ONE

 

Well, this day was a total waste of makeup.

From The Tao of Gertie

 

2003

 

“Times Square. Crossroads of the world,” said Reese with a flourish of her arm as we exited the subway onto Forty-second Street. “And the only place in New York where you’re guaranteed not to find a New Yorker.” She scowled at me. “Except us.”

“You’re a good friend,” I told her.

“You bet I am.” We headed around the corner, shouldering our way through a crowd congregating in front of a tabletop Rolex salesman. Reese nodded toward the gullible tourist handing over two crisp twenties to the sidewalk hustler. “A sucker born every minute,” she said, loud enough for several heads to turn and stare at us. Subtlety wasn’t Reese’s strong suit.

I thought about the watch I bought for my father’s birthday the first week I arrived in the city. Heat crept up my neck. “Not too long ago I was that sucker.”

She elbowed me in the ribs and laughed. “But we cured you. Now you’re one of us.”

“Damn right.” I nodded in appreciation. “Good-bye small town Iowa naiveté; hello cosmopolitan New Yorker.”

“So, Miss Cosmopolitan New Yorker, explain why you dragged me to Disney World North on our lunch hour.”

When I stopped walking and indicated the restaurant to my left, she tossed back her head of multi-colored dreadlocks and groaned. “This is about Dave, isn’t it?”

My goofy grin said it all. I, Nori Stedworth, was in love. Head-over-heels, butterflies-in-the-stomach, heart-pounding, walking-on-clouds, song-singing in love with a capital L-O-V-E. For the first time in my nearly twenty-six years as a living, breathing homo sapien.

Yes, I had been in love before. At least I thought so at the time. In hindsight, though, each of my previous relationships—all of which could be counted on one hand with a couple of fingers to spare—had fallen into either the Puppy Love, Infatuation, or Lust categories. Unfortunately, this revelation always dawned as I picked up the pieces of both my shattered heart and fractured ego. But I was older and wiser now; I’ve learned from my failures. And this time I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that it was the real thing. Love with a capital L-O-V-E.

Which explains why I had left my sanity in some subterranean cave—or at least on the subway—and now stood in front of AWE, the American Wrestling Enterprise theme restaurant.

“Tell me we’re not going in there,” pleaded Reese.

“I have to.”

“You’re not in love, girl; you’re in denial. Need I remind you that you hate pro-wrestling?”

“True.” I’d rather run a marathon with ten ingrown toenails than sit through an hour of steroid-filled, muscle-bound men and women knocking each other’s brains out.

“Then what are we doing here?”

I shrugged. “You know how much Dave loves pro-wrestling. He lives for his weekly fix of choreographed insanity. It’s his one flaw.”

“One?” Reese raised both eyebrows.

I shot her a scowl. “I don’t understand why the two of you don’t get along.”

Reese rolled her eyes. “You want a list? Let me count the ways.”

I held up a hand to stop her. Besides Dave, I had three close friends in New York: Reese, Gabe, and my dearest friend, Suz. Other than Reese and Gabe, none of them cared for each other. Whenever I tried to get everyone together, the results were disastrous.

Last February I invited all four over for a winter doldrums party. Big mistake. Finally, in desperation I popped in a video, and for the next two hours we sat in silence, munching on popcorn, drinking wine, and watching Russell Crowe slay tigers and gladiators. After that, I gave up, resigning myself to seeing Suz without Dave, Dave without Suz, and Reese and Gabe without either Suz or Dave.

“Look, his birthday is coming up—his thirtieth, and he’s already dropped a number of none-too-subtle hints about Mania and Mayhem on Broadway.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“It’s The Great White Way’s newest offering to the culturally-challenged masses. Three hours of half-naked wrestlers prancing around the stage of the Broadhurst Theater.”

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a culture snob. To me, the very idea of sitting through such an evening made The Full Monty sound like Sophocles.

“Definitely theatrical sacrilege,” said Reese. “Rogers and Hammerstein are no doubt flip-flopping in their graves.”

I ignored her sarcasm. Reese didn’t care much for Broadway, highbrow or lowbrow. Her tastes ran more in the direction of salsa and reggae.

