The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken (8 page)

A weird pang of nostalgia grabs me as I start recounting my night. Angela spent hundreds of hours of our freshman year analyzing my life from her customary perch on our bunk beds. She’d arrived at school knowing a lot more about guys and sex than I did, and I eagerly gave her every detail of every encounter, in exchange for her sage advice. Which boiled down to: stop worrying about it, you silly, sheltered, wide-eyed suburban girl, and just do it with one of these boys already.

Angela seemed to be having so much fun, with her disproportionate share of attention from a parade of handsome upperclassmen, that I finally followed her advice right before winter break. I took the plunge with this guy I vaguely knew from my Shakespeare seminar, on his sofa, late one night after a party. It was over in under three minutes, and I ended up pinned under a passed out, drooling frat boy until dawn. When I got back to our room and told Angela it wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, she smacked herself in the forehead and groaned that she didn’t mean for me to give it away to someone half in the bag.

These days, she’s refined her lines of questioning a bit. She needs to know which waiter we had, what sushi Oscar ordered, and what kind of suit he was wearing. This one I can’t answer, but I assure her it looked expensive, probably Italian. She nods her conditional approval and moves on.

When I tell her that I had him drive me to her place, Angela laughs so hard that wine sprays out her nose. “Why on earth did you do that?”

“Because I didn’t trust my willpower to hold out if I brought him here.”

“Plus he’d never ask you out again if he saw this squalor.”

“He already asked, so I’m safe for now.”

Angela’s face goes white when I gush that he must think I have long term potential, because he’s cooking me dinner tomorrow night. “Have you lost your mind?”

She bolts off the couch and lunges towards the calendar in the kitchen. Tomorrow’s the tenth. Oh. My. God. I completely forgot Carol’s son’s engagement party. At the Plaza. She rarely talks about her children, but still. How did it slip my mind entirely?

“And more importantly, did you drop your black dress off at the cleaner’s this morning?”

Of course I didn’t.

“So let me understand this correctly,” Kevin says moments later, through a bad cellular connection. “You want me to cancel on an international super model so I can be your rent-a-date at Carol’s spoiled brat’s party.”

“You said she was boring,” I hiss into the phone.

“That’s beside the point.”

“You said you hadn’t even decided whether to call Lily.”

“I changed my mind.”

Why does he need to be so exasperating? If he can’t go, I’ll just have to make peace with the idea of facing the festivities alone.

“Kevin, please?”

“I have to go. The Councilman’s on my other line.” He’s gone before I can ask again.

“Don’t worry,” Angela says, as she tops off her wine. “Lily would never admit to being free on such short notice, and Kevin won’t get a better offer. When he calls back, tell him Carol’s hired Dave Matthews or the Red Hot Chili Peppers or something. You know, appeal to his sense of collegiate nostalgia.”

“If he can’t help me out it’s not the end of the world. I can say hello to Carol, then hide in some corner and make snarky commentary with Marvin until it’s kosher to leave. But what am I going to tell Oscar? I really like him. At least I think he’s really hot.” Angela laughs at my frankness. “And now I’m going to cancel our second date with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. I might as well stand the guy up. And who knows when anyone nearly as interesting will fall in my lap again? I’m guessing sometime around never.”

Before Angela can snap at me to stop whining, much less figure out what I should say to Oscar, we both freeze. Someone is banging on the door and we didn’t buzz anyone up. Nobody has a key except the super, and he’d never show up and admit himself, unannounced. Nobody but Kevin ever knocks, and he’s still across town. Angela lunges for my phone on the coffee table, presumably in case we need to dial 9-1-1.

I peer through the peephole with more apprehension than you’d expect. Brendan’s distorted face blinks back at me through the cloudy lens. I undo the deadbolt and open the door, suddenly unsteady on my feet. “What are you doing here?” His surprise arrival makes me queasy and off-balance. I didn’t expect seeing him would throw me so literally.

“My therapist says I need to atone,” he says.

“So you’re atoning by breaking and entering the building and scaring us half to death?” snaps Angela. “Ever hear of calling first? Or better yet, ever hear of the postal service? You could achieve atonement without intrusion, for the bargain price of forty-four cents.”

