Previous Section, Section VII
Posted on Sunday, 28 April 2002
Colin
I dressed carefully for the occasion. That is to say, I donned a navy pullover and white socks with my black pants and shoes. Then I rethought the oxfords and exchanged them for my well-worn Nikes. I let my hair cowlick as it may. On my way out the door I grabbed that Steelers jacket that she absolutely detests. Oh, and whoops, I forgot to shave.
Some time later, the lovely Jessica Stevens opened her door to receive me into an apartment, admittedly, much nicer than my own. In spite of all my efforts in driving around the block six times, she refrained from remarking upon my lateness. With a nettled glance at my attire, however, she did mention she had thought it might be nicer to stay in tonight, rather than go out. Mm-hmmm ... yes, while she may be always well-appareled, well-heeled, well-coiffed, she sure wasn't dressed like she had planned to stay in -- not in that little black dress. Or then again, maybe she was. There are ways of women that yet remain a mystery even to me.
After a rapid calculation, I agreed. True, a public place usually ensured a swifter conclusion to the matter, but on the other hand, it could be embarrassing. Besides, it was cheaper. "I don't know," said Jessica doubtfully, "maybe we could order in or something...?" Or maybe not so much cheaper.
"You know I'm not picky. Anything would be fine," I said hopefully.
"Well..." Jessica wandered into the kitchen with me in her trail and opened the refrigerator, finally selecting various items of girl-food she deemed acceptable. Damn. I should have had a bigger lunch. I didn't offer to help her prepare anything. If Jessica thought I couldn't cook to save myself, so be it -- and all for the better. Helping her would seem too much like my times spent with Lindsey. Even without tonight's mission, it would be specious, insincere.
I sat at the breakfast table and read the sports section, wondering how long it'd be before she'd notice the lyrics I was mumbling were from Mellencamp's "I Need a Lover" ...that won't drive me crazy.
"Anything exciting happen at work?" Jessica inquired, with a touch of malice in her voice. She hates the fact that I still work in the same place I did when I was sixteen. Every single introduction in the last two and a half weeks had been tempered with the painstaking explanation that I was working on my Masters degree and was going for a PhD and ladida ... Moreover, she dreads every time one of her friends or even worse, chichi coworkers at that exclusive consulting firm, mentions running into her boyfriend while grocery shopping. I smirked, appreciative of the irony. Well I'm not wiped out by this poolroom life I'm living ... Gonna quit this job, go to school or head back home Well, you'll not need to worry about that for long, my sweet.
"Not especially. Although I do prefer working the nights. It's a little slower, but usually more varied." That would get a reply, I knew.
"Uh-huh ... well, it's hard to see you when you're always working so late, you know."
"Yes, I realise our lifestyles are quite different, Jess. I suppose it could be a problem," I said graciously. Well I'm not asking to be loved or be forgiven ... I waited. This could be it...
Jessica paused. "Well, could be. Anyway," she nodded at my Steelers jacket, "I can't believe you haven't been attacked yet, wearing that thing every fall around here."
"I did go to school in Pittsburgh, Jess. Besides, I've seen a lot more Dolphins jackets around and I think that's considerably more contentious."
Moving around the table to kiss me (some girl that knows the meaning of 'hey hit the highway'), she murmured in my ear "Yes ... I can't believe you went to such a nerd school, Colin."
Nerd school, my alma mater? Humph. "Well, stereotypes can be deceiving, Jessica." Concealing a grin, I continued, "Hey, I've even worn it in Buffalo and have never received so much as a dirty look."
"Buffalo?" Jessica, who is from White Plains, downstate, wrinkled her nose.
"Oh yeah, visited Lizzy there tons of times."
Jessica turned back to chopping vegetables and stewed in silence; she has met Elizabeth ... nothing positive can be said of the event. Sensing an opening, I went in for the kill. "Boston too -- still in one piece."
"Ah, and am I to assume you were visiting yet another of your female friends?"
Meeeeeeooow.... "Oh sure, Lindsey went to BC, you know."
"Hmph."
"You seem to have a problem with my friends, Jess."
"Of course not," she breathed. "I think it's wonderful a man like you is close to so many women in a platonic relationship. It gives him such a unique perspective."
"That's exactly what my women's intuition would have told me you thought," I shot back sarcastically.
Jessica dumped ... something ... on my plate. "Don't be so quarrelsome, okay sweetie?"
Sweetie? But I don't argue while eating. It's bad manners.
After a meal that was bereft of the more interesting food groups, we settled on the couch. I tried to pick a fight over politics, not difficult, I would have thought, with the presidential election a week away as well as a certain (don't remind me) Senatorial contest.
"We can agree to disagree, can't we, Colin?" was Jessica's only reply to my opening wisecrack. Then she did something very exciting that almost made me lose my resolve.