“So you’re going to swallow your pride and buy him tickets?”

I offered her a weak smile. “A woman in love will do most anything for her man, including throwing a tarp over her common sense.”

She greeted that confession with another groan. “And I’m here because...?”

“Moral support.” With that I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the alien universe of AWE.

Having caught glimpses of wrestling on television, I expected to find myself surrounded by insult-hurling eight-year-olds and their tattooed and pierced older counterparts. I wasn’t disappointed. The room was filled with raucous diners of both sexes and all ages, shouting and cheering at the overhead television monitors as they gobbled up their meals.

Body art abounded, especially on the groups of teens gathered around many of the tables. Most of the men wore jeans and muscle shirts; most of the women wore hot pants and midriffs.

Reese glanced around the crowded room. “I think we made a wrong turn south of Saturn.”

I eyed her outfit. “You fit in better than I do.” She wore black leather Escada trousers and a spaghetti strap peach silk corset-style shirt. My Ralph Lauren taupe linen suit made me stand out like a vegetarian at a pig roast.

She frowned at the overly violent scene on one of the TV monitors. “Why are we here instead of at the box office?”

“Because this is the only place you can buy tickets, thanks to some marketing genius.” In a ploy that took commercialism to new heights—or more appropriately, new lows, the producers of Mania and Mayhem on Broadway had chosen to make tickets available only at the AWE restaurant. And not in a separate gift shop but right in the middle of the restaurant. That way, they could tempt diehard fans into shelling out above and beyond the one hundred dollars a ticket for all sorts of merchandising accoutrements, not to mention a meal. Smart move, considering the producers of the show were also the owners of the restaurant.

For twenty interminable minutes we inched our way forward in the ticket line. The sights and sounds of celebrity wrestling bombarded us from every corner of the cavernous space. From giant television monitors mounted around the perimeter of the room. From mega-watt speakers blasting play-by-play. From the raucous patrons, screaming their enthusiasm, stomping their feet, and pounding their fists as they watched their favorite testosterone jock pummel his opponent with a step ladder. The heavy odors of fried chicken, burgers, and fries saturated the air. I tried not to ogle the freak show atmosphere surrounding me; Reese openly ogled.

“Dave’s going to owe me big-time,” I muttered under my breath.

She smirked. “He’s going to owe you big-time squared after you sit through an evening of warbling and waltzing wrestlers.”

I grimaced at the monitor where one tattooed muscle-bound jock had just bashed a folding chair over another tattooed, muscle-bound jock’s head. “Not enough. Definitely big-time cubed.”

“Whatcha want, gorgeous?”

Two tickets to the ballet? I smiled to myself. Dave hated the ballet as much as I hated pro-wrestling. Payback would come on my birthday.

“Hey, red, you wanna stop mooning over The Boulder’s tight ass and tell me whatcha want? I ain’t got all day.”

“Nori.” Reese nudged me out of my reverie.

That’s when I realized I had made my way to the head of the line, and the thick-necked guy with the nose ring and shaved head was speaking to me. “Two tickets for next Saturday night.” I handed over my credit card.

“Orchestra or balcony?”

My preference would have been balcony. Last row. Obstructed view. Reluctantly, I said, “Orchestra.”

“What else?”

“That’s all.”

He raised one pierced eyebrow and leered at me. “They’re for sale, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Boulder.”

I glanced around. “What boulder?”

“The Boulder. The guy you were drooling over.” He nodded in the direction of a life-size cardboard wrestler wearing a leather vest, a matching thong, and a menacing grin. Nothing else. “You can stand him up in your bedroom and eye his assets to your heart’s content.”

Heat surged up my neck and into my cheeks. “I was not eyeing his assets!”

“Sure you weren’t, sweet cheeks.” He winked. “I can wrap him up in brown paper for you. No one’d know.”

“Just the tickets,” I said, wishing I could click my heels together and disappear. Damn. There’s never a pair of ruby slippers around when you need them.

“How about a T-shirt?”

“Just the tickets!”

“Key ring? Hat? Beer mug?”

