Love Like That
“Where will you be going this time?” Electra asked.
“I put in proposals for three places in Africa.”
“Africa’s awfully far away,” I said dubiously.
He jostled my shoulders. “It’s really not when you think about it. You just get on a plane and go. Besides, I’m staying here for three whole weeks. Just to be with my baby.”
I smiled. He wrinkled his nose at me as he smiled back.
“Can we go to Ruth’s Chris tonight like we did the last time when you came, Roman?” Ava piped up. She was sitting on the floor, cutting out magazine pictures with pink-handled scissors.
“Just say when, bella.”
I love that Roman is so generous without being grand or boastful about it. I love that he is so easy-breezy. He treats my friends as if they are special because he knows they’re special to me. It’s not like he’s some walking, talking, ever-smiling human Ken. I’ve seen him get pissed. I’ve heard him yell. Sometimes he can be the biggest SOB. But he doesn’t get put off very easily and that is really important to me.
Having Roman around was great. He would drop me off at work in the mornings so he could use my car during the day. Then he would pick me up in the evenings and we’d chat about this and that as we drove to the house. We’d cook dinner together and watch movies he’d rented for us, or read side by side in bed. I thought about how nice it was to be together, not having to worry about stupid shit like getting wasted or wasting time. It was cozy and fulfilling. When he’s here, life is grand. When he’s gone, life’s just life. When he’s not around I feel like there’s no end in sight. I’m a fish in a tank, dreaming of the ocean.
“You got a nice guy there,” Ava’s friend Dylan Waters told me one night, having randomly materialized. Technically you could say Dylan’s my friend, too, but I’m happy to let Ava take all the credit. It irks me how he’ll disappear for months and then suddenly he just shows up and starts hanging around all the time, giving unsolicited advice and acting like he owns the place.
“Thanks for the tip. Now, what are you doing here?”
He was in control of the kitchen, chopping up vegetables for a burger barbecue. He handed me a piece of avocado before dragging on a cigarette. “Miss me, did ya?”
I rolled my eyes.
“She called me,” he explained, with a shrug.
“That much I gathered. Now, what are you doing here?”
He laughed as he pressed a bottle of Tim’s Pete’s Wicked Ale into my hand. “Just shut up and drink this, will ya? It’s the last of the dude’s brew. He packed up his khakis and moved back to New Haven without even saying goodbye.”
“I take it you’re here to console her, then?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You know it,” he said proudly, like it was some seriously gallant act on his part. Yeah, really chivalrous. I’ve been observing this asshole’s methods since I was eighteen. He picks people up just to throw them over.
“You single right now?” I asked, eyeing him.
“Right now I am,” he said, winking.
It was a balmy evening and Ava and Electra were clustered around the patio table, wearing bright mango-and-banana tube tops and shimmery lip gloss. I pulled out a chair to join them as the men gravitated toward the grill.
I met these two during our very first week of college. We were having an “Around the World” party in our dorm where every room represented a different country and served a corresponding cocktail. My room represented the Ukraine so we were serving white Russians. You had to decorate and dress up so it was really authentic. I wore a fur hat and a sweater with fur cuffs to match. I don’t really remember how the three of us bonded. It’s hard to define the moment that you first become friends with somebody. They are so different from each other. Definitely the sugar and spice in my life.
In private, sometimes Jeremy refers to Ava as “Deprava.” He refers to Electra as “I’llfuckya.” Isn’t he clever.
Roman thinks Ava and Electra are entertaining and comical. When I asked him once if he thought they were freaky and over the top, he said of course not—they’re just girls.
“Dylan’s seriously unexpected appearance better not be your solution to getting over Tim,” Electra said to Ava, authoritatively. “I mean, if you’ve just summoned him here to dote on you, that’s acceptable…but I better not see you swooning!”
“I see you swooning over Dylan and I will definitely puke,” I added.
“He’s going to be my date at Aunt Carlotta’s wedding this weekend,” Ava explained. “You know I have to bring a date or Papa will make a fuss and try to set me up with Tony Montesilvano. I do realize Dylan’s hardly ‘date’ material, but at least he already knows the family.”
