loved you, you felt bored and suffocated. Now he’s moved on, and you’re desperate to have him back. But think about it, Cannie… has anything really changed?”
I wanted to tell her that I had – that I’d gotten an up-close look at what else was out there in my personal dating universe, and that its name was Steve, it wore Tevas, and it didn’t even consider a night out with me to be a date.
“You’d just wind up dumping him again, and that’s really not fair.”
“Why do I have to be fair?” I moaned. “Why can’t I just be selfish and lousy and rotten, like everybody else?”
“Because you’re a good person,” she said. “Unfortunate as it may seem.”
“How do you know?” I challenged her.
“Okay. You’re walking Nifkin and you go past your car and you notice that if you pulled it up a few feet there’d be another parking space, instead of just one of those annoying gaps that looks like a parking space but isn’t. Do you move the car?”
“Well, yeah… wouldn’t you?”
“That’s not the point. That’s the evidence. You’re a good person.”
“I don’t want to be a good person. I want to drive to New Jersey and kick that bitch out of his bed…”
“I know,” she said. “But you can’t.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because you’ll wind up in jail, and I’m not going to take care of your weird little dog forever.”
“Fine.” I sighed.
The waiter came by, glancing at our plates. “Finished?”
I nodded. “All done. No more,” I said.
Sam told me I could stay over if I wanted to, but I decided that I couldn’t hide forever, so I hitched up Nifkin and went back home. I hauled myself up the stairs, with my hands full of Saturday’s mail, and there he was, right in front of my door. I saw him in stages – his scuffed-up, second-best sneakers… then mismatched athletic socks… then tanned, hairy legs came into view as I ascended. Sweatpants, an old college T-shirt, his goatee, his dirty-blond ponytail, his face. Ladies and gentlemen, fresh from his engagement with the Spring Squeaker, Bruce Guberman.
“Cannie?”
I felt so strange, as if my heart were trying to sink and rise at the same time. Or maybe it was just more nausea.
“Look,” he said, “I, um, I’m sorry about last night.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” I said breezily, shouldering past him and unlocking the door. “What brings you here?”
He walked inside, keeping his eyes on his shoelaces and his hands in his pockets. “I’m on my way down to Baltimore, actually.”
“How nice for you,” I said, giving Nifkin a stern look in hopes that it would stop him from jumping up toward Bruce, his tail wagging triple-time. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said.
“How nice for me,” I replied.
“I was going to tell you. I wanted to tell you before you read about it,” he said.
Oh, terrific. I was going to have to live it and read about it, too? “Read about it where?” I asked.
“In Moxie,” he said.
“Actually, Moxie’s not high on my reading list,” I told him. “I already know how to give a good blow job. As you may remember.”
He took a deep breath, and I knew what it was, knew what was coming, the way you can feel the air pressure change and know that a storm’s on the way. “I wanted to tell you that I’m kind of seeing somebody.”
“Oh, really? You mean you didn’t have your eyes shut the whole time last night?”
He didn’t laugh.
“What’s her name?”
“Cannie,” he said gently.
“I refuse to believe that you found another girl named Cannie. Now tell me. C’mon. Age? Rank? Serial number?” I asked jokingly, hearing my voice as if from a million miles away.
“She’s thirty-one… she’s a kindergarten teacher. She’s got a dog, too.”
“That’s great,” I said sarcastically. “I bet we have lots and lots of other things in common. Let me guess… I’ll bet she’s got breasts! And hair!”
“Cannie…”
And then, because it was the only thing I could think of, “Where’d she go to school?”
“Um… Montclair State.”
Great. Older, poorer, more dependent, less intelligent. I was dying to ask if she was blond, too, just to make the run of cliches complete.
“Do you love her?” I blurted instead.
“Cannie…”
“Never mind. I’m sorry. I had no right to ask you that. I’m sorry.” And then, before I could stop myself, I asked, “Did you tell her about me?”
He nodded. “Of course I did.”
“Well, what did you say?” A horrible thought struck me. “Did you tell her about my mom?”
Bruce nodded again, looking puzzled. “Why? What’s the big deal?”
I shut my eyes, assaulted by a sudden vision of Bruce and his new girl in his wide, warm bed, his arm wrapped companionably around her, telling my family secrets. “Her mother’s gay, you know,” he’d say, and the new girl would give a wise, professionally compassionate kindergarten-teacher nod, all the while thinking what a freak I must be.
From the bedroom, I heard choking noises. “Excuse me,” I murmured, and ran into the bedroom, where Nifkin was busily regurgitating a Baggie. I cleaned up the mess and walked back to the living room. Bruce was standing in front of my couch. He hadn’t sat down, hadn’t so much as touched anything. I could tell just from looking at him how desperately he wanted to be back in his car with the windows rolled down and the Springsteen cranked up… to be away from me.
“Are you okay?”
I took a deep breath. I wish you were back with me, I thought. I wish I didn’t have to hear this. I wish we’d never broken up. I wish we’d never met.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m glad for you.”
We were both quiet then.
“I hope we can be friends,” said Bruce.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Well,” he said, and paused, and I knew that he had nothing left to say to me, and that there was really only one thing he wanted to hear.
And so I said it. “Good-bye, Bruce,” I said, and opened the door, and stood there, waiting, until he walked out.
Then it was Monday, and I was back at work, feeling both queasy and abidingly dumb. I was shuffling things around on my desk, half-heartedly going through my mail, which featured