“My therapist says it has to be face-to-face.”

He says it so seriously that I start to wonder if he’s on something. Brendan’s lost weight. He was never heavy, but now he’s downright gay-thin. His ribs show through the fabric of his clingy black T shirt, which reads, “D&G: Diet & Gym,” and his jeans are skinnier than mine. His conservative barber shop haircut is gone, replaced by boyish tousled brown curls. My jaw drops when I notice that he’s wearing a touch of eyeliner. I can’t believe I slept with this man for years and didn’t see it. Or frankly that nobody else saw it and had the decency to tip me off, either. Though I’m not sure how such a conversation would have gone. But I have to hand it to my ex-fiancé. He was smart enough to fool everyone.

Brendan blinks at me, waiting for some sign that he should continue.

I finally find my voice. “Maybe I’m not in the mood to listen to your apology.” I back myself onto the sofa because I really feel as if I might faint. It kills me that he still invokes such visceral emotions.

“You can listen or not, but I have to say it,” he says. He crosses the room and sits on the couch next to me. I try to slide away but there’s no place to go. I’m out of upholstery.

Angela realizes that I’m not imminently kicking him out, so she excuses herself, “to powder her nose.”

I top off my wine, and make a point of not offering him anything.

“You have every right to be angry,” he says.

I cut him off. “Angry doesn’t even begin to describe it. How about furious, and disgusted, and humiliated? How could you possibly wait so long to tell me? Our invitations were in the mail. We had the trip of a lifetime booked for our honeymoon. There’s an unworn Carolina Herrera dress in my mother’s closet that I can’t look at without bursting into tears. Jesus, Brendan, you
must
have known years ago, and you let me go through with the whole charade.” I feel tears starting to well and I fight them back down.

I’d never admit this to him, but part of my malfunction is anger with myself. I don’t miss being with Brendan. For better or worse, our friendship ended the day of our break up. What I miss is being half of an established couple, the security of knowing I’ll have someone to come home to. Someone who doesn’t care if I wear yoga pants and a pony tail most of the time. I also miss knowing that I’ll always have plans on Saturday night and New Year’s Eve. And that I won’t need to face family holidays alone—a poor, pitiable pot without a lid, as my mother would say.

Brendan interrupts my private moment of self-indulgent self-pity. “I’m sorry you’re still so upset with me, and I hope time will heal some of your wounds.” I can tell by his intonation that he’s rehearsed this. Just like he used to rehearse his moot court arguments, and later, his answers to common interview questions, in front of our bathroom mirror. “But I need to tell you that I’ve been seeing Steve off and on, for the last three years.”

“Steve? Who’s Steve? Wait, my
hairdresser
Steve?”

Brendan nods uncomfortably.

“Steve, who spent two hours rehearsing my hair and veil so I could marry
you
? Steve whom I’ve seen
twice
since we called off our wedding?”

He shrugs. “You always knew
he
was gay.”

I will myself not to throttle him. Instead I fly off the sofa and start to pace a tiny circle on the carpet, wringing my hands behind my back, to prevent myself from slapping his smug face.

“Until it came down to the wire, I thought I could do it. I thought I could play it straight, and keep Steve and that whole part of my life in a box off to the side, at least until my parents died.”

“You were planning to marry me until
your parents’ death
did us part?”

“Steve was dead set against that and he got me to focus on what I’d be giving up. The holidays, the vacations, and the public recognition of our union.” He actually gets misty-eyed saying this last part.

“Your union?” I repeat dumbly.

“We’re making it official before the end of the year, and my shrink says I cannot walk down the aisle before I make things right with you.”

He’s getting married. It feels like he’s punched me in the gut. Maybe I do miss him, after all.

“And this is what you call making things right,” I splutter through my tears, which are suddenly coming fast and furious. “You show up without warning at
my
apartment and tell me how living a lie was unfair to
you
, without so much as one single thought about how it affected me!”

