'Why would I care? Is he a cutey?' She feigned enthusiastic curiosity
and gave me a wink.
'Um .. . No! Well, I mean, yeah. I don't really know. Look, what I
mean is that for once this man actually has something to do with me and
not you.'
'Excuse me for assuming. I've gotten used to you never being
interested. It's been two years since your divorce, and you still act
like men don't get to you anymore, except.. . oh, lord, Sam, you're
not actually going to try working with Lucky Chucky, are you?'
It's been more than fifteen years since Chuck Forbes's football buddies
had come up with that nickname. Two of them had barged into Chuck's
house carrying a keg one weekend when his parents were out of town. I
guess we didn't hear them over 'Avalon.' For the rest of high school,
Chuck was Lucky Chucky. They finally stopped calling me Been-laid
Kincaid at the end of senior year.
'Can't we move a little bit past that, Grace?'
'It's not that there's anything wrong with Chuck. It's what's wrong
with the two of you. When are you going to realize that he makes you
crazy? You either need to write each other off or lock yourselves in a
room together until you get it out of your systems. You have this
twisted love-hate, only-happy-when-you're-not-getting-together kind of
relationship. And every time you see him, you dwell on it for the next
two weeks but won't let yourself follow through. I am driven crazy by
osmosis. Please don't do this to me. Is that why you took this
case?'
'Oh, please. No, I swear, Grace. I would've taken it anyway, for all
the reasons we talked about. But I don't know how I'm going to handle
this. Just reading the police reports, I find myself poring over every
word of his, admiring what a good cop he's become. I guess I'm just
going to have to deal with it.'
'Deal with it? You've only ever had one way of dealing with Chuck
Forbes. You decide you can keep the relationship platonic. You start
hanging out, kidding around, watching games on the weekends, all the
things that friends do. But then the chemistry kicks in and the next
thing you know you get scared and back off, he gets mad, and you both
go off into your separate corners and pout until you once again trick
yourselves into believing that you can make the friendship thing work
and the whole damn cycle begins again. Did it ever dawn on you that
Roger might have felt a little left out?'
I stared at her. Roger's my ex-husband. We met at Stan ford Law
School. Dad thought Roger was too much of a blue blood but Mom and I
thought he was perfect: a grownup who knew what he wanted and how he
was going to get it. Smart, good-looking, and ambitious, Roger had
wanted to marry me right out of law school so we could start our
perfect life together back in New York. We moved into the Upper East
Side apartment his family bought us as a wedding present, him working
toward partnership at one of the country's biggest firms, me working as
an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
The perfect life didn't last long. Roger landed a job as in-house
counsel with Nike, so we wound up moving to Portland after only a
couple of years in New York. A few months later, I discovered that my
husband had taken literally his new employer's ad slogan encouraging
decisive, spontaneous, self-satisfying action. We both thought I would
be working late preparing for a trial set to start the following day,
but the case had settled with a last-minute guilty plea. My intention
was to surprise Roger by coming home early with dinner and a movie in
hand.
Instead, I found him doing it with a professional volleyball player on
top of our dining room table. I got the house and everything in it,
but I made sure he got the table.
Now Grace and I rarely referred to my former husband as anything other
than Shoe Boy or for any reason other than comic. We definitely never
insinuated that I was somehow responsible for his infidelities.
'That's totally unfair, Grace. You know that Chuck and I have been
nothing more than friends since I came back to town. Unlike some
people, I took my marriage vows seriously.'
'Come on, Sam. I'm not saying Roger was justified to whore around. I'm
just saying he might have been bothered when you and Chuck started
spending time together again. Roger thought leaving New York was going
to change things, but you were still putting in the same kind of hours
and running thirty miles a week. Then you started making time for
Chuck. Say what you want about only being friends, but to Roger it was
more than that, even if you weren't technically cheating. He had to
have seen the chemistry; everyone does. You drop that hard-ass force
field of yours with me and with Chuck, but you never dropped it with
Roger. And if he was bothered by it, the next guy will be too. So,
unless you want to be alone for good, you need to decide where Chuck
Forbes fits into your life. You're not in high school anymore,
honey.'
I didn't know what to say.
'You pissed?' she asked.
'No, just surprised.'
