Chapter 10 Training Montage #3
I see Ollie now and then, and each time a crushing wave of feeling washes over me.
We spot each other twice in the hallway at work, and he looks ridiculously handsome and not at all like he is going through a break-up, which I hate him for.
The first time, I smile politely but do not wave, a flat, empty, polite smile that he doesn’t return.
The second time, he waves once but does not smile.
When I see him for a third time, this time in the hallway at Manhattan Swing Workshop, he walks straight toward me. Something in my chest turns into a gymnastics routine, all flips and spins and landing hard.
“Laura,” he says. “I um…”
I feel it sharply then: the little mythical string that still connects his chest to mine, tugging. “Yes?”
“I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that by phone.”
Oh, that’s what he wants to apologize for? The method of delivery?
“But you had to do it, right?” I feel anger rising inside me. I want to shove at him, to scream, but I keep my voice even. “It had to be done?”
He takes a shallow breath. “I was just waiting for you to…” The words trail off.
“Me to what? Break your heart? So you had to do it first?”
“No, I —” He looks appalled. “No.”
I wait. He says nothing. He shakes his head; I can’t believe he has the gall to look frustrated with me.
“I was trying to give you space—” he begins. The doors to the main classroom swing open and a throng of sweaty, cheerful dancers pour out.
“To give me space?” Am I hearing this correctly?
He looks pained.
“Well,” I say, “mission accomplished.”
He winces, and I turn and walk past him into the classroom.
A couple of days after that, Brant approaches me at my desk and asks whether my ex-husband is still staying with me.
“No, he’s back to drifting wherever the winds of pop music take him.”
“Good,” Brant replies with a frown. “I was a little worried about you.”
I don’t love that Brant feels comfortable saying that.
“You know, Laura,” Brant adds, “one of these days I hope we’re both ready to date again.”
I nod. “One of these days.” I pointedly return to my work. He stands there for a moment before he walks away.
At lunch, Vivi asks me whether Ollie feels ready to ‘date’ yet, and I try not to look like a want to set something on fire.
“Maybe at some point in the very distant future,” I reply dryly.
“Oh,” she says, taking in my look. “Do we hate him now?”
“A little.”
“Well, good,” she says. “I have no time for games. That whole thing about how he’s still getting over his ex-wife? If a guy told me that, I’d assume he was seeing somebody else he liked better.”
I think of Eliana. Vivi is more right than she knows.
Jody pulls me and Helen aside at the Friday social right after July Fourth, a week before our swing festival weekend. “We need to talk.”
“What’s wrong?” Helen looks between us.
“It’s Ben. I’m worried about our little investment banker.”
“I’m sure he is out drinking with his finance bro coworkers,” I say, “and they are helping him forget the whole thing with the judicious use of lap dances and bottle service.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Jody says. She hands me her phone. There is a text thread with Ben.
If you’re in the city just come hang out with us, Jody has written.
pretty much everything is pointless right now, reads Ben’s response.
Not in a suicidal way, right? Jody has replied.
There is no answer to Jody’s question, which was sent several hours ago.
I consider this.
Ben, suicidal? It seems unlikely. He has always seemed so even keeled. But it still reads as a cry for help, in the way that earnest, buttoned-up Midwestern guys will cry for help: the non-response.
“Give me the phone,” I say.
Ben, I text, it’s Laura. Send me your address right now. We are coming to get you.
I look at Helen. “Do you happen to own a car?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t even have a license.”
“I have a truck,” Jody says. “I got it in the divorce.”
“Hold on, you were divorced?” I stare at her.
Jody sighs. “I don’t need to tell you everything, Laura.”
Ben’s apartment building is in one of the newer loft buildings in Long Island City that face Manhattan across a sweeping view of the East River.
“Of course he lives in one of these monstrosities,” Jody mutters as we get into his sleek chrome elevator. Helen is sitting in Jody’s truck outside to make sure it doesn’t get towed; you don’t find street parking in this neighborhood.
I push the button to the fourteenth floor as she continues her rant.
“I hate rich people. They ruin everything that is good in this city.” Jody sighs. “Now let’s go rescue that rich bastard.”
Ben grimaces when he swings open the door to his apartment. There are weary smudges under his eyes, and his usual polished look has drifted into casual despair.
“I’m fine,” he says, his voice gruff. “You don’t have to do this. I’m not going to jump off the balcony.”
“Can we just come in for a minute?” I say in my most maternal voice.
