what if
when harry met sally
was right?
or
can men and women
be just friends?
I jumped on my computer when I got home and started researching lighthouses. I was struck by how varied they were—fascinating, beguiling somehow, just like Travis had said. Many of them, at least. Others were quaint little cylinders of white, some charming with their conical hats, some like majestic castle towers, some bland and utilitarian . . . but I had a feeling the one his dad had tended would be pretty special. I stumbled onto a few very good lighthouse Web sites, dedicated to lighthouses all over—history, structure, keepers’ odd lives and dirt pay (the traffic staffers of their day), the Sisyphean restoration efforts of the lighthouse faithful in little seaside communities, and how lighthouses were lit with wood and coal, then oil, then high-wattage bulbs, then extinguished altogether when modern navigation technology rendered nearly all of them wistful relics.
But actually, I’m not sure any of them ever had a practical purpose. I think they were all born metaphors. A beacon to bring the lost at sea home. Or guide them to safety around the rocky shoals in stormy seas. A light in the mist. A solitary sentinel. Designed not by architects but by poets. Shamelessly capitalizing on the ready-made romance was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in a poem called “The Lighthouse.” It gave me an idea. I wanted to do something special for Travis, not because I was feeling incredibly guilty, which I was. I wanted to do it because suddenly, making Travis smile seemed like the most important thing in the world to me. I pictured his smile and it felt like a burnt orange sunset in my stomach. Then the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Remember me?” asked a very annoyed-sounding Todd.
“No, I don’t remember anything, remember?”
“Where have you been?” he snapped.
“Nowhere. Here. Why, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve left you three messages.”
Shit, I thought. I had become that girl who ignores her friends when she meets a guy. I hated that girl.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said. “I just got in now and jumped on the computer. I haven’t even checked my messages yet. Everything okay?”
“Fine. Now. Let’s go drink some caffeine.”
“I would,” I said, “but I’m so tired.”
“That’s what the coffee’s for,” he retorted.
I sat and thought about it. If I went, then he would feel better and I would feel better for finally paying some attention to him and everyone would feel better. I was just about to say I’d go when he asked, “Where were you, anyway?”
“I was at Travis’s.”
“Oh. Well. Say no more.”
“What?”
“That accident sure has been convenient, huh? You get a promotion, a new boyfriend . . . Any day now Ed fucking McMahon will be pulling up at your front door.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I began. “We haven’t even kissed.”
“I need to know this?” He was yelling now. “Please keep the details of your sex life to yourself!”
“What details? I just said nothing happened! What is your problem?!”
“No problem,” he said. “I’m just not used to getting blown off for people who run you over. If I bounced a brick off your head, would I have gotten a call back?”
“Jesus, Todd. I’m sorry. You’re obviously having a bad day, and I wasn’t there for you, so let’s talk about it. What’s going on? ”
“I’m going to get that cup of coffee now,” he said.
“You might want to look into some decaf,” I said back.
“Later.”
“Todd, wait . . .” But he’d hung up on me. This more than sucked. I already felt guilty about lying to everybody. Todd was the only one who knew the truth, for fuck’s sake. Now he was going to be mad at me too? Not that anybody else was mad at me per se . . . but they would be if they knew. Beyond mad. Soaring through life, buoyed by the freedom of not being me, I looked down for what seemed like the first time. And right then I felt like all my insides had fallen out. Everyone, everything would turn on me, I realized. Except Todd. And here he was, beating them all to the punch.
It was an unsettling shock, and just a little more drama than I was used to—especially coming from Todd. So I did the natural thing—indulged in some nervous escapism, refocusing on my lighthouse research and dreaming about Travis. And me. Me and Travis. Maybe I was dreaming so diligently because I was trying to forget everything I was pretending not to remember, but I was starting to feel as though I would never get tired of saying that. And if I did, then I could switch it around to Travis and me.
Then I got startled by a knock at my door. Not the aforementioned knock of my mother who was the only person who could con her way in without a downstairs key besides . . . Dirk? At first I thought if I ignored it, maybe he’d go away, but no such luck. The knocks kept coming.
“Jordan?” Dirk said, confirming my fear. I froze. Not that he could see me, but any move I made, I thought, he’d hear, and I didn’t want to have to deal. “Jordan! I just heard you on the phone. I know you’re in there.”
On the phone? Had the mighty man been anxiously pacing in front of my door for the past ten minutes, deciding whether to take the plunge? I got up and opened the door. Dirk walked past me and looked around.
