Love And Miss Communication Part 24

"Has she?" Edward asked, and Evie saw his shoulders creep up in tension again. She shook her head no but wasn't sure either man noticed. Her voice box had quit on her.

Jack smiled innocently. "Well, I suppose we still have some details to iron out. But with her new business, I don't see why this wouldn't be a great opportunity."

Evie leaned over her plate, hoping to disappear in the cloud of steam that was heading to the ceiling. No such luck.

"Well, let me allow you two to enjoy your meal in peace," Jack said. "I have to drop by a lot of the tables tonight." He gestured toward the restaurant, where every seat was occupied.

"Yes, and we've got a party to get to," Evie said, desperate to keep pace with Jack.

"We do?" Edward asked, his look of annoyance surpa.s.sing his surprise.

"Yes, didn't I mention it?" Evie said innocently. "Anyway, good-bye, Jack."

"Happy new year, Evie," he said, and brushed a light peck on her cheek. Extending his hand to Edward once again, he said, "Don't let her get away."

Like you did? Evie was more than baffled.

"What was that about a party, Evie?" Edward asked when Jack was out of earshot.

"Oh, I was just trying to hurry him along," Evie said, hoping to be convincing. She noticed Edward didn't even ask her about redesigning JAK, or her so-called new business.

After Jack left their table, Evie and Edward's dinner conversation wasn't entirely mangled, but it lacked the natural quality it typically possessed. She answered too many of his statements with "uh-huh" and he barely showed his dimple. She tried not to worry too much about it. Outside of JAK, on neutral territory, she and Edward would return to their old ways.

For the next hour, while Evie and Edward worked their way through their main course and decadent servings of tiramisu and mille-feuille, Jack milled about the restaurant, shaking hands, lighting flambes, and toasting with patrons. Evie heard the people at the next table comment that it was already 11:00 P.M. She wondered if and when Zeynup was going to appear. Where was she right now? Downing champagne with a gaggle of glamorous foreigners downtown? Would she be here to kiss Jack at midnight while the onlookers cheered? Evie would have liked to see this woman in the flesh. Sensing Jack was keeping an eye on her, Evie tousled her hair, sensuously brought her winegla.s.s to her lips repeatedly, and throatily laughed until her neck hurt. She even uncharacteristically spooned her dessert into Edward's mouth when she noticed Jack at the adjacent table. Edward didn't seem to know what to make of Evie's affections, and appeared to alternate between confusion, flattery, and concern.

"I think we should get going," Edward said when their dessert plates were cleared. She hadn't noticed that he'd already paid the check. He gathered their coats and ushered Evie onto the street before she had a chance to protest their departure or spot Jack one last time.

Outside, the blast of cold air hit her face like a speeding truck. The streetlights looked like dripping paint, and she clutched Edward's arm for support. The wine had gotten the best of her. By the time they made it into a taxi, she was slurring something about d.i.c.k Clark and his b.a.l.l.s dropping.

With her forehead propped against her apartment door, Evie struggled to fit her key into the lock. Edward pried it from her determined fingers and easily opened the door. Evie truly didn't know what would happen when they were inside. Would they consummate the relationship, the way she had expected to welcome the new year, or was the seismic shift that she was perceiving since they arrived at JAK a reality? She collapsed onto the couch and planted her head into a velvet throw pillow, unable to think straight. What a night.

"Where are the lights, Evie?" She could hear Edward tapping on her walls. There was, unless she was mistaken, a never-before-heard chill in his voice.

"To the right of the front door," she mumbled. Maybe there was still a chance to turn the evening around. She could put on some music, slip into her favorite silver nightie, and take Edward to her bed.

"That's where I am," Edward said. She heard him swatting at the switch.

Evie slowly got to her feet. The journey from intoxicated to hungover had already begun. Boulder-size lumps had taken up residence in the back of her skull. Each of her muscles felt sluggish, as if on strike until the alcohol was purged from their surroundings.

She flicked the switch. Nothing happened. She tried it several times more, but the room remained a black canvas, save the sliver of light shed by her battery-operated clock.

"Sorry, I don't know what's going on. There's another switch by the screen," she said. "Next to the big photograph. Try that one."

Right outside her bedroom hung a vintage photograph of the French singer Edith Piaf. Evie found it on a trip to Paris with Jack over a year ago, while they were browsing antique shops on the outskirts of the city. The vacation had proved a watershed moment in their relationship. At the outset, Evie had felt like her life could not get any better. Suspending what she knew in reality, she harbored a belief that Jack would propose in Paris. She visualized him dropping down on one knee at Versailles or the Eiffel Tower. She fantasized that Jack had been lying all along about his views on marriage just to take her even more by surprise when he produced a ring.

