Milkrun (12 page)

He walks up to the bar to get a pen and a piece of paper, and I see the bartender smirk and mouth, “You scored digits?” How immature.

I write down my number in what I hope appears to be a sexy scrawl. And then I write Jackie in big letters underneath, just in case. Soul mate or no soul mate, my name was the first thing I said to him, and it's possible he wasn't overcome with destiny just at that moment.

And now, here I am sitting at a prime table, all by myself. Okay, I know I'll probably get attitude from Amber the Tooth Fairy, but I am not going to sit here alone for three hours. The bar is not quite as crowded at this hour, so I only have to elbow my way through, without the squeeze.

“Hey,” I say to Natalie, who is standing by the bar with Ben.

“Hi,” she says. “Did you have a nice chat with Damon? You guys do the same thing, sort of.”

“Yeah. He seems nice. He asked me out.”

“Really? I thought he was still with Suzanne.”

“I guess not. Who's Suzanne?”

“He had this older girlfriend for a while.”

“Guess that's over. Is he nice?”

“As a matter of fact, he's supernice.”

Yay! Go me. My soul mate is supernice!

“Who's supernice? Me?” Ben asks, exhaling a puff of vinegary Scotch breath.

“Damon.”

“Damon who?”

“Damon…” Damn. That's probably one of those things I'm supposed to remember. Did he even tell me his last name? I can't recall. I've never been very good at remembering details like that, or birthdays, or where I put plane tickets. But the plane ticket thing only happened once, I swear. And I'm still pretty sure the return portion fell down under my seat on the plane. Stuff does fall down. Just ask Janie. She's always complaining that her butt has fallen down. And her face. Last night she called me up, hysterical, complaining that her size three pants don't fit anymore—she had to buy a size five. Cry me a river, won't you. In any case, the very fact that I've only lost one plane ticket in my entire flying career is actually pretty impressive when you think about it. Twice, maybe, if you count the time Janie told me she had sent me a ticket for June 6, 7:00 p.m., but was actually for June 7, 6:00 p.m. If she hadn't sounded so sure of herself, I would have checked the date. Really.

“Damon Strenner.” Natalie saves the day.

Jackie Strenner has a nice, smooth ring to it.

Ben snorts. “You're going out with Damon Strenner? That guy is such a loser.”

Natalie rolls her eyes. “In the past twenty minutes you've called three guys losers. Tell me, is there any guy in this bar, besides you of course, who is not a loser?”

Ben tilts his head as if he's just been asked a trick question. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “Andrew.”

“You've got to name a guy you haven't been best friends with since you were two.”

Since they were two? Tell me more! “How did you know Andrew when he was two?”

“Our parents are (hiccup) friends.”

Uh-oh. He's starting to slur. Is that a hand on my back? Is that
his
hand on my back? Is that his hand reaching lower and lower down my back?

“Where
is
Andrew?” I ask, trying to squirm my way away from his hand.

“Don't know,” Ben answers, swerving slightly. “I saw Jess. I guess they took off.”

“Who's Jess?” Natalie says, her interest suddenly peaked.

“His lady-friend.”

Jessica the Sweet Valley Twin. Does lady friend mean girlfriend? Almost-girlfriend? Sex buddy?

Ben's hand is now on my butt. I tell Natalie it's time to go.

 

Back at the apartment forty-five minutes later, I find Sam sitting on the couch, wrapped in her afghan. The TV is blaring an episode of
Beautiful Bride
, and Sam is in a trancelike state.

“Hello?” I call. “You alive?”

She mumbles some sort of response.

I peel off the pinching boots. “Do we have anything to eat?”

“Cereal.”

That'll do. I pour a small amount into a bowl with milk. Cereal is seriously underrated. Why should it be only eaten in the morning? It's tasty, low fat, and with milk represents two major food groups. The trick is getting the ratio just right so that the cereal doesn't get soggy.

I crawl onto the couch beside her. “What happened?”

“I hate him.”

What's this? Trouble in Sessy land? Uh-oh, here come the tears. “Talk to me,” I say, reaching to the coffee table for a tissue. “This is what roommates are for. To listen to boyfriend complaints.” Never mind that I am currently between boyfriends (not literally, unfortunately) and that I have no one to complain about. It does occur to me, however, that I've never heard Sam mention another girlfriend. “Who do you normally talk to when you're pissed at Marc?”

“What do you mean? I talk to Marc.”

Wow. This girl needs some serious go-girl therapy. “No one else?”

“My mom.”

Dear God. “You haven't had any girlfriends since you and Marc started dating, have you? When was that?”

“Five years ago.” She is still staring at the television. A brunette is having her horrifically ugly dress shortened. “Natalie's my friend.”

“And the last time you spoke to Natalie was…”

Sam suddenly looks at me in shock. “You're right. You're one hundred percent right. I have no friends, and I have a boyfriend who's never going to marry me.”

Marry you? Who's talking about marriage?

“I'm already twenty-five and I'm going to be an old maid.”

“I have news for you, unless they find a way to rebuild your hymen, you can never be an old maid. Besides, you're far closer to getting married than anyone else I know.”

“My mother had me when she was twenty-four. That's a whole year younger than I am now! She got married when she was twenty-one.”

