Little White Liar

Continued romantic misadventures

Even though the aftershocks still rumble at odd intervals (stories passed through the grapevine through old mutuals, surprisingly lovely conversations with his best friend), it's been two months since I broke up with my ex. In the meantime, the grey skies have been dip-dyed robin's egg blue. The trees are purring with new buds, the lawns are shaking with daffodils, and my winter jacket has been retired to the furthest possible recess of my tiny built-in closet. Spring in northern England might be the prettiest of all springs.

I'm not going to lie...spring fever has hit me hard and heavy. Inside, my eyes are turned by windows onto hazy blue-green fields and atmospheres. Outside, my eyes are turned by intellectuals baring their lower legs and upper arms for the first time since my arrival. I need a man.

In the sort of progressive hermitage I've been warned to expect of the remaining 2.5 years of my PhD, I have recently sworn off men in the following categories: undergraduates for their inability to grasp the difficulty of my undertaking, Masters students for their fleeting nature, PhD students from my own university for their well-used histories and incestuous connections to everyone I know. This left me the following options: townies, abstinence. 

Last night, my flatmate/best friend in England dragged me to open mic night at our local pub. A friend of ours played, and we were needed on hand to clap, cheer, and wave mobile phones. We shared a corner table with a group of three strangers in varying states of handsomeness. The second-most handsome (whom I'd asked for permission to sit) kept bumping eyes with me in an optical Morse code that that I was unable to decipher as being either hostile or flirtatious. 

This stranger, whose name I later learned to be James, looked like the boy next door, if you grew up somewhere in the Midlands of England in Thatcher's bleak mid-'80s. He did not look like the sort who would lope up to the stage after three songs from the first performer, strap on a guitar, and perform the following mismatched setlist: 

1) Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival

2) I'm Yours - Jason Mraz

3) Johnny B Goode - Chuck Berry

My gentle reader: is this not an ideal selection for gaining the instant devotion of the sentimental mop-headed American woman in the audience? When he returned to our shared corner, raising his shoulders and holding his hands out to receive comment, my friends glittered with praise and I chose to focus on his abrupt ending. When the audience refused to sing the last chorus of Johnny B Goode, James simply put down his guitar and left the stage. It was unclear whether he'd lost his pick (he hadn't) or simply decided to conserve his entertainment for a more deserving peer group (he had).

Though his pint was still half-full with what I took to be stout, my next turn at the bar was mysteriously accompanied by a tall, lean shadow, of grazing elbows and a peripheral tuft of brown hair. We talked. Rather, I did my best to abstain from cawing in my horrendous accent, and he, whiskey-voiced, answered every question correctly.

An hour later, before he left, he leaned over to me and asked, "Where is the linguistics department, anyway? Are our faculties close?" They aren't; in fact, he'd never heard of the building where my office is, and where his name would be Googled for a solid 30 minutes the following morning. He frowned, looking toward the door where his friends congregated to observe the exchange. "Well...perhaps I'll see you around?" he asked, and I sighed, "Probably not." 

After they were gone, my flatmate/best friend demanded to know why I hadn't provided any critical details: a phone number, an email address, a last name for the purposes of Facebooking. I answered candidly: having gone so long since meeting a decent (if somewhat shy) man, the thought that he would want to see me again (having abstained from attempted groping or over-the-top euphemism) just didn't compute. Am I ruined?

Jabberwocky

Let's not talk sense. Let's have room for the opposite. Let's revisit over and over that sea-stomach feeling of your eyes looking at stranger for the first time and your soul or heart or sense of blown-out hope rising up with an illogical "Hello again."

At the start everyone wants to compete. Reposition. Track tiny rings around each other, unroll words as a way of measure, use birthplace as weapons to be wielded. Everyone wants to see who's the best at really listening while also formulating the next brilliant response. No, wait. Let's all be friends with different targets that overlap, right here, right now, so far from whatever other fork is coming or gone.

I've been jumping concentric circles until I got so close to the middle of the blue-sky puddle it looks like a watery gasp, or a vortex that opens up on the known future. I've been learning new information second-hand about an absentee and juggling surface surprise with deeper reaffirmation. Let's live our lives like a puzzle whose image you already know and whose pieces you just have to slip into place: this is where we met, this is the first time a phrase from my mouth forced a smile from yours, this is the day we got married, no wait, it doesn't fit there, put that one aside for a second. Let's agree to work from the corners inward. It's too daunting, in this case, to go straight to the center.

