Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [38]
It was almost as if he somehow knew that he would be killed that night, in the line of duty.
Bebe didn’t remember her father. But she did remember her mother’s grief, because it lasted for years. And it was only when Bebe was ten that her mother told her of Bebe’s brother, a brother she’d never known because he’d been given up for adoption at birth. Bebe’s parents were newly married and hadn’t expected a baby so soon, when they had so little money. It had been a difficult decision, but one they felt was best for the baby.
To this day, Bebe’s mother still talked about the roses. And she still said the one regret in her life was letting that baby go and losing that piece of her husband. Of course, her other large regret in life was that her daughter was forty-two and not married.
Roses had never been just roses to Bebe. Roses had always been some sort of message from a father that she couldn’t even remember.
A
t the Barnes & Noble superstore five miles from his condo, Max walked the aisles, glancing at books, but truly hunting for a prospective boyfriend. What better place to shop for a smart man than a bookstore? he reasoned.
He saw a handsome young guy in the Fiction and Literature section. Khaki slacks, blue oxford shirt, gold wire-frame glasses. Max paused, leaned forward, and took a book from the shelf, pretending to read as he peered over the top. The young man was engrossed in his own reading. Max studied the man’s face, trying to determine if he could visualize the stranger at some future point in time throwing a Frisbee in the park for the not-yet-born golden retriever puppy the two would have obtained from a reputable breeder in upstate New York. The stranger, perhaps sensing that he was being scrutinized, glanced up from his book and caught Max’s eye. The man smiled at Max, then looked back down at his book. Max managed to glimpse the title: The Bell Jar.
Immediately, Max replaced his prop-book on the shelf and continued down the aisle, walking past the man and making a sharp right.
Pausing in the neutral zone of Books for Young Readers, Max realized he was likely to encounter another Bell Jar reader unless he devised a strategy. Science Fiction? No, Max did not want a Trekkie boyfriend with a calculator wristwatch. Movies and Television? Just the thought of sitting home on Friday night watching a scratchy old copy of A Streetcar Named Desire with some guy who knew all of Blanche Dubois’s lines made Max feel depressed. Sports? No towel-snapping ex–frat boys, thank you. Photography? Too pretentious. History? Science? Computers? No, no, no.
After eliminating Travel by reason of his own abandonment issues, Max decided that the only two sections of Barnes & Noble that were appropriate for boyfriend shopping were Self-Improvement and Pets.
While pretending to read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Max spotted a beefy, jockish-looking fellow. The guy had very large biceps, which could come in quite handy when it came time to haul firewood inside. The man scanned the titles of the books and then plucked a copy of Codependent No More from the shelf.
A codependent bodybuilder did not sound unappealing. Except then Max saw that the man was wearing a wedding band. This meant he probably had a wife who suffered from low self-esteem, who was needy and clingy and assumed that every time her husband went to the gym he was really visiting a secret girlfriend. He imagined the wife at home that very moment, wondering where her husband was, doing frantic situps on the living room carpet in an effort to become more attractive to her ripped husband, thus staving off the divorce she feared was almost inevitable.
Or maybe he was gay. Gay men often wore wedding bands, trying to pass. But then the guy walked away, without so much as a glance.
Max read The Right Dog for You in the Pets section. He was