“I don’t think you’re a bully,” I said.
“Well then why can’t you just relax and enjoy yourself?”
“I can act relaxed, but…”
“That’s all I’m suggesting either of us do. We act relaxed until we feel relaxed. That’s how these situations always go, no?”
“I’ve never been in a situation like this.”
“Come on,” she said, leaning forward a little. “You expect me to believe I’m the first billionaire critical theorist you’ve ever brunched with?”
I made some laugh sounds, and she punched me not-that-lightly on the shoulder.
“The first world-famous ex–sex worker you’ve ever sat beside in a suburban turret?”
I laughed more heartily. She punched my shoulder harder.
“Perhaps you’ve never wanted anyone who wanted you back, but was, nonetheless, happily married and completely unavailable?”
“Ha!” I shouted, bracing for a punch, then disappointed—more disappointed than I like to admit—when I realized another punch wasn’t coming. She was done with the joking. The flirting—if that’s what it was—was over. She’d picked up her nail block, was studying her nails, i.e. no longer looking at me, and I said (though it was more like I found myself saying), “If you only knew.”
And as long as I’m admitting to embarrassing things, I might as well admit that when I said, “If you only knew,” I did so in the hopes that Fondajane would ask me, “If I only knew what?” so that I could respond with, “Well, the truth is I’ve never wanted anyone who wanted me back, available or not,” or, perhaps even more straightforwardly, “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted who wanted me back,” and that she would protest, call me a liar, but then, upon looking into my eyes, she would understand that I was telling the truth, and the significance I’d granted our mutual attraction would prove contagious, and we’d be swept up in it, we’d have a moment, we’d close what was left of the space between us, find ourselves in one another’s arms and…
But no. It didn’t work. She didn’t take my juvenile bait. She didn’t cue my embarrassing confession. Of course she didn’t. She probably didn’t even realize I was trying to bait her. “If you only knew” is at least as common a way to shut down as develop a conversational topic. In the context of our whole jokey-punchy exchange, “If you only knew” may even have implied the opposite of what I’d wanted it to; Fondajane very well could have taken it to mean, “I can’t even count the number of totally unavailable people I’ve wanted who’ve wanted me back.” Plus her stepson and husband were presumably about to join us any moment, and for me to be so flustered by the thought of someone beautiful wanting me—so flustered that I’d overlook so immediate and obvious an obstacle to our finding ourselves in one another’s arms…Who would suspect it?
Well, Stevie Strumm, perhaps. Stevie on her driveway, in the wake of my requests for permission to kiss her. She’s the only one who could possibly imagine how miserable my sense of timing with women was, how divorced from reality my sense of proper romantic contexts.
And maybe you, reader, since you’ve read that scene.
But not Fondajane. She’d have never imagined. How could she have? Not even I could. Or, in any case (as if this hasn’t come abundantly clear by now): I didn’t. For a second there, I really believed that I might have a shot with her.
“If you only knew,” I said, and she, without lifting her gaze from her nails, responded, “I’m sure, I’m sure,” and thereby, swiftly, however unknowingly, neutered at the gambit my whole seductive stratagem.
I lit up a Quill.
“A smoker,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have asked permission.”
She said, “Don’t be silly,” and dropped the nail block. “There’s an ashtray right in front of you. And it’s good you didn’t ask. It means you’re getting comfortable.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Maybe’s good enough for now,” she said. “You know you’re doing just fine—‘You’re doing just fine’? What the hell am I telling you that for, right? You know you really bring out the mom in me, Belt. I can’t decide if I like it. I suppose I must, at least a little. I keep responding to it. Does this happen to everyone you talk to?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“It’s really very strange to me. I’d have thought you’d be more of—I don’t know…A prick.”
“A prick,” I said.
“What I mean’s I imagine that, if I were you, I don’t think anyone could make me nervous…I don’t imagine I’d make pro forma apologies. Not for smoking, or anything else. Prick, I guess—that was too…that was a lazy way to say it. I didn’t mean prick. What I meant was that, considering your work, I’d’ve thought you’d be a lot more confident. Cocky, let’s say.”
“My work?” I said.
“Well, not so much your novel—it’s mostly a very sweet book, but ‘Certain Something’?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I think that was the title. Of your story? No, who am I kidding? I’m positive. A hundred percent positive.”
“You read ‘Certain Something’?”
“Of course,” she said. “I thought—did Trip not tell you? I thought it was part of…He showed me this little speech he wanted to present to you yesterday, and that was a part of it. Had to do with how he originally came across No Please Don’t?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, he did mention a speech, but he got thrown off it, somehow. He kept saying that he was forgetting to say things he’d written.”
“Classic,” she said. “He’s so his father’s son. Frets and plans and arranges and contrives, and then…what? Remembers who he is and just goes ahead and wings it. Anyway, it’s because of me that Trip read No Please Don’t. Because I’d read ‘Certain Something’ in that literary journal—what was that journal? You know, it was so long ago, I’m not even sure when…eleven, twelve years ago? I know I was finishing work on Lamborgina C(unt)ock, which I wasn’t very happy with (I’m still not very happy with it), I was having a little bit of a crisis of faith, or crisis of vocation, and I thought I might give up critical theory and try my hand at fiction. I had subscriptions to a number of small literary magazines, thinking, you know, that I’d try to publish short stories in them, if I could ever get some written that I thought were worth— Wait! Fairchild’s Quarterly! That was it. That was the journal. It was in Fairchild’s Quarterly. I read ‘Certain Something’ in Fairchild’s Quarterly.” She knocked on the counter, celebratorily, one-two-three. “I read ‘Certain Something’ in Fairchild’s Quarterly and, but immediately, I was your biggest fan.”