My One and Only(51)

The morning of my interview, still angry with Nick for not understanding, I accidentally slammed my hand in the front door. My left hand. No cut, but my fingers had taken the worst of it and almost without thinking, I moved my wedding ring from my left hand to my right. I rarely wore my engagement ring, which was surprisingly large. It was also, to my small-town girl’s mind, an irresistible prize for the many roving thieves of New York. Nick only laughed when I told him that and didn’t seem to mind.

But my wedding ring…that was a different story. That ring, I loved—two strands of gold woven together, one slightly darker than the other. It was delicate and beautiful and one of a kind, made by a Vineyard goldsmith. It didn’t look a lot like the classic wedding ring…especially when worn on the wrong hand. Claudia’s manager didn’t ask if I was married, and I didn’t think to tell him.

You get better tips as a bartender if you’re young and pretty…and single. Or if the patrons think you’re single. My fingers were swollen for a few days. The ring stayed on my right hand. It meant nothing. Except, of course, that it did.

Work at Claudia’s was a lot of fun. Located in SoHo on a cobblestoned street, it drew in the Sex and the City-type crowd—beautifully dressed women who wore outfits that cost more than my rent, men who smelled expensive and thought nothing of leaving me a twenty-dollar tip on a ten-dollar drink. And my coworkers…they were just like me. Higher aspirations, temporarily in the service biz, some balancing grad school. None of us planned to be there forever. All of us were in our twenties—Claudia’s owner knew that the actor/model staff drew in a better clientele or something, so we were all slim and good-looking.

As the new kid, I watched from the sidelines, but even the sidelines were thrilling. Occasionally, someone would confide in me—Jocasta had dated Ben, then dumped him for Peter; Ryan needed a roommate and Prish was looking, but did they really want to work and live together? Especially after that one-night stand? Flattered to be included in their drama, their angst, I’d give a noncommittal answer, didn’t take sides and was generally well liked. They fascinated me…they were so free. Big plans, lazy days, a pleasant place to work. The way it was supposed to be at our age.

For the first few weeks, I just watched, did my job, listened. No one asked if I was married, and I didn’t offer up the information. Was I punishing Nick? Of course I was. I barely saw the guy. He said he’d drop by one night and see the place, but the weeks passed and he never did.

I was young, stupid, insecure, lonely. Walking home some nights, I’d feel that dark, pulling thing in my chest and I’d wish I could cry, because I hated Nick, I loved him so much. I felt tricked and betrayed, and I kept waiting for him to do something that would make me feel the way I’d felt before we were married…that I was cherished, loved, irreplaceable. But he was young and stupid too, and the ocean between us darkened and deepened.

I didn’t have the type of bond with my family that would allow me to vomit up my misery over the phone…besides, Willa was only a high school kid and thought Nick and I were the height of romance. BeverLee…no. As for my father, I’d stopped even trying to tell him the truth years ago.

Then one night, a waiter named Dare asked me to hang out with them after closing, and suddenly, I had a group of friends. I don’t think I realized how deep my loneliness went until then. My college friends had grown distant, engrossed in their fabulous careers or the challenges of graduate school. But my coworkers…they were right where I was, at this strange phase of life where we worked, but not in our chosen fields, where Real Life still seemed a way off. They were like butterflies, lovely to behold, free to float and flit wherever the breeze carried them, no responsibilities other than making rent.

Of course, none of them was married. In Manhattan, you started thinking about marriage after living together for a decade or so, when you were closer to forty or fifty than twenty. Married at twenty-one? Willingly? I told myself I’d bring it up…eventually. If the gang and I became closer, sure, I’d tell them in some droll, charming way, make a joke out of my de facto missing husband. Or maybe when Nick finally showed up at Claudia’s, as he continually promised he would. Any pangs of guilt I had on the subject were smothered in the relief of finally belonging.

So I kept my wedding ring on my right hand. Nick didn’t notice…but then again, our marriage now consisted of an occasional bout of sex in the wee hours of the morning and a few polite sentences exchanged here and there, mostly via voice mail. I missed him so much that I literally had to turn myself away from it, to stuff it down and ignore it. And hey. I was good at that sort of thing.

My new circle of friends became more and more important. We ate together before work, an early dinner around four-thirty, and we would try to outdo each other with pithy comments and observations of the city and its inhabitants. We might hang out at Claudia’s after closing, and I’d make specialty drinks, grapefruit gin fizzes, honey-almond martinis. One day, Jocasta, Prish and I braved the mob at Century 21 and bought cheap designer shoes. We went to a book signing in the Village. When Thanksgiving rolled around, Nick had to go to Lisbon, his first international trip with the firm (or ever). I congratulated him, smiled as he packed, kissed him as the car service came to bring him to the airport.

“You sure you’re okay on your own?” he asked, hesitating there on our grimy sidewalk.