I'm going to bounce hurdles with shoulders instead of knees. I'm going to take my challenges and hold them so loosely that they slip and blow from my fingers in the spring breeze. I'm going to wait in this window looking out on forever and trust, for once, for now, that its view hasn't been engineered or hallucinated. I'm going to get what I want.

Movie life

If you're me and this is your real life:

In Sydney in April 2008 you'll be given a book you've never heard of before, even though it was published thirty years ago in your home country. You'll finish it in two nights laying on a mattress on the floor in a house you hate, and it's an escape.

That July, you'll start your first postgraduate program, and it's at a great school in a country you've never studied in, in a field you know nothing about. Immediately, there will be drowning. Your very first lecture will be the hardest. It's all jargon. The professor is the head of your new department, and he will expect eight hours of study time devoted to his class alone, each week. You suspect it will take this long to look up all of the new words in a dictionary.

But that first class, that first night, you will see a boy walk in who is the cookie-cutter of your "type," if that exists. He's the one surrounded by a small circle of friends who walk and sit together as one. For every blank hole in the lecture where the professor asks a question and sixty students look stupidly down at their desks, this boy will know the answer. He's the one speaking in the soft clear British accent. In profile (which is the only way you will see him), his frameless glasses and strong exaggerated nose make him look every bit the scholar.

You will post your first required entry on the web discussion board, and a boy with a Jewish name will respond with so much precision and intelligence that you search for him on Facebook and there - there will be the boy from the first night. On the discussion boards, you begin hunting his posts. You respond to most of them. He responds to most of yours, always better.

The second lecture, you'll be counted off by groups and when he says "Six" you think six.six.six.six and when it comes to you, the girl before will say "Five" and it's almost too perfect. You'll fall over yourself to be both funny and smart in close-up conversation with him. His eyes from three feet away are Crayola blue. You'll introduce yourself as if you didn't know Facebook existed.

Socially, you come to know his clique better. You go out drinking with one of them. Then two of them. The subject of the boy will come up. His friends will say, "As soon as we heard you in class, we told him we'd found him a new girlfriend" and laugh. They bring up that book that you read back in April and it's revealed that his grandfather wrote it. In fact, he comes from somewhat of a Glass family - hyperintelligent, introverted, talented, doctors, lawyers, writers, travelers.

The boy won't come out drinking. His name is enough, standing up ten times per night as the academic standard we all need to live up to. On the web discussions, in class, socially, you circle closer to him but three weeks in, don't reach the center. It's a good distraction from...those other things.

If you're me and this is your movie life:

These circles continue, maybe for months. Eventually some academic setting (maybe the conference in Hong Kong?) will throw you together and you can bring up the book. Or continue on the Yiddish/Hebrew/English tangent you brought the whole lecture away on together, once. Or laugh about his friends and their conspiring. Anyway, he'll be out and you'll be out and the lights in Hong Kong or Pakistan or Sydney will be shining and there will be that first kiss. And then cut, him teaching in Mexico like he says he wants to, and you flattening tortillas for dinner, flour caked on your hands and sprinkled across your smiling cheeks.

Further adventures in home-sharing

It's either Friday night or Saturday morning, and we're all drunk again. There are some accents. Country Australian and city Australian (the only types I can differentiate between), country American and city American. There's either some cockney or someone is way more drunk than the others. But it's me who's talking the most.

"No, but really. I love him," I'm saying with so much desperate conviction that my throat closes up and I have to force words out, too loud.

The three people who know me least are nodding like, yeah, we all fall in love directly in proportion to how much vodka is consumed in a given night. The one person who's met me earlier but has seen me interact with him (the one I love) is laughing and rubbing my back like, yeah, these things happen. Only the person who knows me best in this world has pity in her eyes. She looks at me the same way you'd look at a tree bent so far towards the sun that its roots will rip out before it escapes the shade.

So what's the problem?

He's taken, for starters. His long-term exotic girlfriend is beautiful and rich and artistically gifted. She never gets drunk and texts him obscenities in the middle of the night. Unlike me, she leaves a party just as it starts its downswing, still pristine and happy. She doesn't ever wait until the gritty end of revelry belly-crawls home. Is it evil how I'm elated whenever he confesses that she bores him? Is it so bad that I can't wait for her heart to be broken, this girl who has never done anything other than have what I don't?

Then, we live together. It's impossible to keep a cool distance. Each morning he emerges from his bedroom, smiling at me bear-headed in pale sun, my heart pops. When it's just the two of us on the big couch, I glue myself against the opposite arm. I will myself not to lean toward him, to keep my wanting eyes on the television screen. He must think I'm really, really, really into Gordon Ramsey.

