Free Looking for a Love Story by Louise Shaffer

tears.
    There was a little debate going on when I reached the entrance of the hotel. Several of the hotel’s security people wanted to call for a police car and send me to central booking. The dissenters—from the hotel’s public-relations department—argued that the publicity would be bad for business, and they wanted to put me in a cab and send me home. I was on their side, but I was too wiped out to join the fight. Because all of a sudden I was tired in a way that I’d never been before in my life. We’re talking running-marathons-and-climbing-mountains tired. Not that I’ve ever done either of those things, but you get the point. Finally, someone summoned the slut and Jake. She didn’t want to press charges, and Jake explained to everyone that I’d been having emotional problems. So Team Taxicab won and I got to go home.
    But that wasn’t the end of the evening’s events. Three people with cell phones caught my act and recorded it. I understand that the resulting footage went viral on YouTube, and for a couple ofdays Andy, Jake, and I were getting almost as many hits as some guy who had trained his dog to use the john. Many, many people got to watch Andy’s big night being shot to hell.
    The next day, before Jake could come back to the apartment to pack up his clothes, I changed the locks. There were only two things I was sure of: I wasn’t going to have a happy divorce, and we weren’t going to have the Talk. Okay, there were three things: I was going to miss Jake like hell.
    But after I thought about it for a day or two, I realized that it wasn’t just Jake I’d lost, it was a vision of myself. Being married to him had also been my shot at being Sheryl, complete with a signature shade of pink. But when my work was at stake, I had morphed into my mother. Alexandra was who I was, whether I wanted to be or not. Alexandra, who hadn’t been able to hang on to her man—my daddy. I went into my closet and threw out all my size fours.
    “I’m through,” I told Annie. “I am never going on another date, and I am never, ever again, going to fall in love. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. I’m having that embroidered on a hat.”
    Then I finally started to cry. And I didn’t stop for a very long time.

CHAPTER 7
    Here’s one of the many great things about New York City: If you don’t want to leave the house, you don’t have to. You can pay someone to walk your dog. You can pay to have hot meals and your newspaper delivered right to your door. You can also pay people to shop for your shampoo, pick up your dry cleaning, and run other errands. Hell, you don’t have to get out of bed. I know this because I didn’t, for two months.
    My divorce had turned out to be depressingly un-bloody. I had wanted to go for the jugular, but I have the wrong DNA for battle. So does Jake. We did have the Talk, however. Or at least we had a talk.
    “I’m giving up on the Svengali thing,” he told me.
    “Sorry I was such a disappointment.”
    “I could say the same thing.”
    “But I’m not the one who wants out.”
    “Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet, Francesca.”
    If I’d been hoping for an apology—and let’s face it, you always are, in a situation like that—that was as good as I was going to get from Jake.
    The divorce took two months from the time he moved out until we signed the final papers. We didn’t fight for the co-op; since almost all of the money we’d put into it was mine, I bought him out of his small share. I didn’t hold him up for half of his camera equipment or any of the assets he’d acquired while we were married, and he gave me all our awful furniture. Neither of us asked for alimony.
    When Jake and Andy got married minutes after our divorce was final and he took off for California to live with her, I told myself not to think about my dad taking off to be with Sheryl and history repeating itself. After all, this time I got to keep the dog. But then I went