Brendan sighs loudly. “You know, I’m sorry you’re hurting, but can’t you see that ultimately, I’m doing you a favor? You’re so blinded by your dashed fairy tale daydreams, that you can’t see past the fact that our wedding would have been one awesome day kicking off a lifetime of frustration.”

“That’s not true!” As soon as I hear the words fly out of my mouth, I know that he’s at least a little bit right. I can tell by his mingled expression of pity and dismay, that he knows it, too.

“I expected this kind of indignation from my parents, but you? Zoë, we were best friends for almost ten years. One best friend wouldn’t want the other to be less than he could be, right?”

“One best friend shouldn’t expect the other to overlook his lies. And it seems to me that you can’t even call it a real friendship if one person is pretending to be someone he’s not. You ruined my life!” I shriek. I know I sound hysterical, but I can’t help myself. The emotional side of my brain has completely over run the rational side.

“You took my twenties! I wasted my best years as your girlfriend, and I did it gladly, because I thought we were going to live happily ever after. And now I have to start all over, but not you. No, Brendan, you get to stay right on course because you lied to me, and kept a whole different life on the side. Which you now get to continue, uninterrupted, while you leave me to start completely over. You bastard! Get out!”

His face changes. It sort of darkens and clouds over, and I realize that, even though I feel I’m in the right, I’ve overstepped some serious boundary.

“Technically you can’t kick me out. You never took my name off the lease,” he says, in a voice so calm that it takes every iota of mental fortitude to keep from smacking him.

“Just go. I’ll deal with the lease tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately, and this part I’m truly sorry about, but you know how my father was eyeing this place as an investment?”

I nod, speechless, but I think I know where he’s going.

“As of Monday at noon, he’ll be your new landlord, and he has it in his head that he should raise the rent.”

The world starts to spin faster. “And you couldn’t persuade him otherwise?” I know the answer is no. Brendan has never once in his life stood up to his parents. He’s too aware of where his bread is buttered.

“You know I don’t pick fights with my father lightly. And think about it, Zoë. You’ve saved money on rent for several years now, so if he does raise it, it’s not like it’s going to bankrupt you. And you’ll get a better management company. They’re already planning to re-caulk your shower...”

His voice trails off as he watches me realize that this speech was also rehearsed. Which somehow makes the fact that he couldn’t be bothered to take issue with his dad on my behalf sting more. Especially since he claims he came here to atone or some such nonsense. I grab the arm of the couch for balance. Then it hits me. He’s being this way, not out of concern for keeping the family peace, but because he’s always been an over-indulged spoiled brat. Yes, he’s cultured and worldly and smart, but he’s also always had a hyper-developed sense of entitlement. Most of the time he hides it well, under his charm and polish, but ultimately, it’s just the way he is, and there’s nothing I can say that will change his self-absorbed view of the situation. He feels entitled to have his apology accepted, even if he’s dovetailed it with bad news he did nothing to prevent.

Angela picks this moment to emerge from the bathroom. She glares at Brendan, her freshly made-up eyes narrow, and she says, icily, “Since when do you run around, storming into other people’s apartments, making threats about caulking, and generally behaving like a ventriloquist’s dummy for your parents? The Brendan
I’ve
known since we were nineteen would be embarrassed to be seen with you.”

“And the Angela I knew at school wanted to write for the
New Yorker
, not try on shoes for a living, but I guess we’ve all changed since then,” Brendan shoots back.

“Not nearly as much as you think,” Angela snarls. “Because I won’t have you threatening my best friend. So if you look the other way while Daddy Dearest gets cute with the rent, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Brendan regards her stonily, as if weighing whether she’s capable of making his life somehow worse. Any residual empathy for my situation has disappeared from his face.

Angela says, “It would be tragic if Steven’s salon was somehow connected, in the media, I mean, to an outbreak of lice. Or if the managing partner of your law firm read that you frequently spend three hour lunches at that massage parlor near South Street Seaport. Don’t try to deny it. Bryce, my copy editor, saw you there four times last month. I’m sure we could buy a photo from their security cameras.”

“You miserable bitch,” Brendan shouts, and starts to rush towards her. I finally find my tongue.