throw out the mate. You just kept it with your hats and scarves as a reminder. A hope. And then one day, when you were moving the couch to get the pen that had dropped behind it, there it was. Your glove. Your favorite one. It had been waiting for you to reclaim it, you just didn’t know where to look. And later that day, when you went to the deli, you slipped the pair on in the elevator, and a warmth and familiarity consoled your body. You were only going out for a container of milk, but however far you went, you felt fine.
I smiled in spite of myself. Then I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Jack.
“You!”
“Me? I thought we broke up because you didn’t laugh anymore.”
“Did I say that?”
Jack nodded yes.
“When did I say that? You’re lying,” I chided.
I waited for him to laugh, like in the old days, but he didn’t. I waited for him to do something, anything, so I could feel normal.
“How was your set?”
“Great. They loved me.”
“They always do, Jack.”
“You always used to laugh at my stuff and then you stopped.”
“No.”
“Yeah. That last time you were here.”
“Well, we were breaking up. I was upset. I think you’re the best.”
“You do? You really do?”
His eyes softened and his lips turned up into a smile. “So, little Miss Orange Coat, you think I’m the best?” He extended his arm and spun me into him like I was Ginger Rogers. He dipped me over the cracks in the sidewalk, then dramatically pulled me up. He parodied the song “You Don’t Send Me Flowers Anymore.” Looking deliberately into my eyes, he sang from his heart.
You don’t think I’m funny anymore—
I threw my arms around his neck. He picked me up.
“Oooo, Ouch, Oooo!” Jack mimicked Curly from the Three Stooges. “It’s a giant Twinkie,” he said, poking at my coat.
“What goes good with Twinkies?” I whispered in his ear.
Jack’s eyes looked at me. Then he looked through me, as if to answer a question without having to actually ask it. Again his lips broke into a smile. I laughed.
“I haven’t felt this good since we broke up,” I said, laughing.
“Which time?” he asked.
“This time. The last time. How many times did we break up?”
“Altogether? Over the whole year?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” I nuzzled my head into him so that my hair warmed his neck.
“We broke up three times,” Jack said.
“Right. But that would be counting the time in the Chinese restaurant and I thought we said we weren’t going to count that time.”
“Didn’t we break up twice in a Chinese restaurant?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Once in ChowFun in Chinatown, and once somewhere around here.”
“Szechuan East.”
“Szechuan East. So which one doesn’t count? Szechuan East?”
“No. ChowFun,” I said. “Szechuan East counts.”
“Remember we got those great fortunes.” He put me down as he recalled them. “Mine said, ‘You will soon go from rags to riches,’ and yours said, ‘Something you don’t think is possible will soon surprise you!’”
“Right! So we figured why break up? This was an omen for everything to change.”
“What were we fighting about again, hon?” he asked.
“Oh, your career, my career, competition, money, marriage, religion, children. The usual.”
“I knew it wasn’t anything important.” Jack moved into me and put his arms around my waist. He rested his chin on top of my head. His lower lip was slightly chapped and his red scarf hung loosely around his neck.
“This is new,” I said as I untied and retied it.
“Yep. My mom made it for me. Remember. For Christmas. This was the gift that wasn’t finished that she said she’d send. She made one for you, too. She sent it even though I told her we broke up. You know, just in case we got back together. Mom’s a real optimist.”
“How’s your dad?” I asked while I pictured Jack’s mother sitting in her kitchen, shucking oysters for her famous oyster dressing.
“Good. Still a gentleman farmer. He also sent a book for you on Jews for Jesus.”
Oy gevalt, I thought. “So, Jack… You’ve got a lot of stuff for me in your apartment!”
“I guess I do.”
We took a breather. We let it all sink in. Whatever it was, and looked at each other a long while before we kissed. My lips brushed his cheeks inside his right dimple. They moved down his straight nose and back up to his green eyes to gently tug on his long lashes. Jack’s breath felt warm on my neck. His hands were inside my hair.
“Let’s get a cab home,” said Jack, and before I could blink we were sailing through the park going west on 79th Street. We were silent until we got out of the cab on Amsterdam Avenue. I turned to Jack, put my hands in my pockets and started to walk to my apartment. He took my left hand out from inside my orange coat and held it tightly as he walked, quietly, alongside me. Saying anything would spoil the moment. This moment was swell. I didn’t want to spoil it about thinking about what would happen next, because it was “the moment after” I was afraid of. I thought I had come too far in the healing process to blow it all just for one night of delicious, passionate, uninterrupted, erotic love.
Then again…
Actually, I hadn’t healed that much. Quite frankly, I had been pining. Obsessing. I’d practically been carrying Jack around in my pocket. If I spent the night with Jack, I would still wake up with yearning as I watched happy couples stand in movie lines, but at least I would have a memory of a nourishing, tactile and filling night.
And what if I got hit by a truck on the way to my audition tomorrow? Then I would have given up the last Valentine’s Day of my whole entire life with my best male friend and lover, to date, just because it wasn’t permanent. What was permanent in this world? Hardly anything. This was the moment to take and to seize. Spending the night with Jack Whitney was not only the smartest thing I could do, in fact, it was my only option.
I turned to him as we passed an open deli.
“You
