My date with Claire—the first date I went on since my breakup with Jean—did not go well. It was, in fact, a disaster. And, as with all true disasters, there were witnesses to document the horrible events for future generations.
"It could have been worse," said Tricia, my best friend and law partner. We were standing on a street corner after the date had come to a miserable end, watching a cab carry Claire into the false twilight of the city night. "You could have fallen in love, stopped having sex, and grown to resent each other." She sighed dramatically at her own sorry plight and rested her head on my shoulder.
It had started out as a good day. When I woke that morning, a fat band of sunshine was streaming through the bedroom window. It was the first time in weeks that the sun had blasted through the steel-gray curtain that hung over Lake Michigan. The sun had been missing for so long that a newspaper published a running tally of the number of days it had been since the sun had last shown its hot face over Chicagoland.
I stretched in the sunlight, happily noting that I had been awake for a full five minutes and, in that time, I had had only two passing thoughts about Jean. And in neither instance had I pictured her having sex with Michelle, the woman she left me for. This so delighted me that I grabbed my cat, Norm, and buried my face in his soft belly. Norm, obviously caught off-guard by my sudden affection, stiffened and tried to jump out of my arms. In the six months since my breakup with Jean, I had touched Norm about a dozen times, and then only by accident. I was lucky if I remembered to brush my own hair, let alone pet the cat. During the darkest days following the breakup, I considered packing him off to live with my parents. Ultimately, though, I figured he'd suffer less from my uneven attentions than he would from my mother's attempts to reason with him.
With my arms wrapped around Norm's squirming body, I laid in bed, listening to the sounds from the apartment above. The walls in the old two-flat did little to muffle the noise generated by Tricia as she stomped and hollered her way through her morning routine. In the midst of Tricia's racket, I could hear Anne dumping food into the many pet dishes scattered around the apartment. This was quickly followed by a parade of paws, hooves, and talons click-clacking across the hardwood floors. At last count, Tricia and Anne had nine animals, all of which were named after chemical elements, and many of which were of undetermined species. Tungsten, the most recent addition to the household, looked like a cross between a very fat ferret and a half-eaten apple.
"Let's call him a cat and be done with it," Tricia said impatiently the week before, as Anne and I turned Tungsten this way and that, trying to figure out his place on the food chain. Tricia hated ambivalence of any kind, except when it came to her relationship with Anne. She had spent the past ten years wringing her hands, agonizing over whether she and Anne belonged together. Occasionally, Tricia would leave, only to return a few weeks later, moaning and howling until Anne agreed to take her back.
It had been three years since their last breakup and, as Anne told me on the day we found Tungsten shivering and gnawing on his own ropy tail under the porch, "We're due for another one. Tricia keeps telling me how unhappy I am." She chuckled grimly as she crouched down to the pavement to coax Tungsten out from behind a garbage can.
I gave Norm a kiss on his head and jumped out of bed. Norm followed me into the kitchen where he rubbed against a teetering stack of unpacked boxes while I poured food into his bowl and sang him a song about the character flaws of mice. Several times over the past few months I had forgotten to feed Norm. I'd often find him sitting at his bowl, staring at it, willing for something to happen. As a result, he had gotten into the habit of gobbling down his food as it fell from the bag, probably because he didn't know where his next meal was coming from. He would eat so much, so quickly, that he'd end the feeding frenzy by staggering into a corner and throwing up.
"Congratulations," Tricia said after witnessing a mealtime, "your cat has an eating disorder."
But on this morning, Norm must have sensed a tentative step back toward stability. Instead of indulging his bulimia, he sniffed at his food with indifference and took only a few dainty bites before joining me in the living room, where I was drinking a cup of coffee at a card table, the only piece of furniture in the room. Nearly everything else I owned was stored in my parents' attic or buried in one of the dozens of unmarked boxes leaning against the apartment walls. Many of the boxes were torn and their walls were caving in—victims of my aborted attempts at unpacking. The towers of damaged cardboard gave my apartment the feel of a sad downtown in an industrial city, which should have depressed me, but instead made me feel cozy.
