on his first novel.”
“His first novel?” I said. Well, shrieked, maybe. Heads turned. Over the partition, Betsy was looking worried again, and Gabby had started typing. “That lying sack of shit!”
“I didn’t know he was writing a novel,” said Samantha, no doubt desperate to change the subject.
“He can barely write a thank-you note,” I said, flipping back to page 132.
“I never thought of myself as a chubby chaser,” I read. “But when I met C., I fell for her wit, her laugh, her sparkling eyes. Her body, I decided, was something I could learn to live with.”
“I’ll KILL HIM!”
“So kill him already and shut up about it,” muttered Gabby, shoving her inch-thick glasses up her nose.
Betsy was on her feet again, and my hands were shaking, and suddenly somehow there were M amp;M’s all over the floor, crunching beneath the rollers of my chair.
“I gotta go,” I told Samantha, and hung up.
“I’m fine,” I said to Betsy. She gave me a worried look, then retreated.
It took me three tries to get Bruce’s number right, and when his voice mail calmly informed me that he wasn’t available to take my call, I lost my nerve, hung up, and called Samantha back.
“Good in bed, my ass,” I said. “I ought to call his editor. It’s false advertising. I mean, did they check his references? Nobody called me.”
“That’s the anger talking,” said Samantha. Ever since she started dating her yoga instructor, she’s become very philosophical.
“Chubby chaser?” I said. I could feel tears prickling behind my eyelids. “How could he do this to me?”
“Did you read the whole thing?”
“Just the first little bit.”
“Maybe you better not read any more.”
“It gets worse?”
Samantha sighed. “Do you really want to know?”
“No. Yes. No.” I waited. Samantha waited. “Yes. Tell me.”
Samantha sighed again. “He calls you Lewinsky-esque.”
“With regards to my body or my blow jobs?” I tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled sob.
“And he goes on and on about your… let me find it. Your ‘amplitude.’ ”
“Oh, God.”
“He said you were succulent,” Samantha said helpfully. “And zaftig. That’s not a bad word, is it?”
“God, the whole time we went out, he never said anything…”
“You dumped him. He’s mad at you,” said Samantha.
“I didn’t dump him!” I cried. “We were just taking a break! And he agreed that it was a good idea!”
“Well, what else could he do?” asked Samantha. “You say, ‘I think we need some time apart,’ and he either agrees with you and walks away clinging to whatever shreds of dignity he’s got left, or begs you not to leave him, and looks pathetic. He chose the dignity cling.”
I ran my hands through my chin-length brown hair and tried to gauge the devastation. Who else had seen this? Who else knew that C. was me? Had he shown all his friends? Had my sister seen it? Had, God forbid, my mother?
“I gotta go,” I told Samantha again. I set down my headset and got to my feet, surveying the Philadelphia Examiner newsroom – dozens of mostly middle-aged, mostly white people, tapping away at their computers, or clustered around the television sets watching CNN.
“Does anybody know anything about getting a gun in this state?” I inquired of the room at large.
“We’re working on a series,” said Larry the city editor – a small, bearded, perplexed-looking man who took everything absolutely seriously. “But I think the laws are pretty lenient.”
“There’s a two-week waiting period,” piped up one of the sports reporters.
“That’s only if you’re under twenty-five,” added an assistant features editor.
“You’re thinking of rental cars,” said the sports guy scornfully.
“We’ll get back to you, Cannie,” said Larry. “Are you in a rush?”
“Kind of.” I sat down, then stood back up again. “ Pennsylvania has the death penalty, right?”
“We’re working on a series,” Larry said without smiling.
“Oh, never mind,” I said, and sat back down and called Samantha again.
“You know what? I’m not going to kill him. Death’s too good for him.”
“Whatever you want,” Samantha said loyally.
“Come with me tonight? We’ll ambush him in his parking lot.”
“And do what?”
“I’ll figure that out between now and then,” I said.
I had met Bruce Guberman at a party, in what felt like a scene from somebody else’s life. I’d never met a guy at a social gathering who’d been so taken with me that he actually asked me for a date on the spot. My typical m.o. is to wear down their resistence with my wit, my charm, and usually a home-cooked dinner starring kosher chicken with garlic and rosemary. Bruce did not require a chicken. Bruce was easy.
I was stationed in the corner of the living room, where I had a good view of the room, plus easy access to the hot artichoke dip. I was doing my best imitation of my mother’s life partner, Tanya, trying to eat an Alaskan king crab leg with her arm in a sling. So the first time I saw Bruce, I had one of my arms jammed against my chest, sling-style, and my mouth wide open, and my neck twisted at a particularly grotesque angle as I tried to suck the imaginary meat out of the imaginary claw. I was just getting to the part where I accidentally jammed the crab leg up my right nostril, and I think there might have been hot artichoke dip on my cheek, when Bruce walked up. He was tall, and tanned, with a goatee and a dirty-blond ponytail, and soft brown eyes.
“Um, excuse me,” he said, “are you okay?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Fine.”
“You just looked kind of…” His voice – a nice voice, if a little high – trailed off.
“Weird?”
“I saw somebody having a stroke once,” he told me. “It started off like that.”
By now my friend Brianna had collected herself. Wiping her eyes, she grabbed his hand. “Bruce, this is Cannie,” she said. “Cannie was just doing an imitation.”
“Oh,” said Bruce, and stood there, obviously feeling foolish.