Electra and I exchanged glances. Yeah, okay. We could buy that because Ava’s pretty sensitive about exposing an unknown to the family. In fact, an unknown will usually run after meeting the family. The first complaint is typically the crazy priest, Father De Marco, who’s always shaking a crucifix and shouting drunkenly in Italian. The Damianos brought him along when they relocated from New Jersey. Ava says they moved for a change of pace, but I swear I once overheard Uncle Paolo say they had to “flee” New Jersey because of that “dispute” with the Gasparellos. Now they live on a heavily guarded, walled estate in Del Mar. I mean all of them, and we’re talking like thirty people. Ava’s stepmom, Anna, used to be a showgirl at Bally’s. She is only twenty-nine. Ava’s father, Carlo, married her after one date. Oh, and just for the record—Ava’s little brother, Luciano-Marciano, told me once that he and Anna do it in the closet sometimes when his father isn’t home. Why the closet? You tell me.
“I’m going to call Josh after dinner and make sure his ass is on a plane,” Electra told us. “Because if I find out he took a later flight due to some bullshit market disaster, you just better know he’s not getting any kitty when we go to Palm Springs!”
Electra’s boyfriend lives in New York City. She met him while he was getting his MBA at USC and these days he is a big-shot investment banker on Wall Street. Ava and I call him Mr. Big Bucks in private. Electra is supposed to move out there when she’s ready, but since she’s not ready, he just flies in every now and then to spend a bunch of money on her and get laid. They are planning to get married, but they don’t know when and neither of them is worried that they’ll break up so they don’t press the issue. Out of sight, out of mind is how she feels about Josh. But when Josh is in town, hey, love the one you’re with! Josh thinks Electra is all that and a bag of chips. The cat’s meow. The bee’s knees! He suspects nothing and thinks that his little jewel of a girlfriend is as faithful to him as the Pope is to the Catholic Church.
“Hey, how do you ladies want the burgers?” Dylan called.
“Bloody,” I replied.
“Ew, disgusting!” Electra shrieked. “And here’s something for you to file away for future reference, dipshit—you don’t cook a Gardenburger like a meat burger, you just cook it till it’s not frozen anymore.”
“Kiss my ass, bitch!” Dylan said merrily.
“Kiss mine!”
“You first!” He stuck his ass out and pointed at it. She kissed the air and he went crazy laughing. Roman shook his head and winked at me over the flames.
When we were done eating, Electra went inside to call Josh and the four of us stayed outside and smoked twilight cigarettes. The sky was all violet and red. Electra wrapped the fence with bamboo and put out tiki torches last summer to feign tropical. If not for the police helicopters circling overhead and the constant rush of passing traffic out on Fountain, the ambience would be downright sultry.
Dylan gave Roman a long look. “Hey, brother, can I ask you something?”
“Sure you can, brother,” Roman replied. He had a hand resting comfortably on the back of my neck.
“Is it hard for you to be away from your fine-ass woman so much of the time?”
“Please,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“No, seriously,” Dylan said, rolling his right back. “I want to know.”
Roman looked thoughtful. “Well, of course. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.’ Cause you know chicks, they get lonely. And when they get lonely…well…all I’m saying is you shouldn’t leave a fine-ass woman unattended for too long.” He gave me a sly wink, looking devilish in the firelight. We settled into an uncomfortable silence. I shot Dylan the look of death and kicked Ava under the table.
“Bacco, tabacco e Venere riducono l’uomo in cenere,” she said to Roman, knowingly. Wine, women and tobacco can ruin a man. Roman laughed.
“What the fuck was that?” Dylan demanded.
“Nothing, bastardo. You come inside with me now,” she commanded him. “If you’re coming to San Diego with me for the weekend, then we need to get packing.”
“Anything you say, bella.” He slung an arm around her neck and kissed the top of her head as they got up from the table.
I watched them go.
Roman was frowning. He looked concerned. “Do you get lonely?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You should tell me these things.”
I shrugged again. “It’s nothing, Roman. I just get lonely. I miss you.”
He kissed me. “I miss you, too, Dalton. You have to know that.”
