“I’ll make a fool of myself.”
“There are worse things than just looking foolish,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Losing someone you love, because you’re too proud to call and lay it on the line,” she said. “That’s worse. Now: What’s his number?”
“Maxi…”
“Give me the number.”
“This is a really bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I sighed, suddenly feeling all the tequila pressing against my skull. “Because what if he doesn’t want me?”
“Then it’s better that you know that, once and for all. We can go in like surgeons and cauterize the wound. And I’ll teach you the restorative powers of hating his guts.” She held out the phone. “Now. The number.”
I took the phone. It was a tiny thing, a toy of a telephone, no longer than my thumb. I unfolded it clumsily, and squinted, poking at the digits with my pinkie.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Bruce. It’s Cannie.”
“Hi-ii,” he said slowly, sounding surprised.
“I know this is kinda weird, but I’m in New York, in this bar, and you’ll never guess who I’m here with…”
I paused for a breath. He didn’t say anything.
“I have to tell you something…”
“Um, Cannie…”
“No, I just want, I just need… you just have to lishen. Listen,” I finally managed. The words came in a rush. “Breaking up with you was a mistake. I know that now. And Bruce, I’m so sorry… and I miss you so much, and it’s just getting worse and worse every day, and I know I don’t deserve it, but if you could gimme ’nother chance I’d be so good to you…”
I could hear the springs creak as he shifted his weight on the bed. And someone else’s voice in the background. A female voice.
I squinted at the clock on the wall, behind the dangling bras. It was one in the morning.
“But I’m innerupting,” I said dumbly.
“Hey, Cannie, this actually isn’t such a good time…”
“I thought you needed space,” I said, “because of your father dying. But that’s not it, is it? It’s me. You don’t want me.”
I heard a bumping sound, then a far-off, murmured conversation. He’d probably put his hand over the receiver.
“Who is she?” I yelled.
“Look, is there a good time when I can call you back?” Bruce asked.
“Are you gonna write about her?” I cried. “Does she get to be an initial in your wonderful, fabulous column? Is she good in bed?”
“Cannie,” Bruce said slowly, “let me call you back.”
“Don’t. Don’t worry. You don’t have to,” I said, and started stabbing at buttons on the telephone until I found the one that switched it off.
I handed the phone back to Maxi, who was staring at me gravely.
“That didn’t sound good,” she said.
I felt the room spinning. I felt like I was going to throw up. I felt like I’d never be able to smile again in my life, that, somewhere in my heart it was always going to be one o’clock in the morning, and I’d be calling the man I loved, and there’d be another woman in his bed.
“Cannie? Can you hear me? Cannie, what should I do?”
I lifted my head from the bar. I rubbed my eyes with my fist. I drew a deep shuddering breath. “Get me more tequila,” I said, “and teach me how to hate.”
Later – much later – in the cab back to the hotel, I leaned my head on Maxi’s shoulder, mostly because I couldn’t hold it up. I knew that this was it: the point where I had nothing left to lose, nothing left at all. Or maybe it was that I’d lost the most important thing already. And what did it matter? I thought. I reached into my purse, fumbling for the somewhat tequila-sticky copy of my screenplay that I’d tucked inside a million years ago, thinking that I’d revise the final scenes on the train ride home.
“Here,” I slurred, shoving the screenplay into Maxi’s hands.
“Oh, really, for me?” Maxi cooed, going into what sounded like her standard accepting-a-gift-from-?a-stranger spiel. “Really, Cannie, you shouldn’t have.”
“No,” I said, as a brief ray of sense poked through the alcohol fog. “No, I probably shouldn’t have, but I’m gonna.”
Maxi, meanwhile, was leafing drunkenly through the pages. “Whazzis?”
I hiccuped and figured, since I’ve come this far, why lie? “It’s a screenplay that I wrote. I thought maybe you would like to read it, like maybe on the plane if you get bored again.” I hiccuped some more. “I don’t wanna impose…”
Maxi’s eyelids had drooped to half-mast. She shoved the screenplay into her little black backpack, mangling the first thirty pages in the process. “Don’ worry about it.”
“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to,” I said. “And if you read it and you don’t like it, you can tell me. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings.” I sighed. “Nobody else does.”
Maxi leaned over and enfolded me in a clumsy hug. I could feel the bones of her elbows jabbing me as she gripped me tightly. “Poor Cannie,” she said. “Don’t you worry. I’m gonna take care of you.”
I stared at her, as dubious as I was drunk. “You are?”
She nodded violently, with her ringlets bouncing around her face. “I’ll take care of you,” she said, “if you’ll take care of me. If you’ll be my friend, then we’ll take care of each other.”
NINE
I woke up in a hotel suite, in a very large bed, in my unfashionable black dress. Someone had taken off my sandals and set them neatly on the floor.
Sun was slanting through the windows, making bright stripes on the ivory-colored carpet and the pink down comforter that felt light as a kiss on my body. I lifted my head. Youch. Big mistake. I gingerly set my head back down on the pillows and closed my eyes again. It felt like someone had welded an iron band around my scalp and was tightening it slowly. It felt like my face was shrinking. It felt like there was something taped to my forehead.
I lifted my hands, removed a piece of paper that had, indeed, been taped to my forehead, and began to read.
Dear Cannie,
Sorry I had to leave you in such a state, but my plane left very early this morning (and April is livid with me… but that’s okay. It was worth it!).
I feel very badly about what happened last night. I know that I pushed you into calling him, and that it was terrible news to receive. I can imagine how you’re feeling now. I have been
