The Guy Not Taken (16 page)

She was funny and smart, ambitious and pretty, and desperately
insecure—but in his limited experience, that was true of most women. He loved her. At least he was pretty sure that he did. But things weren’t perfect. For one thing, they lived two hours apart, and saw each other only on weekends. Bruce liked sleeping in and smoking pot, and tended to leave things in his apartment about where they’d landed when he kicked them off or put them down. Clothes stayed on the floor until he ran out, and finally gathered everything into a laundry basket, which he drove home for his mother to wash. Dishes stayed in the sink until they drew flies. Food stayed in the refrigerator until it rotted or liquefied. At Cannie’s apartment, everything was neat, and everything had a place, which meant that he was forever misplacing something, or knocking something over, breaking a glass candleholder or her favorite serving plate.

She’d accused him, more than once, of drifting through life, content to be a graduate student until he died, secure in the knowledge that his parents would continue to fund his education. He worried that she didn’t know how to relax, that she saw life as one endless marathon and herself as a failure if she didn’t finish first.

He worried about how sad she was sometimes. Depression ran in her family. She’d warned him of that the first time they slept together. “You should be careful,” she whispered. “My whole family’s insane. Clinically insane.” He told her that he wasn’t afraid. “My sister’s on Prozac,” she said, pressing her lips against his neck. “My grandmother died in an institution.” He kissed her again, and she made a noise like a little bird, and he thought as he held her that this could be serious, that this was a girl he could love for the rest of his life.

And why not? They were both the right age, the right religion. She had a good job; he had (on paper, at least) a bright future. But when she’d looked up at him, curled on the couch with her eyes wide, tracing the tip of one finger around the
edge of her wineglass, asking, “Bruce, where are we going with this?” he’d opened his mouth and found that he had no idea what to say.

“Fine,” she’d said. “You’re not sure. It’s no big deal. I can wait.” When she lifted her gaze to meet his, he’d been worried that she’d be crying, but she wasn’t. She didn’t seem sad. Just determined. “I can wait,” she’d said, “but I can’t wait forever.”

“So?” asked Neil, his pale, sharp-featured face inquisitive. “Are you and Cannie next in line?”

“Maybe,” Bruce said.

“Maybe?” asked Tom, raising his eyebrows and clenching his big fists on the table.

“Yeah, what’s with maybe?” asked Neil.

Bruce said the first thing he could think of. “I can’t stand her dog,” he blurted. This, at least, was unambiguously true. Cannie had a tiny little yappy dog, a terrier mix she’d gotten secondhand. The dog had brown-and-white spots, and a sneer from when his mother had bitten him (showing more sense, Bruce privately thought, than little Nifkin had demonstrated in the three years he’d known the cur). He’d come with his name, a disappointment to his mistress, who’d told Bruce she’d always planned on calling a dog Armageddon, after the Morrissey song. “The chorus goes, ‘Armageddon, come Armageddon, come Armageddon, come,’ “ she’d said. “I always knew that if I had a dog I’d want to call him that, so I could stand in the park and yell, ‘Come, Armageddon!’ “ Bruce hated Morrissey, hated cutesy pet names, and thought that any dog under twenty pounds was more of a decorative cushion than anything else, but he’d been careful not to share any of that with Cannie.

“Nifkin?” asked Chris. “What’s wrong with Nifkin?”

“Ah, you know,” said Bruce. “He’s got that yappy little bark, and he sheds, and he hates me.”

“How come?” asked Neil.

“’Cause he gets to sleep with Cannie when I’m not around, but he has to sleep on his dog bed when I am. And when I’m at her place and she’s not there, he just glares at me. It’s scary.” There was more. Cannie was always petting the dog, holding him on her lap and talking to him in a tender lisping baby talk that Bruce could barely decipher. She knew he hated Nifkin, which didn’t improve the situation. Once, in a teasing mood, she said that if a genie came out of a bottle, Bruce would wish for her dog to be turned into a sack of weed. And Bruce, in a teasing mood, said, “You bet I would.” Cannie still held his remark against him. She would bring it up in fights. “You look at my dog and I see murder in your heart!” she’d say, cradling the trembling terrier against her body, her tone sort of teasing, but sort of serious . . . the same voice she used when she was musing out loud about what they’d name their children.