“I do.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
We kissed again. He told me he had something special planned for the weekend, in honor of our two-year anniversary. We were going away, just the two of us. I said I couldn’t wait.
Chapter 2
I was surprised when he proposed. It came out of nowhere. It was the Fourth of July and we were having wine and cheese and crackers and crème brûlée on a cliff by the ocean on Catalina. We were talking about random stuff like what kind of cheese is in cheesecake and how it’s weird that Italy is shaped like a boot and what was really going on in the movie Vanilla Sky. Then he got all serious.
“You know something…Dylan made a good point the other night.”
“Which was?”
“Us being apart as much as we are. It’s not right.”
“Oh, that.” I didn’t want him thinking I was some baby who went around bawling about how neglected she was. “Well, let’s not judge ourselves by anything Dylan has to say. He’s pretty much just a big dorky asshole.”
He laughed. “No, just outspoken, I think. An unexpected voice of reason.”
“That’s putting it very tactfully. Like saying he’s one sweet son of a bitch.”
He laughed again. Then he put his hand in mine and looked at me with soulful eyes. “Really, though. There’ve been some things on my mind that I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I thought now that we’re alone would be a good time. What do you think?”
My heart was pounding as I nodded. I was expecting him to tell me he was tired of things the way they were, tired of me, tired of our relationship. I was too young, too silly and lacking direction. I was never serious, completely trivial, and always broke because I made impractical purchases like my Louis Vuitton Mary Janes and those strass-inlaid Chanel sunglasses that were almost as much as my rent payment but so fucking glamorous I just couldn’t deny myself. I felt jittery and nervous. What if he’d done some research and now he knew all the things about me he wasn’t supposed to know? What if he wanted to tell me what a horrible person I was for acting the way I did in his absence?
But that wasn’t it at all. Instead he started talking about the future and how much I meant to him and how he didn’t want to lose me but he was leaving again. Not just leaving to go home but really leaving. He’d gotten his next placement. He had to be in Cameroon by August 1 and would be staying six months. He said he was afraid that one of these days someone else was going to snatch me up while he was gone. He said he was afraid that I was going to find someone else. Fireworks exploded in the black sky above, shimmering gold and pink and green on the black ocean below. He asked me if I would marry him when he got back, and said that if I wanted, he would give up his career for me.
How grand and traditional. A moonlight proposal by the sea.
“Are you sure you want to marry me?” was all I could think to say.
“Why would you ask me something like that?” he laughed.
I guess because there are two sides to every story. The Roman me, the me he sees, is the nice Dalton. The lover. The one I would be all the time, if the mean Dalton, the hater, wasn’t always demanding her share of the limelight. That Dalton has fists. She bullies the nice one into submission. She says, “Listen, when you’re nice people fuck with you. When you’re not, you can fuck with them.”
Good Dalton says why. Bad Dalton says why not.
“I could see us getting married,” I said thoughtfully.
“So can I,” he said eagerly.
A thought popped into my head. Electra once saying our relationship is chaste.
I may tone it down around him, but I’m still far from darling. It’s not like we never get down. It’s not like we sit around listening to Mozart and comparing Monet and Matisse. Roman himself is not some stiff. He is a wild man. He speaks other languages and I’m not talking just French and Spanish. He lives most of his life in jungles and deserts that most civilized people wouldn’t go to if their lives depended on it. He wears his hair longer like a gay man or a celebrity and isn’t ashamed of it. He has a real camera, the kind that cost a thousand dollars and not some cute pink thing from Toys “R” Us with Barbie written on it.
We are not chaste. We are classy.
“But I would never ask you to give up your career,” I said boldly. “Your work is your whole life.”
He slipped the ring onto my finger. “Not my whole life, Dalton.”
He doesn’t call me Doll like everybody else does. As the story goes, my mom thought that my given name of Dalton was too heavy at first so she shortened it and it stuck. I guess the real spelling should be Dal but then people would mispronounce it because people can be stupid like that. Doll’s fine with me…but I draw the line at Dolly. No fucking way.