“No, no, and no!” I had to laugh despite myself. Did I really look like someone who would sport a snarling wrestler-emblazoned baseball cap? I glanced at the lunchtime crowd and then at the Coach wallet in my hand. I didn’t belong in this place. I wasn’t one of them. Was I the only one who saw the incongruity here? I turned back to the clerk, who despite all appearances to the contrary, obviously mistook me for a fan, and shook my head. “Just the tickets, please.”

He refused to give up. “What about something for your friend?” he asked, motioning to Reese.

“No thanks,” she said. “I gave up wrestling for Lent.”

He shrugged and ran my card. “Enjoy the show,” he said, handing me an envelope after I signed the credit slip and passed it back to him.

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

“What some people won’t do for love,” said Reese as we exited the world of Wrestlemania.

I felt the need to defend my beloved. “Look, other than this one little Neanderthal throwback penchant, Dave Manning is everything a girl could hope for.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. He’s a drop-dead gorgeous hunk with a great sense of humor.”

“I’ll grant you the hunk. The jury’s still out on the sense of humor.”

“And he has a promising career as an up-and-coming dermatologist. He’s poised to take over his father’s practice when Dr. Manning retires next year.”

“Aha! So it’s really about his money.”

“No, of course not.”

She elbowed me. “But it doesn’t hurt, right?”

“Okay, I’ll admit the money’s a nice bonus, but it’s more than money. Dave has class.”

She screwed up her face. “You’re confusing class with Upper East Side snobbery.”

Even though I knew I’d never convince her, I tried to explain. “He knows how to dress.”

“Big deal. My four-year-old nephew knows how to dress himself.”

 “Not dress himself. Dress correctly. And it is a big deal. At least to me.”

“Okay, I guess I can understand, given the last guy you dated.”

“Don’t remind me.” I cringed at the memory of Ethan Fried showing up in a T-shirt and cut-offs for a co-worker’s engagement party at the Plaza.

“Let’s get down to what really counts,” said Reese. “How’s the sex?”

“Shh!” I glanced around to see if anyone had heard her, but the crowd passing around us remained oblivious to our conversation. Still, I couldn’t contain my grin. “Let’s just say on that score alone I could forgive Dave his fascination with wrestling and a hundred other annoying habits—”

“Aha!”

“If he had any.”

Reese shook her head. “Love is blind.”

“Not blind. Open-minded. It enables me to grin and bear my way around the wrestling.”

“And what do you get in return for all your altruism?”

I exhaled in exasperation. “Honestly, Reese, you make love sound like a list of debits and credits that have to be balanced out at the end of the day. Dave loves me. That’s all that counts. Besides,” I beamed at her, “with any luck, a freak tornado will descend on New York and decimate The Broadhurst Theater prior to next Saturday night.”

Reese erupted in laughter. “Talk about grasping at straws.”

I shrugged. “Hey, a girl can hope, can’t she?”

She glanced at her watch and changed the subject. “I’m hungry. Why don’t we grab a bite to eat, then walk back to the office instead of taking the subway? There’s a deli over on Sixth that makes great salads. Things are so slow that no one will miss us if we take an extended lunch.”

The tantalizing aroma of spicy chicken filled the corner where we waited for the light to change. My mouth watered; my stomach growled. I glanced behind me at the street vendor hawking chicken burritos.

“On second thought, forget the deli,” said Reese, following my gaze.

Big mistake. I’ve never burnt the roof of my mouth on a forkful of endive and radicchio.

One bite of the steaming burrito and I swear I could feel the blisters forming on my palate. Tears streamed down my face. Through my blurred vision, I saw Reese spit out a projectile mouthful, christening a startled tourist from Albuquerque.

At least I think she hailed from Albuquerque. Could have been Alberta or Albania. A splattered mélange of chicken, hot sauce, cheese, peppers, and flatbread covered all but the first three letters of the bright blue word plastered across her T-shirt.

The woman stared in stunned horror first at her shirt, then at her husband, and finally at Reese and me. Her mouth opened and closed several times but no words came out.

Reese was too busy guzzling water to offer the woman more than a guilty shrug of apology.

