Not Exactly a Love Story (25 page)

She was just too miserable to hold it in.

I
expected to feel miserable. I hadn’t wanted to come to this dance until I—well, until I did, and here I was, disappointing another girl. But the least expected and most overwhelming thing, I was grateful. Do you know what I mean? She trusted me.

I wanted to tell her.

Oh, I had about forty arguments against it. And not a single word to recommend it. Except that she needed me. All of me, Vincenzo Gold, in one piece. If she would have me.

But Vinnie Gold didn’t say any of that. Didn’t ask questions. Vinnie Gold might care, but he didn’t offer advice on things he didn’t know anything about.

“This isn’t because I’m in love with him or anything,” she said by way of apology. “I sent him a note telling him I didn’t want to go out again. But I let him talk me into dancing with him. Bully me, really.” She fought against crying harder. “I’m acting like a dope.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It makes it worse, huh?” She started to walk away. We were nearly home. I followed her, but she started to walk faster, getting ahead of me.

I couldn’t leave it at that. I didn’t want to run after her, so I called, sounding irritated. “Patsy.” That seemed in line with being cool.

She slowed down and we walked for a block without saying anything. She went through her pockets and came up with some tissue to blow her nose. Finally she asked, “Are you always so tough?”

“Tough?”
No, cool
, I wanted to say.

“You don’t know that you’re tough?” she asked, looking straight at me as we approached the streetlight on our corner. “Hard to get to?” Her manner had changed to one I was more familiar with. She was about to hang up on me.

I’d pictured her with lips compressed into a thin line, eyes snapping, electric sparks in the air around her head. It was a picture that brought a smile to my heart. But she wasn’t like that at all. She looked like someone treading deep water. An expression of superficial calm, panic lurking in her eyes.

“No,” I said, finally. I was really sorry I’d gone with
sounding annoyed. I could’ve been cool enough just by walking along until she slowed down.

She sighed and looked away, pulling the elastic bands to the ends of the ponytails. Her hair fell tousled to her shoulders. The sight of it knocked me out. It just knocked me out. I could have looked at her hair all night. “Patsy?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t mean to seem tough.”

She was talking to the Vinnie Gold of the dance floor. Someone who acted a lot like Vincenzo talked, someone who looked bolder and better than the Vinnie I really was.

“Hey, there’s a new movie opening next week—”

She didn’t meet my eyes. “I’m kind of busy next week, Vinnie.”

“Okay. Some other time, maybe.”

She stopped on the sidewalk in front of her house, but I kept walking, shivering a little, turning and strolling backward in a cool, casual way.

She said, “I really can’t go next week. You’ll ask again, right?”

“Sure, sure.” Sure. “See you then.” And I turned toward my house.

The old Vinnie would have stood there awkwardly, making helpless conversation while his heart bled. Vincenzo—I would’ve thought he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Me, the one walking away as if it didn’t matter whether she said yes or no—who was he?

Will the real Vinnie Gold please stand up?

I paced my room for the next twenty-five minutes, seeing the
whole evening in instant replay. It was hard to figure out where we’d go from here. Would I keep calling her every night at midnight? Maybe we’d meet again in the darkness.

Unless she guessed my name tonight.

Would I be truthful? Or would I do the only thing I could to preserve our relationship?

Lie.

11:58. I sat down by the phone, my foot trying to jiggle away the tension I felt. Put Vinnie Gold out of your mind, I thought. You’re the midnight caller, a man of unleashed passions. I grinned. All right, it was comic relief, but the bottom line? Patsy was there for me. Right where I asked her to be. Me. The melting, bleeding, rapidly beating heart of Vincenzo Gold.

11:59. If you want to know the truth, I was suddenly wild with jealousy. She was practically salivating over Vinnie Gold on the dance floor, but still meeting me in secret, hoping I’d turn out to be—who? And then she didn’t want to go to the movies, or was she playing hard to get?

I had to stop thinking. Trying to figure her out. Trying to plan. The whole thing was making me crazy. I had to see what her reaction to the evening was, and then I’d know where I stood. Maybe.

Midnight. I dialed.

Ringing.

Picked up. Nothing. Not even the sound of her breathing.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say hello?”

“I felt funny.” Her voice still held the extra layer it had in the book room, a nervous edge. Excitement. “Don’t you?”

“I’m a wreck,” I admitted, and felt better immediately.

“Sometimes you say exactly what I’m feeling, you know that?”

“I hear you had a falling-out with Biff.” Fast on my feet.

“He has a jealous streak.”

“Among other more serious tendencies.”

She said, “You were right about him.”

“What are you telling me?”

“There’s been a kind of meanness in the way he’s been treating me lately. Trying to play along, but like he’s
impatient to get to the end of something.” I should’ve been loving this, but it made my skin creep. “And he’s so possessive,” she went on. “I thought he was going to hit me when I got back to the dance. I didn’t let him bring me home.”

I didn’t want to get into that. “Game’s over?”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t play such dangerous games,” I said, wanting to be witty, urbane. But it suddenly felt too true to be that slick. “What about tonight? What do you want, anyway?”

“Want?”

“You met a stranger in a dark room tonight, Patsy.”

“I met you.”

“An obscene caller.”

“Zorro.”