The ring itself was a shining band of platinum, crowned with a glittering two-carat piece of ice that could catch the sparkle in someone’s eye from across the room. I wore it wound around the designated finger of my left hand like a collar encircling a dog’s neck. All the time fluttering my hand and watching it wink at me in defiance, representing everything I have ever, and never wanted. But I think these are things most every woman wants even if she acts like she doesn’t. It’s just all so confusing when it really comes down to that one final choice about your life. It’s kind of strange to finally have to say, this person is The One and Only One for the rest of eternity.
To be honest, it’s overwhelming. Not because I don’t want him. I definitely want him. I’m just overwhelmed because the last time I saw him he was my long-distance boyfriend and now he’s my future life partner. Forever.
“Can I go to Cameroon with you?” I asked.
“Well…getting the directorship doesn’t exactly mean I’ll have carte blanche in Africa,” he told me. “It actually means I’m going to have to work like a dog. I’ll hardly have time to sleep, much less show you a decent time there. And Cameroon rocks, but it’s not the kind of place a girl like you would enjoy on her own.”
I was disappointed. After becoming engaged…you’d think…I don’t know. I suddenly felt like the only difference was me having a sparkly reminder of Roman that got snagged in my hair.
“We’ll do it like so,” Roman said. “I’ll go and do this for six months. I’ll perform so brilliantly and dazzle Landon so hard that he won’t even blink when I appeal to him to let me stay in D.C. for a while, later, so that we can have a real home and life together there before I’m expected to take on another project.”
“That works for me,” I said.
“You’re so understanding,” he told me, eyes all limpid. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
“I think it’s the other way around.”
“Nonsense, Dalton. I’m the lucky one here.”
We were driving home a couple of days later when something occurred to me. As we cruised past the Overland exit on the 10, the one that leads to Jeremy’s apartment, it occurred to me that “forever” with my future life partner is not supposed to include my current partner in crime.
But what am I, crazy? Jeremy practically hates me. He treats me like a nuisance. The same way I treat him.
We pulled into the driveway. Roman got our luggage and took it into the house, where my roommates were camped out in the living room, watching a Brat Pack movie marathon.
“I got engaged,” I reported.
Electra was off her couch in a flash. “Engaged!” she screamed. She grabbed my hand and eyed the ring jealously. “Wow!”
Ava crowded in for a look. “That’s a big one. A real big fucking diamond! You must be so excited, Doll!”
“Of course I’m excited,” I replied as Roman poured champagne for all of us. And I really was. Excited. Nervous. Scared. Everything.
Roman extended his stay so he could be with me almost up until the last minute before having to report for his assignment. He said he was just going to quickly fly to D.C., shave and change his clothes, then catch his flight to Cameroon. He’s so funny like that. He comes across so sane and orderly, and then lives his life by the seat of his pants. I’ve never known anyone like him before. Like as in someone who really does the things they say they’re going to do. If Roman woke up one day and wanted to learn how to play the piano, he would sign up for piano lessons that afternoon instead of just talking about it forever. It’s like how the Duquesnes are from Syracuse and they all go to Syracuse, naturally, but at the last minute Roman Duquesne decided he wanted to go to Georgetown and turned in his application the day before the deadline. He was expected to become a doctor like his older brother and two older sisters, but he went into international studies instead. Everybody always said he was a dreamer and a fool, and that his spontaneity would get him nowhere fast, but now he says they’re eating their words because he’s living his life the way he wants to and that’s what life is all about. That’s a good philosophy, I think. Live your life however you want to.
On his last night in town, we ate at a scrumptious Italian restaurant. We drank lots of red wine. We ordered plates of pasta with tangy red sauce. As he slathered pieces of warm sourdough bread with butter for the two of us, he asked me if I was disappointed that he was leaving. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Every time I’m with him I know he’s going to go away again. I love knowing that we’re getting married, but I’m an instant-gratification kind of girl. I want everything now.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’d love it if you were staying…but I understand.”
“It’s a great career opportunity for me, you know. I think my getting the directorship means that Landon may finally be taking me seriously. It’s going to lead to great things, Dalton. For both of us.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“It’s only six months,” he reminded me.
“I’m not complaining,” I reminded him.
He looked at me for a moment. “Are you angry that you’re not going with me?”