Just as I stood to get another cup of coffee, I heard Tricia slam her front door and clomp down the stairs to my apartment landing. I froze as she pounded on my door and rattled the knob. She called my name a few times before finally giving up and heading outside to catch a bus downtown. In the past six months, I had rode to work with Tricia only twice. I liked to use the quiet of the bus ride to collect my thoughts, something that was impossible to do while sitting next to Tricia. Most people would have figured out by now that I was trying to avoid them. But Tricia simply couldn't believe that anyone would deny themselves the pleasure of her company. So every morning I was forced to either sneak out of the house before her or hide until she left for work without me.
I tiptoed to the front window and peeked at Tricia through a rip in the dingy shade. She was wearing the ratty beaver coat she bought from a thrift store the day we opened our law practice, dragging the coat's hem in the snow that covered the front path. Our neighbor, Mrs. Sternansky, a woman who had filed police complaints against us for everything from unlicensed pets to unorthodox Christmas decorations, was shoveling her sidewalk, being very careful not to clear any snow past her property line. Tricia called out a cheery good morning, forcing Mrs. Sternansky to raise her meatloaf-shaped head and growl something in return. Tricia crossed the street to the bus stop, where she chatted with one of the many crazy people who lived on our block—a guy who wore aluminum foil mittens year 'round and sang patter songs about the stuff he found in dumpsters.
****
By the time I arrived downtown, the sun had disappeared again behind a bank of storm clouds. The dark sky made our office building look even more menacing than usual. The building was one of the world's first skyscrapers. It was built in the 1800's by an architect who designed the granite walls to be several feet thick to hold the then-towering 16 stories. As a result, he created a hulking fortress that looked like it wanted to beat up every other building on the block.
When I walked into the office, Tricia was standing over our secretary's shoulder, munching a piece of toast and shouting out wrong answers to the Tribune's crossword puzzle. Tricia had a brilliant legal mind, but she was a moron when it came to gamesmanship. She did not understand that games had rules you had to obey. Therefore, you can't stuff a nine-letter word into a six-letter space and you can't take two consecutive turns at tic-tac-toe just because you want to win.
"8 across is Lindbergh," Tricia yelled, spewing crumbs all over the room.
"L-i-n-d-b-e-r-g-h," she spelled, jabbing her finger at the puzzle, leaving a greasy fingerprint in each empty space.
"It is not, you fool," Lonnie said. Lonnie wiped the toast crumbs from the desk surface, being careful not to chip her long, colorful fingernails on the wood. Then she fluffed out the paper, and laid it down on the other side of the desk, out of Tricia's view.
"Well, look who decided to show up this morning," said Tricia, as I dropped my briefcase on the floor. She stuffed the last bit of toast into her mouth and clapped her hands together as if she were cleaning erasers, giving Lonnie's desk a final spray of crumbs. "You've missed a lot of excitement around here."
Lonnie rolled her eyes. "I had nothing to do with it, baby. It was all this one's deal," she said, jerking her head in Tricia's direction. Tricia waved her hand dismissively, causing about 10 ceramic bracelets to rattle around her wrist. She walked out from behind Lonnie's desk and grabbed me by the shoulders.
"Guess what you're doing tonight," she asked, grinning like a maniac. Ever since my breakup with Jean, Tricia had a lot of suggestions on how I should spend my evenings—most of which involved drinking and leering at women with her.
"Playing bridge," I answered, squirming out from under her grasp. I played bridge twice a week in the suburbs with my parents. Tricia did not approve of card games, the suburbs, or my parents.
"Bridge!" Tricia said with a snort. She held out her wrist and loudly tapped the face of her watch. "You’re thirty-three years old, Julia. Isn't it a little early for you to be entering your Golden Years?" I brushed past her and picked up a stack of mail from Lonnie's desk. I ignored Tricia, hoping she would turn her attention back to Lonnie.
"You are not playing bridge tonight," she said. "You, my friend, are going on a date! With Clarice Lingraman!" She wedged herself between the desk and me and waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Tricia never got anyone's name right, so first I had to figure out who she was referring to before I could focus on this date nonsense. I dropped the mail back on the desk and looked at Lonnie for help.
"Claire Larsson?" I asked.
Lonnie nodded. "Mmmmmm hmmmmm. That's the one."
Claire Larsson was one of our real estate clients. I represented her several months before when she bought a house. I had met Claire only twice. The first time was the day she came to our office and hired me to handle her purchase.