It's so obvious when you're inside it. I say that Friday/Saturday, "How could he not know?" Because each time he touches me as a friend, I go raw pink. When he squeezes one hand, the other one drops a drink. When he talks about moving back home to the States in a month, I jump superstitiously over the topic like a crack in the sidewalk.

Four am, two or so weeks ago, we're alone for a moment at a table. We're talking about new housemates; how to replace him. "It's impossible," I say, "You're too cool." He sits back, pressing his spine straight so that he can look down at me from all those inches above. His soft brown eyes in fans of black lashes make contact feel like deer-watching.

"That's the first nice thing you've ever said to me. I wasn't even sure you really liked me."

Cohabitation

What is love?

Is love waking up beside a person, and going to sleep beside the same person, with each whispering dream or twitching roll a lullabye for the other? Is it knowing what the other will have for breakfast, and making dinner in turns, and meeting up for lunch halfway through the work day just to sit in the sunshine and make faces over menus? Or is it thinking of moving to a place you never intended; is it considering staying in a place you never accepted? Is the thing that makes you mindful of the times and places and ways you move your body called a certain word?

Is love holding the very word inside your mouth for a week solid because letting it out so soon has been labeled premature birth? Working up the courage one day in Waiheke and writing "I" in the sand, only to have him wipe it away immediately? Is it not being mad or sad at the swallowed confession because what comes up in the blank tablet of beach is your own name in the swirling other-world script of Persian? Or letting the other person say that phrase not once or twice or three times before you muffle him, request a ban on all words that strong to surround something so necessarily fleeting?

Is love carrying one bag between two people, a single shoulder burdened by the weight of double accessories of personality? Is it, then, tucking carefully someone else's belongings into one such pocket while, unknown to you, a bus skates around the corner behind you and aims its front fender directly at your spine? Or, facing the other direction, refusing to be one of the many people whose faces open up in surprise, instead being the one person who reaches in between the girl and the bus and yanks them apart? If so, if you sit trembling in a bus seat while a girl who should be maimed sits giggling beside you, unaccepting of the danger she was in - if you can kiss her and not shout at the driver or strangle the laughter from her throat, are you in love?

What about an ongoing suspicion that you're one-half of the cutest pair in any room? The alienation of friends new enough to still have stories you've never heard, and a lack of care that you might never hear them? If you'd rather watch old episodes of a TV show on a small laptop screen with one person than the latest movie releases in the cinema with any other human, what does that mean? Out of 37 nights, when you spend only 2 in your own (queen) bedroom, and 35 crushed in his (twin) bed breathing the same air back and forth, would you use that word?

 

Is it love if one person hates tomatoes and the other wants extra? Or if a tremble of his cologne passes you on the street and your stomach knots until the air clears? Does the knowledge that someone else will clear your discomfort (a bad seat, an annoying friend, an airless room) with a sentence come with the knowledge of another word? If you do things that you don't want to do, and like them, what led you there?

Two months in Auckland

Two days ago was my two-month anniversary in Auckland. A week has already passed since my six-month anniversary of living abroad. I didn't take note of either one until today. This post is my champagne cork popping.

After a half a year away, I started to numb myself to all of the things that I'm missing. I can push back these tiny aches: Not being there when Ben totalled his car and knowing that someone else giddily accepted the first ride in the passenger seat of the sleek and purring replacement. Never meeting my youngest brother's first girlfriend; never smiling at her and complimenting her hair (whether deserved or not); never having the opportunity to verbally gore her after she dumped said brother in the months following. Skipping every birthday  of 2007, with each cake untasted forever. Being absent when my cousin came out on Thanksgiving, with no camera crew available for rollback of facial expressions. Missing out on my long-lost, weirdly-young half-aunt returning to the fold and joining the fucked up frenzy that is all family gatherings. Not choking back smiling tears at a good friend's wedding. Not attending a housewarming party or a welcome-back-from-Crotia bash. In six months I can let so much of my alternate lives slide away from me, and I can build something brand new on an island. It turns out I can make islands my planets.

At the six-month point places both blur together and pull apart in pinpoints. In the morning at work I will think of the perfect place for lunch. I'll focus on it all day and when I leave the office to walk toward the cafe or restaurant or wherever, I'll have a moment where I get disoriented. Which street was it on? I realize I'm yearning for a sandwich made in New York or Sydney with a stomach that's rumbling in Auckland. I look forward to IKEA sales in the single country without IKEA.