“I don’t think I’m angry. Now that you mention it, though, six months does sound like quite a while. You’ve never been gone that long.”
“You’re right. I haven’t,” he said thoughtfully.
I didn’t want to sound like some selfish bitch girlfriend who thought she should be more important than anything else in the world. I didn’t want to be that girlfriend, either. So I told him, “I’ll deal. There are probably some loose ends I should tie up before I go anywhere, anyway. I have had a life here for quite some time. A silly life, I know, but still.”
He looked visibly relieved as he sipped his wine. He’d obviously been worried that I was going to have some big freak-out about the whole issue. “First of all, it’s not a silly life. Be twenty-five and enjoy it. I know I did. Second, six months is hardly any time at all. It will fly by. And it’s actually a really smart idea for you to get all your loose ends tied up, and you’re a smart girl to suggest it. Think of all the time you’ll have to plan the wedding, right? I think on the whole, women are probably more knowledgeable about weddings, anyway.”
I didn’t point out that he is cultured about every subject and could plan a nice wedding if he really wanted to or had the time. Nor did I point out that I am hardly that kind of woman. I had a vision of myself fully vamped out, walking down the aisle to “Poison” by Alice Cooper. Actually, this was the beginning of a script idea Jeremy had once. It was called You and Me and the Devil Makes Three. He never finished it and too bad because it really started getting good when the bride whipped out a knife and started butchering the wedding guests.
Roman smiled at me. “I think that’s when things will really get started for us, don’t you? When we get married?”
“Definitely.”
Later that night I bid my fiancé farewell in the grand traditional ceremony of fucking. I like the word fucking. I like the word fuck. It’s shocking and good for all occasions. He is gentler than most lovers have been and we have really great sex but right then it made my stomach hurt. It ached. Maybe from eating so much. Maybe because Roman was leaving. I found a focal point in a chaotic Mardi Gras poster on my bedroom wall. He fell asleep with his cheek pressed to my stomach. I played with his hair and watched the moon move across the sky outside my window.
When I drove him to the airport the next day he looked concerned as we stood in front of the terminal. It was hot and noisy out there, hardly a romantic goodbye spot. I hate not being able to go into the airport anymore.
“Are you going to be okay here?” he asked.
I laughed. “Roman, come on. I’m not exactly living in Tel Aviv.”
He fidgeted. “Yeah, I know. It’s just…this place. It really gets to you, you know?”
Ah, that it does. It takes a certain breed. L.A. is like a person. She’s like that one certain friend who’s always been such a bad influence. She makes you think you can act a certain way. Be a certain person. Put up with shit you wouldn’t put up with otherwise, because of the little rewards you get from her for being so understanding of her wicked ways. But for some strange reason, you love her like that. And she loves you, and she says it’s okay…it’s okay to be like that, because everyone’s like that.
I was really tired. I wasn’t thinking straight.
I fussed with the collar on his shirt as he placed his arms around me. He clasped his hands on the small of my back. People smiled at us. People thought, oh, we were so cute. And we are kind of cute. Roman’s really cute. He’s got that clean, woodsy look about him like he was born to wear flannel and whittle small wooden horses on the porch of a cabin in the mountains somewhere. Like a Ralph Lauren ad. His hair is the color of café au lait. And when my man squeezes me in a hug like this, I always remember that he’s a black belt in some exotic, ass-kicking martial art form.
“You just be careful out there, Dalton,” he told me.
I laughed. “You be careful out there.”
He kissed my forehead. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Okay.”
I watched him disappear into the terminal. I twisted my ring and wondered why I didn’t feel any different this time. I knew this was real. I knew it was good. But it felt just like any other time. Here today, gone tomorrow.
I bought a Diet Pepsi from a vending machine and sat on the hood of my car on top of the parking garage. The midsummer heat shimmered over the tarmac and sizzled on my skin. At one-fifty-three Roman’s plane lifted into the air, shooting toward the infinite azure sky. I waved four fingers. He was gone.
Normally on a day like this, I would return to the other half of my double life without a moment’s thought. I would return to the place where what started as a hopeless fling became an even more hopeless involvement. Where my lover doesn’t have hidden expectations. Where in fact he seems to have no expectations.