The woman’s husband glared at Reese, then grabbed his wife’s arm and yanked her away from us. As they hurried down the street, he yelled, “I told you we should have gone to Salt Lake City, Gladys. But no, you wanted to see New York. Seen enough?”

As for me, my parents hadn’t brought me up to spit on strangers. So like some hair-brained cartoon character with steam spewing from his ears, I tried to hold the food between my front teeth, keeping the poultry inferno from inflicting further damage, while I struggled to untwist the cap on the bottle of water I had also purchased.

I couldn’t swallow. I hadn’t had a chance to chew, and besides, my throat had instinctively tightened in protest and defense. No way was it allowing me to risk the same damage to my esophagus. My entire body broke out in a cold sweat. My eyeballs stung. My damp palms, hindered by the burrito I still held, kept slipping over the plastic cap of the water bottle.

I glanced over to Reese for help, but she was too busy attending to her own burnt mouth. With little alternative left, I grabbed the edge of my suit jacket and wrapped it around the neck of the bottle before giving one final jerk.

Just as the cap gave way, someone jostled me from behind, unleashing a huge glob of hot sauce that fell from the tilted burrito and landed smack in the middle of my skirt. A millisecond later, most of the contents of the bottle splashed over the blob, spreading the quarter-sized stain into a flowing pink river that looked suspiciously like a menstrual cataclysm.

A fresh wave of tears gathered behind my eyes. I had just spent two hundred hard-earned dollars on wrestling tickets. I couldn’t afford a new suit, and short of a Martinizing miracle, there was no way any cleaner could salvage my dry-clean-only skirt. I pulled my attention away from what used to be my best suit and gulped down the remaining water, swooshing around the mouthful until the chicken cooled enough for me to chew and swallow it.

Through watery eyes I noticed a group of pointing, staring teenage boys hovering off to the side. They snickered and laughed, shouting out the type of scatologically laced mockery I hadn’t heard since my practice-teaching stint at a junior high school in Sioux City. Not surprisingly, each wore an AWE T-shirt with the face of some snarling superstar plastered across the front.

A dreadful thought forced its way through my haze of pain and embarrassment. If I married Dave, would his wrestle-loving genes find their way into our child and produce an offspring who would grow up into a counterpart of one of those subhuman adolescents? It was a sobering notion. Maybe Dave’s love of wrestling wasn’t such a benign diversion after all.

Now, along with a scorched palate and a ruined skirt, I began worrying about my yet-to-be-conceived progeny. As the boys continued their heckling, my irritation grew exponentially. “Juvenile delinquents,” I muttered.

“Witness America’s future,” said Reese, having regained her composure and her voice. She glared at the boys. “I’d like to mash this burrito into their smug, pimply faces.”

Of the two of us, Reese generally acted first and thought later. If at all. I lived a more cautious life. “Ditto, but there are five of them and only two of us. Besides, their combined weights probably equal that of a Volkswagen Beetle. Dripping wet, you and I don’t add up to much more than a moped. Not good odds.” I tossed the remainder of my burrito into a nearby trashcan.

With a grunt of disgust, she hurled hers in after mine. “I hate when you go Pollyanna on me, even if you are right.”

Moving from rural Iowa to The Big Apple was a greater culture shock than I had expected. People were different here. Very different. I had quickly acquired the nicknames of Pollyanna, Goody Two-Shoes, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Dorothy—of the ruby slippers, not Lamour or Dandridge.

“You’re so naïve,” my friend Suz had said when I first met her. “Remember you’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”

“Iowa,” I reminded her.

“Kansas. Iowa. What’s the difference?”

“Two extra letters—Iowa has four, Kansas six—and a car ride south.”

She shrugged. I don’t think Suz has any concept of geography west of Staten Island. “Whatever,” she said, “but if you want to be a true New Yorker, Nori, you have to stop being a Goody Two-Shoes. It’s a rat-eat-rat world out there. You have to learn to do unto others before they do unto you.”