But by the day they entered the antique shop where she found the lovely black-and-white photograph of Edith Piaf, the trip was nearly over and Jack had not proposed. In fact, she'd even broached the topic a few times, carefully choosing her moments. She brought it up on a sunny day when they were strolling in the Tuileries eating ice-cream cones. And then again after an extraordinary performance on her part in the bedroom that had involved a striptease and a skillful b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. But each time she spoke about their future, Jack rebuffed her coa.r.s.ely, saying some variation of "Let's just enjoy the trip." Crushed, Evie was in a foul mood for the last leg, and when Jack went to pay for the Piaf photograph Evie pushed his hand away and insisted on paying for it herself.

"What's the point?" she had said gruffly. "It's not like we're married." Jack had simply slipped his wallet back into his pants pocket and said nothing while Evie whipped out her credit card. She liked the picture too much to take it down, even though it resurrected painful memories.

"Nice photograph," Edward called out.

Heart-wrenching is more like it, she thought.

"Evie, this isn't working either. Maybe the building had a power outage," he suggested.

"That must be it," she said. She pressed the intercom b.u.t.ton. "Are we having a blackout?"

"No, Miss Rosen. If we had lost electricity, then we wouldn't be answering the intercom now."

"Well my apartment is pitch-black so can you please send the super up? We want to watch the ball drop."

"It's New Year's Eve. He's off," the doorman said unsympathetically.

Edward came over and put his hand on her shoulder. "Evie, it's okay. We'll handle this tomorrow."

We'll handle this tomorrow. The words reverberated in her brain.

"What a nightmare," she whined. It was 11:43 P.M. She lit a candle by her bedside table, the words from Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer" echoing in her mind as she struck the match: Once my flame and twice my burn. G.o.d d.a.m.n Jack. She reached for her flannel pajamas.

"Tomorrow, you'll call up your electric company, find out what happened," he said. "I'm sure it was an accident. It's not like you don't pay your bills."

She thought about that for a moment, not able to remember the last time she had paid an electric bill.

"You're right," Evie said. "I think I need to go to sleep. Will you stay over with me?"

Morning hit her unapologetically. The sunlight streamed through her window with a mighty force, making it impossible to stay asleep and pretend the night before had never occurred. She took a good look at the man lying next to her in bed. Their first sleepover had definitely not gone according to plan.

Edward, in an undershirt and boxers, looked remarkably comfortable in her bed. Overnight the coa.r.s.e hairs on his chin and above his upper lip had sprouted and the shadow made him look more brusque. Her mind immediately did a side-by-side comparison of him and Jack. Edward was more cla.s.sically handsome, that was for sure, but Jack still had that certain something that she could never fully articulate, even to herself. She still couldn't believe she saw him last night.

"Good morning," Edward said, after she started stirring.

"Morning to you," Evie said. There was something rea.s.suring about his stillness in bed. If he was plotting his escape, she couldn't tell.

"So, just to make sure this wasn't a dream, I don't have electricity, do I?" Evie asked.

Edward turned toward her and propped up his head in his hand, so they were mirror images of each other.

"I'm afraid not. I got up an hour ago and tried to make coffee and realized that an electric coffeemaker plus unrefrigerated milk poses a significant problem. So I went back to sleep."

Evie moaned. Last night she hadn't even thought about all the food in her refrigerator and freezer going bad. Fortunately only milk, frozen waffles, and a container of egg salad from Han's Happy Deli were lost.

"I can't believe we saw your ex-boyfriend last night. At the restaurant I chose. What are the chances?" Edward swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his clothes. She didn't take that as a great sign.

"It was crazy," Evie said, touching his back lightly before he put on his shirt. "But we just won't go back there. Like you said, we have eighteen thousand restaurants to choose from."

"Actually, Jack said that," Edward said, twisting around to face her. "Listen, Evie, I'm sorry if I'm speaking out of turn, but I think you may have some unfinished business with him." He put his arms through the sleeves of his b.u.t.ton-down and rose to get his pants.