Tom set his mug down on the table with a slam, flexed his bare arms, and stared at Bruce with bloodshot brown eyes. “The dog,” he said, “must be eliminated.”

“Huh?”

“Bruce,” he said, “I’m doing this for your future. I’m doing it for the future of the
species.
No dog, no problem. The dog has got to go.”

•   •   •

So there they were, the remaining good men, crammed into Neil’s tidy silver Camry, which had been freshly detailed for the wedding, blasting Bruce Springsteen’s “She’s the One,” doing seventy miles an hour on the New Jersey Turnpike on their way to Philadelphia for the liberation of Nifkin. Bruce sat shotgun and sipped from the bottle of tequila—not enough to incapacitate him completely, but enough to convince him that this was a good idea. Tom and Chris were in the backseat, and Steve was draped over both of their laps, head tilted sideways—“So if he pukes,” Chris explained, “he won’t choke on vomit.”

“Hey,” Neil said anxiously, “try to get his head out the window if he starts. I’ve got to take this car to the airport after the wedding.”

“Lotta rock stars choke on vomit,” said Chris, and then he fell asleep with his head against the window, mouth slightly open, chin resting on his pressed white shirt.

With the spring air rushing through the open windows and the miles slipping by, Bruce felt alive, almost electric, with purpose. They couldn’t change the world that night, they couldn’t rescue Tom’s little sister, Missy, they couldn’t solve the riddle of how to know when you were ready for marriage, but the problem of a ten-pound terrier with a bad attitude and a stupid name, this they could solve.

Their plan was for Bruce to sneak into Cannie’s apartment and lure Nifkin into the living room with the remains of Steve’s omelette. Once he’d gotten the dog out the front door, Tom and Chris would scoop him up in Neil’s jacket and smuggle him into the car. Then they could drive him to Valley Forge, where Washington’s troops had wintered, and set him free.

“He’ll be out in the wild,” Tom said. “Where he belongs.”

Bruce thought there had probably never been a dog that belonged in the wild less than Nifkin, who dined on hamburgers and scrambled eggs and slept on an embroidered monogrammed pillow, but he kept quiet, and took another burning gulp of tequila. He’d almost gotten himself to the point where he believed the plan could work. He could picture the scene: the dog eliminated, Cannie distraught and desperate for comfort, as opposed to answers about how Nifkin had managed to unlock the apartment door and make his way outside.

“It’ll be great,” said Chris, who’d woken up at the exit 4 tollbooth just before the Ben Franklin Bridge.

“It’ll be beautiful,” said Tom, pulling the hood of Neil’s too-small sweatshirt over his head and giving the ties a yank so that
all Bruce could see was the tip of his nose and the Rasputin-ish glint in his eyes.

“But what if he comes back?” Neil asked, without taking his eyes off the road. “Like Lassie. Don’t you hear about that sometimes? Those dogs who go across the whole country to find the house they used to live in?”

There was silence. Bruce thought about Nifkin. He wore a heart-shaped identification pendant on his rhinestone-trimmed collar, and on snowy days Cannie had been known to dress him in miniature Gore-Tex boots. He didn’t think Nifkin was the sort of dog to cross the country in search of his mistress. He thought Nifkin was the sort of dog who wouldn’t cross a snowy street without his boots on.

“Don’t worry,” Tom said finally. “He won’t want to come back. He’ll probably be happier out there . . . with the squirrels and all.” He stared out the window dreamily. “Dogs love squirrels.”

Neil killed the headlights as they pulled onto Cannie’s street, and killed the engine as they approached her apartment building, so that the car glided over the pavement like a shark in black water.

“Go, men,” Neil whispered, reaching across the gear shaft to grasp Bruce’s shoulders in a half-hug. “And remember, you’re doing this for love.”

Bruce slipped his key into the door, padded softly up three flights of stairs, unlocked another door, and crept through the living room and down the hall of Cannie’s apartment. He eased open her bedroom door. There was a pale pink dress hanging from the closet door, her dress for Neil’s wedding. She was sleeping on her side, hair spilling over the pillow, her body a vague lump underneath her down comforter. Curled on the pillow beside her was Nifkin.

