Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone
Chapter Eight
“Hey, Eliot.”
“Hi! You busy?”
“Nah. Just parking my bike real quick.”
“Oh, are you out somewhere?”
“No. I’m just getting back. I was visiting my dad.”
“You sound . . . sad.”
“. . . Seeing him can be really hard.”
“Why? I thought you guys had an easy relationship.”
“We do. I mean, he’s pretty much my best friend. He’s . . . the best. Like a grizzly bear. Except for with me and my brother. For us he’s a total puppy. It’s always sad to leave.”
“Does he live in the city?”
“Yeah. Up in Queens. He’s . . . sick. So he’s living in a care facility. I’m taking care of things at home for him and going to see him as much as I can.”
“Wow. God. That must be really hard. Is he—Does he—Will he—”
“Ever get better? No. It’s terminal. He’s not in a hospice facility yet. And I wanted to get an in-home nurse for him. But he sort of, um, works from home, and he didn’t want his . . . clients . . . to see him failing in health. So he’s up in Queens at an adult care facility right now.”
“Oh, JD. God. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you . . . okay? I mean, that’s probably a really dumb question to ask.”
“No, it’s nice, actually. No one really asks me that.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. No. Sometimes.”
“Oh, JD.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I’m all right. Goofing around with you has been really nice. I should probably be focusing on other stuff. But, you’re a really good distraction, Hoffman. It’s been a while since I had fun.”
“I am extremely glad to be of service. Like, over the moon, JD. Seriously. If fun is what you need right now, I will provide. I can think of like a hundred different things we—”
“Don’t hurt yourself, Hoffman.”
“Right, right. I’m going overboard, huh?”
“A tad.”
“Okay. Got it. Be cool, Eliot. Be cool. Um, okay. New topic. What did you do today?”
“I worked.”
“What’s your work again?”
“You think you’re soooooo slick, don’t you?”
“Dang, thought I could sneak that one past you.”
“I will not be telling you my job.”
“Because your job is a dead giveaway?”
“Because my job is a dead giveaway.”
“Interesting. Interesting. I’m filing away this information for future use. Hey. I’ve been thinking.”
“Sounds risky.”
“Do you want to meet my sister?”
“I . . . what?”
“Or talk to her on the phone? Or email with her or something?”
“I mean, she sounds cool from how you’ve described her, but . . . what are we talking about right now?”
“Or what about one of my clients? You could have their numbers. Or one of my buddies?”
“Eliot—”
“Or one of my neighbors? One of them is really chatty, but she would love to talk to you. Like it would make her year. She’d probably never let me forget it. But that’d be worth it, in the end, if it reassured you.”
“Eliot—”
“Or my mom? I mean, obviously she’s not very impartial but—”
“Eliot!”
“Yeah?”
“What are you talking about? Why do you want to introduce me to these people?”
“For character references.”
“Why would I need character references?”
“Because you don’t really know me. And you’re obviously worried about getting to know me better. Probably because I’m mostly a stranger to you and men are generally terrible. But I thought that if you picked someone who knows me a little and asked them about me then you might have some reassurance that I’m not an axe murderer or a fuckboy or anything like that.”
“. . .”
“JD? You still there?”
“First off, I really love that you put axe murderer and fuckboy in the same category. Very astute.”
“Just trying to, as the kids say, keep it real.”
“Wow.”
“Are the kids not saying that anymore?”
“Anyway . . . Secondly, I’m not scared of you, Eliot.”
“Well, that’s good. And you aren’t, like, wary or suspicious of me, either?”
“No. I’m really not.”
“Then . . . can I ask . . .”
“Yes. You can ask. Whatever it is.”
“Are you hesitant to let me know who you are because you know me too well?”
“Huh?”
“Like maybe you already know that you don’t want to meet in person because of the way I am? I mean, I know I’m a good person. But I definitely have some attributes that could be really, ah, frustrating to someone.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I can be completely scatterbrained and thus make huge, messy mistakes.”
“Really? Because it seems to me like you really have your shit together.”
“Ha. Thanks. So then you definitely don’t know me from before five or six years ago. Because back then, I was a total train wreck.”
“I find that really hard to believe, Hoffman.”
“I used to be really . . . disorganized.”
“Well, you must have really gotten your act together because you come off as, like, the most organized person I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Really? No way.”
“Let’s do a quick quiz to prove my point, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What do you wear to meet with clients?”
“A suit, mostly.”
“Anything in the front pocket?”
“You’re trying to get me to admit to wearing a pocket square, aren’t you?”
