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By Root 528 0

a bad phase, but the more I tell myself that, the more I suspect it isn’t really true. I try to remember the way I felt when I first met him, when he called me after our first date and said to my voice mail, “I’m having a drink with some friends, but the only thing I want to do in the world right now is have another drink with you.” I try to remember how, when he said that, I just melted. I try to remember how I felt like maybe all the less-than-stellar boyfriends who had happened before him had happened so I’d meet Evan right at the right time, right when I was ready, so that everything might be a little bit perfect. But lately, the more I try to remember all that, the less I can. And mostly, the more I try to think that maybe he really is the one, the more it’s just so completely clear that he isn’t. There’s that.

And then, there is, of course, Elliot. There is always, always Elliot. I seem to be very infatuated with Elliot.

Just this very morning, as I walked up Columbus Avenue, to stop back at my apartment to get ready for work, as I do not have any of my stuff at Evan’s, I think I thought then that I had too many problems. And I think I even thought that I had no idea how to solve them. Some sort of problem god must have heard me think this and he must’ve said, “Oh, no, sister, you think you’ve got problems? You think these are problems you can’t solve? I’ll show you problems.”

I look down at my watch, and a wave of guilt washes over me for busting out of work in the middle of the day in the dramatic way that I just have. The guilt at least takes my mind off all the problems, solvable and not so. As I stand up, take one last look around to make sure there isn’t maybe just one pug, I think that at least I can count on something. I can count on the guilt. I’m half Jewish and half Catholic; I’ve got the market on guilt pretty well covered. And anyway, I can’t think any more about any of it. It just isn’t the same sorting out your problems at Pug Hill when the pugs aren’t here. I make a mental note to come back over the weekend. I hope Evan hasn’t already made plans to go ice fishing or something equally as fun.

I get up and turn away from the hill, the hill so very free of any sweet, snorting pugs. I don’t walk back down the hill, back across more empty lawn covered with leaves. Instead, I walk on the other side, along the cement path. I do this, I know, because I don’t want to inflict any additional water damage on my Ugg boots. Before every fashion victim in New York and LA wore them, Ugg boots were originally worn by Australian surfers. The surfers like them because the sheepskin is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I picture surfer dudes in Australia carrying surfboards into the ocean, waves lapping at Ugg boots left on the shore. I look down at my boots again and wonder if I have, as I fear I have with so many things, perhaps quite completely missed the point.

chapter three

You May Feel Sad

I walk quickly away from Pug Hill and back up to the Met. I hurry past the Paul Manship sculpture of the three bears, trying not to think that the absence of the pugs is a bad omen. Usually I’m not in this much of a hurry; usually I stop for a minute and look at the sculpture. Though I’m beginning to realize that, today, nothing is usual. I reenter the museum through the south side employee entrance; I take a left, a right, go through a long snaking underground hallway, and I’m back at the door to the Conservation Studio.

I walk back into the Conservation Studio, this room that houses so many beautiful, priceless (if slightly worse-for-wear) masterpieces of art, and the first thing I see is Elliot. Lately, I could walk into a room that held a million more beautiful, priceless, timeless objects than this one does and if Elliot were in it, he would, time and again, be the first thing I see. I pad silently over to my work space, trying to draw as little attention as possible to myself, to the fact that I have, most recently, been gone. It’s not very difficult. One of the things about paintings restorers (technically