My breath caught. Did this mean she knew? On the walk home? Or just since we were talking? Or was she trying to hedge her bet, choosing both Vinnie and Vincenzo?

“I guess it’s not Italian,” Patsy said, into what she might have perceived to be an offended or maybe bored silence. “But I want it to be tonight’s name. Until you give me yours.”

“I was at the dance, remember? I saw you with him.”

Silence. And then she said, “Look, he’s nice enough, and I loved dancing with him. But he’s not the kind of guy I’m ever going to get to know. He’s smooth and all, but he’s not like you. He’ll never say anything important.”

“What do you want him to say?” My voice came out hoarse.

“I don’t want him to say anything. He’s a Ken doll with a ring in his back. Pull the ring and get a cute remark.”

“He’s safe, though. Didn’t you want to say something to one of your friends? ‘If I’m not back in twenty minutes, look for me in the book room?’ ” I knew I’d pushed for it, but now I wished I’d played things differently. “Why would you do such a crazy thing?”

“It’s not crazy,” she said. “You’ll trust me now, right?”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t have trusted
me
. How could you be sure I wasn’t going to act like Biff?”

“How can you say that? After all the things we’ve talked about.” She sounded truly shaken. But she came back fast. Mad. “You want to go on this way, don’t you?”

I said, “Don’t get angry.”

“You get angry.”

“I have a weak character.”

“Don’t make jokes.” She made an irate sniffling noise. “It’s enough for you? Whispering sweet nothings in my ear?” She was going for sarcasm, but not making it. “Don’t you ever just want to hold hands?”

“I want both.”

“We could have both.”

I wished she was right. I hoped she was. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it. To believe her.

“If it’s going to be that you can’t take it if I’m not always thinking of ways to keep you interested,” she said, “or if I’m not going to be able to face my friends with you, let’s just find it out.”

“So you can make up your mind about the other guy?”

“Don’t be like that.” She sounded outraged. Caught at playing both sides until she’d made up her mind.

“When it’s over with the dancer,” I said as steadily as I could manage, “it will be over.” My voice was shaking like crazy. “But I’ll still be here all along, talking to you. We’ll be—”

“What makes you think I’ll want to talk to you while I have a boyfriend? Don’t you think he’d be enough for me? Do you think I’d be stringing some other guy along?”

Actually, that was exactly what I thought. Actually, I knew it. The question was, how could I tell her I knew it?

“You think I was honest with you because we’re only talking on the phone,” she said. “But I was open even though I don’t know who you are. I was honest even though you know who I am.”

“I don’t think you were entirely honest.”

“You’re never going to tell me who you are,” she said too quietly, and it was a simple statement, not a question at all.

“I don’t know,” I said, and it was the most truthful answer I could give her.

“Maybe you don’t like girls so much after all. You found yourself a way to have one like a pet.”

She was wrong. At least I hoped so.

I felt like she was driving me into a corner, and if I could just think for a minute, I’d know how to answer, how to turn the tables.

“You know what else I think?”

“Please—”

“I think you’re no better than Biff,” she cried, her voice mingling frustration and a desperate appeal. “You’re different, that’s all, you’re weirder. But you’re no better.”

Click.

I moved the phone back to the bedside table. It was a tremendous effort. She could have had this whole conversation without me, and that’s about what she did.

Probably I should have called her right back. It was possible she expected me to do just that. Maybe we would go on talking about something else, like we’d done before. She’d try to guess my name.

But somehow I knew she wouldn’t try. She wouldn’t even pick up. I lay in the darkness, thinking—or not thinking most of the time, feeling a dull ache, amputation pain.

Except that it was nearly painless, as feelings go; it was almost comforting. I don’t think it would be right to say that I let myself drown, but I didn’t fight it off.

After a time, sensation returned to my body. I could feel the smooth cotton bedspread beneath my fingers. The floor felt solid beneath my feet, reassuring as I stood and walked across my room. Testing. Everything worked. Everything felt fine now.

I looked out my window. Her room was dark.

I went back to bed.

It was what I’d been afraid of all along. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her who I was. How could I? I saw how wrong
I’d been to meet her in the book room. It was erosion. Maximum entropy. Sand on the beach.

Of course she’d found Vincenzo wanting. He seemed more courageous while cowering in his room. The first thing I had to ask myself was, Was she right? Did I really want us to go on this way? No. Because didn’t Vinnie have the sweeter deal? She might not tell all, but he could sit next to her when he talked to her. He could kiss her.

And there was still this shocking idea she had, that she had to take these crazy risks. Wasn’t I right? Talk about weird. How come it was falling to an obscene caller to keep her from harm?

I had a funny thought just before I fell asleep.

If we were to stretch the phone wire from my bed to hers, right through the window and across the driveway, we wouldn’t need thirty feet. And we were both crying ourselves to sleep tonight.

I woke up in the middle of the night. It was all resolved in my head. It felt terrible. All the clichés. Like I’d never love anyone else. Like it was the end of the world. Like this pain would never go away. I decided the thing to do, feel pretty good for Vinnie Gold, who, if he played his cards right, had himself a girl. I wouldn’t die of love. Dying of love was out.

The way things worked out, I ran into her as she went out for
the paper the next morning. I was on the same errand, giving me a fairly uninteresting opening as we walked down our driveways. “Funny we don’t run into each other this way more often.”