The Friends We Keep (9 page)

23

 

I flung my tie on the bed. The shirt followed. Both would go to the dry cleaners in the morning. The suit could be worn once more as long as I gave the pants a quick press.

Yes. I am a man who irons. This interesting fact did not, however, seem to ensure successful dating experiences.

Take, for example, the dinner from which I'd just come. Teri had set me up with a friend of hers from college. Her name was Cheryl. She had a master's degree in education and worked as a public high school teacher. Needless to say, Cheryl was bright. Not brilliant but above average. She was also nice.

I would not be seeing her again.

I tossed my socks into the hamper and wondered if I was a horrible person. Was I just one of those Shallow Hal–type guys after all, completely focused on a woman's appearance rather than on her character and personality?

I revved up the electric toothbrush and dismissed the notion as ridiculous. There was ample evidence to prove otherwise. I was a nice guy. Pretty much anyone could tell you that. Just ask my mother.

Maybe it was the sting of the mouthwash that brought on the flicker of righteous indignation. Why, I thought, is it wrong for a nice guy to want to date—and eventually to marry—a woman he and every other red-blooded straight guy in the room finds attractive by the generally accepted standards of contemporary beauty?

Cheryl was smart and pleasant but she did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe if her wit had been sparkling I might have overlooked her bitten-down nails, might have found something charmingly quirky in her supershort, tightly curled hair, might have thought her diminutive size was adorable and not—well, a little weird.

The simple truth was this: I was way better-looking than Cheryl. I'm not bragging, just stating a fact anyone with eyes could verify.

And this bothered me. And it bothered me that it bothered me.

I imagined the whispers that would follow us whenever we entered a room together: Why in God's name did he marry her? She must be good in bed, dude, 'cause she's nothing to look at. Man, he could have gotten a model and he settled for
that?

I know men. I know women, sometimes. I know people, and all of them, even the most upstanding among them, have moments in which they can be petty and mean and stingy with their kindness.

Maybe it's wrong but appearance and appearances matter to me. Not exclusively, of course. Consider Eva. Physically, she was fantastic. But her personality put a big damper on any feelings I might have for her.

I dabbed cream under my eyes and carefully stroked it in. I'm not trying to dodge old age, but neither am I courting it.

I want, I thought, to be turned on by the woman I'm going to marry. I want to be smitten with everything about her, and, yes, I want other men to look at me with envy and at my wife with admiration.

Evening ablutions completed, I stared in the mirror at my forty-two-year-old face. And there it was, the truth. I could pretend all I wanted. I could hold doors and pay for dinners and even fight for the neglected rights of neglected women. Nothing could change the truth.

“You,” I said aloud, “are a pig.”

24

 

“So, how was your date with Cheryl?” Teri asked. “Tell me everything.”

“Well,” I replied carefully, “there's not much to tell. We went to dinner. It was nice.”

“What was nice, the restaurant?”

I moved the stapler to the left side of the phone. I moved it back to the right side. “Yeah, it was okay. Not my favorite place but Cheryl picked it, so . . .”

“So, what else? God, John, it's like pulling teeth talking to you. You have no gift for gossip.”

“I wasn't aware,” I said, “that gossip had become a good thing.”

“Did you have a nice time with Cheryl?” Teri asked, ignoring my comment. Her tone brooked no more evasion on my part.

I shrugged to the empty office. “Yeah, it was okay, you know.”

“What's wrong with her?” Teri demanded.

“Nothing's wrong with her. I just wasn't attracted to her.”

Teri sighed magnificently. “Sex isn't everything in a marriage, you know.”

“Yes, Teri,” I replied patiently, “I know. But there should be some spark, at least in the beginning.”

“Is it because she's so short? It's her height, isn't it?”

“Of course not,” I protested. “What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“Right now, I'm not so sure.”

“Don't you want your brother to be happy?” I asked rhetorically.

“Of course. It's just that Cheryl called me this morning and said she had a wonderful time with you last night.”

My eyes widened in genuine surprise. I'd thought she was as uninterested in me as I was in her. God, John, I told myself, you're an idiot. “She did?” I croaked.

“Yes, she did. And she told me you said you'd call her. But now you're telling me you don't really like her!”

“I didn't say I don't like her,” I argued. “She's very nice. I just don't want to go out with her again.”

“Then why did you tell her you'd call her?”

Good question.

“Because, well, it's what you say.”

“What who says?” Teri shot back.

“Guys. It's what guys say at the end of a date, even if they had a miserable time. It's just . . . easier.”

“Not for the women you're lying to!”

“Come on, Teri, do women really believe men when they say they're going to call? What woman believes anything a man says?”

“Not funny, John. I am so mad at you right now. I want you to promise me you'll call Cheryl and apologize.”

“What are you suggesting?” I asked stupidly. “That I tell her the truth, that I don't want to see her again?”

“That's exactly what I'm suggesting. No, I'm demanding it, John.”

