Pug Hill - Alison Pace [81]
“I had something leaning towards a panic attack the next day,” she says, “thinking about how he had quoted the rather high price tag of the apartment he was looking to buy; how he said that his Mac was the new titanium version; how he always bought dinner for his friends who didn’t make the insane amounts of money that he did; how, that said, he bought dinner for his friends a lot. I got a little feverish thinking how he told me he would take me to Bond Street next, how he looked forward to showing me the wonders of fine dining.
“I called his home number during work hours and left a message and said I wasn’t feeling well and got into bed with a book for the rest of the rainy weekend, thinking maybe being alone for the rest of my life might not be so bad. I’d get to see a lot of movies. I’d get a lot of reading done.
“What if he was the one?” She pauses, looks around the room, and continues.
“There was some guy named Kevin. When I met him at a bar on the Upper East Side, he was sipping club soda and told me he had just gone to his first AA meeting. Ten minutes later he said he was thinking that the better version of AA for him would be a ‘modified version.’ Ten minutes after that he ordered a Makers Mark and soda and in no time flat had drunk it and ordered two more. There was David, who picked me up at the end of our.first date and twirled me. Jim sent me a stuffed bear holding a heart that said ‘I Wuv You.’ Justin wore a vest; Ron looked to me so much like Sam the Eagle. There was Gary, too emotional Gary, who cried more than I did, and I cry a lot. Josh, so promising, until he licked my armpit. Scott was unkind to waiters; Craig didn’t know what amicable meant; Alan, old Alan, had his own house in the Hamptons but pronounced Nietzche, Nitzky. Alex was a Republican.”
I think how Evan was a Republican. Then I think of all my exes, and I think so many of them were.
“What if one of them was The One?” she asks us, looking around yet again. “What if they were all The One?” She looks down, looks back up again, and smiles.
Lawrence jumps to his feet and shouts, “Bravo, oh, bravo, Amy, bravo!” Amy thanks him, really rather graciously.
“Wonderful job, Amy!” Beth Anne exclaims. “Such an effective presentation!” And all I can think is, effective indeed.
“What was your anxiety level?” she asks, and all I want to do right now, all I want to do in the world, is raise my hand high, raise it high in the air, and say that my anxiety level is about a ten.
“Uh, you know, it wasn’t so high,” Amy answers, really pretty calmly. “It was, like, a three, at most a four.”
“Well, claaaaaass, I hope you were all able to see this excellent, just excellent, example of how if you concentrate more on what you are saying than on the fact that you are saying it up in front of a room of people, that wonderful results can occur.” She beams proudly at Amy.
But I’m not seeing that so much. Maybe I’m not seeing that at all! I look around at my classmates, all nodding sagely in agreement with Beth Anne. I wonder if they’re seeing what Beth Anne is telling us we should see, or if they’re seeing that maybe Amy could have found her happy ending, that things could have turned out so differently for her, if maybe she’d been just a bit more open-minded.
All I can wonder is, what would have happened if Amy had—instead of balking, instead of deeming each one of these men her own equivalent of a Sprocket—just looked at these men, one by one, and said, “Really, it’s gauche to talk so much about money and it kind of turns me off.” “Your name is Kevin and you are an alcoholic. Put the drink down, baby, one day at a time,” or whatever it is that helps alcoholics. What if she’d just said, “I prefer, generally, not to be twirled.” “I don’t like stuffed bears.” “Wear something other than a vest?” “Wear a baseball hat, maybe?” “I don’t like