But on the other side, in just over eight weeks the skin of this city has blistered up with hot spots of personal memory. Each time I walk past the circular entrance of the Rendezvous or those sad little outdoor tables at the fake 24-hour coffee shop, my chest clenches for Brendan. On High Street I watch the windows going by, looking for the darkened wine bar where a lawyer told me stories of India and where the laughter is muted by good breeding and thick shudders. Vulcan Lane is about a hundred drinks with Rachel. The corner in front of the Central City Hotel on Albert and Wellesley is almost unbearable to walk across, being the site of my most disgraceful moment of 2007: where I told a British boy that if we couldn't have sex within the next hour that, no, I didn't care to be his friend any longer. Sky City is for Kevin and those first tingling touches on the outside of my leg where my skin was whispering, "Is this something something something?" On Elliott an African let me win a game of pool and afterwards in the underground garage I sent out my best mind vibes trying to pull him into a kiss that would never come. I wonder if these places are printed with the energy of these moments beyond the stamps in my own mind.

I can tell already that this time in my life, these short stories in New Zealand, will always seem dreamlike in retelling. It's a small intermission in my journey through Australia, punctuated by street corners and single tables in small establishments, defined by an unlikely relationship with a fellow wanderer. With my visa application pending and set for decision any day now, the time before waking grows shorter. But just before your eyes open and the morning floods back in, everything becomes sharp, clear, and memorable for a heartbeat. Two months.

Calls from the other end

I'm used to a completely different angle of this conversation.

The part where one of my favorite people says, "Sorry I've been basically incommunicado for the past few weeks. You see, I met somebody..."

That's the part where I'm always on the other end of the phone line, trying to shove my voice into the sound of a smile. When I'm attempting to make cookie cutter shapes of all of the right thoughts, like being happy for someone else and being ready to share a loved one's attention with a newcomer.

I'm used to that viewpoint. I have great friends; it never takes long before someone new comes along and sees what I can see. Here's what's strange: sitting on the other side of the phone line.

Absent from his social circle for three weeks, Kevin makes excuses, and from this angle I can see what I usually can't. Like that as far as the hands of an apologizing absentee may go, one can be for cradling the phone but the other will be for cupping the newly shaven knee of the girl he's gone hermit for.

I feel for the girl on the other end of the phone, down one friend, up one missing person case.

It's strange to be the accomplice to your own kidnapping.

Two Weeks (dating in Auckland)

Since I can't get a job, don't have any friends, and basically hate my life and myself for deciding to come here in the first place, I'm in a very unusual situation. I have discovered that there's no aphrodisiac like a sickly combination of loneliness, isolation, and poverty. Any guy who asks me out gets an automatic yes. Instead of listing all of the things I love about Auckland (contents: nil), I will list the boys I have been distracting myself with in this horrid city. Then someday we'll all look back and laugh, etc.

Codename: My fellow American
Age: 27
Origin: California
Pros: Has more than a little bit of Zach Braff going on in the looks department. Is modelled after an inverted triangle, with big shoulders, medium chest, and slim everything else. Gets my slapstick 80s cartoon, shameful 90s sitcom, and 00s cringe-pop references without explanation or mockery. Reads books that I've never heard of, and then talks about them in a way that makes me wish I had heard of them. Hurdles social awkwardness with ease and grace. Works in my field, and in fact in almost my same position, which makes for at-the-office conversations easy and enlightening. Touches when he talks, which I took for granted at home but won't ever do again. Has taught himself to drive on this side of the road after just a short while in the country, and has invested in a car that I have rubbed "Amanda's road trip" vibes all over. Is Jewish, but not too Jewish. Makes fun of all the people I want to make fun of but don't because I'm afraid of coming off as too mean.
Cons: The sound of his voice makes me intensely homesick. Wrts txt msgs lk a 10 yrld grl. Takes weekly dance lessons with his female roommate, which makes me uneasy in a variety of ways that probably showcase my own insecurity much more than his oddness.

