Pug Hill - Alison Pace [31]
One week, and then it occurs to me that I should make some initial efforts at filling up the week ahead. In Evan’s absence, that is not going to be taken care of for me anymore. An image of The Union Club flashes into my mind, and I think how that is very much a good thing. I send Pamela a quick e-mail, seeing if she’s free this weekend. I send another to Kara saying I’m looking forward to Chloe’s birthday party the weekend after, even though I’m secretly wondering if there is a way to get out of it. I’ll tell them about Evan, I think, when I see them. I don’t feel inclined at all to e-mail about it now.
Before turning away from the computer, my eyes are drawn again to the bouncing man. The bouncing man who does not bounce. I take one last look at the stillness, the finality. It’s just a little yellow cartoon man. I think how Evan told me once that a woman in her thirties had a better chance of getting struck by lightning than she did of getting married. I’d told him I didn’t think that could possibly be true. He’d winked at me then, in a way I think he must have thought to be charming, and he’d said, “A girl can dream.”
I put my hand on my mouse, click a few clicks, and send the entire IM program to the trash. I forego, for now, the now customary several moments of stealing glances at Elliot, and instead, I swivel my stool around to my easel and reach for my paintbrush. I turn to the task at hand, I turn to the Rothko.
chapter eleven
I Am Jan Brady
“Okay, so I’ll be sure to get out of here by six, six-thirty at the latest. I’ll pick up the rental car and then come to get you.”
Elliot is on the phone with Claire. It’s easy enough to know when he is on the phone with Claire because, as far as I can tell, she is the only person he ever talks to. But more than that, whenever he talks to her, his voice gets softer, so considerate, and his posture relaxes. I try not to listen. I stare through my magnifying visor at the lower left section of the red and try not to hear anything.
“See you soon,” I hear him say softly, in spite of my best efforts not to. And then, in spite of all my best efforts not to get busted again looking over at Elliot, I look up at him right then, just as he’s hanging up the phone. He looks up, and the instant I always dread, but also must always secretly want, is upon us. Our eyes meet, and I smile awkwardly. I am, for some reason, perhaps to quell the awkwardness, perhaps more to quell my curiosity, compelled to ask, in a way that I hope is cheerful, merely conversational, “So, you’re going on a trip?”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize that this was, of course, the wrong thing to ask, as asking it simply screams across the Conservation Studio, I WAS LISTENING TO YOUR PERSONAL PHONE CALL BECAUSE, TRY AS I MIGHT, I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF!
“Yeah,” Elliot says, “just for the weekend, we’re going fishing.”
Fishing, I think. In March, in the cold. It takes a moment for it to settle in, that Elliot may in fact be a cold weather outdoorsytype person. Thoughts race through my mind: this could in fact change everything; this could in fact set me free! But can I, right now, in fact deal with any more change?
“Cool,” I say, and though I know nothing at all about her, mostly because I have steadfastly avoided like the plague asking even the smallest of details about her, I need to know. “Does Claire like fishing?”
“Well,” he says, his beautiful green eyes bright, “she likes camping, but she doesn’t actually fish. She’s getting more into it though. She’s really psyched about it; she says this time she wants to learn how to gut fish.”
Two thoughts run through my mind. One: she lies. And, two: I could gut fish.
“Sounds fun,” I say and turn, defeated, back to my Rothko. In this past week, this first week of being single, I have learned that it is a hell of a lot harder being unrequitedly in love with Elliot from afar, now that I don’t have a boyfriend, a reason