Most law firms assign clients to attorneys based on the lawyer's specialty. An attorney skilled in real estate law usually advises clients looking to buy property, while a family law attorney takes divorce cases. Our firm handled things a bit differently. Tricia had spent a considerable amount of time training Lonnie on our very different tastes in women. It was Lonnie's job to assign us female clients based on their looks, and not their legal needs. Tricia got any client who had a chip on her shoulder and wore ugly eyeglasses. Women who used lipstick and bathed regularly were sent to me.
Claire certainly fit within those vague parameters. She had the slightly over-fed prettiness of a busy PTA president. She was blonde, but a Midwestern blonde, which is very different from the sleek and dangerous blondes of the East Coast or the oversexed and fun-loving types bred in California.
"She looks like she was milked out of a cow," Tricia said, not unkindly, after meeting Claire. We were both shocked to learn that Claire had found us through our ad in a gay newspaper
"But she can't be gay," said Tricia, shaking Claire's client form, which asked where she had learned about the firm. "She was wearing Espadrilles, for Christsakes."
I didn't see Claire again until the day we closed on her property. Unfortunately, the closing took place the week after my breakup with Jean. I sat next to Claire, pushing papers at her that I had never even glanced at, telling her in my zombie voice, "Sign here. Sign here." At one point, she reached over and tucked in a tag that was hanging out of my blouse, and then she gingerly patted my back. I almost burst into tears at the gesture, which in my state of despair seemed like a saintly act of kindness.
A few weeks later, Claire called me at the office. I shook my head in a panic when Lonnie tried to hand me the phone. I was certain she was calling to tell me that I had screwed something up at the closing.
"Does she sound mad?" I asked Lonnie after she hung up the phone. "Does she sound like she wants to sue me?"
"She sounds like she sounds," Lonnie said. "Call her back if you're so interested in her mood."
I returned her call late at night when she wouldn't be in her office. I left a message that I'd be out of the country for a while. I didn't hear from her again until that morning.
"I answered the phone because this one," Tricia said, pointing at Lonnie, "was much too busy to do her job."
"Too busy fetching your damned breakfast," Lonnie sniffed, not bothering to lift her head from the crossword puzzle.
"Anyway," Tricia said, slapping her hands together, "we had a nice chat. She wants to take you to dinner for doing a good job on her closing, which we all know is ridiculous. I told her that you weren't busy tonight—which you are not. She'll be here at six." Tricia crossed her arms against her chest and smiled smugly.
I stared at her for a moment in disbelief. Tricia had always taken an unusual interest in my love life, but her actions were generally restricted to peppering me with questions about my lovers' sexual peccadilloes. This was the first time that she had actively recruited for me.
"You idiot," I said, finally.
"Mmmmm," said Lonnie, chuckling over the newspaper. "What have I been telling you all these years?"
"Oh, come on, Julia, it will be fun. She's very cute and you need to start hanging out with people who are under age 65."
I pushed past Tricia and reached for Lonnie's rolodex.
"What are you looking for, hon?" Lonnie said, looking up from the puzzle and tapping a pen against her teeth.
"Claire's number," I said. "I'm calling her to cancel."
"Sorry, baby, she got there first." I looked up at Tricia who was holding the card just beyond my reach and dancing it teasingly in the air.
I lunged for the card, but Tricia jumped back and I tripped over the coat rack.
Tricia stuffed the card into her bra. "You've been moping around in a funk and feeling sorry for yourself for months. Not having any fun. Barely talking to me or Lonnie. Isn't that right, Lonnie?"
"I'm staying out of this one," Lonnie said, burying her face in her coffee mug.
I looked Tricia up and down in a way that I hoped made her feel bad about herself, and I walked into my office. As I shut the door, I heard Tricia tell Lonnie in a stage whisper that they should leave me alone for a while. Two seconds later, Tricia crept into my office on exaggerated tiptoe and knelt on the floor beside my desk.
"Are you really mad or just pretend mad?" she asked. I didn't know the answer, so I glared at her, just in case.
She looked up at me pleadingly for a moment. "Fine," she said, suddenly officious. She jumped to her feet and fumbled in her breast pocket for Claire's number. "Wallow in it." She threw the card at me and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind her.
