Starting From Square Two. Caren Lissner

Southern,” Todd said. “I’m a conductor on a train, and we get twelve hours on and twelve hours off….”

      “Those are freight trains, right?”

      “Yeah, and you have a couple of guys on each run, one driving and one making sure everything’s okay. It’s too dangerous to be drinking off-duty, because they could call you all of a sudden to come in. So they don’t let you drink at all, ever.”

      “That’s too bad,” Gert said. “I mean, if you think it is.”

      “Nah.” Todd shrugged. “I did enough of that in college. It’s okay.”

      “So, Brian, how long have you been a stockbroker?” Erika asked.

      “Since college,” Brian said. He looked at his watch and nudged Todd. “I think we’d better get going.”

      “Yeah, we’re meeting friends,” Todd said. “It was nice to meet you, though.”

      Gert didn’t know if he meant all of them.

      “So…” Todd said “…if you have a number, I mean, would you mind if maybe I gave you a call sometime?”

      Gert thought about it. There couldn’t be much harm. Besides, the practice would do her good. She searched in her purse for something to write on—it had been a while since she’d done this—and finally came up with an inky business card. She scribbled her home number on the back.

      Hallie and Erika looked on, concerned.

      Then, the men were gone.

      “The only person to even talk to a normal guy was Gert,” Erika whined in the subway in the wee hours.

      “Neither of you would have even talked to Todd,” Gert said. “You didn’t like that he’s a train conductor.”

      “Well, I did like Brian,” Erika said.

      “Based on what?”

      “I don’t know. He was cute. So thanks for not helping. You were like, ‘I’m taking Todd and that’s it.’”

      Gert sighed. “I wasn’t taking him. He just seemed like a nice guy, so I talked to him.”

      “Why didn’t Brian like me?” Erika wailed.

      “Maybe Todd only wanted my number so he could call me to get yours,” Gert said.

      “Well, if he calls, don’t give it to him,” Erika said. “They were short.”

      Now Gert knew the truth: Hallie and Erika were single because they were crazy.

      “How did you know to mention his favorite movie?” Hallie asked.

      “Oh,” Gert said. “There’s a canon where guys are concerned. Marc was always quoting lines from that movie. If you quote certain things, you can slide right into their conversation.”

      “What kinds of things?”

      “Do you really want to know?”

      “We’ve got nothing to lose.”

      The canon for guys in their twenties and thirties

      1 The Simpsons

      2 This is Spinal Tap

      3 Star Wars

      4 Monty Python

      5 Star Trek

      6 The Princess Bride

      7 The Untouchables

      8 The Hobbit

      9 The Matrix

      10 Office Space

      “Excuse me,” Erika said. “Don’t you mean, ‘The canon for nerds’?”

      “No. There are cool guys who like those things.”

      “Hey,” Hallie said. “Maybe we should get together at my place this weekend and rent these flicks.”

      So they put it on their schedule.

      When Gert got home, she was exhausted. Her bed felt soft and wonderful.

      She’d spent the last five hours trying to put something out of her mind that she hadn’t really wanted to put out of her mind. She’d been in an environment where everyone was supposed to appear carefree and happy, but her feelings had veered between torture and just getting a mild drubbing. Even if the bar scene hadn’t been as horrible as Hallie and Erika made it sound, there was a real harshness to it. It was unsettling. It wasn’t at all like what she would have done that night if Marc had been there.

      If he had been there, they probably would have gone out to dinner, and then taken a walk through Manhattan. Or maybe they would have snuggled on the couch and watched a movie. Even cleaning the house with him would have been better than going to the bar. Playing a rousing round of that silly plastic foosball game he’d insisted on keeping in the living room would have been better. It was too hard to fall in love with someone, learn all of their quirks and passions, assume you’d spend the rest of your life with them, and then suddenly have them snatched away forever.

      Slowly, in bed, Gert spread out her bare arms. Sleeping barearmed, feeling the sheets against her skin, was the closest she got to a caress these days.

      She knew she had to stop thinking about what she could have done if Marc had been there. This was the new reality. He never would be.

      But did she have it in her to start fighting her way through leather-jacketed and miniskirted crowds in search of a second miracle?

      It didn’t seem worth it.

      Erika brought two bowls overflowing with popcorn into Hallie’s living room. It was Friday night. The room had one wide window that was being pelted by the rain. Hallie popped the tops of three Diet Coke cans and a no-frills carbonated fruit punch and let them fizz on the coffee table.

      Gert and Erika, sitting on the couch, reached for the diet sodas.

      They left one for Hallie’s often-absentee roommate, Cat, who was rumored to be making a rare appearance within the hour. Although with meek Cat, who spent weekends with her family on Long Island, it was always hard to be sure.

      Why, Gert thought, does it seem wrong for us to be having a slumber party for twenty-nine-year-olds?

      Because this is not what you expected. You don’t have a sleepover party with your twenty-nine-year-old girlfriends. You and your husband have kids, and THEY have sleepovers, and the two of you stand in the doorway beaming, pleased to see the kids so excited, remembering what it was like back then—and thrilled to have your own best friend to sleep with.

      “You know what would be great?” Hallie asked, lying on her stomach on the floor and painting her nails. “If the rain turned to snow, and it piled up, and we were stuck here for three days.”

      Erika, on the couch, pulled a blanket around herself and shivered visibly. The rain snapped more loudly at the windows. “What would we do?”

      “We’d hole up right in this room in our sweatpants and play truth-or-dare and confess our deepest secrets to each other,” Hallie said, “and order heaping bowls of pad Thai and drink cheap wine.”

      “I want a guy to do those things with,” Erika whined.

      “Well, you ain’t got one, so shut up.”

      “I’m twenty-nine,” Erika said. “It isn’t even healthy to be boyfriendless this long. My body needs to be physically touched by a member of the opposite sex.”

      “Get a root canal.”

      Gert gazed over the blankets neatly laid out on the floor, and at the popcorn on the table, and really did feel like a kid at a sleepover. She wondered if later Erika would break out the Ouija board, hoping to channel Elvis, and after that the three of them would try to levitate themselves, chanting, “Light