Instant Love by Jami Attenberg Page B

could just walk out silently when I’m done, that would be the best thing of all, but it is always important to them that they pretend they care, that their intentions seem good, that they take back control by offering some pretense of hope that we will somehow see each other again.
    If I had wanted to see them again, I wouldn’t have fucked them in the first place.
    But mostly I tried to be the relatively nice girl my mother raised me to be (My father was too busy fucking his grad-student groupies to worry about how I turned out); I would go out on dates, I was dating. Yes, I will go out on a date with you, stranger who thinks referencing Voltaire and Yo La Tengo in a personal ad will make you attractive to women with good jobs, who own their own apartments within spitting distance of the park and regularly attend yoga classes. Here we are, on a date at a wine bar located equidistant from our apartments. Sure, I’ll have another chardonnay; let’s try something from California this time. No, I’ve never been engaged, never even close. I’m not that type. You are that type? Right. I’m sorry that didn’t work out for you. It was for the best, obviously. It is always for the best. And I’ll bet the medication is helping. It
is
helping, isn’t it? Do you have any extra?
    We were all just walking around this city with our hearts sadly swimming in our chests, like dying fish on the surface of a still pond. It’s enough to make you give up entirely.
    Still, when Gareth surfaced and e-mailed me, asking for a favor—would I meet him for a drink?—I said yes.
     
     
    “ WHY ’ D YOU bother going?” asks Maggie. I’m telling her the story of the third date, seated on the living room couch of her spacious suburban home, my legs folded under me, my head resting on my hand. Maggie speaks quietly—she has gotten quiet and careful the past few years—but with force. “I just don’t understand why you go on any dates at all. You don’t like anyone. Why don’t you just admit that you’re not interested in having a relationship? It’s OK to be single. Just do it. Just
be
single.” We’ve just eaten steak for dinner, filet mignon, naturally. Maggie had spent the whole afternoon shopping for the dinner, she told me. What a hard worker. Her commitment to spending her husband’s money was an inspiration to women everywhere.
    I look at her hands, at her enormous wedding ring. Three icy karats on a solid gold band. We weren’t raised to care about jewelry, but here she is, caring about jewelry. I’ve watched her clean it, her precious ring, swab it, shine it. Underneath the ring is a thin line of pale skin, with one brown freckle—like the ones on her lovely shoulders—in the center acting as a divider. It’s her real skin underneath.
    Robert is in the kitchen doing the dishes. My glass of wine is poised on a ceramic coaster they purchased on their honeymoon in Costa Rica. There was a blue chicken painted on it. They had twelve of these coasters, but they only ever used four at a time. The rest sat in a drawer. Eight blue Costa Rican chickens roosting in a drawer in Westchester.
    She continues, “I have never seen you happy with a man.”
    “That’s not true,” I say. “I loved Alan. I was devastated when it ended.”
    “You loved Alan because he lived in Chicago. The farther away the better, that’s what works for you. You know—just do these men who ask you out a favor: stop saying yes.”
    Maggie has tried to fix me up before, has sat me down in front of them, one after another, dinner after dinner in Westchester. A husband buffet. These single men of the suburbs were all in their forties and wealthy and really into their jobs, with one big hobby each, biking or sailing or their car. Men really do love their cars, I learned at those dinners, and if I could just love their cars, maybe I could love them, too, and they, in turn, could love me. If only.
    They trotted out their divorce stories, too, which had