked up to see her watching me from the doorway, an unlit cigarette in her hand.

“It’s just a business card.” I held it poised over the wastebasket again, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to drop it in.

“Whose business card?”

“This guy’s. I met him at the airport last week when I was waiting for Mike.”

“Is he cute?” She leaned in and lit her cigarette from the one I was holding.

“Really cute.”

“Available?”

“I guess.”

“And you asked him for his number?”

“No! He sort of…forced it on me.”

“Why don’t I ever meet any really cute available guys who force their numbers on me?” she asked wistfully. “Do you know how lucky you are?”

“If I hear that one more time…” I shook my head. “I don’t feel very lucky right now, okay, Val? My boyfriend wants to abandon me to live a million miles away. That isn’t lucky.”

“True.” She waited a second, then said, “Come on, Beau. Don’t just stand there holding that card. Either call this cute available guy or give me the card so I can call him.”

“Call him!” I echoed. “Why would I call him? I have a boyfriend. And why would
you
call him?”