The Idea of Him. Holly Peterson

aggressive toward this Jackie woman.

      “Allie.” Caitlin popped her blond head into my office. “Selena asked me to tell you that Murray wants you in there in ten minutes.” I glanced at the clock in the corner of my screen. How had it become 9:25 so quickly? Now I’d never get any pages polished before class. “Are you okay? Why are your eyes red?”

      “Nothing. I’m getting a cold.”

      “You sure? You need to talk?” she asked softly.

      “There’s no news. I left early this morning.”

      “Was he out again?” she asked, fuming.

      “Yes, gambling I guess, or entertaining.”

      Caitlin snorted. “Like there’s a difference?” She put her hands on her hips. “And you still haven’t filled me in on the laundry room episode last week. Why was he hidden away in the middle of his own friggin’ party when he’s usually the guy holding court?”

      “It’s too long a story, Caitlin.”

      She walked to my desk and splayed her arms out on the other side of it, with her chin resting on my computer screen. “One thing you have to tell me. What exactly is going on or not going on with you two? You and Wade look like robots together every time I see you. Believe me, I study you guys. I keep telling you that.”

      I put my head in my hands. “I love what I loved about him from day one: his irreverence, his magic touch with kids, but I just feel out of sorts with him right now. It’s weird, like I’m questioning some things … it’s nothing. We’ll be fine.”

      “Questioning what? Your love for him?”

      “No, but you know Wade isn’t easy to be married to; he’s so all over the place all the time. The flip side of that is I love how exciting he is, but suddenly I’m thinking about things I’d shut out before.”

      “Like what?”

      I straightened up my back. Caitlin always pushed so hard on everything, there was no use resisting. “Like way back when, even on our wedding day, maybe, perhaps, I may have seen some things I didn’t really digest.”

      “What the hell? What did you see back then?”

      “His hand on my bridesmaid’s rear end for starters.” I laughed slightly; somehow it seemed ridiculous in that instant of lucidity. Every few days during that spring I felt something click, like those lenses eye doctors roll down over eyes to test and then sharpen the patient’s vision. With each slow click, everything comes into focus a notch better.

      “No!” Caitlin walked over to my desk and crossed her arms. “Really? Back then? You never told me that.”

      “Well, I was putting on my veil in an anteroom and I saw him ushering Kathy Vincent down the hall and his hand was practically on her butt and I just thought, ‘Oh, gee.’ But then I just plowed forward into unholy matrimony. I couldn’t begin to process that.”

      “And you think the girl from the party and he are … and you should be suspicious always after the cheating with the photo assistant during the breast-feeding moment?” Hard to fool Caitlin, not that the dots would be that difficult to connect for a sixth grader. Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to.

      “Well, kind of like maybe I’ve been in a blur with work and kids and now he’s just distracted and not that focused on me and …” Click.

      “Listen, Allie, when you marry an ego like Wade, there’s a limit to the intimacy you are going to feel. You weren’t overlooking that one. It’s all about him. You had to know that going in.”

      “It’s like I don’t rock his world the way I used to.”

      “Does he rock yours?” Caitlin sounded weirdly like she hoped he didn’t.

      This was the seminal question of the day I wasn’t ready for. It literally stung. I felt an acidic chemical shoot up my body, tighten my heart, and give me an instant headache. Caitlin laid it all on the line right then and there in a way I’d never really let myself fully consider.

       How and when did he rock my world?

      What did this guy actually give to me? For a horrible, terrifying, very honest moment, I thought to myself: Was I just wanting and needing to rock his so much I don’t even know the answer?

      “Caitlin, I don’t know about rocking my world. Of course he has or did or does at times,” I blurted out to convince both her and myself. “I’m so distracted by catering to his man-baby needs and getting the kids fed while I’m handling every Murray explosion to be able to answer that honestly right this second.”

      “He’s fucking around again, isn’t he?” she asked. “I will literally chop off his dick if he is.”

      “Jesus, Caitlin! You didn’t listen to what I just said!”

      “I certainly did, but I’m not so sure that you did. How can you say one day you love his magic touch and the next that it’s so hard to be with someone like him?” She perched on the desk’s edge and looked straight at me. “Are you fucking around?”

      “Don’t be crazy,” I answered, rubbing the pain out of my forehead and wishing she would leave.

      “There is definitely something that you’re hiding from me.” She looked at me long and hard. “You have to tell me. I live for this stuff, you know that. There’s none in my life, God knows.”

      I smiled at her. “It’ll happen soon for you when you’re not expecting it, Caitlin. He’ll just pop out of nowhere.”

      “Wouldn’t know it if it happened, haven’t had a guy even look at me in a year,” she said.

      “What are you talking about? Guys like you; you just don’t see it.”

      “No, Allie. You don’t get it: guys don’t like me. I’m the fun best friend, not the one they want to take home.”

      “Well, then we’ll work on it.” I glanced at her bulky shoes and thick, muscly thighs peeking through her skirt. “We’ll soften your look a little or something. I promise he’s just around the corner. Let me just deal with the monster down the hall first.”

      I grabbed a pen and paper and quickstepped down the short hall to Murray’s corner office.

      SELENA, A CURVACEOUS Colombian woman, and one of the only beings on the planet who didn’t fear Murray Hillsinger, nodded me in with a roll of her big eyes and a pursing of her huge shiny lips lined in dark pencil. My boss was clearly not in a good mood. All I needed.

      “I don’t give a shit who he thinks he is,” Murray roared into his phone as I entered. He waved me to the straight-backed chair next to the black leather couch where he tended to hold court. I crossed and recrossed my legs while his tirade continued. His yellow tie dotted with little purple crowns didn’t quite cover his belly, which protruded in a horizontal glob over his belt. “You gotta say what I tell you to say publicly or you’re screwed. Plain and simple. I hate to state the obvious, but the cover-up is always worse than the crime, buddy. Just admit your mistake and move on. Otherwise you’re toast. Trust me, that’s what you’re paying me for. I’ll get a good reporter to take your mea culpa. Someone important. I know: I’ll get Delsie Arceneaux to do it for you. Sound good? She’ll be gentle.”

      Arrayed on the coffee table was Bouley Bakery’s freshest assortment of chocolate croissants and buttery Danish and muffins, delivered daily the minute Murray arrived. As he listened to the diminished soul on the other end of the line, he gestured toward the coffeepot for me to pour him a refill. I felt like a stewardess.

      Murray suddenly threw the phone down the length of the couch, grabbed a giant blueberry crumb muffin, tore off the top, and bit a large section from it, spraying balls of sugar everywhere in the process. “I’m so happy Delsie is ready to emcee the Fulton Film Festival media lunch, and some panels. It’s