Starting From Square Two. Caren Lissner

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СКАЧАТЬ the site down?”

      Erika was quiet for a second.

      “Don’t you understand?” she said, her voice rising. “Don’t you get it? That would be the most wonderful thing in the world.”

      Erika sounded ready to cry. Gert felt embarrassed for her, so she stared at the floor.

      “If Challa took this stupid site down,” Erika said, “then I wouldn’t have to maniacally check it every day to see what Ben’s doing. I wouldn’t have to know everything that’s going on in his life. But I just have to. I have to figure out what he’s doing now, and whether I did the right thing. I just wish the site didn’t exist. But if it does, I have to check it.”

      Gert considered suggesting that Erika pretend the site didn’t exist. But she knew people couldn’t trick themselves in matters of the heart. Hell, she’d certainly tried. She had dutifully repeated positive messages as her therapist had instructed. “If I get through today, I’ll have accomplished something.” “Marc would want me to be happy.” “There was nothing I could’ve done.” “Everything happens for a reason.” These were the lies she’d told herself.

      “I know you guys think this is crazy,” Erika said. “But Ben and I honestly had something. I can’t just forget about it.”

      As the three of them sat on the subway heading toward Gert’s condo, it occurred to Gert that she should have pretended her computer was broken. They would have believed her. There was a nasty computer virus going around called the “Kiss Virus.” It looked like an e-card that said, “KISS…” but when you clicked the link, it said, “…your hard drive goodbye!”

      Gert told herself it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Erika would just blow off steam for a few minutes and be done with it. At least Erika and Hallie were helping Gert get out of her apartment. She had to cut them more slack. This was Erika’s strange method of getting closure.

      Gert knew about closure. It was a favorite topic in the support group—those women who wished they’d said more to their husbands before they’d died. Gert had her own fantasies, in fact, about that day, all the ways she should have stopped the chain of events that led to Marc’s death.

      “Did you tell Gert about your date?” Erika said to Hallie, pushing a newspaper away on the subway seat.

      “Oh, it’s barely worth telling,” Hallie said. She turned to Gert. “This guy from work set me up with his friend the other night. He’s into seafood, so we went to a seafood place.”

      “Sounds good…” Gert said.

      “Well, it started off that way,” Hallie said, “but…two things. One, he wore a Tweety Bird shirt. It had an emblem of Tweety on the shirt where an alligator would be.”

      “At least he’s different,” Gert offered.

      “Yeah, but,” Hallie said, “he’s totally obsessed with Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers cartoons.”

      “That’s like a secondary male canon thing,” Gert said. “A lot of guys are into Bugs Bunny cartoons. Remember Marc’s best friend, Craig? He had all the tapes.”

      “I do remember Craig, and I know some guys are into Bugs Bunny,” Hallie said. “But would they wear Tweety Bird on a first date?”

      “I guess not,” Gert admitted.

      “I think the more I go out, the more easily I get irritated by guys who don’t make an effort,” Hallie said. “I spend so much energy worrying about impressing them, but they don’t even do the basics to look half-decent.”

      “What was the second bad thing about him?” Gert asked.

      “Oh. He kept saying things about us being on a first date, or pointing out that things were awkward, even when I didn’t feel that way,” Hallie said. “Like, our meals came, and the minute I put food in my mouth, he said, ‘So, have you ever gone camping?’ And I said, ‘No, I guess I was never really into that.’ And he was quiet for a second, and then he said, ‘Wow, this is awkward.’”

      “There should be a rule,” Erika said, putting her finger in the air, “that if you actually point out that something is awkward on a date, you immediately get ejected from your chair.”

      Gert was glad that she had felt comfortable with Marc, and then with Todd, right away.

      “I guess I’ll go on one more date with him,” Hallie said. “Everyone deserves a second date.”

      “Not everyone,” Erika said.

      “I’m perfecting a top-secret innovative method to meet men, anyway,” Hallie said. “No more of these horrible blind dates. Both of you will think I’m a genius when you hear my idea.”

      “You said something about this last week,” Erika said. “Tell me already.”

      “I’ll tell you soon,” Hallie said. “I promise. I’m working on it. You’ll both love it.”

      Gert didn’t know whether to look forward to it or dread it.

      Erika was tapping away at the keys of the computer in Marc’s trophy room.

      “My new screen name is Baltimora,” she announced. “It’s in honor of the group that sang that ‘Jungle Love’ song in the eighties, which was on the radio when the alarm went off this morning, so now it’s stuck in my head. And boy, this’ll drive Challa crazy.”

      “I want to write some,” Hallie said. “You said I could write some.”

      Gert walked over to her window and pulled down the shade.

      “The two of us can argue with each other!” Erika said, cracking up. “We’ll both say that we’re flight attendants who gave oral sex to Ben on his business trip to Texas, and that he was the best customer we’ve ever had.”

      “That’s mean,” Gert said, wondering why she was trying to give Erika the benefit of the doubt. “What if you were married to him and living your life, and some girl kept writing this stuff to you?”

      Hallie and Erika got silent.

      “Gertie,” Hallie said.

      “Gert,” Erika said, “if I had married him and was as happy as this girl seems to be, I would not need so much freaking attention that I’d write a Web site about myself every day. She needs to appreciate what she has instead of rubbing our noses in her syrupy slop.”

      Hallie and Erika switched off writing messages, and they laughed hysterically. At the end, the exchange said:

      THIS SITE IS STUPID AND P.S. LEARN TO SPELL. BEN IS A LITTLE “TO” SMART FOR YOU.—Baltimora

      Hey, leave them alone. The two of them are happy. Ben told me so when we did it in the bathroom on Continental flight 221 to Houston.—XSGIRRRL

      WAS THAT TO “BUSH” INTERCONTINENTAL AIR PORT? GET IT—BaLT.

      We’re lucky Ben has so many business trips. He showed me this site to tell me how annoying his wife is. Don’t get СКАЧАТЬ