Apparently, they have a different version of The Golden Rule in Brooklyn, where Suz grew up, than the one my parents taught me back in Iowa. Shrugging off over twenty years of life in Ten Commandments, Iowa wasn’t easy. When you grow up in a town like Ten Commandments, you have to be a Goody Two-Shoes—especially if you’re the mayor’s daughter, the minister’s niece, and the great-great-granddaughter of the town’s founder.

With a bit of trepidation, I turned myself over to Suz’s tutelage and went from timid country bumpkin to assured city girl in less time than it takes to till an Iowa cornfield. So any reference to those old nicknames made me bristle. “Pollyanna, huh?” I scowled at Reese. Just to prove I could be as New York as anyone, I did something that would have made Suz proud of me and given my God-fearing parents apoplexy: I flipped those obnoxious reprobates the bird.

They flipped me back.

Reese shook her head and chuckled. “Sometimes you really surprise me, Nori.”

She grabbed my arm, and we dashed across the street, jumping a stream of street sludge left over from last night’s downpour and ignoring the flashing "Don’t Walk” warning. Along with half a dozen jaywalkers, we dodged three cabs, a FedEx truck, and a stretch limo. Of the eight of us, though, I was the only one in the line of fire when the limo rounded the corner, its right tire sailing through another river of gutter goop.

I shrieked.

“What a mess.” said Reese, eyeing the damage.

I wiped some wet gunk from my cheek, shivering at the thought of what sorts of toxic waste covered me, and stared down at my suit. The taupe linen now resembled a Jackson Pollack spatter painting. Reese grabbed her middle and doubled up in a fit of laughter.

I failed to see any humor in the situation. “What’s so funny?”

She wiped a tear from the corner of her cheek. “Picture you and Dave fifty years from now, two doddering old fools in matching porch rockers, reminiscing about what you went through for his thirtieth birthday.”

I offered her a wry smile. “I wonder if he’ll still be watching wrestling.” Then a horrible thought—one far worse than my earlier worry of wrestling-loving offspring—surfaced, settling in the pit of my stomach like one of Aunt Florrie’s lead biscuits. I grabbed her arm. “Reese, what if one of our kids wants to be a pro-wrestler?”

“Wow, I never thought of that. Big worry, huh?” She tapped her chin with a rhinestone-studded index finger and glanced skyward. “If I were you, Nori, I’d start praying my genes are more dominant than his. Meanwhile, unless you’re pregnant—” She stopped and eyed my spattered abdomen. “You aren’t, are you?”

“Of course not!”

“Then I wouldn’t worry about wrestling rugrats for now.” She scanned me from head to toe. “You have a more pressing problem at the moment.”

I followed her gaze and groaned. The linen fibers had absorbed the watery filth, transforming the Jackson Pollack-like skirt and jacket into a blurry Monet. A blurry Monet on a day when the artist was in a really bad mood and only using browns, blacks, and grays.

With Reese in tow, I dripped my way to the Marriott, the closest hotel, and took the escalator up to the ladies’ room. After stripping down to my undies, we went to work, Reese on the jacket and me on the skirt. Standing at the sinks, we flushed the linen with gallons of cold water.

“This isn’t working,” said Reese. The combination of hot sauce, sludge, and water had turned the once taupe fabric into a muddy shade of Pepto-dismal. “I think it’s ruined. And for wrestling tickets of all things. Face it, Nori, no good deed goes unpunished.”

Thoughts of punishment unleashed the inbred Midwest guilt I had banished to the far recesses of my brain. Guilt never came by itself, though. It always dragged along self-doubt, triggering the memories of all those years of Sunday school lessons and church sermons. Was this some divine retribution for turning my back on my upbringing and moving to—according to my relatives—the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah? My parents would think so. After all, didn’t they always tell me that God works in mysterious ways?

I heaved a deep sigh, lifted my head, and glanced at my reflection in the mirror. “Doesn’t God have anything better to do than torture me for leaving Ten Commandments?”

Reese stared at me as though I’d fried a few brain cells along with the roof of my mouth. “Where’d that come from?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I was just thinking maybe I’m in the throes of divine retribution or something for turning my back on my family and my upbringing.”