Codename: The Refugee
Age: 26
Origin: Zimbabwe
Pros: Is of the tall and athletic variety, with shoulders standing at the perfect height for this particular forehead to fall down on. Is of the hazel-eyed persuasion, which means my favorite green makes frequent and enjoyable appearances. Tells stories about third-world social systems (unusual) from a first-hand perspective (rare). Lets me win at pool, but only one game out of four, and in a way that still has me guessing whether his concentration really was broken. Opens doors for women with effortless habit that does not embarrass or belittle. Works across the world to send money home. Grew up around the corner from Victoria Falls and tells stories about Africa that have me checking ticket prices hours later. Owns a truck and keeps the back seats down so that his German Shephard has a rolling playground; keeps juice boxes in the passenger seat that must be cleared for me. Has never looked at another man or woman in my presence other than to order a drink. Pays for everything and balks when I thank him for feeding and watering me. Actually almost died from malaria, but didn't.
Cons: Two front teeth cross gently on the bottom corners like everything he says is a promise broken behind the back. Traces of humidity bring up sweat patches on his otherwise well-selected boyish t-shirts. Repeats jokes that he knows made me laugh the first time and seems confused at their lack of continued success. Something like ten hours of interaction with just the barest of physical contact and a total kiss count of zero threatens the friend zone coming quickly.

Codename: Hung Jury
Age: 32
Origin: New Zealand
Pros: Bright blue eyes that actually glitter, I swear. Dimples, both sides. Sleek fashion sense in the beat jeans, designer t-shirt, Fidel hat, travel-worn leather jewelry vein. A knowledge of wine that borderline intimidates me; the boy orders glasses like cars, by make and year. This hobby leads us not to the usual sleepy locals, the tourist-fed rowdies, or the musty pub in-betweens, but to unmarked doors in unknown alleys that lead up spiral staircases and open into dens of secrecy. On thick leather couches, in candlelight, surrounded only by in-the-know locals and some smooth jazz, I sip a hand-selected wine and live somebody else's life. As a lawyer, he is both better-educated and better-off than I am - his age has done him well. He presents as confident and somehow feline. For my level of prying, he talks very little about work. He speaks instead about playing cricket with street urchins in India, the years he lived in Venezuela, his philanthropic father. He's both proud of being a Kiwi and aware of how silly many of them look from the outside. His wish is for me to enjoy his country more fully.
Cons: Fashion interest nears suspicious; admits buying trousers from a "very camp" boutique shop and being eyed unfavorably in the firm upon wearing them. Invited me prematurely to his house for wine and music, already an overly intimate setting for near-strangers. Upon asking how I would get home from his (rather remote) locale, he offered the service of cabs or the opportunity to sleep over. No. Must be forcibly removed from apartment after work hours and convinced to stay out past witching hours of various times. Slender build makes one nervous about the possibility of sex and inflicting injury on a man who knows full well how to sue.

The hottest affair I never had

Yesterday I could feel the tide turning. I landed an interview for a job. I put a deposit down on an apartment. I took public transportation all afternoon without once whipping out my laminated "Tourist Alert!" map of the city. I began to enjoy the vibe that comes with living in a big small town. Kiwi celebrities are everywhere in Auckland -- not that I recognize them. In the five days I've lived here, I've averaged a little over .5 local celebrity sightings per day. On Sunday I was accosted by some be-wigged street comedy duo, enormous cameras in tow, doing interviews for I-forget-which-show. Tuesday I watched a talented floppy-haired teenager pulled off his skateboard to sign an autograph. (He penned it with his overturned deck held like a tablet.) Today I was shoe shopping next to an enormous woman, following her on the principle that she made me look so petite and adorable, and also that her running commentary on the shoe selection was nothing short of hilarious. Two minutes into our shopping experience, a couple of Kiwi women came up to her asking about the Silver Ferns World Netball Championship game that had just been played and won. By her. Goddamn.

So late last night, filled with tenative well-being, I was up to the usual: drinking a random off-brand soda in a foreign hostel, boring the fingers off Meg on Gmail chat, and perving on the local talent. I glanced up from my laptop after experiencing that icky "mouse in the bird's scope" feeling that I so often inflict on others. Someone was staring at me. That someone was 6'2" and about 200 pounds made half of shoulders and half of brown tattooed skin over lean muscles. His happy Maori face opened into the biggest smile I think I've ever seen. I told Meg that I was in love, and I meant it for like five minutes. Busy chatting about what was happening instead of partaking in what was happening, I missed when the Maori boy left the lounge. For fifteen minutes I literally prayed to God for his return.

When the elevator opened and he was inside of it, carrying food in a tattooed arm, I smiled so big that I needed chapstick after. I felt his presence behind me for ten minutes, rummaging around, looking at my back, coming close and going away. The elevator pinged again and when I turned around he was in it again. My disappointment was unnecessarily deep for how little I had done to hold his attention. I made my best frownie face and waved goodbye. He waved in reverse. He lifted a big hand and curled the forefinger. Then the doors closed. I had fantasies about getting in that elevator and peeling off his white t-shirt and bringing him straight to my room without any words exchanged between us. I longed to be the kind of girl who has one-night stands on her last night in a hotel, instead of the girl who types in Gmail while it all passes her by.