She wanted to protest. To tell Edward that she was over Jack and totally ready to move forward with their relationship. But she found it hard to do so convincingly when she was replaying every line exchanged between her and Jack over and over, searching for signs of his longing for her, and asking herself why he called her back to his office. She made up a new business to impress him; invented a story about having another party to go to. Edward witnessed this behavior. How could he not accuse her of having unresolved feelings? The question was where she and Edward would go from this f.u.c.ked-up place.

"I'm really sorry about all that." It was the best she could do in the moment.

"It was an interesting night." Edward leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Good luck with your electricity situation." Evie wondered what happened to "We'll deal with this in the morning."

"Thanks. So we'll talk soon?" Evie said, hating that her voice climbed about eight octaves.

"Of course," Edward said, waving from the door to her bedroom.

When she heard the front door close, she let out a guttural "Arghhh." It was a h.e.l.l of a way to start the new year.

After tearing apart every cabinet and drawer looking for correspondence from Con Ed, she finally found a letter confirming activation of a new account buried deep in her night table. After a torturous ten minutes on hold listening to Donna Summer's "Bad Girls" on repeat, the customer service representative explained that their system had been hacked and everyone's stored credit card information lost. Her power was shut off because she hadn't paid a bill in three months.

"Why didn't you call me to get my payment information? I deserved a warning," Evie demanded.

"Ma'am, it says in your file you specifically refused to give us your phone number. You asked to be contacted only via e-mail."

"I see," Evie said, shrinking on her end of the phone.

"And, ma'am, did you not receive the letters we sent you in the mail?"

Letters? She must have dumped them along with her junk mail. She'd never needed to open anything before to have light in her apartment. Maybe she didn't have Internet service either. She had no idea. Just six months earlier, an Internet outage would have sent her scaling rooftops in search of a signal. Now she was truly unaffected.

"My neighbor steals my mail. Can you turn my power back on?"

The lights flickered moments after she gave the representative her credit card number. Relieved, Evie went to the kitchen in search of carbs to soak up the alcohol residue. Luckily she found a box of English m.u.f.fins on the counter. As she chewed her way through the nooks and crannies, she thought back to the day she moved into her apartment.

Paul was there. He was helping move her stuff out of her Columbia Law School dorm and into a new rental apartment, the place she still called home today. After three long years. .h.i.tting the books in Morningside Heights, Evie was moving to the Upper West Side, arriving in the "real" Manhattan a single girl with a J.D. on the wall, a sophisticated job, great friends, and membership in the twenty-something club. The threshold of her new abode lay rife with possibilities, and Paul was there to help move her into the next chapter. It was a quid pro quo for Evie setting him up with Marco, who at that point Paul was still calling "the guy with the hottest body I've ever met." Nowadays Paul referred to his husband as "Mr. Love Handles," even though Marco was at most three pounds overweight. In some ways that day seemed light-years away from her current station, but in other ways it was very much the same-she was, again, finding herself at a crossroads.

Move-in day had been exhausting. She remembered sprawling out on her new couch with a dish towel spread over her eyes. Paul was still bustling around, shelving her plates and hanging her clothes (the latter with ample commentary). It was a boiling hot summer day and both of them were drenched in sweat. The strong AC promised by the building's in-house real estate broker was not showing its best self.

"Now we need to set up your cable, Internet, and electric, okay?" Paul said.

Evie had just groaned and pa.s.sed Paul some paper that had come inside her lease package.

"You want me to do this?" Paul asked, incredulous.

"Marco," was all Evie said, to remind him of what brought him to her apartment in the first place.

"Fine," he grumbled and got to work. "But not because of Marco. Because you are a great friend and I love you."

The memory hurt.

She suddenly needed to see Paul at once, to wrap her arms around him and offer a heartfelt apology for her lukewarm reaction to his baby news. She still hadn't met Maya. The Edward situation may have gone haywire, but that didn't mean she couldn't right another wrong today. She reached for her phone.

"Paul, it's Evie. I know you're p.i.s.sed at me, but I really miss you and want to meet the baby. I'm coming over," she said to his voicemail. Sending a contrite e-mail would have been a million times easier, but a one-way conversation would have been a cop-out. Whether Paul would have accepted it was beside the point. He deserved an apology face-to-face.

She grabbed her coat and headed downtown in a cab. The streets of New York City on January first were the perfect tableau of heartbreak. Singles walked with heads hung low, dressed in their party attire from the night before, cursing themselves for already breaking their top New Year's resolutions: (1) cut back on drinking; (2) no more one-night stands; (3) get eight hours of sleep a night; and (4) exercise every morning. Couples too looked out of sorts-fighting about where to have brunch or gossiping about the other guests at the New Year's Eve party they attended out of obligation. Almost everything was closed on New Year's Day except for restaurants, and the city dwellers didn't know what to do with their free time except gorge themselves and overthink their lives.

