Free The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon Page A

or Jaipur gem boutique.
    On the morning after Doug went missing, though, it wasn’t so much my pride that kept me from calling my mom; a slightly battered ego seemed like a fair trade for her advice. What welled up instead, swallowing everything—rationality, a desire for comfort, consideration of Vera’s feelings—was a powerful wave of protectiveness. I didn’t want Laird to have the satisfaction of knowing that Doug was gone, or wondering if it had anything to do with him and my mom.
    And to be candid, strung out as I felt from sleeplessness and worry—even before I talked to Dr. Thwaite—the person whose voice I wanted to hear most that morning was Max’s, despite everything. Despite a month of embarrassed crying in the stairwell when attacks of sadness would hit on my breathless ascent, picturing the poor neighbors rolling their eyes as they lifted pasta lids, wiped kids’ noses, turned up the volume on things. A month of rashly commanding my Meme to erase his number and most of his photos, texts, beams, only to bitterly regret it laterand try to get them back—an operation the Meme claimed was “not actionable.” A month of inane incantations—“I can’t believe this is happening,” “I don’t understand”—to each of my (also progressively less understanding) friends.
    Despite everything, and of course knowing better, I still wanted to feel Max’s massive arms around me. His pointy chin jutting into my head. “Such a cute, cute nutjob,” I could almost hear him say. “I’ll bring you lots of nice chocolates at Bellevue.” Right away I reprimanded myself; even in my fantasies Max was an ass.
    Doug, the teasing king, had always disapproved of Max’s brand of it. When I pointed out that I teased Max, too, and noted Doug’s own affinities, Doug would shake his shaggy head, face drooping in sad folds, and say, quietly emphatic, “It’s not the same, Nins. His isn’t generous. He tries to discredit you.” I usually thought that Doug was missing the point, or that I’d misrepresented things. I tried to explain that the difference between my own blithe imitations of Max’s lumbering, athletic stride, the halting way he often talked, and his relentless befriendment of nearly everyone we met (bartenders, dry cleaners, lots of girls on the street) was a difference only in method from the way Max teased me. But Doug didn’t miss many points. And I’d been revisiting this theory.
    In recent evidence to the contrary, for instance: after Max was done breaking up with me, he tried to shake my hand, as if we were business associates. That had upset me (obviously). In part because I blamed his work for our estrangement. And there was no denying that things got worse after Hermes was sold in July. He’d had a lot more nights out and coming home trashed, or not at all. He started traveling all the time—Shanghai, Rio, L.A.—and spending money like he’d won a game show. He could waste $16K on dinner, including guests he’d just met. Soon he had a motorcycle and a car. He bought himself one of John Lennon’s guitars, a fur coat, a
gold-plated toilet
. (That was a joke, allegedly.)
    He naturally began to resent “my” tiny apartment and started looking at listings. “You wouldn’t get it,” he snapped when I asked, bewildered, what was happening. “You’ve
always
had money.” (Which wasn’t totally fair—I remembered lots of successive nights of beans and rice as a child when my parents hadn’t felt like going begging to my grandparents. But the underlying point was sound.) Max bought things for me, too, of course. Perfume. Spiky jewelry. Electronics. I gave most of themback. Faster than I knew what was happening, he’d turned into a person I didn’t know, or like. Our life became a never-ending fight. But it was because of Hermes’s sale, I told myself. I just had to wait. For how long, I wasn’t sure—he didn’t like to talk about work.
    In truth, we’d had only two really good