He said flatly, “I really don’t care.”
He was obviously about to get all high-minded about making the art you wanted to make, and not giving a shit what other people thought, that stupid argument that I had had a million times before, at Iowa, after Iowa, self-righteous speeches about how the best things came from people who didn’t give a fuck (but I gave a fuck, that was the defining thing about me, that was why I was not a Depressed Girl, why I had gone to Harvard, why I was sitting in this bar talking to this man who seemed alternately attracted and indifferent to me: I gave a fuck), and so, to head off this pointless philosophical bullshit, I said, “I got so pissed off I almost told her what my novel was about.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“Nobody knows,” and as if those words had flipped a switch, I suddenly felt eager and sensual and like I knew something about art. Maybe we would fuck later. Yes, we would definitely fuck. After I had told him it was over, we’d both be feeling sentimental.
“Really, nobody knows? You haven’t shown it to anyone?”
“Just my agent.” Ian looked skeptical. “If you talk too much about something while you’re writing it, you kill it.”
Of course killing it was the point. I wanted Leo ink-dead, dead on the page. I wanted his memory sold, printed, published, and reviewed, our lives no longer our lives but public property. Answering the inevitable nosy questions, I would be coy, and gradually the hurt he had caused me would blur.
Ian smiled his inscrutable close-lipped smile. “Maybe you’re writing about me.”
“Ha. You wish,” but my face flushed.
Then he blushed. “Oh my God. You are.”
“No, come on. Think about it. I’ve been writing this book for years.”
“Then why are you blushing? Are you writing about Lacie?”
“No.” But it was pointless to lie. I blushed so hard it hurt.
“Look at you. You are.” He sucked at the dregs of his whiskey, and ice cubes clinked his teeth. “That’s sick, Rose, that’s really sick. Is that why you moved in with her? So you could take notes on her?”
“Oh my God, Ian, no. It’s actually so random that we live together. It’s just a coincidence.”
“Hmm.” He sounded like he didn’t believe me. Our Mennonite poured out a liquid ribbon of gin. Behind us, a woman laughed loudly, like a hawk. “Does it have to do with that fight?”
“What fight?”
“You told me you guys had a fight. Some kind of falling-out.”
At once, that golden Indian summer day came swimming up: the red chiffon curtains billowing with soft breezes, Ian sprawled on the couch and singing my name. It seemed pointless to deny what was so cleanly etched in my memory. “Yeah, we did.”
“So what’d you fight about?” Moodily he sipped. “A boy?”
“Jesus! Why do men always think that the only thing women could possibly fight about is a man? It’s so sexist.”
He looked at me, amused. “So you did.”
I laughed. “God, I hate you. You’re the worst.”
“You should get better at lying. Look at you, you’re blushing again.” I ducked my head, secretly pleased. “So what was it? You liked the same boy?”
Primly I crossed my legs and folded my hands. “I’m not telling you any of this.”
“Who got him?”
“Come on, Ian. You’ll just have to read the book.”
He sized me up. After a moment, he announced, “Lacie did.”
“Yeah. But then I slept with him, so I guess I kind of won.”
I meant it as a joke, but he didn’t laugh. There was a terrible, splintery silence. “Oh, no.” His voice had gone quiet. “You slept with her high school boyfriend? Really, Rose?”
I shrugged. “Really.” In that moment I felt deliciously cavalier.
“And that’s what your book is about?” His lips bunched as if tasting something sour. “That makes me feel really weird.”
“You guys doing all right?” Our bartender clicked away our glasses with two hairy fingers.
“I’ll have another,” I said, and Ian looked at me, surprised. “Actually, just a whiskey.”
“Me too.” He sounded resigned.
“Double rye?” the Mennonite asked me.
That was what Ian was drinking. I nodded, then turned back to him. “Look. What’s happening between us, it doesn’t have anything to do with Lacie. Regardless of what my book is about.”
“Right.” He rolled a little red straw beneath his palm. “It’s just. It’s a lot.”
Our drinks arrived. Carefully he turned the glass around in his hand as if he were an alien encountering his first drinking vessel. I waited. I felt like an alien, incapable of guessing what these earthlings considered solemn and what was glib. Ian had seemed glib back at Song, boldly proclaiming I like Lacie, and I like you. Why should something that had happened in high school change any of that?
When he finally looked at me, the light in his eyes had dulled. “Look, Rose. I’ve actually been thinking this for a while, but this thing about Lacie clarifies it.”
He rested his arms on the bar, perfectly parallel to the edge. I got scared. Clearly he was ramping up to a speech, and the only time men make speeches is when they need to smash your heart to smithereens and they think they can do it diplomatically. He sighed. “The thing is. I think we should stop.”
My heart dropped to my gut. Everything got real slow and swimmy, and his words stretched like Silly Putty across the bar to me: “There’s a way that we’re having sex that’s not working for me.”
“You’re not attracted to me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what you mean.”
We both took a deep, shaky breath. My throat ached as I prepared to hear the familiar words about how fantastic, how fucking fantastic I was, how he really, really wanted to stay friends.
“This was the thing I was afraid of. That you would take it this way.”
“I’m not taking it any sort of way, I’m just trying to understand what you mean.”
“It’s my stuff.” He spoke sadly. “It really has nothing to do with you. It’s my stuff.”
If I were playing Breakup Bingo I would’ve just gotten the center square.