“So,” Pru said, after they’d given the waiter their orders. “Tell me about your doctor.”
Kate brought her hands to her face, hiding behind them. “Shit,” she said.
“Uh-oh,” said Pru.
Kate peeked out between her fingers. “I’m in love, doll. I want to spend the rest of my life with this man. Like, shackled to his side.”
“You are? You do?” Pru leaned forward. “This is going to sound weird, but—how do you know?”
Kate tipped her head to the side, thinking. “You know how you’re at a party and you pick up the wrong beer, and you know after one sip that it’s not yours? But then, when you find the right one, you know it right away? Why? What is it? The temperature, or the taste of your own spit that you somehow recognize? Or the weight and moistness of the can? Or maybe everything, all together. But it’s all so subtle and complex you can’t explain it. If someone asked, How do you know that’s your beer? well, you wouldn’t know what to say. You just know.” And that was the great thing about Kate. There she was, in her delicate party dress and with her lisp, talking about how true love was like a beer. And she’d gotten it exactly right, too.
“That’s how I feel about my friend John,” Pru was surprised to hear herself saying. “He’s married, and something was going on with us, but now it’s not. I’m so ready, and he’s so what I want, but it’s not going to happen.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Katie, I was so hard on you, wasn’t I, when you were seeing your married guy. I’m so sorry. I was just stupid. I didn’t know anything about anything.”
“Stop it,” Kate said. She’d gotten tearful, too. “You totally know I was over it as soon as it happened. Anyway, you were right. He was a shitbag.”
“He wasn’t your beer. Oh, Kate, I’m nobody’s beer,” Pru said, laughing and wiping her eyes. “Some drunk kid is going to pick me up and drink me, and my real owner is never going to find me.”
“No, no,” Kate said. “He’s out there. He’s just still looking for you, that’s all.”
“Or he’s upstairs in the bathroom, throwing up. Let’s talk about your beer.”
Kate straightened up. “We can meet him after dinner, if you want. He wants to meet you.”
“He does?” Whoever this guy was, Pru liked him right away, for no other reason than because he wanted to meet her. Kate said he was waiting for them at the bar around the corner from her place. He was already there, sitting at a little table, when they came in. He had a copy of Spin magazine and a medical journal. He was quiet and rumpled, friendly and distracted. He drank his drink and let Pru and Kate continue squawking at each other. When Kate mentioned her ex-lovers—she was still in touch seemingly with everyone she’d ever dated—he didn’t even bat an eye. Pru wondered exactly how many of them she’d told him about. He paid for their drinks and hailed a cab. He opened Pru’s door for her and gave her a big hug, and when he said “we” he meant himself and Kate. He looked at Kate with dreamy eyes. He was what Kate never in her life seemed interested in: a really nice guy with no visible hang-ups.
Pru was happy for her. When she got home, she would send Kate a card to tell her how happy she was for her. She gave the cab driver the address of her hotel and then asked him if he had any children. She found that cab drivers loved to discuss their children. She sat back in her seat and listened to the man talk about how his youngest daughter was doing better at school now that she was learning karate. It was giving her discipline, he said, and self-respect. She’d have to remember to tell that to Patsy. Annali would look adorable in a those little white pajamas and an obi. She wondered how they were doing back at home. She hoped Patsy had gotten the check to secure the apartment. God, she thought, thirty-six, single, and living with her sister, like a couple of spinsters out of a Victorian novel. It certainly had never been part of her five-year plan. But neither had been becoming a shopgirl, and she and Edie had had a blast, earlier in the day, looking at clothes. So maybe plans were overrated. They never worked out as you thought they would, anyway.
STILL, SHE FELT COMPELLED TO MAKE A FEW NOTES, with regard to the upcoming move. After all, she had less than a month to figure it all out.
It seemed an interminably long time to wait. It was becoming harder and harder to spend another day in the apartment on Columbia Road. The two rooms (three, counting the bathroom) felt claustrophobic and cramped. There was constantly someone underfoot, and although Pru did practically nothing but start cleaning the minute she got home from work, the place was always a wreck. Patsy’s and Annali’s clothes were spread out everywhere, there were toys in every corner of the place, and it seemed she could hardly cross the room without startling an animal.
A bedroom, all to herself! She couldn’t wait. It seemed a lifetime since she’d slept alone, or just with Whoop. Not sharing a bed with at least two, sometimes three, other living creatures— she could barely remember what that was like.
She pulled out her Daytimer again and quickly filled it with move-related tasks and errands. She spent her day off from Edie’s at her table of yearning at the Korner, the one with AG + SW?? carved into it, making calls on her cell. She loved the feeling
