The Art of Love (5 page)

“Elliot,” Elliot snaps with warranted irritation.

“Nice to meet you, Elliot.” Trent flashes a smile that probably cost as much as a four-year–college tuition. He doesn’t really look in Elliot’s direction, though; he keeps his gaze on me. “Sue, I'm sending over a bottle of champagne to your table. Compliments of the Winchell Hotel.”

“Thank you Mr. ... Trent.” If my face gets any more red, I’m sure it can be used to warn ships away from treacherous shores.

“Yeah, um, dude?” Elliot interjects. “Champagne gives me gas. Can you make that a couple of brews instead?”

I am mortified. I truly could die on the spot.

Trent turns to take Elliot in fully for the first time. His eyes flicker over the jeans, the shoes, the wrinkled shirt. “No.” Then he turns back to me and says, “Have a lovely evening, Suzanne.”

As Trent walks away, Elliot glares after him, completely livid. “What a total douche,” he snarls.

I am embarrassed beyond actual words. I knew having dinner where I work was a mistake, but if I’d known it was going to be this humiliating, I would have opted for the third-rate pizza.

Elliot gets to his feet. “
I've got to drop a deuce,” he feels the need to announce. “When the waiter comes by, get us some of those cheesy appetizers I like.”

He saunters off before I can even stutter out, “Um… yeah
... okay.”

I sit by myself with my eyes closed, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. It’s this meditation technique I’ve read about, but it’s really doing nothing to make me feel better. This absolutely has to be the last straw. I can’t keep tolerating Elliot and still have any respect left for myself.

The music for when Jaws is about to attack some hapless swimmer starts to play. "dun-dun Dun-Dun DUN-DUN DUN!-DUN!" I open my eyes and notice Elliot’s cell dancing across the table. I pick it up to silence it but am caught by the caller ID. It reads "Office." Elliot hasn’t managed to hold down a job for longer than a few weeks for the entire time we’ve been dating, so he really has no reason to have “office” saved in his phone.

I’m normally not the overly suspicious type, but something compels me to answer. “
Hello...?” I all but whisper.

“
Elliot! You nasty boy!” a very female voice trills. “I found your underwear. Behind the couch!               How did it get back there? You dirty thing!”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s definitely not this. Elliot has always been less than adequate in the bedroom, to put it kindly, and he’s sunk to completely incompetent in the last month. I guess I now know why. “
Uh...” is all I manage to say into the receiver.

“
Elliot?” the female says again, the dawn of suspicion starting to creep into her voice.

I drop the phone and just take off. I can hear the voice echoing in my head as I speed walk out of the restaurant. “
Hello...? Elliot...?”

Chapter 5

I am the biggest idiot on the planet. That’s all I keep thinking. I knew Elliot was a loser. I knew he treated me like crap. And I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I really needed to dump his ass, but I never, in a million years, dreamed that he was cheating on me.

The first time Elliot and I had sex, he apologized when it was over. Hell, he didn’t just apologize, he begged for forgiveness, insisting he would get better. The next few times after that, he kept apologizing then running a replay loop where he commented on what he did well and where he needed improvement. I began to feel like I was having sex with my optometrist. “Better? Or worse? Better? Or worse?” Finally, I explained that it really isn’t sexy to be with someone who keeps saying, “I’m sorry,” afterwards.

After the first three months is when I should have broken it off with Elliot. That’s enough time to realize if you want to invest more energy into someone or if you’re better off jumping ship. But Elliot seemed really into me, and although I wasn’t getting a ton out of dating him in return, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. That’s a lot of my problem with dating: I’m too worried about how the guy feels and never really think about whether I’m actually benefiting from the relationship. And for me, after three months, the boyfriend / girlfriend groove sets in. The guy stops trying so hard; I stop expecting so much. The problem with Elliot is that I wasn’t getting that much out of the relationship to begin with, so when he stopped trying, there was just this hairy mess I was dating for the sake of having a boyfriend.

Even so, the thought that he is cheating on me sends me into a rage. Cheating on me on my birthday! How low can you get? And that woman, calling up to gush over him. It was pathetic. I think a lot of the problems women have with men are perpetuated by women. If we keep faking things in the bedroom and giving them positive feedback that what they’re doing is curling our toes when it actually isn’t, then how are they ever going to improve?

But men’s egos are so fragile. Just the slightest hint that what they’re doing isn’t sending you over the moon and they either sulk, get angry while simultaneously blaming you, or go find somebody who will lie to them more convincingly. I am completely guilty of nursing Elliot’s ego along. That’s probably what gave him the confidence to go out and start cheating on me in the first place.

I am such an idiot!