“How are you?” I said earnestly, earnest having become my middle name.
“Why haven’t you called me?” he asked.
“I’ve been so busy.”
“Busy?” he asked. “With what? You have no life.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped, and Dirk almost jumped. He was definitely not used to the mouthy me. His eyes widened and his arms started waving frantically, like he was trying to swat away what he’d just said.
“That’s not what I meant,” he pleaded. “What I meant was, you can’t remember anything from before, so I just don’t understand what you could be so busy with.”
“Oh, right.” Dick. “Well, I’ve been promoted at work, so my workload has changed and I’ve been hanging out with my friends . . .” And falling in love. “And just . . . you know. Trying to remember.”
“You haven’t called me,” he said, as if he actually cared.
“You haven’t called me either.”
“But you used to be the one that called me.”
“Really?” I said. “Well, as some wise man with a marginal voice sang on the radio the other day, ‘the times they are a-changin’,’ I guess.” He looked genuinely disturbed. I don’t think it was because he missed me, but I think he was confused as to why I wasn’t being my usual doormat self and begging him to spend time with me so he could treat me like shit. Or maybe he just had a problem with radio stations that still played Dylan. He looked down and around, and for a second he had that little-boy look that was one of the things that originally endeared him to me. I felt bad. He wasn’t pure evil. He had a good heart under there. He just needed a bypass to replace the punk artery that sometimes ruled the roost.
“So I heard you’re in a major lawsuit,” he said. “You’re probably going to get like seven figures.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“La La Schneider told me.”
“La La, my sister’s friend?” I asked, not realizing I shouldn’t have remembered that and quickly correcting it. “I think I met her when I was staying at the house.” La La was the girl who’d had sex with Chris Tannenbaum in the seventh grade because they were “in love.” They were thirteen years old. Meanwhile, I was sixteen at the time and I had never even French-kissed. Dirk and La La, huh? The way I saw it, it was a good news/bad news situation. Bad news: Dirk was now also cheating on me with my little sister’s friends. Good news: I didn’t give a rat’s ass because I was crazy about Travis. Bad news: Dirk probably now had an STD because La La had contracted herpes at the ripe age of fifteen after sleeping with her seventeen-year-old camp counselor, her fifth sexual partner. Good news: I would not be touching Dirk again—ever. So as far as I was concerned, that thing could shrivel up and fall off.
“Yeah, I ran into La La at the roof deck at Bed.”
He ran into her. Right. I’m sure he tripped and fell right into her. Meanwhile, I shouldn’t have even remembered who the hell La La was, considering I had amnesia. This would have been a major slip if Dirk wasn’t such a major dolt. But he was. Thank God.
“So you’re gonna make us rich, huh?”
“Us?” I asked, cocking my head backward like I was dodging bad breath.
“You and me, baby. We’re gonna be livin’ large.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I’m not suing anybody,” I said, and thought out loud, “I thought I’d put the kibosh on that when my over-eager, money-hungry mother brought it up the first time.”
“Actually, your mom confirmed it.”
“Pardon?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She did.”
“Why are you talking to my mom?”
“I was checking on you. Just wanted to see how you were doing . . . and she knows I know how to lay down the law . . .”
“If you were checking on me, why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Well, I ran into her.”
“You ‘ran into’ my mom as well? You are doing a lot of running into people, Dirk.”
“Sam had an after-party the night I ran into her and La La. At your mom’s place.” Images of Dirk, Samantha, and La La having a threesome were running rampant in my brain. It was making me feel ill.
“Well, I’m not suing anyone,” I clarified.
“Jordan, you should. It’s such an easy win. Trust me.” Right. Trust you. Did he really think I was going to get rich off Travis? And that he was going to reap the benefits? He deserved every single herpe that was coming to him.
Dirk took a step closer to me. “Hey,” he said, and then without any warm-up, he placed his hand on my right breast. Was that supposed to be foreplay? I started to crack up. “What’s so funny?” he asked, and I just shook my head. I couldn’t stop laughing. He reminded me of a monkey. I thought I was going to stop breathing, I was laughing so hard. Needless to say, Dirk wasn’t at all amused by my hysterics. “You’re whacked,” he said, and with that he walked over to my door and let himself out. I actually laughed for a good five minutes after he left. I felt a teensy bit guilty about bruising his ego, but that was the most asinine attempt at seduction I’d ever seen. So perfectly conceived and executed, too—what with the “hey.” Pathetic.