Chapter 9
I practice my smile in the mirror before I head out to meet Paul. No. Too dopey. I try again. I want to appear sexy and confident. ‘Hello, Paul,’ I say lowering my voice as far as I can. Too Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. ‘Hi Paul!’ I say, upbeat and chipper. No. Too Shirley Temple. ‘Ugh!’ Maybe this was a big mistake. I could just text him and cancel. But I’m too curious to see what he wants and to find out why he’s back in New York. And maybe there’s a chance things have changed. Maybe I could make things work with Paul. Again.
I walk out of my apartment and the sticky evening air of early September embraces me. It’s too warm for the tight, deep olive textured T-shirt with a plaid button-up shirt and chunky sweater I’m wearing. I wanted to have enough layers on to metaphorically suggest that I am a complex person who has changed over the past nine months since he’s been gone.
I peer down the block to make sure my mother isn’t lurking. Now that she’s working downstairs I’ll have to walk out the front door and turn away from Plant Daddy so she doesn’t see me, and then head all the way down to Tenth Avenue and U-turn on the next block so I can get on a train to meet Paul at a cafe by his old apartment in Tribeca.
The whole train ride, I’m telling myself to turn around, but there’s something about Paul that I can’t resist. I met him after a bad breakup with a guy I had been seeing for over a year named Anders. Contrary to what my mother thinks, I can, in fact, find a boyfriend. I’ve had a ton of them. None of them have really stuck, but I did think after Anders, Paul was the one. Anders didn’t so much break my heart as much as he broke my spirit. He was my TA in college but we didn’t start seeing each other until after I graduated. Still, it was a bad idea from the start. He was also a writer but worked mainly in creative non-fiction, which I thought made him a perfect match. I told him about this story idea I was working on and he thought it was amazing and that we should write it together. I wrote an outline and we would bang out a few scenes before or after banging each other. He went away to some writing retreat and I was busy working on my latest ghostwriting project for Justine ‘Divorce Hamptons-style’. But after Anders left for the retreat, I never saw him again. I was ghosted while ghostwriting. A few weeks after that I saw that he had sold our screenplay, which was really my screenplay, to a major studio. I should have sued. I should have confronted him. But I didn’t. I thought it was my fault. I told myself that he didn’t think I was talented enough to pull it off so he left because it would have been hard to tell me the truth. The whole thing stung so bad I swore off all artists and all romances.
But along came Paul and he seemed like the perfect antidote. He was a patent attorney in a large firm and had wanted to be a patent attorney since he was a kid, which is odd but also kind of nice. He was more than a dozen years older than me. I liked that. Being with a guy who is more mature makes me feel safe and taken care of. Not in any financial way exactly. Paul was able to pay for a lot of things I could never have afforded, but it was more about feeling like I was with someone who had already figured out so much of what I was still struggling to get a hold of.
When we first started dating, he told me that he and his husband had been separated for more than a year and they were working on a divorce but it was complicated. He told me they still lived in the same apartment because, well, you know New York real estate. He told me lie after lie after lie and I believed every last one. I told myself I believed his lies because I was stupid but that wasn’t the only reason. I’m ashamed to admit I believed them because I wanted to believe them.
When he told me that he and Todd were moving to California and going into therapy to save their marriage, I was devastated. I thought Paul loved me. He’d surprise me with flowers. He’d take me to a lodge upstate for the weekend and stock the room with my favorite cookies, fulfilling my Old Hollywood-based romantic fantasies and satisfying my sweet tooth. He was always trying to impress me. It made me feel important to him. I thought I had a future with Paul. It’s horrible to be dumped but even worse to be dumped and feel stupid and ashamed.
I’m intentionally late to my coffee with Paul. I didn’t want to be the one waiting for him again. Let him wait for me. I planned to walk in all cold and calculated – Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest but slightly less criminally insane. I’ll show him that his leaving didn’t have any impact on me at all. Most importantly, I will not be emotional.
I walk in and hide behind a column so I can survey the room but I don’t see him.
‘Sammy!’