“Jeez, Nori! Get a grip. You ruined a suit. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Why me, though?”

“Why not?”

She had a point. I shrugged at the soggy mess in the sink. “You’re right. Shit happens, huh?”

“Got a Plan B?” asked Reese, nodding at the skirt and jacket.

I scowled at my suit. “If I go back to work in those, I’ll be the butt of jokes for the next six months.”

“A conservative estimate, considering some of the clowns in the office.”

Dave’s apartment wasn’t far from The Marriott. “I have some clothes over at Dave’s. I can change there before returning to work.”

“Better also take a shower and wash your hair.”

I glanced back into the mirror. “Yuck!” Although I had washed my face immediately after entering the ladies’ room, my concentration had been focused on my clothing. I hadn’t noticed the muck spattered throughout my hair. On a good day, my riot of strawberry blonde curls was hard to tame. After a shower of street gunk, I now looked like I’d spent a week battling my way through Amazon rain forests.

Reese wrung out my jacket and walked over to the hand dryer. “Damn,” she said, pounding the button three times in rapid succession without producing so much as a whisper of air.

I tried the other dryer. Equally dead. Tossing the skirt back in the sink, I threw my arms up in the air and cried, “Can anything else go wrong today?”

“Cheer up. I think you’ve depleted your bad luck allowance for the year. From now on life should be a breeze.”

“Yeah, if I survive the day without catching pneumonia.” The early spring day had started out warm and sunny but not warm and sunny enough for walking the streets in a dripping wet suit. I squeezed as much moisture as possible out of the garments, then squeezed myself into the cold, damp, wrinkled skirt and jacket.

We headed back downstairs and through the lower lobby, an experience bordering on supreme humiliation. As I made my way outside, I suffered the condemning glares of the hotel staff and the morbidly curious stares of several dozen patrons.

“Smile,” whispered Reese, grabbing my arm and offering a huge grin to a group of Japanese businessmen.

“Easy for you to say,” I whispered back between chattering teeth. “You’re not the one who looks like the loser on a reality TV show.” Still, I took her advice. Filling my lungs, I stuck out my chest, lifted my chin, and pasted a brave smile onto my face.

Once outside I told Reese she didn’t have to come to Dave’s apartment with me. “It’s going to take me a while to clean up. Why don’t you head back to work?”

“You sure?”

“I’ll be fine. Go ahead. I may treat myself to a soak in Dave’s Jacuzzi.”

She looked me up and down and nodded. “I’d say you deserve it.”

Jacuzzis are but one of the many sybaritic pleasures Dave has introduced me to during our eight months together. Growing up in a Norman Rockwell kind of town, surrounded by nothing but corn as far as the eye can see, kept me from experiencing much of life first-hand.

College hadn’t helped to widen my horizons. Mom and Dad nixed every one of my out-of-state choices. Both my undergraduate and post-graduate degrees came from a small private college within an hour’s drive of home. A small private college where the president was my father’s second cousin and the dean was my mother’s aunt’s brother-in-law. Thanks to my well-meaning but overly protective parents, I had about as much freedom as a cloistered nun during my six years of college and graduate school.

After graduation, my parents expected me to settle down back in Ten Commandments, teach English at the local high school, and eventually marry Eugene Draymore, the town’s most eligible bachelor. That’s when twenty-three years of toeing the line and being a good girl came to a screeching halt, culminating in my one and only act of defiance against Mom and Dad. I turned my back on them, on Eugene, and on Ten Commandments and headed for New York.

I’ve never looked back.

I didn’t completely sever the umbilical cord, though. Besides short trips home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I keep in touch with my parents by phone. I’d actually prefer e-mail, but Mom refuses to use it. So, I call them Wednesday evenings after my aerobics class, and they call me every Sunday after church. I speak of my job, the friends I’ve made, the museums I’ve discovered. They talk about that morning’s sermon and Eugene. In the nearly two-and-a-half years since I left Ten Commandments, Uncle Zechariah’s sermons haven’t changed. They’re still dull as dried-up Iowa cornhusks, but then again, so is Eugene, who—according to my parents—has never gotten over my rejection of him.

