Engaging Men. Lynda Curnyn

the air. A note left by the answering machine indicated in Justin’s loopy scrawl that he had taken Lauren to the airport. Which meant, since Justin didn’t have a car, that he was taking an expensive round-trip cab to LaGuardia, just so he could spend an extra hour with the woman he once described to me as “the best thing that ever happened” to him.

      I sighed. When was I going to be anyone’s best thing?

      As I headed into the living room and saw that sofa #3 had been maneuvered from its position in the middle of the room to a less prominent place in front of sofa #2, I realized I did have something to be thankful for. At least Lauren had used her considerable influence over Justin to persuade him that his most recent sofa acquisition was atrocious enough to warrant a slip-cover, which Lauren had no doubt created from one of Justin’s bedsheets, I deduced from the pale blue covering that now disguised sofa #3’s threadbare expanse. Since the two sofas faced the largest of our four TVs, their positioning created a movie-theater effect that satisfied my inner actor on some levels, despite the sacrifice of a good three feet of living space. I plopped down in the front row, grabbed the remote from the marble-topped coffee table (all the French provincial castoffs were Aunt Eleanor’s) and clicked on the TV, my eyes roaming to the clock on the far wall. Seven o’clock. Kirk’s flight landed at 7:50 (I saw the ticket on his dresser—not that I was checking). No luggage (Kirk always carried on), so he’d head straight for Ground Transportation. Give him five minutes to land a cab. Twenty minutes to the Midtown Tunnel. Ten minutes through the tunnel (after all, it was Sunday night, there was bound to be traffic). Kirk lived six minutes from the tunnel (he actually timed it once). That would put him in front of his building at precisely 8:31 p.m. Two minutes up the stairs, twenty minutes settle-in time (Kirk couldn’t relax until his bag was unpacked and his toiletries safely tucked away in his medicine cabinet once more. I found it cute at first. Annoying later, when I was waiting to hear from him after one of his frequent weekends away.) That took us to 8:53. By nine o’clock he would be on the phone, proclaiming how much he had missed me.

      I only had to wait two hours for a reminder of why I had been in the relationship with Kirk for twenty months despite the fact that he hadn’t felt it necessary to bring me home with him. We loved each other, dammit. Had declared it so in month three. Reveled in it until month eight. Settled into things at the year mark. And now…now we sometimes took it (love, that is) and each other for granted. So what that he hadn’t asked me to come with him? It didn’t really mean anything in the face of all we had. Why, I bet if I just opened my mouth (because Grace always told me I was guilty of not communicating what I wanted) and told him how much it would mean to me to go home with him next time around, he’d happily invite me along. In fact, he might regret he hadn’t brought me along this time. He might even want to schedule a trip home within weeks just to make up for it!

      And so, with this soothing thought I settled in to watch a round of mindless TV, starting with a rerun of Friends, which seemed to be on six times a day now that it had gone into syndication. I studied Jennifer Aniston with renewed interest, imagining this cheerful blond goddess settling in at home with her golden-blond god, Brad. Surely there was something to Michelle’s tight-lid theory if this woman who had had trouble attracting the attention of David Schwimmer in her fictional life had landed Brad Pitt in reality.

      So much for my reality, I mused, quickly changing channels once Rachel et al’s coffee-shop existence was wrapped up with a rousing laugh track. One hour to go, I thought, with another glance at the clock. I spent it watching a news program on the deadly bacteria that resides in common household objects. And just as I was absorbing the fact that I had greater things to worry about than whether or not I will one day marry (like that I will certainly one day die), I realized it was just about nine and anticipation warmed me, reminding me that I was at the moment very, very much alive.

      I jumped off the couch and headed for my bedroom to throw on a pair of boxers and a tee. Might as well get comfortable, I thought, with a vision of myself curled up cozily with the phone while Kirk whispered how much he’d missed me. Admittedly, he wasn’t usually so demonstrative, but I had begun to look forward to a certain heightened display of intimacy whenever he returned from one of his business trips. Once I even lay in wait at his apartment, wearing a black lacy bra and thong. You can imagine what kind of amazing sex we had that night.

      With a glance at the clock, I realized it was 9:10 already—so where was my phone call? My hey-baby-missed-you-so-much-I-could-die speech? Maybe there were delays at the airport….

      I heard a key slide in the door. Or maybe he decided to drop by!

      “Hey,” came the sound of Justin’s voice in the hall. What was I thinking? Dropping by wasn’t the kind of thing Kirk did, after all. It wasn’t that he was unromantic, just…orderly.

      “Hey,” I said, joining Justin in the living room, where he was toeing off his sneakers and settling in on sofa #3. “Lauren get off the ground okay?” I asked, my face a mask of concern. The subtext of my question was: Any delays at the airport that I should know about?

      “Without a hitch,” he replied, his gaze falling on the dining room table with the two wineglasses. “God, I hated seeing her go.”

      My stomach plummeted at his forlorn expression, and I remembered suddenly what it was like to really miss someone. The look on Justin’s face was the kind every girl pines for.

      But it was only momentary, that look. For, suddenly, Justin glanced at the clock and snapped to attention. “Hey, mind if I put on the game? I just heard in the cab that the Yankees are up by three against the Red Sox.” He grabbed the remote.

      I had my answer. The Yankees were playing the Red Sox. Kirk was a Red Sox fan. Was it possible he got home and immediately flipped on the TV to catch the rest of the game?

      I glanced over at Justin as he pounded a fist in the air. “Yea!” he roared along with the crowd on TV.

      Oh, yeah. It was not only possible, it was probable.

      Despite the fact that I was annoyed at being beat out by baseball, I joined Justin on the couch, never mind that I was a Mets fan, mostly by birth rather than from any true allegiance to game watching. Yeah, I could sympathize. I had watched the subway series with great trepidation. But it wasn’t something I worked up a sweat about on a regular basis. Wasn’t something I ignored friends, families and people I allegedly loved for.

      The clock ticked on. Justin became more jubilant with every pitch. The Yankees were up by five now. By the time I did talk to Kirk, he wasn’t exactly going to be Mr. Happy. I thought about calling him during the game, but didn’t want him if his attention was going to be divided. I decided to wait until the seventh-inning stretch.

      When the seventh inning finally arrived and a Yankee win was all but secured, Justin decided this called for an all-out celebration. “I’m going down for beer and chicken wings. Want anything?”

      “No, no. I’m good,” I said, making my way casually over to my bedroom, where I hoped to make my long-awaited phone call with Kirk in privacy. I was so high-strung at this point, I feared I might do something I’d later regret—like yell.

      Kirk picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Noodles, I was just about to call you….”

      Ah, if I could only have waited thirty more seconds, I would have had the upper hand. Still, I was glad to hear his voice. I missed him. “The lure of baseball was too great, huh?” I joked.

      “You kidding? I couldn’t bear to watch that travesty once I saw the score. I shut it right off.”

      Oh, brother. Then, as if to answer my unasked question—What exactly have you been doing in the one hour and fifteen minutes you’ve been home and not calling me?—he said, “I’ve just been settling in, unpacking.”

      Uh-huh. “Did you have a good weekend?” I asked, trying to rise above it all.

      “Great,” he said, his voice perking up. Then he proceeded to tell me, in lavish detail, all about it. Playing touch football with his cousins in the legendary acre lot his parents lived on (legendary to me, who had never actually seen it); holding his sister