Free Instant Love by Jami Attenberg

tennis bracelet. I laughed when I saw the Wolfowitz label on the inside of the box. And then I got down on my knees and pretended we were on vacation with his family.
    I don’t wear the bracelet much now or really at all, because where am I going to wear it. To work? On the subway? I would say I would pass it on to a daughter someday, only I’m not sure I want to have kids.
    That was the problem with me and Alan. Well, that was the first problem with me and Alan. Had we fixed it, there would have been a whole series of problems to solve after that, so we just stuck with the one. He fed me ice cream and fattened me up, then pointed out how my breasts and hips would be perfect for childbearing and nurturing. He turned parts of me into the woman he wanted, but he could never turn all of me into something I wasn’t.
    And then I got the job offer in New York, and decisions needed to be made.
    What he said was: “You go, I’ll follow.”
    What he did was: meet a flight attendant on one of those goddamn golf trips with his family. I saw the wedding announcement, and let’s just say she’s twice the shiksa I’ll ever be.
    For a year all I did was eat and eat and listen to him talk. And at the end, I was single again, only this time around, fat.
     
     
    “ WHAT HAPPENED with Wolfowitz?” I said. “Who did he end up with?”
    “Who didn’t he end up with?” Alan said. “Turns out my dad was right, Wolfowitz liked to play the field. He’s on his third wife now. They get younger every year.”
    “While we just get older,” I said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
    “You have nothing to worry about,” he said, and at that moment, I couldn’t figure out how to disagree. Now I have plenty to say, but then? Nothing.

 
     

     

 
     
    I agreed to go out on the first date with Gareth not because I was attracted to him, but because it had been a while. You know. A
while
. Also he asked properly, not by e-mail or instant message, but with an old-fashioned phone call. I had been spending too much time on Internet dating sites, which I often fell back on as a stopgap measure. A stopgap between
what
I can’t exactly tell you, because it certainly wasn’t relationships. Perhaps between winter and spring. Between my thirties and forties. Between birth and death. But to meet someone in person, names exchanged, eyes contacted, and then to receive a formal, nerve-wracking phone call made me feel like I was in high school again. Maybe we would make out, too. Maybe I would give him a hickey. Maybe I would let him get to second base.
    He called me on a Tuesday evening, after dinner but before bedtime, asked about my day (long), my job (same as always, which is to say, less complicated than people think and mainly fine), and what I thought about the latest political scandal (I am never surprised). Then he popped the question: Would I join him for dinner on Friday? It could be an early meal if I had other plans, he didn’t mind. He just wanted the opportunity to spend a little time with me, just an hour or two, a fraction of my day to bestow upon his unworthy self.
    This charmed me, I must admit.
    Instead of dinner we met for drinks postwork at an Irish pub near his place on the East Side, as I did indeed have other plans—tickets to dinner theater with my sister, Maggie, and her husband, Robert. They’d purchased them months in advance, so I couldn’t say no. They liked to come to the city on a weekend at least once a month. “Because I’m down,” said Robert.
    “Down where?” I said.
    “You know what he means,” said Maggie.
    The play was a historical parody—the ads for it had the word “historical” crossed out in yellow and the word “hysterical” scrawled over it in block letters—about the Last Supper. Whenever Judas tried to kiss Jesus, the audience was ordered to “drink from thine chalice.” Delightful. Robert found the play “freaking hilarious” and thought it would be a good idea to recommend it to