“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’re not like her. You’re strong.”
“I know,” she said, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
“Better than fine. You’re going to find someone better than me, someone who deserves you.” Can’t he, at least, spare me the clichés, she thought. But then he kissed the top of her head and she loved him all over again. And then, somehow, he was walking out the door.
In the dark courtyard, he turned and looked back at her, a black, stringy figure, like a rendering of Ichabod Crane she’d seen once, at the little museum in Sleepy Hollow. She raised a hand to him—a royal wave—and he to her. In a moment, he was gone and Emily’s tears stopped. She rose, creakily, from the couch, found a tissue, and blew her nose. It was unimaginable that Curtis wouldn’t simply walk back in the door, smiling his closemouthed grin, and crawl into bed with her. They wouldn’t make love again. Not ever. At this thought, her mind fell into a tailspin of sorts. She cupped her hands around her mouth, afraid she might scream, then drank down her goblet of wine and fell into a deep, restless sleep, splayed out on the small couch, still clad in her blue sundress with the apple print. At four, she woke and had a moment of warm, sleepy bliss before remembering what had happened. Her mind began to race. Dave’s party was tomorrow—no, today. Would Curtis go? Should she go alone? But then she’d have to explain what happened with Curtis. No, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell them that Curtis had left her—Dave’s smug face materialized before her—and she certainly couldn’t do it at the party. She wouldn’t go. And perhaps she should call Curtis to let him know that she wasn’t going, so that he might go without her. No, no, God, what was wrong with her. Why was she worrying about denying Curtis the pleasure of her friend’s party?
And so her mind went, in circles and circles, until well past dawn, when she took off her dress, slid between her cool, clean sheets, and fell into a dreamless sleep. When she woke, the second time, it was after one; she was relieved, at least, that she’d slept through half the day—only eight more hours to get through before she could sleep again. She stayed in bed for as long as she could stand it, flipping through magazines she’d already read, ignoring the ringing of the phone. Eventually, sleep came again, then morning, and she rose and went to work, where she took great pleasure in doing everything absolutely perfectly: faxing and filing and photocopying with the utmost precision, answering the phone in exactly the way her boss preferred. At six, she raced to the train, as she always did, to get to her apartment before Curtis and, thus, have time to change her clothes, take a shower, smear on lip gloss. But as she pushed through the turnstile, she realized that Curtis, of course, wouldn’t be coming. There was no reason to rush home. She was free to do whatever she wanted: run errands, window-shop, meet friends, see a movie. A movie. A dumb, soppy, girly movie at the huge, awful multiplex by Union Square. Yes.
The 6 train rolled into the tiled station and she rose with the crowd and pushed her way onto it, but at Union Square, where she normally switched to the L, she walked up the stairs and into the park, crossed from the north to the south side of Fourteenth Street amid another, younger throng, and bought a ticket for the seven fifteen showing of a romantic comedy that Curtis had refused to see with her (“You should go with your girlfriends”). The theater was deserted, it being Tuesday, and she stood, bewildered, in the foyer for a moment, sick with regret. Going to the movies alone suddenly seemed pathetic. I should go home, she thought. I can’t sit through a movie. I should go home and lie down. But her home was haunted now, not by Amy, as on those gloomy Sundays, but by Curtis. “Okay,” she said aloud, glancing around to see if anyone had heard her, then strode out the glass doors onto Broadway, forcing her shoulders back, as she did in yoga class, her head high, and turned herself back north. She had forty-five minutes to kill and she would sit in Union Square, alone, and read the fat book that Sadie had given her, about a Midwestern family, a satire.
But the street was as crowded as the theater deserted. “Excuse me,” she said to the tourists in their polo shirts and khakis. “Sorry,” she said. “Can I just sneak by here,” she said to the clumps of hard, angry-looking teens awkwardly smoking menthol cigarettes and laughing so loudly she wanted to scream at them to shut up. “Excuse me,” she said, and edged by them, flattening herself against the window of the Virgin Megastore, where she found herself face-to-face with Curtis. Or, not Curtis himself, but his likeness: a blown-up image of the band’s album cover hung in the store’s southmost window. It took her a moment—more than a moment—to realize that this was indeed Curtis, her boyfriend until less than twenty-four hours before, staring at her from a piece of foam board, his name imprinted in white script, like handwriting, above his head, the other bandmembers standing slightly behind him, receding into the background as the label wanted them to (though Dave’s red hair flamed like a beacon). The teens kept laughing and laughing, until Emily began to wonder if they were laughing at her—if her skirt was tucked into her underwear or her face streaked with mascara—but, no, they were shouting, “Shaneekwa said what?” and “She is stupid.” Emily was nothing to them, they hadn’t even noticed her, a small, sad girl—no, woman. To them, she was old, in her dull, gray shift. A nonentity, in the same negligible adult category as guidance counselors and youth ministers.
She squeezed past them and stared, glassy-eyed, at Curtis. With his long, sad face, his large, watery eyes, airbrushed and exploded 300 percent—literally larger than life—she saw what she’d never seen in the flesh-and-blood Curtis: a strange ferocity. She had been such a fool. She had believed it all, this romantic crap. She had really believed it, some mystical system of cause and effect, in which Curtis had no desire or need for material, earthly success—wanted only to be able to do what he loved to do, even if it meant living in a pup tent and eating beans—and was rewarded for his lack of ambition, while she, she had wanted it all too badly, and thus would never have it. It was all just bullshit. Curtis had wanted it more than anything. And she hadn’t wanted it enough. That was the truth. The real, actual truth. She had jumped at the chance to give up auditioning. She had freed Curtis from keeping his promises to her, freed him to go back to Amy. And Amy? Well, she’d fought for him—and won. Perhaps she really did love him more than Emily did. Or perhaps Emily wasn’t capable of loving anyone or anything enough to fight for it. Sadie, she knew, would say that Curtis shouldn’t have made her fight for him in the first place. That he didn’t love her enough. That he was weak. But then what did Sadie know, Sadie, who’d never had to fight for anyone, anything, in her life. (“What would she do,” Lil had asked Emily years back, “if men didn’t just fall in love with her on sight?”)
Across Broadway beckoned the maroon interior of a Starbucks knockoff that had recently joined forces with an overpriced sandwich shop. Hiking her bag on her shoulder, she crossed the street and strode inside, squeezing through the maze of small tables, and found a seat near the south window. All around her, tourists gabbled in French and Spanish and German, and NYU students in faded jeans and pastel lip gloss chatted about their boyfriends (“He’ll only give me his cell number!” “Okay, so he’s totally married!”). At the next table, two dark-haired women spoke in low, husky voices, taking large sips of red wine and fumbling with their packets of cigarettes. “Cabernet,” Emily mumbled, to her surprise, when the waiter came to take her order. Maybe I am an alcoholic, she thought.