“Three books?” he said unhappily. “Oh, Andrew…”
“What can I say? They bought Faulkner and Salinger and passed me over.”
“But Faulkner and Salinger are dead, and you were sitting right there. And you’re so stunning, how could they have missed you?”
“Damned if I know. But I have news for you: Salinger’s not dead.”
“He’s not on PMC’s list, so he’s dead to me.”
I laughed, spitting up a trickle of scotch that ran down my chin. “Ah, damn.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry,” I said, looking around for a napkin or paper towel. “I dribbled.”
“Well, a day in New Jersey will do that to you,” David said, and he started to launch into some new ideas he had to publicize the book.
In the meantime, I found a paper towel. I was about to wipe my chin when I realized there was writing on it.
Ted’s handwriting.
Written with a felt-tip pen, which had bled into the towel and made the words almost illegible.
And it started: “Dear Andrew…I’m sorry—”
If I strained, I could read it:
Dear Andrew…I’m sorry, but I can’t go on with our relationship. I’ve tried to tell you in person, but you’ve been so busy with your book that we haven’t been able to talk. Again, I’m sorry, but I need more out of life than what we have, and I’ve met someone I think can give me what I feel is missing. I took some of my stuff. Maybe we can talk later. Good luck with your book and your life…Ted.
“Andrew?”
“Huh?” I was still too stunned to react. “I’m sorry, David, I didn’t hear what you were saying.”
“That’s because I haven’t said anything in thirty seconds. I’ve just been sitting here, listening to you whimper. Are you all right?”
“I—I—I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong? You sound horrible.”
“It’s Ted.” I started to feel the haze lifting as the reality of his words sank in. “He’s…he’s…” The tears forced themselves out slowly, and I sank back into the couch.
“Oh, God,” mumbled David, his deeply concerned voice still coming through the phone that was now tucked somewhere near my neck. “Is he all right? He’s not dead, is he?”
“He—he—he left me.” My voice was hollow.
The phone fell to the couch, but I heard David’s distant voice. “I’ll come over.”
A while later, I managed to get off the couch long enough to tell the doorman to let David into the apartment building. I really just wanted to be alone with my grief, but I suppose it was good that he came over, if for no other reason than to finally hang up the phone.
“You’ll be all right,” he assured me in a hushed voice, repeatedly stroking my back as I choked back sobs, curled up in the closest imitation of the fetal position that a thirty-five-year-old man can achieve.
“I loved him,” I moaned between convulsions.
“You’ll get the last laugh when you win the Pulitzer Prize. The men will be beating your door down then.”
Somehow I managed to control myself long enough to turn to him and say, “David, you’re really not making me feel any better about this.”
In the days to come, I found out that what Ted needed more of out of life was packaged in the twenty-three-year-old body of Nicholas Hafner—Nicky to his friends—which meant that I would always consider it a point of honor to call him Nicholas.
Nicholas Hafner was a twink with double-pierced ears who aspired to design windows for a living. He was, at that time, merely an apprentice window designer.
My mortal enemy was an apprentice window designer. No, not just an apprentice window designer—an apprentice window designer who bleached his hair.
Why couldn’t Ted have found himself a nice doctor?
After Ted left, I did a lot of moping. I didn’t leave my apartment for the first week. I spent most of the time sitting perched in the window overlooking Eighty-sixth Street, watching the appropriately gray skies and rain. And sighing. And straining to look toward Broadway to see if his was one of the faces coming out of the subway station, having come to his senses and decided to return home, where he knew I’d forgive him after some brief histrionics.
But, of course, his face never emerged from the subway station. He was gone. He was the property of Nicholas Hafner, the twenty-three-year-old apprentice window designer with double-pierced ears, bleached hair, and absolutely no commitment to anything deeper than keeping ahead of the curve on the latest styles and music. And since I couldn’t really hate Ted, no matter how hard I tried, I came to double-hate Nicholas, even though we’d never met.
If I found any consolation, it was in the knowledge that one day one of them would hurt the other just as Ted had hurt me. Superficial Nicholas would probably discover it was no longer fashionable to shack up with older accountants, and he’d dump Ted for the latest in boyfriend chic. Or Ted would discover that Nicholas—who danced each weekend until five in the morning and was decades away from developing an ability to settle down—wouldn’t and couldn’t offer him the domesticity he craved.
That was my consolation. But when it happened, if it happened, it would be down the road. Right now, Ted and Nicholas were lovers; they were having fun, having sex, and having each other. They were going to dinner parties and clubs and movies. They were living their lives.
I was sighing and sobbing and watching the rain. And the subway entrance.
David Carlyle called me occasionally, but I seldom bothered to pick up the telephone. I hadn’t been going to work, and although David covered for me, as the week wore on and his sympathy waned, he subtly warned me it might be in my best interests to “snap out of it and come back to earth one of these days.” In an effort to lift my spirits, he told me—well, actually, he told my answering machine—that sales of The Brewster Mall were running much better than expected, which I knew was a lie because I’d personally seen how the book was selling and doubted there was more than one Marlene Birrell in the world.
Denise Hanrahan also called. She was probably my closest friend left in New York City, since I’d lost all my other friends when I’d coupled up with Ted and shut out the rest of the world. I usually picked up for her.
Even though Ted had just ripped my heart out and filled the empty cavity with lead, Denise always had a way of besting me in depressing, tragic boyfriend stories. I mean, at least I didn’t consider it a disaster to find out my boyfriend was gay. In a bizarre way, it was almost therapeutic to hear her tales of the horrid heterosexual and allegedly heterosexual men of New York. The Germans call it Schadenfreude—taking pleasure in the pain of another.
And between the passage of time and Denise’s horror stories, I at last reached the point where I was able to leave the apartment. Which was good, because my appetite was coming back and I desperately needed groceries.
My first day out on the street was also the first day in several weeks that the sky cleared, treating New Yorkers to a warm and sunny September afternoon. I spent it walking; walking through the Upper West Side, walking through Central Park…I considered, but rejected, taking the subway down to Greenwich Village; that excursion was squelched because that was where that no-good bastard Ted and his twink boy toy were now living, and I was afraid it would encourage the stalkerlike impulses I was trying to fight back.
It was only when I stopped, after several hours of walking, that I realized I hadn’t seen a thing. I was sleepwalking, that’s