Poor Eugene has the personality of an undertaker, which I suppose is appropriate, considering his family owns the local funeral parlor. Although not bad looking in a monochrome, thin-as-a-cornstalk sort of way, Ten Commandments’ best catch also tends to smell of formaldehyde and other odors I’d rather not contemplate.

Predictably, my parents actually can’t understand why I don’t want to become Mrs. Eugene Draymore and provide them with a passel of pale, thin, future mortician grandchildren. “He makes a good living,” my father constantly reminds me every Sunday. “He’d take care of you.”

Eugene eventually takes care of everyone in Ten Commandments. I’m one of very few who has left the town in any manner of conveyance other than a pine box. I never tell my father this, though. Instead I say, “I can take care of myself, Dad. I have a good job.”

“But what about when you want to have children?” asks my mother, listening in on the extension. It would never occur to her that a woman might keep working after starting a family. “And how can you think of raising children in that place? It’s not safe.” Then she usually launches into a ten-minute lecture on the evils of the city.

I’ve given up trying to explain the twenty-first century to my parents. Instead, I simply tell her, “I’m not ready to have children yet,” then change the subject as quickly as possible. There’s no point in trying to change her mind about New York. With each call she worries it will be the last time we’ll speak, thanks to the ever-present stalker-rapist-murderer-bogeyman-terrorist she’s convinced is lurking on every street corner in that place.

Besides, why would I consider Eugene when I have Dave? Formaldehyde or Jacuzzi? Preparer of the dead or lover of life’s pleasures? Ten Commandments mortician or Park Avenue dermatologist? Was there really a choice here? All that aside, as I mentioned before, sex with Dave is mind-boggling, whereas Eugene’s kisses—the few that I had suffered through—were coma-inducing.

I shook Eugene, my parents and Ten Commandments from my head and entered the lobby of Dave’s co-op. The doorman gave a double take at the sight of me, but since he knew I had a key, he simply nodded as I headed for the elevator.

Note to self: Never take an elevator with a faulty air vent while wearing a sopping wet suit. Cold air blasted me for twenty-seven floors. By the time the doors opened and I stepped into the hall, my body was wracked with shivers. I raced toward Dave’s apartment, jammed the key in the lock, swung open the door, and didn’t stop running until I got to the bathroom.

Then I froze.

So did they.

I stared at Dave. Stared at Suz. Naked. Together. In the Jacuzzi. Each held half-filled flutes of champagne. In his other hand Dave held a chocolate dipped strawberry inches from Suz’s open mouth. In a daze I stepped back and took in the rest of the scene. An uncorked bottle of Dom Perignon champagne rested in an ice bucket at my feet. Next to a pile of clothes. His. Hers. A platter of chocolate-dipped strawberries sat perched on the wide tub ledge.

No one said a word. The only sounds that filled the room came from the whir of the Jacuzzi, spewing steamy bubbles around my lover and my best friend. My lover and best friend, who on a good day barely tolerated each other’s existence. Or so they claimed.

So what do you do when you discover Prince Charming is a toad—warts and all—and your best friend is the combined female reincarnation of Brutus, Judas, and Benedict Arnold? With as much dignity as my disheveled hair and clothing allowed, I walked out, making certain that as I turned to leave the bathroom, my purse knocked the platter of chocolate-dipped strawberries into the tub and the toe of my shoe accidentally-on-purpose kicked over the wine bucket, spilling the champagne on Dave’s Armani and Suz’s Dolce and Gabbana.

I don’t know how I made it back to Greenwich Village. My legs carried me without benefit of my brain. My body and mind had gone numb. From cold and betrayal. I can’t remember if I walked the nearly two miles or took a cab or the subway. I don’t remember anything until I rounded the corner onto Bedford Street and saw a decidedly unwelcome sight parked on the steps of my apartment building.

At first I thought I was hallucinating, given the triple-whammy I had suffered. Fate couldn’t be that cruel.

I stared at the hallucination. The hallucination stared back at me. I tried to blink it away. Instead of disappearing, it rose and spoke. “Nori, darling. I’ve been waiting hours for you!”