I don’t even know how I got back to my condo. I guess I must have driven, but it’s all just a blur. I know it’s not smart to drive when you’re upset, but I didn’t think about that when I ran out of Bouche. All I could think about was getting the hell out of there. I didn’t stop and think that it would be smarter to take a cab. I’m lucky I didn’t get into an accident.

Just entering my apartment makes me feel a little better. I fully believe that where you live should be a sanctuary, and I’ve done my best to make my condo a little haven just for me. Any spare foot of wall space in my living room has a bookshelf. I’m obsessed with Chinese history. Like I said, my dad is from Hong Kong. So most of my books have something to do with China.

I also have quite a bit on Ireland. It’s not a true passion of mine, but my mom keeps giving them to me, and I read them because I don’t want to hurt her feelings. The thing is, there are a ton of Irish people in America, and there’s a lot of information about Ireland. There are a zillion Irish bars in Chicago, and the city practically shuts down every March 17
th
so that everyone can get drunk. But it’s not the same for China. If you look at census polls, there are a lot of people with Chinese heritage living in America that we’ve just, somehow, overlooked. Yes, most major cities have a Chinatown, but it’s not like everyone runs around drinking Chinese liquor and wearing red on a special day each year to celebrate the culture.

Anyway, I also collect Chinese antiques when I can afford them. It’s a reasonably esoteric collection for an American, especially an American female. Most people in the states know nothing about Chinese history but are pretty darn fascinated by Japan. Ask almost any guy in America about a samurai sword and he’ll go on and on about how many of the swords the Japanese military used during World War II were actually ancient family swords and how some of them are worth millions of dollars. It’s basically an urban myth that titillates the average suburban white male.

Hey, I’m not saying there aren’t swords that were brought home by GIs as war prizes. I’m not even denying that some of them are ancient family swords. And I’m sure there are many Japanese people who would be thrilled to get their family sword back. What I submit is that not many of the Japanese have the desire or the means to pay out a million dollars on a sword. I guess when things were really booming in Japan back in the eighties, Americans got the impression that all Japanese have a ton of money and that dropping a million bucks on a sword really isn’t that big of a deal. I’m sure it happened once under a set of very special circumstances, but American guys act like all you have to do is find a WWII samurai sword and you’re set for life.

I really shouldn’t complain because it means Chinese antiques are a lot cheaper than Japanese antiques. I focus most of my obsession on armor, edged weapons, jade, and cloisonné. Everyone who comes over to my apartment for the first time is always a little thrown because my personality, apparently, does not line up with a woman who’s obsessively collected a bunch of antique swords, but I guess it’s my way of connecting to my father.

This may sound weird, but I’ve never met my dad. He and my mom had their “romance” when he was living in the U.S. for grad school. She didn’t even know she was pregnant until he was on his way back to Hong Kong. Mom says he’s fairly well off, but he’s never come to visit or anything. He’s probably afraid that if he enters the United States now, he’ll get slammed for a bunch of back child support or something. I’ve talked to him on the phone about a half dozen times, and he used to send presents sometimes when I was really little, but that’s about it. I was raised by my mom and my grandmother. Mom comes from a family of four sisters, all of whom are divorced. So besides my very reclusive grandfather, who died when I was eleven, I didn’t have a lot of men in my life while I was growing up. That’s probably why I’ve become a little too dependent on relationship self-help books. I mean, how else am I supposed to figure out what the hell is going on in guys’ brains?

I go into the kitchen and rifle through the cupboards until I find a still-unopened pint of some fancy vodka I was given as a Christmas gift several years ago. I think it was a re-gift because the woman who gave it to me said she puked on vodka in college and couldn’t stand the smell of the stuff, so it really didn’t make sense that she would give it to me as a gift. I crack the seal on the bottle and dump a healthy pour into a water glass. In the back of my fridge, I find a jar of green olives. I throw a couple in my drink along with a splash of the olive juice and some ice. Taking a large swig, I feel the alcohol burning my throat. Not the best martini on the planet, but serviceable.

I head to the living room to relax on my couch. The drink does wonders to calm my anger, but about halfway through, I start to feel a touch of melancholy. Not for Elliot exactly, but it just hurts to be cheated on. Plus, I hate trying to find someone new. I hate dating in general. I start to feel all insecure, and I get way too nervous and can’t really relax or act like myself when I meet someone for the first time. And besides, where the hell do you meet someone new? I don’t really like bars, and besides, who do you usually meet in a bar? Some drunk guy. There’s always online, I suppose, but that comes with its own risks.

But why did Elliot cheat? Why? My brain can’t stop going there. Is there something about me that makes a guy think, “I definitely need a little on the side,” or something? And where the hell did he find someone to cheat with? He’s not exactly George Clooney. Or eve
n
Paul Giamatti. He looks more like a stereotypical terrorist that would be cast in a Hollywood blockbuster with Bruce Willis running around a high rise. And he’s not even the head, charismatic terrorist type. He’s more like one of the henchmen that gets killed in the first half of the film. Since when is that a look that women are willing to cheat for? I take another slug of vodka and decide to just go ahead and feel sorry for myself.