****
Over the past several months, Tricia had been almost frenzied in her attempts to cheer me up. She tried to drag me to lesbian bars every weekend. She composed personal ads that described me with such outrageous adjectives as luscious, feline, and ripe. And she took every opportunity to badmouth Jean, reminding me, for example, that Jean had affected a British accent after a weekend trip to London. I should have appreciated Tricia's efforts, but instead I treated her every gesture as an irritant and regarded every invitation as an obligation. Worst of all, I suspected that Tricia's campaign to get me interested in other women had contributed to her own feelings of restlessness with Anne.
I put my feet up on my desk and watched an El train rattle past the window. I realized that my dark, little cloud routine was wearing thin not only on Tricia, but on myself, as well. Maintaining a bad mood for six months was exhausting and not very good for my complexion. Maybe Tricia was right. Maybe it was time to have some fun.
I picked up Claire's card and stared at her name until the type blurred and gave me double vision. I didn't think I was capable of falling in love again, so why not chose this smart, nice, slightly awkward woman who was obviously interested in me? I could be as happy with her as I could with anyone else. And, I thought, smiling to myself, Claire was pretty. Certainly pretty enough to make Jean jealous.
The more I thought about it, the more excited I got at the prospect of going out that night. I hugged myself and twirled around in my chair. Just then, Tricia walked into my office with a stack of files in her arms. She had pinned her hair up in a bun, which meant she wanted to be taken seriously.
"Here," she said, slapping the files on my desk, "you need to go through these. I don't have the time to do it myself." This was the same stack of files that had been sitting on her desk for a year. They contained closed cases that needed to be filed. Whenever Tricia wanted to appear overworked, she'd haul out these files and make a big production about how much time it was taking her to clear them.
"I'll get right on it," I said with a laugh. Tricia grabbed her chest and collapsed into a chair. She shook her head in mock disbelief and called out to Lonnie: "Get in here. There's something wrong with Julia." Lonnie grunted a reply and ignored the order.
Tricia leaned back in the chair and kicked her big, clumsy feet up on the desk.  She was wearing leather pumps, which, like most of her shoes, were so weatherworn that the heels were ground into nubs and the toes curled up, making them look like elf shoes. "It's just a date," she said. "You don't have to marry her." I smiled and shrugged my shoulders with what I hoped appeared to be indifference.
For the first time that day, I noticed that Tricia was wearing a skirt. We had what you might call a “casual” workplace. We considered anything short of full-frontal nudity appropriate business attire. Today, though, Tricia, who bought clothing that was at least one size too small as an incentive to lose weight, was spilling out of a short wool skirt and filmy blouse. I reached over and ran my hand up and down her calf. "Stockings?" I asked. "What gives?"
She smirked and pulled the pencil out of her bun, causing her hair to cascade in a honey wave over her shoulders. Tricia wasn't particularly vain, but she was extremely proud of her hair, which was long, curly and the color of cognac. She couldn't walk past a mirror without stopping to smooth a cowlick or tuck a strand behind her ear. Once a week she treated her hair with expensive conditioners and wrapped it in a turban, which gave her the slightly exotic look of a fading European film star. The rest of her appearance suffered for all the attention she paid to her hair. Her clothes, purchased exclusively at thrift shops, were usually wrinkled and covered in cat hair.
"Guess who else has a date tonight?" she said.
"With who?" I asked incredulously.
She covered her face with her hands and convulsed with laughter.
"Oh, God. Not Bunny," I said.
Tricia's face was fever red from laughter and, I hoped, shame. "I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong," she said, waving her hands furiously. "I'm just going to have sex with her. That's it. No relationship. We have already agreed to these terms." She pounded her fist on the desk to make it sound official.
"You've got to be kidding," I said. Tricia and Bunny fell into bed every couple of years. Their affairs always played out in three stages: loud lovemaking in public places, followed by exchanges of bad poetry about the absurdity of their love, and culminating in competitive threats of suicide. By stage three, after being subjected to the poetry of stage two, I was handing Tricia straight-edged razors and begging her to jump off ledges.
"Does Anne know about this?" I asked sharply. I tended to take Anne's side in any dispute, partly to irritate Tricia, but mainly because I couldn't understand why Tricia was bent on destroying their relationship. The fact was that Tricia and Anne had a nearly perfect relationship. They both loved wine and drank it to excess. They snickered at people who exercised regularly. They enjoyed vacationing in places with shaky political climates. And they fought just often enough to keep things interesting. Their biggest problem was that Tricia couldn't accept that she was in a happy relationship.