I jump hearing that name. Only one person in the world calls me Sammy, and as soon as I hear it, my heart melts just a bit. He taps me on the shoulder. I turn around, and I can’t help but hug him. It’s an involuntary reaction like when the doctor hits your knee with that rubber triangle hammer.
‘Oh, Paul,’ I say. ‘It’s great to see you.’ I can’t hold back how nice it feels to be here with him. This is the opposite of what I was planning to do. I can’t help it. I’m a hugger. I see something that makes me feel a certain way and I hug it. I get that from my mother.
‘Sammy, sorry I got held up. Let me get us a table.’
‘Oh sure,’ I say. ‘No problem. I understand.’ I follow Paul to the table and make sure there aren’t any mirrors where he can see me smack myself in the forehead for being so weak. I promise myself that when I sit down I will not be the doormat I was back when we were dating… or when I met him at the door of the cafe a minute ago.
We sit down and Paul orders his usual. ‘May I please have a dark roast ristretto ground at the finest setting with a side of oat milk heated to 120 degrees and a shot of seltzer. Grazie. ’ He spent a month in Florence two years ago and sprinkles Italian into his conversation often.
At this place I usually order something so sweet and creamy that it’s more of a hot milkshake than a coffee but today I say, ‘Just black coffee, thank you.’
Paul wrinkles his nose. ‘Black coffee? Sammy, it’s close enough to PSL time. Why not get yourself some pumpkin, cinnamon, vanilla, hazelnut thing like you like?’ His voice is almost condescending, and if his description didn’t make my mouth water, I would call him on it.
‘No, thank you. Coffee. Black,’ I say to the server and smile wondering how I’m going to choke that down. ‘Paul, I did not decide to meet you to have you review my coffee order. You’re lucky I showed up at all. I’m only here because Omar said I should find out what you want in order to be on guard.’ Not true at all but the last thing I owe Paul is honesty. ‘Now, what do you want?’ I ask, shooting my words across the table, finally proud of myself for displaying the attitude I wanted. I knew it was deep down there somewhere.
Paul looks at me and pushes his round tortoiseshell glasses up his nose. It feels so good to be in his gaze again, to have his attention. The grey scruff on his face makes him look distinguished and important. I loved the way it felt against my cheek. Then his mouth opens and he says the two words I thought I would never hear him say: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re what?’ I ask. I genuinely don’t believe what I’ve heard. Paul always had an excuse. I’ve heard him say ‘It’s not my fault’ hundreds of times but ‘I’m sorry’ is a new one.
‘When I got to California…’
And as soon as I hear him say I , I find the strength to challenge him.
‘No, Paul. Use the correct pronoun. Not I. You mean we . When we got to California.’ I’m not going to let him use grammar to hide his deceit.
‘You’re right. When Todd and I got to California. When we were there.’ He says we like he’s learning a new language. ‘I realized how much I missed you. How much I missed us. That’s why I got this.’ He takes out an envelope from his jacket and pushes it across the table the way they pretend to show salary numbers on TV.
‘What’s that?’ I fold my arms over my chest. I have no intention of taking the bait.
‘The proof that I am serious this time. I’ve retained a lawyer. I’m getting a divorce.’
‘Really?’ I ask with way too much hope in my voice as my eyebrows rise to the top of my forehead.
‘Yes, this is the retainer. Proof. Open it. Please.’ His eyes turn soft, and my hands reach across the table for the envelope. I open it and read that Paul has retained Marcia Woo as his lawyer in the case of Diller vs Pearson. It’s true. It’s real. Paul is finally getting the divorce he had promised me he was getting for years. I don’t know what to say. I have so many questions. Why now? Why not before he left over nine months ago? Is he getting bored or is this really, truly happening? But I can’t get any of those questions out of my mouth. I just sit in silence.
‘I hurt you. I messed things up. I thought I could make things work with Todd but the further I got from you, the more I missed you. I missed you so much Sammy. You have to believe that.’ I want to believe it, and wanting it makes believing easier.
