WE WERE OVER AT Suzanne’s condo this one time. I mean, it had got to where I was over there more than I was at my own house. Larry was always off at work, and Suzanne and me were best friends.
We were doing our nails. She was doing my nails, is more like it. And all of a sudden she puts down the emery board and looks at me and says, “Do you think Jimmy Emmet’s cute?”
That took me by surprise. The truth was, I had a crush on Jimmy Emmet. I mean, there were guys more well built than him, and plenty of guys a lot more popular. But he had this gentle face. I used to sit behind him in Government, and I’d stare at his hair. He had this cowlick. I was always wishing I could reach out and pat it down for him. And he had these beautiful brown eyes, with long lashes, almost like a girl. Sad eyes, but sensitive too.
“Search me,” I said. “I never really thought about it one way or another. Cute enough, I guess. Why?”
“I think I’m falling in love with him,” she said. Just like that.
“Jeez,” I say. “What are you going to do?”
It was one of these hopeless situations, she said. Where two people are just meant to be together, only they can’t. Here she’d gone and married Larry, thinking he was Mr. Romantic rock drummer, and he turned out to be this stick-in-the-mud workaholic that wants to join the country club like her dad and turn her into a housewife. They were going to have this exciting life, going to concerts and partying and stuff, and now all he wants is to stay home and have a bunch of screaming babies. Where Jimmy loves her for herself. Jimmy’s wild and exciting. Dangerous, of course. Almost like Bonnie and Clyde or something. She knows he’s young. Knows it’s crazy. But they’ve got this fire burning between them. She hasn’t told him what she feels but she can tell he feels the same about her. There’s this electricity between them. You can sense it.
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “I just can’t believe it.”
She asked me if I’d suspected anything. No, I said. Never.
“What about other people?” she said. She figured there were probably a lot of people talking about her—talking about the two of them. She was scared to death the school principal would find out. Or her boss over at the TV station. And then word would get to her parents, and Larry’s parents, and Larry. And everything would be such a mess. She wanted to know what I thought, what were people saying? And how did I think she should handle the talk?
“Nobody talks about you,” I said. I said that to make her feel better. Only for some reason, I don’t think it did.