Starting From Square Two. Caren Lissner

complained, in her squeaky voice, that she wasn’t meeting anyone, but turned down every invitation Hallie and Erika made to go out, whether it was dancing at Polly Esther’s or rinsing trays at the University Community Soup Kitchen. She was “too tired,” or it was too cold out, or she was spending the weekend with her family. Hallie and Erika privately ragged on her, but at the same time, they loved it when she actually did come out with them, because her shrinking-violet existence made them feel good about their own lives. At least they’d had real relationships.

      One more thing about Cat was that she wasn’t willing to accept any degree of obnoxiousness in boys. If a guy even made a joke about sex, Cat looked intimidated, and she retreated. Gert was glad that Cat stuck by what she believed in, but Hallie and Erika said that Cat would be alone until she was sixty-five. Then she could meet a nice guy who had prostate cancer and just wanted to be her very good friend.

      Hallie got up and turned off the light so the women could watch the male canon movies they had rented: Monty Python’s Holy Grail, This Is Spinal Tap, and number eleven in the canon, Reservoir Dogs. Gert was hoping Hallie and Erika would like the movies, but the odds were against it. She’d never had a female friend who had the same sense of humor as she did, except for her high school friend Nancy, who lived in L.A. now.

      Even before the movie started, Gert’s prediction was proven right. Instead of paying attention to the opening scenes of Holy Grail, Erika was fussing over her throw pillows. Hallie was finishing with her nails. Cat had already gone into her room.

      Hallie got up and paused the DVD. “I forgot,” she said. “Before the movie starts, I have to tell you this. I thought of a great question for the two of you today.” She was wearing an orange long-sleeved T-shirt and gray sweatpants that Gert thought looked cute. Even though Erika was around making her nervous, Gert realized that at least this was just a no-pressure girls’ night. They didn’t have to worry about how they looked or how they dressed. Maybe it could be fun.

      “Not another of your profound probing questions,” Erika said to Hallie, flicking a piece of popcorn across the coffee table.

      “No, this is great,” Hallie said, prying and probing as usual. She crawled over to the table and waved her nails to dry them. “Let’s say a soothsayer told you that you would not meet the man of your dreams for eight more years.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “Let’s say that the soothsayer said that without a doubt, when you turned thirty-seven, you would finally meet someone, fall madly, madly in love with him, and live happily ever after. Would you still date people in the interim?”

      “No,” Gert said.

      “No,” Cat said, coming back into the room.

      “Probably not,” Erika said. “I wouldn’t bother.”

      “Interesting,” Hallie said. “So dating is just a means to an end for all of you. It’s not about fun or socializing or sex.”

      “I have enough fun,” Gert said.

      “I do enough socializing,” Erika said.

      “I…do enough socializing,” Cat said.

      “Most people won’t admit that,” Hallie said. “They won’t admit that dating is work. Maybe we should all decide we’re going to meet the man of our dreams when we’re thirty-seven. Then we’ll stop squeezing into tight shirts and walking around half-naked and analyzing every encounter as future husband material. We’ll stop feeling the need to put on makeup to take out the trash just in case he’s walking by. Maybe we should just assume that we’ll meet our dream man at some future point, and stop driving ourselves crazy before then.”

      “I already met the man of my dreams,” Erika said. “He’s married to a bitch.”

      “I already met mine,” Gert said. “And then he was gone.”

      The room was silent for a minute.

      Cat said, “Anyone for Ouija?”

      The movies ended up largely ignored for the night, as a half hour into the first one, something reminded Erika of Ben, and she said she just had to show Hallie and Gert what had happened on Challa’s Web site that day.

      Gert had sighed. Erika had the attention span of a Chihuahua.

      Standing in Hallie’s room by the big bed, they waited for the Web site to load. Hallie’s bedroom was mostly black, with a black comforter over the bed and black furniture. She still had the same purple telephone from college, Gert noticed, and she wondered if it still had the same sticky goo around the push-buttons.

      Across the computer screen flashed a page with a rich blue background and the words “Challa’s Corner.” A gliding pastiche of photos swirled across the screen, most of them of Challa, Ben and their baby. On the left was a list of links to things like the Weather Channel and Elle magazine.

      Gert had to admit to herself that it looked cheesy.

      And at the bottom of the screen was the bane of Erika’s existence: The Web log.

      Standing in front of Hallie’s computer, the three women read that day’s blog entry from Challa.

      Last night was cold out, and we stayed in and put the baby to sleep and made dinner. I cooked linguine and mussels, and Ben tossed a salad. It was soooo romantic!;) We polished off an entire bottle of red wine LOL!!!

      Gert suspected that deep inside, all of the women were thinking that mussels and wine sounded a lot better than soda and popcorn at 11:00 p.m. Gert almost felt her body ache, remembering the effort and passion that went into something as mundane as preparing dinner together.

      Erika returned to the home page and clicked a link that said, “Message board.” That was where Challa’s friends could leave comments like: “Hi, Chall!” “Hey, girl, love the new pix!” “Thanks for helping me waste time at work.”

      But recently Erika had started to leave messages, too.

      She’d used all seven of her America Online screen names to create aliases to post things. Some were meant to annoy Challa, and some were just meant to confuse her. She told Hallie and Gert that Challa deserved it. Why did Challa have to shove everyone else’s face in her and Ben’s bliss all the time? Erika said that if she herself were married to someone as passionate and artistic as Ben, there was no way she would waste her free time writing blog entries about it.

      The three of them read what Erika had posted on the message board that morning.

      “You are banal,” Erika had written under the screen name Mr. HushPuppy. (She chose screen names completely at random, based on whatever she happened to see from the Internet café while she was typing. That day, someone had walked by in Hush Puppies.)

      “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Erika had responded to herself, this time using the name LadyAndTheTrump. “She started a whole Web site dedicated to herself. Sweetie, you don’t need TOO much attention, do you?”

      “Challa’s a ho and a slut,” Mr. HushPuppy wrote.

      “Ho, ho, ho, Merrrryyyyy Chall-mas,” wrote “JenDurr.”

      “It wouldn’t surprise me if Challa did name a holiday after herself,” Mr. HushPuppy wrote. “Too much attention isn’t enough for this girl. She should be lucky for what she has, not clog everyone else’s cyberspace with her binary spittle.”

      “You’re a sick girl, Erika Dennison,” Hallie said, laughing.

      What really got a rise out of Erika and Hallie that evening was that Challa, who previously had been ignoring the posts, was now getting into fights with the “writers.”

      “Can’t you at least say something meaningful between your insults?” Challa had written back to Mr. HushPuppy. “If you hate me so much, then please don’t read this board. I didn’t invite you. At least LadyAndTheTrump sometimes has something meaningful to say.”

      “Ah,”