He leaves the door open for us to follow him inside, and sure enough, his place is a wreck…
a grey and black, extremely expensive wreck, with pizza boxes littering the polished surfaces and piles of drinking glasses and Makers Mark bottles crowding the kitchen sink.
Jody walks straight through the living room to take in the view.
“Holy shit, Ben,” she says, taking in the Manhattan skyline. “This is so American Psycho.”
He shrugs. “I’ll have to get nicer business cards, I guess.” He walks up and stands beside me. “I’m sorry if I sounded melodramatic in my texts,” he says, his voice flat. “I’m just depressed.”
“And you’re going to a therapist about it?” I ask.
Ben groans and flops onto his sofa. “What would they even say? ‘Your ex is horrible, and you were stupid for dating her in the first place, and then she waited to dump you until your entire family had flown in for your wedding.’ ‘Yeah, you’re right, Mr. Therapist, thank you. I had no idea I was a loser.’”
I look around at the emptiness of his vast living room. “What do your friends say about it?”
“Which friends?” he asks. “The ones at work who call me the Mormon because I won’t do cocaine with them? Or the ones back in Ohio who think I was dating outside my league and should give up and move home already?”
“Come on,” I say firmly. “Stand up. We’re taking you dancing.”
He sighs. “I don’t—I don’t even—I don’t even know what to wear.”
Jody looks him up and down. “Put on your most offensive skinny jeans and your oldest band t-shirt. Helen is waiting downstairs in my truck.”
“Where are we going?”
“A biker bar on Long Island.”
“They’ll probably beat me up,” he replies dully.
“Good,” Jody says. “Better to have a stranger do it for you than to do it to yourself. Come on, they have great live music, and I know the bartender.”
He looks between us. “Can I shower first?”
“Make it fast,” she says.
“And don’t shave,” I tell him. “The scruff beard thing is working.”
“Yeah, you almost look interesting,” Jody agrees.
He rolls his eyes but slowly walks toward a hallway that must lead to his bedroom.
When he emerges fifteen minutes later, he has scrubbed up into something almost handsome, which Jody and I seem to mutually register and decide not to mention.
No so with Helen, who shouts with delight when he gets into the car downstairs. “My goodness, Benjamin! You look like that Chris Martin fellow from Oasis!”
“You mean Coldplay?” Ben asks flatly as he climbs into the back seat.
“Same thing. Who’s he dating now? Not Gwyneth Paltrow, the other one. The one with that glazed look in her eyes like someone has stabbed her but she’s trying not to react.”
None of us can think of the person she means. Ben shrugs and looks out the window, but he’s almost smiling a little.
An hour later, the four of us are at a Long Island biker bar that, as Jody promised, is having a ‘blues rock’ night, which is as close to West Coast Swing as we could find on short notice.
Jody walks in and greets the bartender, a woman with long blond hair and sleeve tattoos who shouts over the music that our first two rounds are free.
“This isn’t a true biker bar,” Jody explains quietly as we take seats at a booth. “The line of Harley Davidsons outside belong to bankers and lawyers from the city.”
“That can be your next step in life, Ben,” I say. “Buy yourself a Harley and pretend you’re tough.”
“I’ll need a raise first. Those things are expensive.
” Ben sips a drink. He looks surprisingly cheerful about having been dragged from his home by force.
We are tucked into a booth near the bar, watching the band play: four men in sleek white shirts and black ties, looking like they stepped out of a Tarantino movie.
“I have my motorcycle license,” I mention casually, to Ben’s consternation. “It was a requirement for keeping up with my guitar player ex. I even owned one for about three months, before I got pregnant. After that it seemed stupid to keep it.”
“That the ex who’s living with you?” Jody asks.
“He was on my sofa, but he is back on tour. He just stayed around long enough that Ollie could decide that I was still emotionally involved with my ex and dump me. Which was probably Nick’s whole strategy.”
“Ollie dumped you?” Ben looks surprised.
“He is insecure?” Helen says. “I wouldn’t have pegged him as the type.”
“Well, he did announce he doesn’t trust women before our first date.”
Ben stares at me. “Oh, man.”
“I know,” I say. “I was stupid to go out with him. You can say it.”
“No, it’s not that,” Ben says. “It’s just that he gave himself an out. As soon as he messed up, he could say, ‘Well, I warned you.’”
I pretend that the words don’t hurt as much as they do. “Or he never liked me that much.”