“If the penny loafer fits . . . Okay, how about on your coffee tables? What do you put under your drinks?”
“A coaster, obviously.”
“How many coasters would you say you have in your house?”
“I don’t want to say.”
“Because the answer is incriminating?”
“Oh, fine. I have at least ten coasters that I can currently count from where I’m sitting.”
“How about remote controls? Are they strewn around the room? Resting in a designated basket . . .?”
“Mmmmrrhphhprmrhr.”
“What was that you’re mumbling?”
“I said that I keep my remote controls arranged by size.”
“Ha! See! I rest my case. You’re a deeply organized person!”
“This is all because I’ve learned how to manage myself. After the fourth coffee table I ruined with drink rings, I realized that coasters were less expensive than new coffee tables. I dress up for business meetings because . . . well, it’s like stage makeup, I guess. And it’s ritualistic. I know that I need to be focused and aware and on my game when I’m doing work-related stuff, so I dress up in the whole nine. All the way down to the pocket square.”
“Wow. Sounds like you make a lot of rules for yourself.”
“I have to. Or else everything goes down the shitter.”
“So, you’ve been living this lifestyle for five or six years?”
“Yup.”
“What changed six years ago?”
“I . . . had something really embarrassing happen and realized that I needed to change things up.”
“Oh, come on, Hoffman. You can’t just leave a gem like that in the middle of the trail and expect me not to pick it up.”
“What?”
“You had ‘something really embarrassing happen’. You obviously have to tell me what it was.”
“I . . . ugh.”
“Well, why did you mention it, then!”
“No, no. I can tell you. I just need to adjust to the fact that you’re going to fully see me as a cut-up from here on out.”
“Hoffman, please refer once again to the number of pocket squares currently in your possession. You’re clearly not a cut-up. You graduated college. You’re good at your job. You keep in touch with your friends and family. I bet you jog, right? You strike me as a jogger.”
“And once again, I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me or not.”
“Just like God intended. But for real though, if you don’t actually want to tell me, you don’t have to.”
“No, we can talk about it. I trust you. You’re pretty much the least judgmental person I know, so . . . Well, I was well out of college at that point, working as a designer at this web company, living in Manhattan, basically fooling everyone in my life into thinking I totally had everything together. But, really, I was up to my ears in credit card debt and getting by at work through sheer talent, not hard work. I was stressed all the time. Lonely. When I met a new friend or a girl I was clicking with, it would only be a matter of weeks or months before I totally flaked on them and lost touch. But things really fell apart at my college friend’s bachelor party in Vegas.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t . . . kill a stripper, did you?”
“What? Oh, my God! No. JD, if you would stay on the line with someone who would casually drop into conversation that they once murdered someone at a bachelor party then you really need to rethink your priorities.”
“Point taken. So, what happened?”
“Well, his bachelor party included all of our friends from college, so there were both girls and guys there. And I had this one friend, Audrey, who I’d always had a crush on. And about a month and a half before the party, we started dating.”
“Oh.”
“Vegas was like the first official couple thing we did, and we were gonna tell all our friends we were dating. But . . . our first night there, we got really drunk and woke up the next morning with a marriage certificate on the nightstand.”
“What?!”
“Yup. We got married. Like total idiots.”
“Wow. I kinda thought that happened only in movies?”
“It happens in movies and to my dumb ass. Almost immediately our friends found out. Audrey and I were both mortified. I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if my parents and my sister found out that I got married to someone I’d just started dating without them even being there. I mean, it’s not like I want a white wedding or something, but if I were to ever do that for real, I’d at least want my family to be there.”
“What happened with Audrey?”
“We got it annulled right away. But the whole thing was a complete headache and . . . getting a marriage annulled while you’re trying to start a relationship with someone doesn’t . . . work. It’s like, part of the mystique of dating someone at the beginning is trying to see whether or not you have a future together. And by annulling the marriage, we were pretty much saying that no, we definitely didn’t have a future together. It was like we were trying to start and end something at the same time. We didn’t last more than a couple weeks post-Vegas.”
“You . . . were really torn up about it?”
“I was really torn up about the fact that our friendship didn’t survive. She didn’t really want to talk to me any more after that, and honestly, I can’t blame her. She was one of my closest friends for a long time and then everything just got so messy and now we’re not even friends on Facebook. And I was torn up about how much the whole thing would have hurt my family if they’d ever found out.”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“No. I was too ashamed and raw over it. I just avoided the subject. Though I’m pretty sure they knew something was up. I’m a terrible liar.”
“That must have been really hard.”
