conditioners were iffy, and the Jacuzzi always seemed to be under repair.
“And how was the rest of your day, dear?” asked Sam, wiping her face with her sleeve. I told her about Mr. Deiffenger’s angry defense of Celine Dion.
“I hate readers,” I gasped, as my StairMaster kicked into a higher gear. “Why do they have to get so personal?”
“I guess he probably figures that you were messing with Celine, so you deserve it.”
“Yeah, but she’s public property. I’m just me.”
“But not to him, you’re not. Your name’s in the paper. That makes you public property, just like Celine.”
“Only bigger.”
“And with better taste. And not,” said Samantha sternly, “with any plans to marry your seventy-year-old manager who’s known you since you were twelve.”
“Oh, now who’s being critical?” I asked.
“Damn Canadians,” said Samantha. She’d spent a few years working in Montreal, had endured a disastrous love affair with a man there, and never had anything nice to say about our neighbors to the North, including Peter Jennings, whom she steadfastly refused to watch, arguing that he’d taken a job that should have rightfully gone to an American – “someone who knows how to say the word about.”
After forty miserable minutes, we adjourned to the steam room, wrapped ourselves in towels, and assumed prone positions on the benches.
“How’s the Yoga King?” I inquired. Sam gave a satisfied-looking smile and raised her arms above her head, reaching toward the ceiling.
“I’m feeling very flexible,” she said smugly. I threw my towel at her head.
“Don’t torture me,” I said. “I’m probably never going to have sex again.”
“Oh, cut it out, Cannie,” said Samantha. “And you know this won’t last. Mine never do.” Which was true. Sam’s love life, of late, had been uniquely cursed. She’d meet a guy and go out with him once, and everything would be wonderful. They’d meet again, and things would be clicking along. And then, on the third date, there’d be some horrible awkward moment, some unbelievable revelation, something that would basically make it impossible for Sam to see the guy again. Her last guy, a Jewish doctor with a fabulous resume and enviable physique, had looked like a contender until Date #3, when he’d taken Sam home for dinner and she’d been disturbed to find a picture of his sister prominently displayed in the entryway hall.
“What’s wrong with that?” I’d asked.
“She was topless,” Samantha’d replied. Exit Dr. Right, enter the Yoga King.
“Look at it this way,” said Samantha. “It was a lousy day, but now it’s over.”
“I just wish I could talk to him.”
Samantha brushed her hair back over her shoulders, propped her head on an elbow, and stared down at me from her perch on one of the upper tiers of wooden benches. “To Mr. Deiffledorf?”
“Deiffinger. No, not him.” I ladled more water on the hot rocks so the steam billowed around us. “To Bruce.”
Samantha squinted at me through the haze. “Bruce? I don’t get it.”
“What if…,” I said slowly. “What if I made a mistake?”
She sighed. “Cannie, I listened to you for months talk about how things weren’t right, how things weren’t getting better, how you knew that taking a break would be the right thing to do in the long run. And even though you were upset right after it happened, I never heard you say that you’d made the wrong decision.”
“What if I think something different now?”
“Well, what changed your mind?”
I thought about my answer. The article was part of it. Bruce and I had never talked about my whole weight thing. Maybe if we had… if he had some sense of how I felt, if I had some inkling of how much he understood… maybe things could have been different.
But more than that, I missed talking to him, telling him how my day went, blowing off steam about Gabby’s latest salvos, reading him potential leads for my stories, scenes from my screenplays.
“I just miss him,” I said lamely.
“Even after what he wrote about you?” asked Sam.
“Maybe it wasn’t so bad,” I muttered. “I mean, he didn’t say that he didn’t find me… you know… desirable.”
“Of course he found you desirable,” Sam said. “You didn’t find him desirable. You found him lazy, and immature, and a slob, and you told me not three months ago lying on this very bench that if he left one more used piece of Kleenex in your bed you were going to kill him and leave his body on a New Jersey Transit bus.”
I winced. I couldn’t remember the line exactly, but it sure sounded like something I’d say.
“And if you called him,” Samantha continued, “what would you say?”
“Hi, how are you, planning on humiliating me in print again anytime soon?” I’d actually had a monthlong reprieve. Bruce’s October “Good in Bed” had been called “Love and the Glove.” Someone – Gabby, I was practically sure – had left a copy on my desk at work the day before, and I’d read it as fast as I could, with my heart in my throat, until I’d determined that there wasn’t a word about C. Not this month, at least.
Real men wear condoms, was his first line. Which was a hoot, considering that during our three years together Bruce had been almost completely spared the indignities of latex. We’d both tested clean, and I went on the pill after a handful of dismaying times when his erection would wilt the instant I produced the Trojans. That minor detail was, of course, notably absent from the story, along with the fact that I’d wound up putting the thing on him – an act that left me feeling like an overprotective mother tying her little boy’s shoes. Donning the glove is more than a mere duty, he’d lectured Moxie’s readers. It’s a sign of devotion, of maturity, a sign of respect for all womankind – and a sign of his love for you.
Now, the memory of the way he’d really been regarding condoms seemed too tender to even consider. And the thought of Bruce and I in bed together made me cringe, because of the thought that came dashing in on its heels: We’ll never be like that again.
“Don’t call him,” said Sam. “I know it feels awful right now, but you’ll get through it. You’ll survive.”
“Thank you, Gloria Gaynor,” I grumbled, and went to take a shower.
When I got home, my answering machine was blinking. I hit “play” and heard Steve. “Remember me? The guy in the park? Listen, I was just wondering if you’d like to get that beer this week or maybe dinner. Give me a call.”
I smiled as I walked Nifkin, grinned when I cooked myself a chicken breast and a sweet potato and spinach for dinner, beamed all through my twenty-minute consultation with Sam on the question of Steve, Cute Guy from the Park. At nine o’clock precisely I dialed his number. He sounded glad to hear from me. He sounded… great, in fact. Funny. Considerate. Interested in what I did. We quickly covered the basics of each other’s lives: ages, colleges, oh-did-you-know-Janie-?from-my-high-school, a little bit about parents and family (I left out the whole lesbian mother thing, in order to have something to talk about in the event of a
