“Diane, it’s Becca.”
The door swings open. “Hey,” she says. Diane has some light makeup on, and her hair’s pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’s beautiful. But I can’t help but notice the red puffiness around her eyes.
“How are you doing?”
“I’ve had better days,” she says. I’m glad to see her sarcasm still intact.
“I’m sorry.”
Diane shrugs. What can she say to that? “Thanks for feeling sorry for me”? She waves me to enter. Her room is spotless. I should take notes.
“I’m almost sorry for him, for having to marry that horse-faced woman.” Diane checks her skin in the mirror, verifies her face is not horse-shaped. I figured the knives would be out, though I suppose it’s better than a replay of when he first called off the wedding. I can still hear the screaming echoing in my ears. I just wish Diane had an in-between mode. “You know his mother set the whole thing up.”
“It’s an arranged marriage?”
“Obviously. He’s only marrying her to make his family happy. He’s a total coward. His mother will cut off his inheritance if he doesn’t marry an Indian girl. I wish I had known that earlier than six hours before my wedding, but whatever.”
I used to love hanging out with Sankresh and Diane. It was like having an older brother. He was teaching me how to play piano on a Casio keyboard he’d picked up at Goodwill. I threw it out the day he called Diane to break off the wedding.
He called. He didn’t even have the guts to face her in person.
“You’re better off.” I put a tentative hand on her shoulder.
“I know. But I had to learn that lesson sometime.”
My tentative hand becomes a back massager. Diane welcomes it. “I’m here if you ever want to talk about it.” I sound so unconvincing and fake, worse than a guidance counselor.
“I know you are. But I’m fine.”
“Don’t worry. One day, you’re going to find a great guy—”
“Stop it, B. Are you actually giving me the ‘one day’ speech? There won’t be a one day. I know the silver lining to what happened is that you were able to learn from my mistake. I thought Sankresh loved me, but he just wanted a Western fling before following tradition. I was used, just like everyone else. People just use relationships to get what they want: money, power, sex, connections, self-esteem.”
“Didn’t you date that guy in college because he had a car?” I ask. Diane rolls her neck forward, letting me work her upper back.
“Right. But it’s never about love. Did Erin, Aimee and Marian marry those cardboard-cutout snoozefests because it was true love, or because they all make a lot of money, and my friends wanted a hot husband to show off at their big parties in their McMansions?”
“Right.” Aimee’s and Marian’s husbands are pretty cool, though. Aimee and Bill went skydiving on their honeymoon, and Ted plays drums in a band. (Okay, Erin’s husband is a boring square, but two out of three isn’t bad.) Diane always had a blast hanging out with the group, even before they began pairing off. But now’s not the time to argue.
I run my fingernails along her shoulder blades. I saw a girl do it at a slumber party. It seems to do the trick and calm Diane down. I can’t give a pep talk if my life depended on it, but at least I’m not totally useless.
“Did you see that they already set a date?”
“That’s fast.” I only glanced at the article; Diane has it memorized.
“June 28. That’s the day Sankresh and I had our first date. Five years to the day. He took me to this Italian restaurant and we sat in the courtyard in the back. They forgot to put our order in, so they threw in free tartufo. Sankresh let me eat the cherry in the center.”
Diane never talks about Sankresh, not this stuff anyway. I don’t know if she’s talking to me or to herself anymore, so I just give her a supportive squeeze.
She spins around and grabs my shoulders. Her eyes are wet but urgency lights up her face. She stares through my eyes directly into my mind, like she’s been able to do forever. “You’re the Break-Up Artist. I don’t want you to get—”
“Duped. I know.” A chill runs through my body. I throw the newspaper into her overflowing garbage. “Don’t worry. I’ll never forget.”
I check my email when I get back to my room. And then I check my other email. LeBreakUpArtiste [at] gmail [dot] com. (I decided to be creative.)
Perched at the top of my inbox is a message from a Mr. Towne. The email has been sitting there for a day—way too long. The name doesn’t ring a bell, but most people don’t use their real names with me in the beginning.
To: Le Break-Up Artiste
From: Robert Towne
My wife saw your ad on a bathroom stall...it’s worth a shot. I need you to break up Steve Overland and his girlfriend, Huxley Mapother. I’ve attached a picture. Let me know next steps.
I reread the email about five more times. The words don’t change, but each time they seep in more. I deal with low-profile relationships, ones that don’t cause major seismic shifts in the tectonic plates of gossip our school rests upon. Huxley and Steve are the San Andreas Fault of relationships. (Wow, I guess our current unit on geology is more fascinating than I thought.) Maybe this Towne guy is confused. I open the picture.
It’s Huxley and Steve at homecoming—the same picture on display at school.
9
It’s not until after dinner that Mr. Towne pops up online. I email him back asking to video chat. He asks for ten minutes, which gives me enough time to set up. I tape a black blanket to the mirrored sliding door behind me to eliminate all traces of personality from my surroundings. I pull out my grandfather’s vintage suitcase from under my bed and remove my costume: my raccoon mask and Diane’s old graduation robe. As I slip them on, I contemplate who this Mr. Towne could be. A vengeful father? A frustrated teacher or disgruntled janitor?
But it’s none of the above. Mr. Towne looks exactly like a Mr. Towne would. He’s an adult dressed in full dad attire—baby-blue polo buttoned all the way up and tucked into khakis with his gut protruding. Thinned hair, creased face, but a boyish smile. Despite his age, he still looks fitter than some guys in my school. He sits at his desk and doesn’t say a word.
“’Ello love,” I say in my British accent.
“I didn’t know you were British. I assumed French,” he says, totally calm. It’s making me nervous. He leans back in his chair. “Is that what you normally wear?”
“Um, no. It’s my work uniform.”
“You really British?”
“Why, of course!”
He stares at me, his gray eyes coalescing into a steely glare. “I get it. Gotta protect yourself.”
“Is Mr. Towne your real name?” I ask him.
“Does it matter?”
He flashes me that boyish grin, dimples caving in both cheeks. He was probably Steve Overland thirty years ago. His high-school sweetheart and three kids are probably down the hall singing Bible hymns.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I have no idea who you are, and I don’t care to know so long as you get the job done. So let’s stop prying and get down to business.”
I exhale in relief. Most of the awkwardness has left the room. “Why does a fortysomething man want to break up some high-school couple?”
“Why do you need to know?”
I’ve never had to pry information from a potential client like this. I’m not interested in competing in a “who’s more paranoid” contest. “Do you want me to do my job or not?”