calls and suffering through rejection would ultimately result in nothing.
You would think that since he’d given up the precarious life of an actor for the relative safety of life insurance, he would have calmed down, but no. Now that he had succumbed to a career of creating tables designed to measure such things as death due to, say, consumption of common household products, Josh was a font of horrifying statistics. And though I knew better, I could not, somehow, keep from waiting with rapt attention for some morbid little tidbit to drop from his lips. It was as if I needed him around to remind me that even if there were things in life I couldn’t be sure of (my acting career, Kirk, the number of sofas in my apartment at any given time), I could be sure of one thing: the fact that I would die.
“So, you folks ready to order?”
“I am,” said Josh, glancing up at me in question.
“Uh, yeah. You order first,” I said, burying myself in the menu, my appetite gone. How was it that Josh always had a knack for making me realize the pure insanity of my life?
“I’ll have the Pad Thai,” I said finally, ordering the same thing I always ordered whenever I ate Thai. Boring, yes, but at least I knew what I was getting. And I liked to be sure of something in life. Besides, I was allergic to so many things, it saved me from having to interrogate the waiter about hidden ingredients that could potentially kill me in the other entrée choices.
“So let me tell you how I did it,” Josh said, and I knew, without any further clarification, what “it” was. The proposal. I sipped my water, pasted on a smile and listened while Josh proceeded to tell me all about the glorious evening he asked Emily Fairbanks to be his wife. Josh prided himself on being a romantic. In fact, he still gets on my case that I didn’t appreciate all his valiant attempts to woo me (okay, forgive me if I didn’t find rowing across the lake out front of his parents’ family cabin in the Poconos on the hottest day of the year romantic). But as he told me about the carriage ride across Central Park (a bit clichéd, but we’ll give him points for big spending), how the moon hung low in the sky and the only sound was the gentle clip-clop of the horse’s hooves (I’m sure there was traffic. There’s always traffic. But never mind…). How Emily’s eyes lit up when he turned to her in the cozy little seat, took her hand in his and said those words he had never uttered to another woman before.
I have to say, I got a little choked up there. Especially when I saw shining in Josh’s eyes what looked like the real thing. Love. For Emily Fairbanks, whose most notable quality (in my mind, anyway) was a certain nobility of brow and good skin.
I smiled, the lump thickening in my throat. I was happy for him. Really, truly happy. Because if Josh, with whom I shared not only the same allergy prescription but the same paralyzing anxieties, could get married, then, hell, I would be just fine.
“So let me know when I have to get my tux,” I said, referring to our old joke that I would have to be Josh’s “best man,” since I was (at least according to him) his closest friend.
And then Josh ducked his head and actually blushed.
“Okay, okay,” I continued to banter, unaware of the source of his discomfort, “I’ll wear a dress if I have to. But no taffeta!”
But when Josh continued to avert his gaze, I realized our old joke was no longer funny. And I suspected I knew why.
“I am coming to the wedding, aren’t I?”
Finally he looked up, his gaze hesitant. “Actually, Emily and I…well, we were just talking about, well, you…and she doesn’t really feel, uh, comfortable with, uh, inviting…that is to say, uh—” he ducked his head once more “—you.”
My mouth opened to speak, but not a word was forthcoming. After all, though we didn’t hang out much anymore, Josh and I were friends. And though we hadn’t fared well as a couple, we had come to depend on each other in some ways. At least until Emily had entered the picture.
“C’mon, Ange,” Josh said now. “You have to understand how Emily must feel. I mean, you are my ex-girlfriend.”
And, apparently, I thought as I scanned his embarrassed features for some sign of the man I thought was one of my closest friends, that’s all I would ever be.
But I didn’t have time to ponder my flagging relationship with Josh. Because suddenly my relationship with Kirk took a turn for the better.
When I came home from dinner that night, there was a message blinking on my answering machine. “Call me when you get in,” came Kirk’s voice over the machine (rather insistently, I might add).
I opted not to call.
What? It was late. I didn’t want to wake him up.
Besides, I didn’t want to do anything to break my feeling of sheer power. A power that only grew when, while I was sitting at my desk at Lee and Laurie the next day, Jerry Landry leaned over my cube, eyes gleaming as if he were going to tell me some dirty secret, and said, “You got a call at the control station from Kirk. You want me to transfer him?”
“Sure,” I said, my insides shimmering with an excitement I had not felt since the early days of Kirk’s and my relationship. I glanced at Michelle, who raised an eyebrow at me. Kirk never called at the office. Not only was it near impossible to get through during the day, he never really had a need to. Until now.
“Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy,” I answered as I was supposed to, praying Kirk’s call had gotten to me before a customer’s.
“Hey,” Kirk said, “what’s going on?”
“Hey,” I replied, as calmly as I could.
“Why didn’t you call me back last night?” he demanded. I almost felt a pinch of guilt at the hurt in his tone.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said, rushing to make amends as was my nature (despite what you might think of me, I really am no good at this game-playing stuff). “It was just so late when I got home and I figured you were tired, and—”
“What the hell time did you get home?”
Wow, he was mad. “Uh, eleven-thirty.” I neglected to explain it was because I had spent a major part of the evening letting Josh know just what I thought about the fact that he felt it necessary to exclude me from the most important day of his life. An utterly fruitless endeavor, as I discovered that not only did I not understand Emily Fairbanks, I understood Josh even less.
“What the hell were you doing?” Kirk barked. “Oh, never mind. You coming over later?”
“Later?” I glanced at Michelle, who was nodding her head in the affirmative. “Uh, okay.”
“Good, because we need to talk…. See you around ten-thirty.”
“Okay,” I said, clicking off the line and turning to face Michelle. “He wants to talk….”
“Bingo!” she proclaimed, clapping her hands together.
My eyes widened. My God. It was working….
I showed up at Kirk’s place around quarter to eleven. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t Kirk standing in the doorway of his apartment, waiting for me.