“It was humiliating. And I was so angry at myself. The day my lawyer notified me that the marriage had been officially annulled I was sitting in my crappy little apartment I could barely afford and I looked around and all I could see were the dishes in the sink and the crumpled-up clothes on the floor. I just thought, Eliot, it’s now or literally never. You know? Things had to change immediately or else I knew I was going to be having that same rock-bottom feeling again in a couple months or a couple years and I never wanted to feel like that again.”
“So, you started organizing your life?”
“Yeah. I got a therapist and she kind of saved my life. She helped me figure out how to make my life work. Everything in its right place. So, now, here I am. Eliot 2.0.”
“I like Eliot 2.0. A lot.”
“Thanks. I do, too.”
“But, to be honest, I probably would have been way more into Eliot 1.0.”
“Hahaha. What?! How could you say that? You’re ice-cold, JD.”
“No! No offense intended at all.”
“How could that not be offensive?”
“I wasn’t trying to insult the person you are right now, I was trying to explain a fault of my own.”
“Which is . . .”
“I’m pathologically attracted to men who don’t have their shit together at all.”
“Ah.”
“Like, if ‘accidentally got married in Vegas’ was on some dude’s dating profile, I’d be like, ooh, I’m intrigued.”
“Oh, no. JD. Standards. You gotta have ’em.”
“I’m learning that the hard way unfortunately.”
“By dating a bunch of losers?”
“I hate to admit that I have to assign you ten points for accuracy.”
“You use dating websites?”
“No, I don’t actually. I don’t have anything against them, but I prefer to meet dudes the old-fashioned way.”
“Bars?”
“Monster truck rallies.”
“Hahahahaa. Wait, for real?”
“I guess you’ll never know.”
“Gosh, I hope it’s true. That’s way cooler than how I meet women.”
“Bars?”
“Yeah and online.”
“Which works better?”
“Well, I’m not married or in a relationship so I’d say they are both equally shitty.”
“Is . . . that your goal? To be married or in a relationship?”
“I mean, I’d rather be single than be in a bad marriage or relationship. But yeah. I’m thirty-six. I’d like to meet someone. Have a partner. Have a family.”
“That’s very . . .”
“That’s very what?”
“I don’t know. It’s very something.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Oh . . . good thing.”
“What about you? You’re not looking for anything serious?”
“I’m in kind of a strange situation. It’s not really conducive to being in a relationship.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve got my dad, who I’m kind of taking care of. And then I’ve got my brother, who I’m also always kind of perpetually taking care of. So, the idea of adding a boyfriend to that, yeah, I’m at capacity for people I have to take care of.”
“When you think ‘boyfriend,’ you automatically think of someone you have to take care of?”
“I—I guess I do?”
“Good boyfriends help take care of you right back, you know.”
“Do those men actually exist?”
“Definitively, yes. They do.”
“Based on personal experience, I’m not convinced they do. Everyone I’ve ever dated either couldn’t care less if I’m around or they need me to hold their hand through every moment of their lives. There is no in between.”
“I mean, sure, men are the worst. No doubt. But not all of us are like that! And why would you date someone who couldn’t care less if you were around?”
“I was young. And, I don’t know, grateful to be involved with anybody.”
“Grateful to be involved with someone who didn’t care about you?”
“Let’s just say that I didn’t have a ton of interested parties in line when I was growing up.”
“Awkward phase?”
“Took me a long time to grow into my nose. And find my style. And just generally figure out who I was.”
“So then, once you did, you started meeting guys who were too dependent on you?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of funny. Once I realized how badass I am, guys started being really interested in me. I guess you could say that I’m . . . someone who gets shit done? It’s hard to explain. If there’s something that needs to happen, I do it. For instance, when I got home yesterday, the light in my fridge was out. So, I turned back around, went to the hardware store, bought a new one, and installed it. If it’s dinnertime, I make dinner. If it’s time to change the sheets, I change them. And somehow that has translated into me being extremely attractive to men who don’t know how to make dinner or change the sheets.”
“Or who are willing to live with a dark fridge because that’s easier than changing the light bulb.”
“Bingo.”
“Which is why you say you don’t have enough time to date. Because you’ll end up holding some grown man’s hand so he doesn’t get hit by a car while he crosses the street.”
“Bingo again. Ten points.”
“Oy. That’s bleak. You know, it’s kind of funny that this is the first time we’re really talking about dating preferences.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . never mind.”
“No, really, why is it funny?”
“I guess just because we’ve talked about pretty much everything else.”
“Not . . . everything, Eliot.”
“. . . Right. Do you think we’ll get there, JD?”
“I hope so. I really do.”