“But won't that be worse than my not calling at all?” I argued. “I mean, in a few days she'll probably get the idea that I'm not interested. If I call, if she sees my number on caller ID or the minute she hears my voice, won't her expectations be raised? And then I'll have to let her down again.” The words sounded lame even to my ears.

“John. Call Cheryl tonight. But not too late,” she added, “she goes to bed around nine.”

“Most nights I'm just getting home from the office by nine. You see how incompatible we are?”

“Call her from the office, John.” Teri was really angry. I did understand. Cheryl was her friend. My bad behavior might rebound on their relationship. “Apologize for leading her on.”

“Okay, okay,” I said resignedly. “If you really think it's the best thing, I'll do it. I'll call her. But it won't be easy.”

“Poor you. I'm sure you'll survive.”

“I can't wait until Mom and Dad get home.”

“Why?” Teri asked.

“Maybe then you and Chrissy will stop bossing me around.”

“You'd rather Mom boss you around?”

“Sure. She's the mother, that's her job. You and Chrissy are my little sisters. I'm supposed to be telling you what to do, not the other way around.”

“Well, when you learn how to behave like a human being we'll leave you alone. Until then, you're fair game.”

“Good-bye, Teri. I've got to work up the nerve to call Cheryl.”

“Thanks, John.” Teri's tone had softened. “I know this whole dating thing is hard.”

“I hate it,” I admitted. “I really hate it.”

“Someday you'll look back on these days as just a bad dream.”

“Promise?” I asked with a rueful laugh.

“I'm talking to God about it, John. He's working on it.”

“Well, in that case, I'm golden.”

“Not until you call Cheryl.”

That's Teri—tough and tenacious. And she's got faith. If anyone is golden, it's my little sister.

25

 

“Cheryl, this is John Felitti.”

“Oh, hi!” she said enthusiastically. “I was hoping you would call.”

My courage took a nosedive. “Is this a good time to talk?” I asked, shamefully stalling.

“Oh, sure. I was just washing the kitchen floor but, here, let me take off my gloves . . . Okay.”

Could things get any worse? This woman was about to be rejected while clutching a mop.

“This is very awkward,” I said, then rushed on with my miserable task. “I had a nice time with you last night, Cheryl. A very nice time. But—I don't think things are going to work out between us. I'm sorry.”

There was an awful moment of silence before Cheryl said: “So, you didn't call to ask me out?”

“No,” I said, “I didn't. I'm sorry.”

“You called to say you're not going to see me again?”

“Yes,” I said, “that's right.”

“You know,” she said, not belligerently, “when a man says that he'll call you, it's supposed to mean he'll call you for another date. It's not supposed to mean he'll call you to tell you he doesn't want to see you again.”

Oh, I was going to have a word with Teri. I'd been right all along. I should never have called. Eventually, my silence would have conveyed my disinterest. Or would silence really have been more hurtful, like Teri believed it would be?

“Yes,” I said, “I know. Again, I'm sorry. I was just—I was just trying to be polite last night.”

Cheryl laughed awkwardly. “Well, I guess that's that.”

“Yes, I guess so. Good—”

“Wait,” Cheryl interrupted. “What did you tell Teri?”

“What did I tell her?” I repeated stupidly.

“It's okay,” she said and I thought I heard a catch in her voice. “It's fine.”

No, it wasn't fine. “I told her I thought you were a very nice person.”

“I am,” Cheryl replied, with that little awkward laugh. I felt like a bum for being the cause of it.

“Yes, okay then . . .”

“Good-bye, John,” Cheryl said, and then our mutual misery was over.

26

 

We always met at Jake's apartment. It was hardly a room at the Ritz but the place was clean and generally tidy. I tipped an imaginary hat to Sophie for having raised a boy familiar with the pleasures of a mop and a bottle of ammonia—until Jake mentioned that he hired someone to come in once a week and clean.

“I'm hopeless,” he said with a shrug. “My mother did everything for me until I went away to college. I was lucky the campus was only an hour from home. Every Sunday afternoon I'd show up with my laundry and on Monday morning, I'd drive back to school with clean sheets, towels, and clothes, and enough food to feed me and my roommates for a week.”

Unaccountably, I found this bit of information charming. See, I liked Sam as far as I was willing to, which wasn't very far; I had no interest in his life outside of the bed on which we were sprawled. But with Jake, things were different. I wasn't quite sure why and it worried me at first that I might be becoming emotionally attached. Why did I ask questions of Jake? Why did I listen to his answers with interest? Maybe it had something to do with Sophie, after all. As much as I didn't want her in bed with Jake and me, she was. Maybe I felt I owed it to her to know more about her son than the size of his penis.

On the other hand, I continued to guard my own privacy religiously. Jake might want to know all about me but he wasn't going to learn very much at the source.

About a week after our first tryst I asked Jake a question that had been on my mind since his performance in the lobby. I asked him if I was the first older woman he'd slept with.

Jake looked at me with some amusement. “Hell, no,” he said.