Fortunately, the next thing she said handed me my opportunity on a silver platter, as it were. "You know, Col ... you don't have to stay at that silly job. I mean, there are lots of things you're qualified for until you get your Masters. It might not be Princeton or Chicago, but you did go to a halfway decent university... I'm sure you could get a job at some bank, or as a bookkeeper or something. Maybe you could find something in a financial establishment ... or I could even get you a job at my firm, if you wanted..."
I half stood before she stopped me with a territorial hand. "Look, I didn't mean it the way it might have sounded--"
"Yes you did."
Jessica turned to me with an ingratiating smile, but it faded when she saw my face. And to be honest, I didn't even have to feign my pique. "I've always known that's it: I embarrass you. I'm not good enough for you -- you and all your sophisticate friends--"
"Colin, will you get a grip..."
"I've got a grip. Look Jess, when I said earlier our lifestyles don't mesh, I meant it, and in more ways than just you work days, I work nights. We're too different, completely different..."
"But that doesn't mean it couldn't work out... I swear I didn't mean to offend you, really Colin. I only meant," she took a breath, "you don't have to be so stubborn, holding out for that perfect job. You think when I got out of college I was thrilled to come to this stupid repressed little city for some crummy public relations job? But I took it anyway, and now when I see where it's gotten me, I'm glad I did."
"Do you love it?" I threw back.
"I'm successful."
And she was. She was successful, well-paid, prestigious, and on her way up. And I would not for the world have had it the same way. "I'm afraid that calling isn't so strong for me. What would you have me do, Jess? Colin R. Wesley, MBA, assistant loan officer in one of the more prestigious banks in town? That's what you want, isn't it..." I couldn't resist a barb in defense of my native city: "And a helluva pity you had to leave Albany for the western frontier, Jess, that's one gorgeous metropolis you left behind..."
She flushed. "It's the capital -- at least things happen there."
"Oh sure, they raise our taxes after sticking us with a budget so late it would've automatically been marked down to a zero if any one my old English teachers ever were to get a hold of it."
She ignored the comment with a disdainful flick of polished burgundy hair.
"No, I know..." I continued ruthlessly, "Even better. You wanted me to join that pack of whores and panders you call a firm ... If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right? What would you have me do, put the numbers to spinning the bull?
"You b******!" Jessica shrieked. Frankly, she should have slapped me. But Jessica is not the kind of woman who slaps men, literally; Jessica is the kind of woman who slaps men with lawsuits.
"Yeah, I know, but what do you care. All night I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I ever could have seen in you -- now I can't for the life of me see what it was you saw in me."
Light brown eyes narrowed, Jessica circled me. "Now that you mention it ... I haven't any idea what it could have been. I really can't think that you have anything more than your charm to recommend you. Sure, you've got your Casanova rep, but you can't even get the player line right. You're an economist? Please. Everyone knows how sexy Alan Greenspan is. And your apartment's a dump, you drive a Ford Focus, for God's sake, you subscribe to The Economist andThe Wall Street Journal. You have that dumb job, you read Automobile magazine and the stupidest books--" she threw me a disgusted look -- "you're a terrible dresser ... and you're hardly even good-looking. How you ever got that reputation, I'll never know."
I gave her a look. "Oh, you know."
Jessica paused. I knew when it came to the point, she'd never dare to contradict that. "Well, fine, but it's not like it's anything I can't find in someone better."
Suddenly I grinned. I couldn't help it; it was too funny. In middle school lexicology, I was the cute kid in the stock-market club that all the cool girls had a mad crush on (this month, anyway). And now I'd jilted the princess and man, she was pissed. Jessica glared at me. "Oh, good for you," she sniped, completely misinterpreting my amusement.
I shook my head. That was something Jessica would never understand. I reached for my jacket and cheerfully announced my departure. "Well, I guess I'll be going then. Nice knowing you -- I suppose -- and to us never meeting again?"
"Oh no you don't ... since you asked, yes. Yes, you're job's not good enough for me. Yes, you're not good enough for me--"
"Then it's an especially good thing I'm leaving now--"
"One more thing ... don't think I didn't know you were cheating. You told me last week you were going out for drink with Elizabeth, I call you all night and no one's home, then you emerged the next morning at Lindsey's house? Why is it every time you're free you're supposedly 'hanging around' with one of them instead of me? Well, those two or Annie ... I suppose that's different, but--"
"Oh yes, I'm screwing two of my best friends, but thank goodness, at least I'm above incest." I slammed the door, her furious "Get out!" echoing behind me.
I'd blown it with another girl. So what? There had been many in the past; there would be many more in the future.
Someday it would work out -- someday it would just feel right. And 'til then...?
I pulled up to same corner for the third time, waited for the light ... nowhere to go but around in circles.
The light changed to green, and with the strange weightlessness of intense relief pressed down on the accelerator, urging the car forward. I knew exactly where I was going tonight.
John Mellencamp - "I Need a Lover"
The Eagles -- "Take it Easy"