I scan through my numerous dating advice books and find one that looks likely,
His Cheating Heart
. Maybe there is some wisdom between the covers because I sure can’t think of anything. I thumb through the pages and find a potential resource—Chapter Seven: How to Forgive a Man Who Cheats.

I’m a good three pages in before my brain thinks, “Wait a minute. What am I doing?” I don’t want to forgive Elliot. The hell with that. I want to forget Elliot, get past Elliot, move on to greener pastures. But first I have to understand if there is something I did wrong to get me in this situation. Besides continuing to date Elliot well past his expiration date, which is my most obvious blunder.

There is a knock at the door so loud that it startles the book out of my hands, and it falls onto the floor. It’s an angry knock, not some neighbor-stopping-by-to-borrow-a-cup-of-sugar-at-ten-o’clock-at-night kind of knock. I realize as I get up that I’m a little sloshed. Not super drunk or anything, but my makeshift martini has definitely softened the sharp edges of the world.

Using the peephole, I check to see who’s out there. Just as I suspected, it’s Elliot. And he’s brought that stupid Elizabeth’s Conspiracy gift basket with him. I let out a sigh so deep that I feel like it’s emanating from my soul. If I just do nothing, how long will it take him to give up and go away?

I guess he somehow senses I’m behind the door because he looks directly at the peephole and says, “Sue, open up. It’s me.”

I really need to get one of those chains for my door. Instead, I open it a crack with my foot braced behind the door so he can’t just barge in. “What do you want?”

Elliot looks thoroughly annoyed. “Sue! What the hell?” he bellows. “Why did you take off like that? I looked like a total wad! The waitress made me pay for the champagne!”

I restrain myself from saying that he does not need my help to look like a total wad. I can’t quite tell if he knows the jig is up and he’s trying to bluff his way out of it or if he seriously thinks I took off, leaving him there for no reason.

Lifting the gift basket, he shoves it toward the door. “Look, I brought your birthday present. You forgot it.”

I don’t know what compels me, but I open the door another few inches and take the basket. I know that gifts create obligations, and that’s what he’s trying to do, but it’s too ingrained in my DNA that I have to be gracious about a gift, even a wildly inconsiderate gift.

But no. I’m not going to be that person anymore. I can’t be that person anymore. There is a point where you reach the absolutely, very last straw. So I straighten my spine and say, “For the hundredth time, Elliot, I'm allergic to this crap. What does that say about you as a boyfriend that you keep giving me gifts that make me break out in a rash?”

Elliot is truly confused. I mean, he’s not faking it. He seriously has no idea. “
You're allergic to Elizabeth's Conspiracy? Since when?”

Feeling beyond exasperated and in no mood to explain something that I’ve explained dozens of times before, the last time being less than an hour earlier, I cut to the chase and say, “
Elliot, we've got to break up.”

This completely throws him. His mouth practically falls open. “
What? Why?”

“
Because you're an asshole. And you're cheating on me.”

Elliot reacts like he’s just discovered a cobra in a basket, which is some pretty bad acting. “
What? I'm not cheating on you! That's crazy. Where would you come up with something like that? Sue, I love you.”

Nope, I’m not buying it. I give him a steady glare and say, “
Fine, if you didn't cheat on me, prove it.”

I see a subtle smirk flit across Elliot’s face. He is supremely confident that he can squirm out of this situation, and it’s really annoying. “No problem. What do I have
to do?”

I give him the death glare. “
Drop your pants.”

Elliot is completely caught off guard by this request
. He stares at me for several seconds while his brain maps out all the different scenarios. For the longest time, all that comes out of his mouth is, “Uh...” Finally, his brain clicks on a plan of action, and he decides to go on the defensive. “I'm not dropping my pants!” he thunders, full of indignant self-righteousness. “Don't think I'm going to jump through a bunch of stupid hoops just to prove to you I didn't cheat!” A vein on his forehead is throbbing, and he’s really selling it. “I love you. My word should be good enough.”

I completely melt. “
Oh, Elliot. I’m sorry,” I gush. “I should have known you'd never cheat. Here.” I extend a hand toward him. “Give me your phone. I'll call work and tell them to take the champagne off your credit card.”

Elliot can barely suppress a smug look of triumph as he pulls his cell phone out of his jeans and hands it to me. As I press a few buttons and put the phone to my ear, I see doubt creep across his face. The desire to have the cost of the champagne erased from his credit card was stronger than his common sense. He’s really starting to look nervous, so I hold a finger in the air to delay him from reacting. “
It's ringing.”