“Yeah, so did mine, and look how well that turned out.”

Sam rambles on as if she doesn't hear a word I say. “Don't you see? I'll date Marc until I'm twenty-nine and he still won't want to get married and my biological clock will be ticking and I'll have to break up with him and no one else will want me.”

Biological clock? I don't even own a watch. This type of issue is way beyond the range of my radar system.

“Okay. First you've got to stop watching
Beautiful Bride.
” I click off the remote. “Second, give me the CliffsNotes version of your relationship so that I can understand the problem. From the beginning. How you met.”

“Okay.” Sob. “I met Marc at the library. He always studied across the table from me. One day he slipped a note in my child psychology textbook—”

“Why'd you take child psychology? To understand men?”

“No, to understand children.”

“Makes sense.”

“Anyway, the note said, ‘Hi, do you want to take a dinner break?' Of course I said yes and—”

“You wrote back yes or you told him yes?”

“I told him yes.”

“How did you know who he was?”

“Because he sat across the table from me at the library.”

“But you knew
he
had written the letter?”

“Of course I knew.”

“What did you say?”

“I looked up and he was staring at me and I said, ‘I'd love to have dinner with you,' and he said great.”

“Technically he might not have written the note.”

“Of course he wrote the note!”

“But how do you know?”

“I just do. You're being ridiculous. Do you want to hear or not?”

“Fine. Sorry. Continue.”

“We went out for dinner and then he asked me out again for that weekend, and we've dated ever since.”

“That's the story?”

“That's the story.”

“It would have been much more interesting if someone else had written the note.”

“Get over it. Now the problem is it's time to move things to the next level.”

Huh? Next level? “Are you telling me you guys haven't slept together yet?” Maybe her old maid theory isn't so farfetched after all.

“Of course we've slept together. There are
other
next levels, you know.”

Other next levels? “Sorry, no guy has ever mentioned any other next levels to me.”

“We've been together for five years now, and I think it's time to move in together.”

Is she crazy? Has she completely lost her mind? “That's a terrible plan.”

“Why?” she asks nervously. “You don't believe in living with a guy before marriage?”

“Of course I do. I just don't believe in leaving your roommate in the middle of the year with a two-bedroom apartment lease.” I look down at my bowl and sigh.

“What?”

“I have too much milk left. I need more cereal.”

She ignores me as I get up to reconfigure the bowl's ratio. “I wouldn't stick you with the rent. We'd look for someone else to room with you, or I'd wait until September first when our year lease is up.”

Technically it was a thirteen month lease and not only a year since I had sublet her former roommate's final month, and then started my own at the beginning of September, but Sam was obviously trying to downplay our relationship to alleviate her guilty conscience.

What does she expect me to do? I don't know anyone else who I want to live with who is looking for a place to live. I barely know anyone I don't want to live with who isn't looking for a place to live.

“I haven't asked him yet,” Sam continues after a noisy honk into the tissue. “But I drop about a million hints a day.”

“What kind of hints?”

“Like last year when Angie was moving out, I asked Marc what I should do, and he said, ‘Why don't you put an ad in the classifieds?' He was supposed to say, ‘It's time for us to move in together.'”

“You're upset about something he said a year ago?”

“No, I'm upset about something he said tonight. I met him for Chinese food after work. He said, ‘Why don't you sleep over?' and I said, ‘Okay, I just need to get some stuff from my apartment,' and he said, ‘You know, you should really keep a toothbrush and some extra stuff…in your car.' In my car!”

“In your car!”

“In my car! Not in his apartment, but in my car. I ask you, is this normal? As if I'm some kind of nomad. I wasn't about to stay over at his place after that kind of comment.”

“But why is
Beautiful Bride
on at two in the morning?”

“It's a tape.”

“Maybe he's a commitment-phobe.”

“Just my luck. How do I know?”

Luckily I have the answer to that question at my fingertips. Diagnosing commitment-phobia is one of my specialties. “What does he put in his mouth?”

“Why?”

“This month's
City Girls
says you can tell if a guy's a commitment-phobe by what he puts in his mouth. Hold on, I'll get it.” I run into my room and grab the magazine. “So what type of breath freshener does he use?”

“Breath freshener?”

“Yeah—gum, mints or those dissolving squares?”

“He loves those dissolving things. What does that say about him?”

Uh-oh. “It says he's bound to pull a disappearing act.”

“Oh, come on!”

“What is your man more likely to order as an entrée? Lemon chicken, ravioli, or rib eye.”

“Um…ravioli.”

I shake my head. “No good. That means that, ‘One is never enough.'”

“Meaning?”

Isn't it obvious? “Meaning he can't commit to one girl.”

Desperation is clouding over Sam's normally cheerful brown eyes. “What should he eat then?”

“Rib eye.”

I continue reading. “‘A man who orders rib eye is willing to invest in your relationship. And when the going gets tough, he sticks around.'”

“Who eats rib eye?”

“Obviously not Marc.”

“What is rib eye?”

“It's the prime cut of the rib steak. You should buy him some.”

“I don't want to feed him, I just want him to want to move in with me.”

“Good luck. But wait 'til September, okay?”