"Of course she does," Tricia snapped. We glared at each other for a moment until she rolled her eyes and tossed up her hands in resignation. "Well, she doesn't know about Bun, but she knows that I'm dating other people."
"Don't worry," she said, smirking at me, "we've decided to stay together for the children." I smiled with genuine relief. Tricia and Anne's breakups were as hard on me as they were on them. "We're going to have an open relationship."
"I thought only gay men are allowed to do that."
Tricia shook her head slowly and lifted a glass off my desk. She rolled it back and forth across her forehead. "You know what's weird? Anne thinks it's a good idea. I was expecting her to freak out. Maybe even ask me to leave." She knocked the glass gently across her forehead. "What do you think she's up to?"
"Maybe she's met someone on the Internet," I said. Anne was terrified of computers. Tricia, however, considered herself to be something of a technophile because she kept a computer on her desk, though she used it for little more than a place to hang New Yorker cartoons and to surf the Web for free pornography.
"Oh, come on, she doesn't even know how to turn one on," Tricia said with a snort. "She thinks that if she pushes the power button the computer will spring to life and run around giving us orders." She began gnawing on her thumbnail, something she did when she was trying to work through a problem. "No, I think it might be reverse psychology. Like if you give a little kid a lot of freedom, they won't want it." She pondered the idea for a moment, nodding her head in agreement with herself.
"How do you think she's going to react when she finds out about Bunny?" Anne hated Bunny, and with good reason. Anne and Bunny had been friends before Bunny and Tricia started their first affair.
"She'll probably throw me out," Tricia said with a shrug.
"Is that what you want?"
"No," she said, flinging her arms wildly in the air. "I want to date. Not just Bunny. I want to date lots of women. I want to have some fun. I want to have sex. I'm thirty-six years old and I haven't had a non-self-induced orgasm in months."
"So, you and Anne are going to live together and date other people?”
"It should make for some interesting dinner parties," she said lightly. Tricia grabbed my knee and shook it. "Do you realize that this will be the first time in the history of our friendship that you and I will be single at the same time? We'll be just like Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda."
"As long as it's understood that you're Rhoda," I said.
****
At five o'clock, Bunny slunk through the old, heavy door of our office. She was wearing her usual uniform: baggy, black pants; a white, man's business shirt; and a shapeless, black jacket. And, of course, thick glasses with heavy frames to advertise the fact that she was a serious artist. Although her name was Bunny, she more closely resembled a creature with an exoskeleton. I had to fight the urge to call her Cricket or Aphid. She was small, wiry, and her limbs did not seem to fit into their sockets. Her face and fingers were stained yellow, the telltale signs of a dedicated smoker, and her shoulders were set in a perpetual slump.
Bunny approached Lonnie's desk warily, like a sick dog would, doing her best to avoid eye contact. "Where’s Tricia?"
Lonnie and I stood shoulder to shoulder, both rendered speechless by Bunny's charm. After a moment, Lonnie chuckled softly, grabbed her coat, and said, "That's enough for me today."
I took a deep breath and stuck out my hand. Bunny stared at it as if it was electrified. She sighed deeply before reluctantly dropping her hand into mine. I grabbed her clammy paw as tightly as I could and shook it senseless.
Bunny hated me, but I didn't take it personally because Bunny hated everyone. She was a self-described performance artist whose only talent was misanthropy. Tricia once dragged me to one of Bunny's shows in the basement of a bar. Bunny spent an hour alternately seething at the audience and screaming at the people in the bar above to shut up. Tricia admitted that her main attraction to Bunny was that she was the only person on Earth who Bunny could stand to be around for more than five minutes. "It's probably the same sensation that makes people keep pet snakes or tarantulas," Tricia said. "You feel a certain power knowing that they want to kill everyone but you."
Just when I thought Bunny and I would have no choice but to engage in painful small talk, Tricia popped her head out of her office. "Get in here, you," she said huskily. Bunny brushed past me and skulked into Tricia's office. Tricia shot me a look so fat with sexual innuendo that it almost moaned. I retreated to my office, but even after I closed my door I could hear giggling, the clinking of ice cubes, and other sounds that I did not want to identify. I made as much noise as possible, hoping to remind them of my presence and shame them into silence, but nothing could quiet their ardor.