Anguish! Torture! Unfairness of the planet! I waited for thirty minutes in hopes that he'd return but for that entire time it was just me and one Asian girl who chewed grapes with her mouth open, which sounds discomfortingly like lewd sex acts. In an act of desperation, I got in the elevator and pressed every button, hoping that the doors would open on some hallway that had him in it. When that genius plot failed, I left the building to look at the "smoker stairs" outside. Nothing was out there but a car illuminated from the inside, which back-lit the girl climbing out of it. She wore a hot pink dress roughly the size of a pillowcase. The dress split around her bare stomach on one side. Out of the bottom dropped two skinny knock-kneed legs covered in brown fishnets. I've never seen a more obvious hooker.

I tried to get the fuck out of there, but the door had shut behind me and my key was defective and I found myself outside, alone, with a hooker and either a pimp or a customer. I pressed myself into a corner by the entrance and frantically tapped the night call button. The hooker and guy came to the door. They buzzed themselves in. I crept in after them, trying not to watch the hooker's buttcheeks wriggling out of the bottom of her dress. Because of the endless misfortune that is living in Auckland, they invited me into their elevator. I watched the hooker watch herself in the mirror, her pretty and distant eyes ringed with red and makeup. After they got out, I pressed the button to my floor. The search was over. I went to bed fearing, irrationally, that my perfect man had called a hooker and was about to pay for what I would have given for free.

This morning I woke up early to pack and check out, to get to an interview on time, to check my e-mails from the last reliable service for god-knows-how-long. I set up in the lounge and five minutes later, the elevator again. Him. He sat down next to me and the air filled up with the amazing scent that is a freshly washed guy who doesn't sour the smell of soap and skin with cologne. We made small chat under the watchful eyes of two elderly German couples making breakfast.

His name is Johnny. He said that he and his family were up from Wellington on a holiday. I let him explain where Wellington was because he was so adorable that I didn't want to scare him off by being something devastating like intelligent. I didn't mention how weird it was that a man in his mid- to late-20s would be holidaying with his family. Then he mentioned his daughter. Oh. Family family. After twenty minutes or so of excruciating conversation, he left to "put something in the car." Maori men speak in this crazy accent that sounds half caveman and half island sex God. Obviously, it's irresistable. Also obviously, there's a lot of "Pardons?" from this side when dealing with them. I was relieved both that I had spoken to him and that I could stop speaking to him. Ten minutes later, I packed up to leave the lounge.

On my way to the elevator, someone waved from outside the window. Johnny was standing there, in another white t-shirt, tighter if possible, actually hosing off his car. This was probably my first softcore porn type scenario in real life. He gestured for me to hold on a minute, and ran inside smelling like fresh New Zealand water and even more soap. He stood beside me until the elevator arrived, and when it did, he climbed in. I pushed my floor button.

"You didn't push a button," I accused him.

"I'll just go for a ride," he smiled.

You certainly will.

The doors closed and he put his hands around my waist, which is exactly where I wanted things to be going until I looked down at them and there was a ring where there shouldn't be one.

"Oh, you're married," I basically cried.

"Yeah." There was no apology or explanation. Just open-eyed honesty, which was disarming on someone so handsome and so suddenly forbidden. We talked while the elevator and his hands pushed the stomach out of me, and when I got off on my floor he followed me out. "When are you leaving?"

"Right now. This minute. Any chance you can get divorced before then?"

He literally swung back and forth between the door of my room and the door of the elevator, his hands on his own hips for once, making a decision. "...No. Can I hug you?"

I let myself be hugged, and possibly hugged him back a little, enjoying the feeling of being wanted without being had. Enjoying, horribly, a secret and intimate moment with someone else's partner.

I wonder now why he told me he had a child. Why he wore his ring. What kept me from doing something that I wouldn't be at fault in doing, and would have done forever unknowingly had he been a better liar. In short, what makes another man and woman's oaths to each other sacred to me? What stops me from eating forbidden fruit when the fruit is basically hopping out of its rind, begging to be eaten?

I could have been another kind of girl. But the girl I am planted a hand in the middle of his big chest and pushed him away. Went to her room alone. And fell back in hate with her city.