Despite himself, Weston’s expression must have looked hopeful.
“Well, this thing with me and Jillian isn’t like either of those,” Paige said, meeting his eyes at last, and that was that for feeling hopeful. “I couldn’t stand her when I met her, and I can’t stand her now that I’ve gotten to know her better. She acts as if her not doing anything professionally makes her so special, when most people don’t do anything. She absolutely has to be the central focus in any given group of people, and whenever conversation strays from her latest goofball project, or her latest goofball outfit, she stops paying attention. She’s basically under-socialized. She only pretends to be interested in anyone else—though I guess the pretending means she’s socialized to a point—and whenever she asks about my life, it’s obvious she’s only going through the motions and doesn’t care. I’m not even convinced she’s that interested in you. You’re just a great audience for her, and that’s the main thing she needs from anybody. She has no sense of tact—which is just another form of being inconsiderate, of not bothering to pay attention to anyone else. So it never occurs to her to maybe keep her mouth shut about how great fracking is, because other people present might find her idiotic opinions offensive. For that matter, her opinions about anything important are all over the map. Since she doesn’t read newspapers or even watch TV news, I’ve come to the conclusion that she doesn’t have opinions—she just tries on a position like another outfit. She’s not a serious person, West! She lives her life in, like—a playroom! And there’s something so crafted about her. All presentation, no substance. With these big stagey entrances she makes. With all the feathers and jumped-up enthusiasm. It’s fake. I have no idea what’s behind the prima donna song and dance, aside from a woman who’s hopelessly self-centered, and maybe a little lost. Like a lot of people who come across as egotistical, all that high-octane vivacity could be just overcompensating for underconfidence—since she’s clearly too frightened to go out into the world and make her mark. That’s me bending over backwards to be understanding, but I’m not a gymnast. I can’t maintain that position for very long.”
This—whatever you call the perfect opposite of ode—came out in such a rush that Paige was breathing hard. Weston asked dryly, “Is that all?”
“No, come to think of it. She also drinks too much. Way too much, making her a bad influence. Every time you go over there without me, you come back soused.”
“Are you trying to convince me to despise my own best friend?”
“No, this is obviously my problem—but it’s getting worse. Like those private coinages of hers that she repeats all the time whenever we go over for dinner, and she always serves popcorn as an appetizer? Which is cheap, by the way, in every sense. Practically free, and déclassé. So a substandard bowlful always has ‘low loft.’ Having only a few dead kernels at the bottom indicates a ‘high pop ratio.’ A batch lifting the lid on the pot is ‘achieving lidosity.’ You think it’s enchanting, and I’m glad for you about that, I guess. But I couldn’t find it enchanting on pain of death. I think it’s dorky. Every time she says this stuff it’s fingernail-on-a-blackboard for me. Her very voice grates. You’d think she’d learn to speak at a volume that isn’t pitched for the hard of hearing! The stress of pretending to get along with her is wearing me out.”
“If you want to keep the socializing to a minimum—”
“If it were just a matter of your friend getting on my nerves, maybe I could simply avoid her, and we could keep making excuses for why I’m busy and can’t come with—though if we’re really talking about getting married, a there’s-somewhere-I-gotta-be routine could be hard to keep up over a lifetime. She’d figure it out. And then it would be an issue, and she’d get all touchy and wounded the way she does. Still, maybe that would be manageable. If that were the only problem, we could choreograph some sort of elaborate dance and never end up in the same room.
“But it’s worse than that. She acts as if she owns you. I’m never sure what you two are talking about all that time after tennis—because you’re always gone for way longer than the couple of hours you play. I can’t help but worry that you’re talking about me. And I worry the discussion isn’t always nice, since nice things are usually a little boring, and for some reason they never take very long to say. I can’t bear this paranoia. It’s worse than when you go see your shrink. At least a shrink is supposed to keep his mouth shut, and be a little objective. If you also need to confide in a regular person, a civilian, and I’m going to be your wife, then you should be confiding in me.”
“I can confide in more than one person, can’t I?”
“You can confide in more than one person who’s a man. You’re going to claim I’m ‘insecure.’ Maybe I am, but maybe I have a right to be. If you two always had a platonic relationship, that would be one thing. But you’ve been involved with each other, you said, not once, but twice. You’ve played it down, but I’ve gotten the impression that both times it was kind of a big deal.”
“We’ve both been involved with multiple people since. That’s ancient history.”
“It doesn’t come across as ancient history. I still pick up a feeling between you two. It’s not—well, it’s not wholesome. There’s an electricity, an energy, and it leaves me out. When she’s around, you hardly touch me, have you noticed? Structurally, this situation is lopsided, too. I’ve had boyfriends, but then I’ve broken up with them or they with me, and we’ve gone our separate ways. I don’t have anyone in my life who remotely duplicates Jillian’s role in yours. I don’t see anybody else socially three or four times a week, not even a girlfriend. I’d appreciate your trying to picture how you might feel if I saw one of my exes that often. And we hung out on a park bench for hours at a time and shared each other’s secrets. Wouldn’t that make you anxious? Wouldn’t you worry what we talked about?”
“Half the time, it’s about how many minutes you should sous vide salmon.”
“Right—half the time. Wouldn’t you worry about the other half? And imagine if this male pal of mine went through long periods of being unattached, and gave every sign of being emotionally dependent on me, to say the least. I think you’d get the jitters. Especially if this hypothetical guy was—I’ll give Jillian this much, and I might feel a little different if she weren’t—fucking good-looking.” Paige didn’t often curse.
Maybe this was where he was supposed to say, Only up to a point, or But she’s not aging very well, or I’ve never noticed one way or another, or Fair enough, but not my type, further gilding the lily with the white lie, I may not have mentioned it, but truth is we were a lousy match in the sack. Maybe out of loyalty he was even supposed to claim, Give me a break! Between the two of you, you’re the knockout in my book. There was no way any man in this position could remain in the realm of credibility and win.
“It’s hardly her fault that most people would consider her reasonably attractive.” Judicious. But even his insertion of reasonably was pure suck up, and probably backfired. The qualifier made him sound evasive and condescending.
“The issue isn’t ‘most people.’”
“I don’t think of her that way.”
“So you’ve told me repeatedly. Whatever folks say over and over starts sounding shifty. As if they’re trying to talk themselves into something.”
“I don’t know what else I can say to make you feel safe.”
“There’s nothing you