Finally, I settled in at Lonnie's desk and began sorting out Tricia's closed-file mess. I have found that tedious, clerical work can be much more fulfilling than many more mindful pursuits. And once you've finished stuffing envelopes or organizing a stack of forms, you always have something tangible to show for your efforts, unlike many intellectual tasks, where all you end up with is a headache. I became so absorbed in my filing project that I didn't hear Claire walk into the office.
"Julia?" she said softly. Her voice startled me. I tossed a file into the air. A dozen papers flew out of the folder and scattered on the floor around the desk. As I stumbled out of the chair to pick them up, Tricia burst through her office door. Bunny followed, sulkily buttoning her shirt.
"Clairy!" Tricia exclaimed. She wrapped her arms around Claire and hugged her hard. Tricia pulled away from her and held Claire at arm's length. "I love that blouse," Tricia said, reaching up to straighten its collar.
Claire had clearly made an effort to shed some of her suburban shine for our date. She was wearing black jeans and loafers. Her mustard-colored silk blouse was opened daringly low to reveal an ample bosom. She was maybe 10 pounds overweight, but the extra pounds gave her a dreamy, voluptuous quality, like someone floating just below the surface of water. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and nauseous. I grabbed hold of the edge of the desk to steady myself.
"So," Tricia said, cocking her head at Claire flirtatiously. "Where are you off to?"
"I'm not familiar with the area," Claire said, hesitantly. She tugged on a thick strand of hair and smiled at me shyly. "I was hoping you could suggest a place."
Before I could answer, Tricia exclaimed, "Good, then it's settled. You're coming with us to Shangri-la." I shot Tricia a dirty look, but, secretly, I was relieved. I wasn't so sure that I could do this alone.
****
Shangri-la was my favorite bar in the city. It was a throwback to 1950's swank, with Easter Island heads guarding the front entrance, red banquettes shaped like clamshells, and canned tiki music playing in the background. The cocktails had dangerous names and were served in glasses that looked like man-eating plants.
When we arrived at the bar, I slid into our regular booth, only to be ordered out by Tricia. She directed Bunny to sit at the far end of the booth. Tricia sat next to Bunny, and she told Claire to sit next to her. Finally, I squeezed in next to Claire, who tried to adjust her body so it was touching neither mine nor Tricia's. "Now this is cozy," Tricia said, snuggling against Bunny's shoulder. Bunny sneered off into mid-distance.
Tricia signaled the waiter and we ordered mai tais. Claire asked for a glass of Chardonnay. "You don't come to Shangri-la for the wine," Tricia said. "Have a mai tai."
"She can have whatever she wants," I said.
"It's OK," Claire said with an uncomfortable laugh. "I'll try a mai tai."
"Three mai tais," Tricia told the waiter triumphantly. "And, sweetie," she said, rubbing Bunny's thigh, "what will you have?" "Scotch," Bunny barked. Tricia turned toward me and mouthed, "She's so butch."
As soon as the drinks arrived, Tricia raised her glass and said, "To new love." I set my glass down and glared at her.
"So, Claire," Tricia said, shifting around in her seat so that she was practically sitting on Claire. I could feel Claire's body tense as if she were bracing herself for a blow. "You don't look like a scientist."
Claire exhaled in relief. She must have been expecting a question about her bathroom habits. "I'm a biologist. A life scientist. It's the physical scientists who tend to look a bit abstract."
"What's your degree holding," Bunny asked suspiciously. When Claire answered that she had a doctorate in entomology, Bunny groaned and rolled her eyes. Bunny was a failed doctoral candidate. Her doctoral review committee had rejected her dissertation on grounds that everything about it—including the title—was incomprehensible. Bunny claimed to be delighted by the rejection, heralding it as an endorsement of her brilliance. "They should replace the letters Ph.D. with the word sellout," Bunny said to Claire.
Claire stuttered and looked around the room in a panic. I briefly considered punching Bunny in the face. Instead, I drained my mai tai and signaled the waiter for another round.
"Oh, don't pay any attention to Bunny. She's a very angry person," Tricia said, leaning into Claire conspiratorially. "Have you ever had sex after a fight? Isn't it terrific? Well, that's what it's like with Bunny all the time." She grabbed Bunny's face, and kissed her hard on the mouth. Bunny's eyes softened and she mewed with pleasure.
