LITMIR.BIZ

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go outside a minute. So I can smoke a butt.”

      I sighed. Clearly I was at Michelle’s mercy now, I thought, feeling even more guilty as we got on the elevator and headed down eleven floors and outside into the cloying summer heat.

      The moment we stepped onto the concrete out in front of the building, Michelle had already lit up a Virginia Slims and was puffing steadily. “Want one?” she asked, holding out the pack with one well-manicured hand.

      “All right,” I said, taking a cigarette though I had given up the habit, for the most part, shortly after my father died from cancer four years ago. Some things, however, still required nicotine.

      After she had lit me up and I had taken one heady drag, Michelle started in. “Getting married is a game. You want to do it, you gotta play the fucking game.”

      “Game?” I said, grimacing at the all-too-frequent swear-words that flew out of Michelle’s mouth, especially when she was on her favorite subject: men.

      “You know, getting the lid loose. It doesn’t happen overnight—”

      “This tight-lid theory is bullshit,” I said, taking another acrid puff of the cigarette before I dropped it to the ground.

      “Bullshit? I’ll give you bullshit. You remember who Frankie was dating before I hooked up with him, don’t you?”

      “Yeah, yeah. Rosanna Cuzio. But that was high school. No one marries their high school sweetheart anymore—”

      “But Rosanna Cuzio was the prom queen. The fucking prom queen, Angie. She and Frankie went out for four fucking years. Then, just about the time she’s picking out china patterns, he dumps her. Dumps her!” Her eyebrows shot up and she took another drag of her cigarette. “So a few months later, Frankie and I start going out. Within two years, whammo,” she said, holding up her left hand, which was covered in gold rings, one of which sported a one-and-a-half carat emerald-cut.

      I have to say, the sight of that ring was about to convert me once more. Until I remembered Susan, Kirk’s ex. No, she wasn’t the prom queen, but with a degree in engineering from MIT, she was a pretty strong contender for a lid-loosener of the very best kind. “Kirk’s last girlfriend gave him the old ultimatum. But I don’t see him shopping for rings with me anytime soon. He didn’t even invite me to meet his parents, for chrissakes. Does that indicate a man who is about to pop the question?”

      Michelle shook her head, blowing out another blast of smoke. “You’re not fucking getting it,” she said. “The lid is loose, but it’s not off. You have to apply a little pressure. You have to play the game. In fact, it’s really only a matter of three steps.”

      “Steps?”

      “Yeah, to get him to pop the fucking question. The first one is deprivation.”

      I didn’t like the sound of that. “And what, exactly, does that entail?”

      “Just don’t be so available. When he calls up to make plans, tell him you’re busy.”

      Maybe that was what I was doing wrong, I thought, remembering the look of pure longing I’d seen in Justin’s eyes at the thought of Lauren coming home after three months. Hmm…

      “And whatever you do, do not have sex with him.”

      “What?” This particular step would be a lot harder on me. After all, sex was one of the best things in Kirk’s and my relationship.

      “I know it sounds crazy, but all that shit about getting the milk for free is true,” she said, blowing out a last puff of smoke and crushing the butt beneath one three-inch heel.

      “I don’t know, Michelle, it sounds kind of…manipulative.” I wanted a proposal that was genuine—that came from Kirk and Kirk alone. “That’s just not me,” I continued. “I’m not a game player.”

      “Okay,” she said, waving that weighty engagement ring in the air as she pulled open the door and headed inside once more. “But, remember, you got to be in it to win it.”

      3

      Welcome to Brooklyn. Population: Married

      “I don’t like that, Angela,” my mother said, standing over a sizzling pan of eggplant on the stove. It was Sunday, and after an utterly uneventful weekend spent mostly alone (Justin and Lauren had disappeared to the Hamptons on Saturday, thank God, to celebrate their happy reunion), I had gone to my mother’s house early, ostensibly to help her cook, and was now being subjected to the third degree while chopping garlic. It was my own fault, really, for admitting that Kirk had gone home to see his parents. And for saying it with a less-than-cheerful expression.

      “How many times has he been here?” Ma said now, flipping the eggplants with barely contained indignation. “It’s not right.”

      For once I had to agree with her. She was from the old school, where a man treated a woman with the utmost deference. My father was one of those men. It seemed when I was growing up, there was never a moment when he didn’t put my mother’s concerns above his own. Even up until the moment he died, as he lay on his sickbed, where my mother had permanently stationed herself, he begged her to go to sleep, knowing he would be up and in pain for the rest of the night. Of course, my mother didn’t dare close her eyes during those last few days. In fact, she still blames herself for succumbing to exhaustion the night he passed away. “I closed my eyes for one minute, and he was gone!” she laments, as if the fact that she couldn’t stay awake had ultimately done him in. Even four years later, she still wore mourning clothes, and judging from the way her knit skirt was starting to fray around the edges, they were the same ones she’d bought in her first year as a widow.

      “Ma, how come you never wear the dress I bought you?” I said now, hoping to get her off the subject of Kirk. “What did you do, throw it out?”

      “I have it. It’s in the closet.”

      I bet it was. Along with sheet sets she had gotten on sale and never used and the tablecloths from Italy she was saving for a “special occasion” that never seemed to come. Hence the one flaw in the Old World ways: You never enjoyed anything while it was fresh and new. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” I said.

      “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself,” she said, starting to pull the eggplants out of the pan and placing them on a plate.

      “Who’s worried about Angela?” Nonnie said, coming through the kitchen door from her apartment downstairs.

      “Hey, Nonnie,” I said, jumping up to enfold her in my arms. I breathed in her flowery scent and leaned back to gaze at her soft, smiling features with relief. Cheerfully attired in a bright red blouse and a pair of polyester capris—like most of her peers in the eighty and over set, she couldn’t resist synthetic fabrics—my grandmother was a breath of fresh air in the gloom that permeated my mother whenever she thought one of her children was in danger of unhappiness. Since I was the one who usually fell into that category, I had come to rely on Nonnie to keep things on an even keel.

      “You gonna cook in that?” my mother said, turning from the sauce she stirred momentarily to take in my grandmother’s festive outfit and made-up face.

      “I sure am,” Nonnie said, then defiantly grabbed a bowl of chopped meat off the counter. After dumping in the garlic I had just finished dicing along with breadcrumbs and myriad other ingredients so secret she claimed she was taking their names to her grave, Nonnie reached into the bowl of red meat and spices and, rings and all, began to mix the ingredients by hand.

      “So what’s your mother worried about now?” Nonnie asked, addressing me as if Ma weren’t standing two feet behind her at the stove.

      “Oh, you know. The usual. Me and Kirk.”

      “Hey, that’s right,” my grandmother said, as if it just occurred to her I was without my other half. “Where is the Skinny Guinea?” she asked, using her nickname for Kirk. It

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