her lungs. "He's gorgeous. God, is he gorgeous." She puts her chin in her hands and whines, "I don't know what I'm going to do."
Rob and I don't comment. When the waiter returns for our orders, Rob says, "German chocolate cheesecake."
I study the menu. My stomach growls, but I doubt anyone hears.
"What do you want, Sybil?" Madeline puts her menu on top of Rob's.
I feel her staring. "Probably just a drink."
"What have you eaten today?" She glares at me with hot eyes.
The waiter freezes over his pad of paper. Rob doesn't move either.
"I don't remember." Okay, so I had one cup of dried cereal, a few slurps of skim milk, alfalfa sprouts with a splash of balsamic vinegar, and an orange. Quartered.
"Get a salad," says Madeline. "Sybil's like Kafka's 'hunger artist.' "
"I'm broke—"
"We'll split one—"
"I don't have any money."
Rob breaks in, apparently sensing discord. He picks up a menu, opens it, and scans. "You like goat cheese?" He peeks out from behind the menu. "Goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes?"
"Yes, but— I just want coffee." I shake my head decisively.
Rob points to something on the menu, showing our poor waiter. To me, he says, "I'm buying."
"You didn't have to do that," I say when the waiter walks away.
"I'm a rock star." He raises his eyebrows and leans forward. "I've got the money."
Madeline, deadpan but delighted, says, "She starves herself all day." She smiles in my direction and adds, "You need the protein."
" Thank you for sharing with our new friend." I'm mortified.
Rob leans back. "Let's get it all out on the table so we can be done with it."
The waiter brings us iced water. "I'll be right back with your caffé Americano," he tells Madeline. She winks. We watch him go.
"Who wants to start?" asks Rob happily; he's downright cheery.
"Madeline wants to know about Dave Stomps," I say. "Tell us if he's happily married."
Rob, looking resigned, as if he gets this often, eyes Madeline, who may be doing her own blushing now. "I have very little to say. He is happily married, and they have a nine-month-old daughter."
Madeline definitely blushes. "Okay," she says. The waiter puts down her caffé Americano. "Okay." She tosses that ironed hair over her shoulder.
Rob looks around the table. "Favorite book? Favorite movie?"
"Hemingway's A Moveable Feast." Madeline examines her drink for accuracy. "I always wanted to be an expatriate."
"You are an expatriate," I say.
Books and movies are mentioned ( Crime and Punishment, The Graduate), hometowns are acknowledged (only Rob is from nearby with Providence, Rhode Island). A nod to God, a political stance (some kind of amalgam of multiculturalism, democracy, and moral relativism), a sexual preference (heterosexual!). All of us have seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but none of us cares. Madeline has done acid, Rob's been married, and I've taken ice-skating lessons. Two of us have seen Stomp, and all three of us have seen Blue Man Group. We can all sing the theme to The Love Boat. My first concert was Captain and Tennille, Madeline's was David Lee Roth, but Rob's was the Moody Blues.
We are the freakin' world.
Our long-suffering waiter presents my salad, which is huge. Madeline steals a bite of my baguette. "And we were all English majors," I say, going for the salad. With great deliberation, I have to eat as if I'm not overly anxious, as if I haven't been thinking about sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese all day. I have to tell myself to put my fork down occasionally, take little breaks, act carefree as opposed to behaving like a stray dog hovering over leftovers in an alley behind a grocery store. It's like having a Beatles song sung to you by the lead singer of a small rock 'n' roll band. These things happen. No need to gobble down the greens. No need to color wildly.
Rob sighs. "If we're really going to be friends— if this isn't just a one-night thing— we shouldn't spend too much time on character sketches, on histories." He sips his drink. "It's way too easy and sad and self-indulgent to get mired in the past. We'll become sentimental."
Madeline bristles. "Rob, we're sentimental girls. You must know that."
"It'll weigh you down." He looks solemn. "The eighties are over. You can't celebrate them for the rest of your lives. Sentimentality is evil. Nostalgia is forgetful. Reagan was president when Wham! made it big."
Still bristling, Madeline leans in. "Excuse me, but aren't you the one wearing your wedding ring after seven years of being a widower?"
I quickly say, "I have a BA from UCLA. I'm from San Diego—"
Rob covers his ring finger with his right hand. "I know people talk."
Madeline's voice returns to a normal pitch. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"Yeah, I still wear the ring." His eyes dash between us.
I reach out and touch his arm. I remove my hand, embarrassed by the gesture.
"So I'm sentimental too." He regains some lost composure and scolds us with his finger. "But it's fucked in the head— it's no way to live."
Madeline straightens. "I went to Berkeley, I'm from D.C., and I believe in a higher being." She isn't religious, but she expects to become so later, when she has kids.
"It sounds like you're trying to be P.C. about God." I pop a tomato into my mouth.
"I am," she admits.
Rob puts his napkin on the table. He adjusts his Roy Orbison glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Your borough? Your 'hood?"
"I live five minutes from here, off Greenwich Ave., near Benji's Quesadillas." I throw my thumb over my shoulder. Then I return to spreading goat cheese on a baguette. My Beautiful Baguette.
Madeline crosses her arms in front of her chest. "Brooklyn. Fort Green, but I say Park Slope. With a girl who doesn't look anyone in the eye. I think she has A.D.D."
Rob turns east. "I live above Bombay Café on Sixth between First and Second."
"We like Indian a lot, Rob." Madeline drains her water and looks for the waiter.
Rob asks, "What's something you want to do but probably never will?"
Madeline and I are dumbfounded. There are so many things. It's part of being sentimental. One romanticizes a bittersweet past while craving an unrealizable future. "You go first," I tell him.
"I'd like to play Madison Square Garden," he says.
"It's