“Nifkin?” he whispered. He pursed his lips and whistled softly. The dog’s ears twitched, but he didn’t move. Bruce slipped his hands under the dog’s warm, pliant body and lifted him into the air. Nifkin opened his eyes, yawned, and stared at Bruce. “Good boy,” said Bruce. Nifkin yawned again, looking bored.

Cannie muttered something in her sleep and rolled over into the empty space the dog had left behind. Bruce stood beside her bed with Nifkin dangling from his hand, staring at him, unblinking. He thought about his parents, holding hands on the beach. He thought about Tom’s father, standing on the deck with a cigarette while his daughter cried. He could do better than that.

“Marry me,” he whispered. The words hung in the air. The dog stared at him. Cannie rolled over again, sighing into the pillow while she dreamed.

He set the dog down gently on top of his monogrammed pillow, pulled the covers over Cannie’s shoulders, and bent down and kissed her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered. His breath ruffled her hair. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, feeling the weight of the miles he’d traveled, everything he’d drunk and smoked that night, everything he’d heard, and he was more tired than he’d ever been in his entire life. But he didn’t lie down. He didn’t move. He stood there in the dark, with his eyes closed, waiting for his answer.

B
UYER’S
M
ARKET

“I
don’t want to start off by saying that it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Namita said, adjusting herself on her bar stool and smoothing her tight wool pants. A guy at the pool table gave her an appreciative grin. Namita nodded back coolly, then returned her attention to Jess. “But it is. Seriously, it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to actually sell it,” Jess shouted, in the vain hope of being heard over the thundering din of the jukebox and the chatter of the hundred or so people crowded around the bar. Every woman she saw appeared to be six feet tall and blond, which normally would have made Jess—at five-foot-two with brown curls—feel even shorter and mousier than usual, but that night she felt as giddy as if she’d drunk champagne, as if her heart was full of helium, as if she could float. “Probably I won’t.” She took a gulp of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Namita had ordered. “Ugh. This is warm.”

“Sadly, refrigeration doesn’t improve it much. And don’t change the subject! You,” she shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at Jess, “have the best apartment in the entire world.”

“I know.”

“Hardwood floors, views of the park, two full bathrooms . . .”
Namita’s voice was rising as she ticked off the apartment’s amenities. Light glinted off the gold rings on her thumbs as she gesticulated.

“I know,” Jess said. Her friend was undeterred.

“An actual eat-in kitchen, a working—working!—wood-burning fireplace . . .”

“I know!” Jess had seen those exact words—albeit with fewer exclamation points—on the one-page sell sheet that Billy Gurwich had prepared that very afternoon on Hallahan Group stationery. “A triple-mint, spacious, light-filled, two-bedroom, two-bath prewar gem of an apartment in the fabled Emerson on Riverside Avenue,” it began. She and Billy had worked on it together over pizza the night before. She’d provided all the adjectives. He’d paid for the pizza and, on the way home, he’d hugged her against his side, telling her they made a perfect team.

“It’s so beautiful there,” Namita said dreamily. “You’re never going to find anything better in that neighborhood. Or in the rest of the city. Or anywhere, for that matter.” She took an emphatic swig of beer and turned on her stool, stretching and arching her back so that her figure was displayed to its best advantage.

“Which is why I’m not selling,” Jess said. “We’re just testing the waters.”

“We,” Namita said, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to test the waters right into homelessness. You know what’s going to happen?” The tip of her tongue flashed as she delicately licked beer foam off her lip. “They’ll hold one open house, people are going to show up and fling piles of money at you, and you’re going to get swept away in the madness of it all.”

“Namita. Please.” Jess shook her head, then glanced at her watch (she was meeting Billy at ten to watch
Law & Order
).
“Have you ever seen me get swept away in the madness of anything?”

Her best friend leaned forward, took Jess’s chin in her hand, and studied her carefully. “Yes. Now. There’s something different about you.” Jess tried to meet her gaze head-on as Namita studied her face.

“Did you have your eyebrows threaded?” she asked.

“Waxed, actually,” Jess admitted. “And I had a facial.”

Namita sniffed, as if this was the least she’d expect, and poured them both more Pabst. Jess smiled and hugged herself. In addition to the waxing and the facial, she’d sprung for a paraffin pedicure and an extremely painful bikini wax that she was pretty sure had left her bald as a baby bird down there. Not that she’d mustered up the courage to look.