you climbed up to sing a sonnet to your lover. Josephine, Josephine.
Why would a house need razor wire on its windows and balconies?
Julian didn’t want to think about his day. He wanted only to feel. When he was thirteen he had a mad crush on a girl in the schoolyard. The crush was so bad it had rendered him speechless. Every time he was within fifty feet of her, he would start to sweat and pant. In the middle of the school year she had open heart surgery and died on the operating table, and that was that. It was the last time Julian had felt this way. Since then, he kept in control of himself. None of the later women he was with, and some of them had been awe-inspiring, made him feel like that tongue-tied kid at recess. He tried to avoid it at all costs, the feeling of being out of control. It was so debilitating. He wanted a sane love life. He wanted a sane life.
And until today, that was exactly what he got.
WHEN GWEN OPENED THE DOOR, AT TEN AT NIGHT, SHE stared at him like he was about to tell her someone had died.
Gwen was right to be worried. They had a weekly schedule from which they rarely deviated. They went out on Thursday nights, and she stayed over at his place. They went out on Saturday nights, usually with Ashton and Riley. The four of them had Sunday brunch together. On Wednesdays he and Gwen tried to grab lunch if Julian didn’t have meetings and she wasn’t swamped. She was a legal secretary for an entertainment law firm.
She lived in a ground floor apartment with two other girls. All three had been watching Desperate Housewives. The other two waved to Julian, annoyed by the interruption. “What’s wrong?” Gwen said. “Were we supposed to go out today?”
“No, no.”
“I didn’t think so. Tuesday is not our day.” She smiled.
“Can we talk?”
Gwen glanced at the couch where her roommates were waiting. “Can it wait till tomorrow, Jules? Because we have fifteen minutes left of our show and then I gotta hit the sack. I have to be in at eight. Contract crisis. Can it wait?”
“No.”
Gwen grimaced.
He didn’t want to talk in the kitchen, and Gwen was already in pajamas. There was no way he was getting her into his car for a distressing heart to heart. “Let’s go to your room.”
Smiling and misunderstanding, she took hold of his wrist. “Girls, finish without me.”
In her room, she fell on the bed, while he took a chair across from her, his hands tensely threaded.
“Why are you all the way over there?”
“Gwen …”
Sitting up, she cut him off. “No. Don’t start any conversation with Gwen. Jules, I’m so stressed at work, I never work fast enough or long enough. Tonight I was there till eight-thirty. If I’ve been off, it’s because I’m overworked.”
“You haven’t been off.”
“I’m so tired all the time. I can’t deal with any bullshit right now, Julian,” she said. “Can’t this wait until I have more energy?”
“It can’t. I’m sorry, Gwen. I don’t know how to say it. There’s never a good time for this.” He stiffened his spine, took a breath.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her hands together. “Julian … are you … breaking up with me?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset. Don’t cry.” He came to sit by her on the bed, tried to touch her. “You’re a great girl. You won’t be alone for a minute. And I hope we can stay friends—”
“You’re not serious!” she cried, slapping away his arm. “We can’t break up! We have brunch reservations at N/Naka this Sunday! We’ve been waiting three months for them!”
“About that—”
“And we’re going away to Cabo next month. You already booked the hotel.”
“About that …”
“Why are you doing this?”
What could he say? What could he say that would hurt the least?
“I did something wrong,” Gwen said. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m always having mood swings. It’s not you, Julian, it’s me. I have to take something. My therapist says I need something.”
He took her hand, held it despite her protest. “You’re not having mood swings. You don’t need to take anything. It’s not you. Honest. It’s me.” He took a breath. “I met someone,” Julian said. “And I don’t want to sneak around on you, or on her. I don’t want to end anything or begin anything like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect it, it’s not something I looked for, it’s not something I wanted.”
Wasn’t it, though? Wasn’t it something he looked for? As he meandered through the streets of Los Angeles, the city of angels, trying new bars, new cafés, new restaurants, new movie theatres, new stores, as he grazed the beaches and the boardwalks, sat outside eating and drinking al fresco, wandered the malls, the cemeteries, hotel lobbies, what was he looking for, what was he searching for? Yes, he was grabbing ideas for his newsletter, photographs, flowers, phantoms of life. But was that it, really? For ten years he’d been scouring L.A., in a roam not just of the body but of the soul. Was he searching for someone? Staring into the face of every woman he met, the question behind his eyes ever present. Was she the one?
One thing Julian knew for sure—and had known from the beginning. Gwen was not the one.
“We’ve been together so long!” Gwen said. “Don’t I deserve better than this?”
“You do,” Julian said. “Better than me.”
“But why waste three years of my life?”
“Sometimes,” Julian said, “when you’re on the wrong road, you have to get off, go back, start again.”
“You’re calling me the wrong road? Fuck you!”
“No. I’m the wrong road.”
“I thought your mother raised you better than this,” Gwen said.
“What am I doing?” Julian said. “I’m trying to do the decent thing, the honest thing.”
“The decent thing would be not to break up with me.”
“Not the honest thing.”
“The decent thing would be not to hook up with someone else!”
“I haven’t hooked up with anyone else. It’s brand new.”
“But you want to!”
“Yes,” Julian said. “I want to.”
HAVING FALLEN OVERBOARD, JULIAN SWAM THE REST OF THE night in a sea of Josephine. His morning newsletter reflected this. It was a hodgepodge framed by an odd Joseph Conrad quote (was there any other kind?).
It was his turn to open