F*ck Marriage(4)
The loft is painfully empty when I step inside. My shoes echo on the wood floors; I like the sound because it reminds me of my hollow insides. Washed and scrubbed and dusted of our memories, the loft is barely recognizable. I choke out a laugh, because I laugh when I feel awkward, and I feel hella awkward in the home I shared with my first love. It smells the same and that’s what makes me tremble. I try to shake it off, reminding myself that it’s been two years. Two! I say forcefully to myself. When we’d moved in, Woods had commented on how it smelled like baby powder. I’d scrunched up my nose and agreed, hoping he wouldn’t get any ideas. Babies were not on my radar ... yet. We never could figure out where the smell came from, though on several occasions our friends made mention of it too. I do a quick walk-through, trying to breathe through my mouth, my tennis shoes sweating on the freshly polished floors. Nights drinking red wine in front of our view; Saturday mornings scrambling eggs at the stove, Billie Holiday playing on the stereo. A fight we had about the bathroom paint color that ended in a smashed bottle of perfume and both of us laughing hysterically. Heavy, happy memories that make me swell and deflate at the same time. I thought he loved me, but I was wrong. By the time I make it back to the kitchen dragging the memories behind me like deflated balloons, my new tenant is buzzing through the intercom. I scoop up the box the cleaning people left for me and meet him at the door.
Farewell, goodbye, adios, fuck you! I think.
Chapter Four
Pearl Lajolla is five years my junior. Five years; it doesn’t feel like much, but it is. Five years means fewer wrinkles—probably right around the eyes and mouth—perkier tits, and more innocence. The innocence is the worst part. Men, especially Woods, are drawn to that shit. They act like they’re not the ones who’ve made us jaded in the first place, and then punish us for having battle wounds by leaving us for someone they haven’t fucked up yet. Pearl—was she truly innocent or just feigning? Who knows. There’s a line Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” That was the first thing that came to mind when all five feet of her walked into the Rhubarb office the day I hired her on the spot. She was there in response to an ad I’d placed in the New York Times. I’d put the ad in the paper because I liked the old-fashioned quaintness of it. Woods made fun of me—a hundred job sites on the Internet and you take an ad out in the paper! Newsflash, Woods: newspaper is not a dirty word, it’s just slightly antiquated.
The ad went like this: Open-minded blogger needed for an up-and-coming brand! Must love fashion, food, and fun!!
I cringe now at the wording, but my younger, untarnished self had been hopeful and apparently grandly enthusiastic.
Pearl had been wearing too much of everything when she walked through the doors for her interview: jewelry, makeup, perfume ... eagerness. But underneath the heavily made-up face and the heady smell of Chanel was a woman who never missed a thing. She was pretty except you didn’t notice it right away. What you noticed first was the tiny-ness of her, and then the large expressive eyes that were always watching. Her pretty came secondary to her expressions, which were often comical. In that first meeting, she wore her hair pulled back in an impressively large bun. Her hair was a rich auburn that I imagined unfurled to her waist. Within two minutes, she confessed that she was a huge fan of the blog and hadn’t happened upon the ad I’d put in the paper by chance. She’d been waiting for it, she said. Pearl had a friend at the New York Times who worked in classifieds. When she saw my ad, she called Pearl immediately. She told me all of this with the same lack of shame I’d seen on her face after I found out she was sleeping with my husband. Consequently, it was that very lack of apology that made me hire her in the first place. She was a go-getter and the no-excuse way she moved through life was her biggest asset. I’d shared a lot of myself with her that first year. She’d been eager to learn. An easy friend, she seemed to have had my back. But she only had it so she could stab it.
The bar where I’m meeting Woods is more of a dive than one of the trendy drinking spots in Manhattan. I hail a cab instead of walking the seven blocks and slide into the backseat, relieved that the cabbie is blasting the air conditioning. I have to start using the subway if I want my money to last. Just this one time, I tell myself. Small, dangerous luxuries. I call out the address as he almost kills us with his extra terrible driving.
“You’re super bad at this,” I call out to him.
But my voice is drowned out by the motorcycle that passes us. God, I love this city: I love this cab, and the subtle danger I’m always in just by living here. I lean my head against the seat and close my eyes. The cab jerks left and I’m thrown into the door. Outside the car is a cacophony of honking. I don’t even bother to open my eyes. If I die, I die in New York. I’m okay with that. Ten minutes later, we make it to the bar and I slide out of the car, groggy. The cabbie calls after me—I forgot to pay him. Shoving a twenty in his hand I offer a meek apology. He speeds off without responding, and I walk unsteadily toward the bar. Woods used to accuse me of being too distracted with life to remember to do basic tasks like pay the cabbie or push the button in the elevator. He did those things, and I suppose I’m only getting worse at not doing them as I age. I push through the bar door and scan the room for a table. I need to be in just the right spot to hold the upper hand.