"Entomologist. You study insects, right? Or is it fish?" Tricia asked, quickly turning her attention back to Claire. Like most outgoing people, Tricia had a talent for making shy people feel comfortable. She did this mainly by asking lots of questions and then answering them herself, giving the shy person the impression that they were actually participating in the conversation.
"Maybe you can settle an argument between my good friend Julia and me," Tricia said. "Isn't it true that fleas can be trained to pull little wagons and walk on tight ropes?"
"Well," said Claire, glancing nervously at me, "I wouldn't use the word 'train.' But they can be manipulated to perform stunts that rely on their instinctual behaviors."
"Aha!" Tricia said, pointing her finger accusingly at me.
"Do you even understand what she just said?" I asked.
"She said that I am right and you are wrong." Tricia grabbed a drink off the waiter's tray and launched into a tale about an uncle who ran a flea circus. The cast of characters included Asian gangsters, identical twins who were both named Santa, and a very fat woman with no thumbs. Like most of her stories, it was highly improbable, but it contained just enough basis in fact to be wildly amusing.
*****
In no time, Tricia and I were drunk and dribbling on ourselves. Tricia told silly stories and I laughed too loudly, hoping that if I pretended to have a good time it might rub off on Claire, who was clinging to her drink as if it was a life preserver.
Bunny sat at the end of the banquette, sullenly waiting for Tricia to pay attention to her. She shifted in her seat every few seconds and savagely ripped at cocktail napkins. After about an hour, Bunny shot up from the table, manfully adjusted her trousers, and marched into the men's room.
"What's she up to?" I asked, grabbing a mai tai off the waiter's tray.
"God only knows," said Tricia, craning her neck toward the bathroom, her eyes crazy with excitement.
A few seconds later, a man came flying out of the restroom, closely followed by Bunny, who planted herself in the middle of the room and loudly accused him of not washing his hands.
"Isn't she something?" Tricia said, raising her glass in Bunny's direction. Bunny stomped to the table, grabbed Tricia's arm, and yanked her to her feet. Tricia held up a hand in a halting gesture as she quickly drained her glass. Then she let Bunny lead her off to the ladies' room.
It was the first time all evening that Claire and I had been alone. I cleared my throat and fiddled with the fruit-laden spear in my drink.
"I'm sorry about all of this," I said, waving my hand over Tricia and Bunny's empty seats.
"No, no, I'm having a nice time," Claire said, unconvincingly. She bit her lip and looked down at her hands, which were folded neatly in her lap.
"So am I," I said, staring at my sweating glass, resisting the urge to gulp down the rest of the mai tai. It suddenly occurred to me that I had been drinking much more than usual lately.
"Really?" she said with genuine surprise. She swiveled in the banquette so that she was facing me. Her lips were full and stained red from the few sips she had taken from the cocktail. "I'm not very brave. But a friend of mine convinced me to call you. And this friend, her name is Nadia, she has been nominated for a Nobel Prize. That's how she got me to do it. She said, 'Listen to me. I've been nominated for a Nobel Prize. I know what I'm talking about. Ask her out to dinner.'" Claire laughed. She picked up her drink and took a careful sip.
"Did she win?" I asked.
"Nadia? No. She was nominated with a team of American chemists. But they lost to two Russian researchers. And the funny thing is that Nadia is Russian. Of course, I mean it's funny in the ironic sense."
"Have you won a Nobel Prize?" I was trying to keep my side of the conversation limited to simple sentences. I was at the point of drunkenness where it was impossible not to spit when I spoke.
"Me? Oh, God, no. Oh, you're just teasing me." She slapped me playfully on the arm. Her light touch burned pleasantly into my flesh. "My research is not taken very seriously. People are only interested if you find new ways to kill insects. I became an entomologist because I like insects. They are fascinating! They are our friends!" She pounded the table lightly with her fist. The movement caused her breasts to bounce pleasantly under her blouse.
"Did you know that only one percent of all insects are pests?" she asked. I shook my head. "Of course not. No one knows that. People just want to kill them all." She frowned into the distance and distractedly stabbed a shrimp fork into the table.
Her passion caught me by surprise. It filled me with a warm, almost sleepy feeling. If there had been a bed in the restaurant with flannel sheets and a thick wool blanket, I would have taken her by the hand and climbed in. I would have asked her to talk of nothing but insects until I fell asleep.