His answer disappointed me.
I
hadn't drawn Jake's attention; my age had attracted him. Not my intelligence or my long legs but my experience and my crow's feet.

“So, you're in the habit of sleeping with women old enough to be your mother.” I cringed at the foolish choice of words.

“I suppose it is a habit,” he admitted. “Though it's not as if I have some rule about only dating women over forty. It's just that most often I find myself attracted to them.”

“You must have been imprinted at an early age,” I said, half-jokingly. I wasn't sure how deeply I wanted to delve into Jake's psychological makeup.

Jake propped himself up on one elbow and said, very seriously, “I guess I was imprinted. I lost my virginity at the age of sixteen to a twenty-six-year-old. She was a dental hygienist. We met at the dentist's office.”

“Naturally,” I replied. “So, did she seduce you?”

“No,” Jake said matter-of-factly. “It was pretty much mutual. She knew I was sixteen but it didn't seem to bother her. I mean, neither of us was interested in anything long-term so what did it matter? It was all about sex. It was great.”

“It was illegal.”

Jake laughed and dropped back onto the pillow. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

My young lover, I suspected, had quite a sexual history. Maybe that was to account for his prowess. And I'm not one to complain about prowess. “How did it end?” I asked.

“She met a guy around her own age. Last I heard, they were married and had a kid.”

“And since then?” I prodded. “I can't believe you've been a heartbroken recluse since sixteen.”

Jake looked at me with a mix of amusement and suspicion. “Why so interested in my romantic résumé?”

“No reason. Just curiosity.”

“Can I ask you about your romantic past?”

“No,” I said, a bit harshly. I softened my tone to say, “Well, of course you can ask but I'm not going to tell you anything. So, go on. What have you been doing with yourself since the hygienist?”

Jake wasn't put off. Young men like to talk about themselves. I suppose all men do.

“Well,” he said, “since Gina I've been involved with several significantly older women.”

“Ah, significantly older, not just older.”

“I told you I must have been imprinted.”

Or, I thought with sudden distaste, you're unconsciously in love with your mother.

As if he'd read my mind, Jake said: “I've always kept my choice of sexual partners from my mother. She wouldn't be cool with it. She's kind of old-fashioned.”

Yes, I thought, she was. Or maybe naive was a better term to describe Sophie. Or, maybe, average. A person who lived comfortably within convention.

“Didn't she ever wonder why you weren't dating like a normal, red-blooded American boy?” I asked.

Jake laughed. “No. Every once in a while I'd show up at the house with a girl my own age to keep her from bugging me.”

“What a little trickster! Did the girls know they were being used as a cover for your less ordinary sexual pursuits?”

“Of course not,” Jake said, as if I was nuts to have asked. “I went out with them, too. I just wasn't all that into them. Girls my own age never seemed to have anything interesting to say, you know? Not like older women.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “with age comes experience, if not necessarily wisdom. What about your father? Does he know you sleep with older women?”

“My father,” Jake said with an air of mild criticism, “is into much younger, artificially enhanced women these days. He doesn't understand my interest in mature women—in real women. But he isn't bothered by it, either. He's always lived his own life and let me live mine.”

“Does he know about your twenty-six-year-old?”

“No.” Jake laughed. “I know when to keep my mouth shut. Let's go to your apartment next time,” he said suddenly. “I want to see where you live.”

“No.”

“No?” Jake looked at me. “Why not?”

“There's another condition to this relationship besides secrecy,” I told him. “No more showing up in the lobby of my office, okay? And we don't go to my apartment.”

Jake's expression darkened but his tone was even. “I'm getting the feeling that you're embarrassed by me.”

“No. It's not that.” Oh, how I hated to excuse or explain my choices. “It's just that I need my space, Jake.”

“That old cliché!”

“Don't laugh,” I scolded. “Or, you know what, go ahead and laugh, I don't care. I require a certain amount of distance in a relationship.”

“Eva,” Jake said with the patience of a parent explaining a simple rule of social behavior to a lazy child, “relationships aren't about distance. They're about closeness.”

We don't hit our friends, Eva, we hug them.

“Maybe your relationships are,” I said, “but mine aren't. Come on, Jake, we don't even have a relationship, not really. We have sex. That's great, that's fantastic, but that's all.”

I thought for a moment that I'd gone too far for Jake's delicate sensibilities. He shifted a bit away from me and didn't answer right away.

“That's a relationship in my book,” he said evenly.

Oh, crap, I'd offended him. Poor kid. And poor me if I lost my incredibly gifted lover before I was done with him. So I made nice and we made up by having more sex. Sex works every time.

I watched as Jake slipped into the male postcoital doze. He looked so very young and vulnerable. I knew he thought it was only a matter of time before he was curled up on my couch watching baseball and I was in the kitchen making dinner.

But he was wrong and he would learn that someday. But not now. Now, he was a young, sexy guy sure of his powers of persuasion. I'd let him enjoy the delusion—and the nap—while it lasted.