On television shows when there is a major blow up, someone always storms out of the room. But the last thing I wanted to do was walk away from her. I loved her. I was stunned, and I wanted her to make sense of what I was experiencing. I wanted her to be with me far more than I wanted to claim the lame high ground of the victim. I didn’t leave the table, never raised my voice, and took a long time before the snide jabs began. Mostly, I found myself using my begging voice, my wounded, sensitive-guy voice. The one I’m so self-conscious about. The one that makes me feel boring and safe and makes me wonder how much her choices are a reflection of my weakness.
She came back to my place after dinner. We ended up in my bedroom. She slipped out of her dress and stood before me in her black underwear and pearls. From the outset of our relationship, I’ve been completely intoxicated by her beauty and her body. She can do the splits against the wall standing up. She has a washboard stomach. There’s this perfect tendon that traces inward from her hip. We spent our college years flirting with sex in a myriad of silly and even pathetic ways, and we both knew that after all that time, now that she had slept with him, she was about to sleep with me.
And that would be it. We were not going to survive as a couple. She wasn’t going to choose between me and the other guy. She was going to keep moving forward with both of us in twisted ways, poisoning her options and forcing a response from him or from me until she made her choice without really ever making her choice; she would orchestrate what would happen to her and she would pay some weird penalty for her behaviors when he or I finally responded. She was stuck—painted into a corner—and she knew I knew it.
A better man would have sent her home in disgust. A lesser man would have taken her vigorously, selfishly, consuming something of her. I denied the obvious relational truth facing us, and hiding behind some lame and spineless rationalization about hope or romance, I stepped forward. And then she changed her mind. She shook as she put her dress back on. Here I cried. Here I begged. Here I took dirty shots. And then I repeated the process like it was a cheap shampoo, too weak the first time around, and enough to wound her the second. And then she was gone.
So she can wait while I eat my burrito and drink my stinking Mountain Dew on the sidewalk, a wino to my food on the street as a couple walks past, holding hands. I hate Chicago lovers.
I’m still on the sidewalk, wiping red chorizo oil from my hands with the paper bag, when Betsy gives up and arrives at the curb to hail a cab. She sees me and drops her shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t you recognize fine dining when you see it?”
“Didn’t you see me waiting for you?”
“Do you think I usually take my meals on the sidewalk?” I answer her questions with questions because she hates it.
“Why are you avoiding me?”
“Uh, because you’re sleeping with another guy?”
“Can we talk about it?”
“Will you quit sleeping with other guys?”
“Can we talk?”
“How about we go inside and even things up then, right now?”
“Please?”
“No? No? Hey—I didn’t think you still used that word!”
“Don’t do this.” She’s crying now. Again.
“You don’t get to decide what I do anymore.”
“I don’t want to lose you.” She’s shaking. Again.
“Go home. I’m done with you,” I say, and I know this immediate gratification will be followed by tearful apologies later. We both know it. We both know this is pure ugliness. And we both know we won’t end well.
Betsy stops and stares. She inhales a sobbing, stuttering gasp. I am ice. Furious, venomous, profoundly hateful ice. She turns and runs with her hand over her mouth to Lake Shore to catch a taxi. I’m a complete wreck by the time I get to my apartment.
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Chapter 2. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart
I walk the three blocks from Burritoville toward Lake Shore, carrying my dinner in a brown paper bag. As I enter the courtyard of my apartment building, I see Betsy outside my door waiting for me. I turn and duck back around the corner of the building before she notices me. I sit with my back against the wall and unwrap the burrito. She can wait.
Twenty-four hours earlier we were out for my birthday dinner. Hancock TowerCenter, 95th floor. Window table facing north. I wore a tie. She wore a low-cut, black spaghetti strap dress over her perfect body, pearls resting proudly on her delicate collarbones, double French braids in her chestnut hair. She owned me. My birthday was also our four-and-a-half-year anniversary. I’d been shopping for engagement rings for weeks, but before we’d even ordered dinner she dropped the bomb.
“You said there was nothing there, Betsy.”
“I was lying.”
“How long?”
“Six months.”
“So the roses did mean something.”
“That was at the very beginning.”
“And last Thursday?”
“I’ve been with him.”
“What?”
“Every Thursday. I’ve been with him every Thursday.”
“Does he know about me?”
“He thinks we broke up.”
“Why didn’t we?”
“I love you.”
I was staring at her with my stunned mouth half-open when the waiter breezed up and asked for our orders.
“I’ll take the lobster and another Glenfiddich,” I said.
As she ordered, I looked out the window toward my apartment. My stinking Chicago apartment, in stinking Chicago. I hated Chicago. I hated Chicago people. I hated Chicago sports teams and sports fans. I hated the Chicago accent and the stupidity it highlighted in the people who had it. I hated Betsy’s ancient insane parents, and her brothers and their beer and muscle cars and posture of protectiing her against me. Like she was the one who needed protecting. Life in Chicago.
I thought this was going to be it. I thought Betsy’s family, with all of their arguing and drinking and bigotry, was going to be my family. I thought I was going to be in Chicago forever because that’s the only place Betsy could see herself. Suddenly, it was all unraveling.
Outside the dining room window, a thousand feet up in the night air, I suddenly noticed a spider that clung to a strand of web, a filament of hope spun from itself. Were there even bugs up this high for spiders to catch? How in the world did it get so far from the ground? How long would that take, to climb all the way from terra firma? Four-and-a-half years, maybe? Maybe the spider had been blown to its current place. Or maybe it had taken generations to get to this height—maybe it was from some family of spiders bent on moving ever skyward. Did it have any idea how far it was from the ground? Did it have any fear, dangling a foot from the glass? I have never experienced a moment I wanted to escape so badly, and it’s the only time I’ve ever wanted to trade places with a spider, if only the spider could have been convinced that it
wasn’t getting the short end of the deal.
What would my family say about the end of the relationship? Of course, my mother would assume I did something to ruin it. What would I even tell them? My friends were easy; they’d been sick of Betsy for years and would immediately take me out drinking to celebrate. My coworkers, Brett and Tony in particular, would moan like I’d missed the game-winning field goal. They found it absurd that Betsy and I had never slept together, and were determined to find the right scenario for it to happen. I told them we hadn’t because I knew it wouldn’t be worth dealing with her after the fact if we did.
“I do, really.”
“Love me?” I asked, raising my eyebrows sarcastically.
“Yes.”
“You’ve always said he was such a jerk.”
“He is.”
“So …”
“So that’s what makes it all so hard. So confusing.”
“You’re confused because you’re cheating on me with a jerk?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you slept with him?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“What?” I did one of those coughing/laughing things on the wh.
“I’m not going to talk to you about our sex life.”
“‘Our’ sex life. Are you serious?” I stopped and took a sip of my Scotch because I could see that she was about to cry, and the last thing I had the patience for was crying from her right then. After a long pause and the preparation of a dinner roll, I tried again.
“I won’t make you say it, Betsy. Can I ask you this, though?Do you and I have a sex life?”
There was a candle on the table, and her skin looked so perfect in the dim yellow light. Her eyes were wet and red when she looked up.
“No,” she answered. And for a moment I thought the collapsing inside would kill me.