"I've always been rather fond of spiders," I said.
She looked up at me from over the top of her drink and smiled slyly. "Spiders are arachnids, not insects."
Then our eyes met in that way that eyes sometimes do. A powerful moment of connection that makes you feel as if you are destined for each other. I had built a relationship with Jean on little more than a thrilling exchange of glances. Somewhere, deep within my rum-soaked brain, a voice told me that I should know better. But, of course, I told that voice to shut up.
I inched toward Claire and allowed my body to melt slightly into hers. She didn't pull away, so I moved closer. We both reached for our drinks. She jiggled the soggy fruit in her glass and glanced at me self-consciously. I took a deep breath, and set down my glass solidly. And then I kissed her. As I did, I realized I was making a huge mistake. But I couldn't stop myself. It was like knowing you are about to hit freezing cold water after you've already jumped off a diving board.
The kiss caused Claire to reel back into the banquette. She tried to leap to her feet, but she slammed into the table. She scooted out of the banquette. Her eyes were huge and filled with terror as she excused herself to go to the washroom.
"Sorry," I said weakly as I watched her scurry away. As soon as she got to the bathroom door, Tricia and Bunny emerged in a cloud of cigarette smoke. "Claire!" Tricia exclaimed, as if she hadn't seen her in years.
When Tricia and Bunny returned to the table, I had my head buried in my hands.
"What's wrong?" Tricia asked with concern. One of the things I loved about Tricia was that she knew when to take me seriously.
"I'm an idiot."
"Join the club," she said gently. Tricia slid next to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. I whispered what had happened, stealing glances at the bathroom door, nervously anticipating Claire's return.
"She freaked out over a kiss?" Bunny scoffed. For a second, I almost liked Bunny. But that feeling quickly faded when Bunny added that if she, Bunny, had kissed Claire, they'd be on their way to bed right now.
"Oh, shut up, Bun," Tricia said icily, more irritated than jealous. The fact that Tricia was already losing patience with Bunny was a sign that this would be a short-lived affair. The relief I felt over this almost made me forget that I still had to deal with Claire.
After a few minutes, Claire emerged from the bathroom. Her face was washed clean of the light makeup she had been wearing and her eyes were puffy and red. Tricia grimaced at the site of her and whispered, "Jesus." Claire didn't look at me when she announced that she was leaving. "It's started to snow again, and I have a long ride home," she said in a strained tone.
"But we haven't even eaten yet," Bunny whined. Tricia shot Bunny a withering look. Then she stopped Claire from pulling out her wallet. "It's on me," Tricia said.
"Let her pay for it," I said when Claire protested. "We've had enough scuffles for one evening." I laid my hand on Claire's arm, which caused her to jump as if I had stuck her with a pin.
****
Tricia tried to lighten the mood as we left the bar by giving one of the big Easter Island heads a sloppy kiss. She grabbed Bunny's hand and skipped up the stairs with Bunny dragging behind her like an anchor.
Claire and I stood silently under the restaurant's awning, watching Tricia and Bunny as they tried to hail a cab. Bunny slouched in the street with her hands jammed in her pockets, while Tricia jumped up and down and yelled at each passing taxi.
"I'm sorry," I said, finally. "I was drunk and there was all that tropical music..."
"It's OK," Claire said, furrowing her brow and shaking her head. She gazed out at traffic for a few seconds and then she chuckled awkwardly. "You probably won't believe it, but I'd like to try this again. Maybe, next time, we can make it all the way through dinner before I run out of the room."
I smiled and nodded, knowing that I would never call her. Bunny whistled to us, signaling that Tricia had flagged down a cab. Claire touched my hand and mouthed "thank you" before ducking into the back seat. Tricia bent down and waved madly at Claire, who was tugging on her eyebrow and staring straight ahead. "Bye Claire," she shouted. "Let's get together again soon."
Tricia and I stood next to each other, weaving unsteadily on our feet, our shoulders bumping together gently, watching the taxi pull away from the curb. "So, that was pretty horrible, huh?" Tricia said. As I watched Claire disappear into the city night, I felt an urge to tell Tricia just how terrible it had been—not only that night, but also every night for the past six months. But then, just as suddenly, the feeling left me.
"Well, it's a start, anyway," I said, feeling almost merry.