When she arrived, Marco answered the door of their third-floor walk-up carrying a swaddled infant in his arms. She was more blanket than baby at this point.

"Hi, Evie," he said. "Happy new year. Meet Maya."

She melted at the vision of the newborn baby girl wrapped in her pink cashmere coc.o.o.n, eyes closed and rosy cheeks puffed out, crimson lips in the shape of a rosebud.

"She's gorgeous," Evie gasped, and threw her arms around Marco.

"Thank you," he said through a big smile and motioned her inside.

"My G.o.d, I haven't been here in a while," she said. Their apartment had been transformed from a sleek and modern oasis into a shrine to Buy Buy Baby. Everywhere she looked, she saw baby swings, bouncy seats, playmats, blankets, toys, and books all in the brightest shades of pink, purple, and yellow.

"We went a little overboard," Marco said, registering Evie's look of horror.

"No, no, it's great. It's just a big change."

"Let me show you the baby's room," Marco said. "Paul went to the hardware store to bribe someone to help put the crib together. He won't be back for another hour at least. Transitioning Maya from her Moses basket to a proper crib was our New Year's resolution."

Maya's room was bright and cheerful, the walls painted in Pepto-Bismol pink. But bags of unopened toys and adornments lay everywhere, including a lamp shaped like a lamb and a tall stack of animal decals still in their shrink-wrap. Evie never understood why jungle animals were a part of every baby's early education. How often in real life were most kids going to encounter a giraffe? The large pieces of furniture, a changing table, a sweet love seat in crushed ivory velvet, and a rocking chair in chocolate brown suede, were situated oddly in the center of the room.

"You said he'll be gone for an hour?" Evie asked, looking at Marco as he adjusted the blanket to cover Maya's exposed toes.

"At least. He didn't even know where to find a hardware store. Come to think of it, I doubt they're open on New Year's Day anyway."

"Take Maya for a walk, okay? I've got some stuff to do here," Evie said, gently pushing Marco out of the room and toward the stroller.

"You sure?" Marco asked.

Evie nodded.

"One hundred percent. I owe this to Paul," she said. "Let me do this for him. And for you."

Marco just whispered thank you and set off with a well-bundled Maya.

Closing her eyes in the style of Julianne Holmes-Matthews, she took a moment to visualize the room taking shape. Behind closed lids, she saw the glider gravitate to the window and the crib migrate to the west wall. The stuffed animals took their positions, the oversize giraffe standing sentry by the door. The toy chest found its way into the closet. Opening her eyes with a plan in mind, she got to work. Evie resituated the furniture and hung the decals around the room in a thoughtful, but not overly stylized, fashion. She a.s.sembled the lamp and rolled out the area rug and put the tiny toys and board books out on the shelves. It was like doing exactly what Paul had done for her move years earlier, but with miniatures.

The work proved to be an effective distraction from her New Year's date with Edward (and her hangover) until she recognized an oversize plush Minnie Mouse similar to one in Olivia's room. It had been over a week since their horse and carriage ride. She longed to cool Olivia's hot chocolate with her breath and ride next to her at the carousel in Central Park. She found a precious princess clock in one of the shopping bags from Toys "R" Us that she was sure Olivia would adore and vowed to pick one up for her later that day. When, and if, she'd be able to deliver it to her was another story.

When she heard the key in the door, Evie felt sufficiently pleased with her progress.

"Oh my G.o.d," Paul gasped when he saw the transformation. "Evie, this is unreal." He went over and swept her into a big hug. "Marco texted me that you were here and that I shouldn't come home for another hour. I knew you'd work magic in here."

"You're welcome," she said. "I've been an a.s.s. I'm really, really sorry for being so selfish. But with my grandma sick and my job situation sucking and my love life having been nonexistent until recently and Jack getting married . . . You know what? I shouldn't make any ex-"

Paul stopped her by putting his finger to her mouth.

"Evie, it's okay. Maya's room looks incredible. Let's just call it even, okay?" Only in the context of a really old friendship could schadenfreude be forgiven in exchange for a freshly decorated baby room. Eight years ago she and Paul had bartered a New York City apartment move-in for a setup.

"I appreciate that," Evie said, but Paul didn't seem to hear. He was inspecting his daughter's new room with an ear-to-ear grin.