‘I missed you too, Paul,’ I say. I’m speaking from my heart. I have missed him. I haven’t missed feeling like his second choice, but if I’m not second choice anymore, maybe none of that matters? He moves his hands across the table for mine but I’m not ready for that. ‘Tell me why you’re here?’
‘To apologize, to explain everything to you.’
‘No, I mean, why are you here in New York? I thought you were taking a position at the Los Angeles office. You said New York is over.’ The very thought that New York is over fills me with rage like I’m Carrie Bradshaw circa 2002. I came to conquer this city. It has beaten me, but I’m still here.
He shakes his head. ‘I’m coming back. As soon as the divorce is final, I’ll be back in New York. I’ve already arranged it with the firm. Had a few meetings with the New York office this week. The subletter leaves at the end of the year, and I’ll move back in, but I’m hoping it will be “We’ll move back in.” I want us to live together.’
‘What?’ I ask so loudly it surprises me and the woman at the next table who looks over to see what the commotion is. ‘Paul, you can’t seriously think I’m going to believe you this time. How stupid do you think I am?’
He raises his hand to his chest. ‘I think I’m stupid. Not you. I think you are exactly what I need. I’m an idiot for not realizing it. I had to leave here to see it. The summer has been miserable. I thought about you all the time.’ He tilts his chin down a bit and then asks, ‘Did you think about me?’ The words come out slowly. Is this vulnerability or the performance of vulnerability? I can never tell with Paul.
Over the nine months since our breakup, I thought about Paul more than I’d like to admit. Poor Omar has sat on the couch with me so many nights as I cried my eyes out over another broken promise but once Paul was gone I could only remember the good times. All summer, I’ve replayed in my mind the dinners where we talked about our favorite places to travel or when we would meet at the gym to work out together, followed by a different kind of workout back at my apartment. Paul was so easy to be with. He asked almost nothing of me except that I put up with his lies.
‘No, I did not think about you. Not at all.’ I look down at the document he pushed in front of me. Could he be telling the truth? What if this time really is different and I’m being too stubborn to see it? What if I really could have a future with Paul? I look down at the paper again and hold it up to him.
‘Is this for real?’ I ask.
‘Yes. In fact, you can keep that one. It’s a copy but it’s real. I have to fly back to Cali in two days but I want to use that time to show you how sorry I am. Let me make everything up to you and convince you to move in with me in January.’
‘Paul, I don’t know what to say.’ That’s only a few months away. I’m not sure this is a good idea.
‘Don’t say anything. Not yet. Just give me two days to show you I’m serious.’ He reaches his hand out and puts it on my knee, and the sensation of his thick, strong hand on my leg makes me shut my eyes so I can prevent my groin from showing him that everything from my waist down does not need two days to make a decision. It’s ready now.
He keeps his hand on my leg but slowly moves his gaze up to my eyes. ‘I have a suite at The Simpson just a few blocks away. It has a great view. Do you still love to watch the traffic enter and exit the Holland Tunnel?’
He makes it sound sexual, but my obsession with Holland Tunnel is anything but. Most people wax romantic over bridges but I’ve always preferred tunnels. All that energy rushing out of those humongous tubes. Scratch that, maybe it is sexual or maybe I’m so desperate for Paul in this moment that everything is sexual.
I know I should tell him to get lost, but I’m in such a bad place that I don’t have the strength. Paul wants me, and he wants me right now. It feels so good that the parts of my brain that tell me I’ll never succeed are temporarily silenced. Maybe I need one last romp with Paul to get him out of my system.
He keeps his one hand on my leg and reaches his other hand across the table to grab mine. I see the familiar hairy knuckles that always turned me on so much. His wedding ring is not there.
‘What do you say we get out of here? Let me use each hour I have here to show you how much I want you back. I’ll be back in four months and we can finally have everything we both wanted. It’s time for us to both grow up.’ He takes his hand off my knee but holds my hand more tightly as he stands up. I don’t say anything. I stand up. He throws some money on the table and then puts his arm around me and leads me out the door. The humid air from earlier has been replaced with the first whisper of autumn coolness. We walk down the street toward his hotel. Maybe I’m not headed in the right direction but at least I know where I’m going.