Ted pops across the checkerboard of cars on Interstate 80 and smiles at the irony: his driving style was one of the things Lane hated about him. Well, maybe she didn't hate it, but she did find it…distasteful. He settles on this word not because it was one Lane used herself but because it describes the look on her face when she would tell him to slow down, to stop trying to prove something by passing every other car on the road. Like so many of his habits—videogames, paintball, drinking—she found it distasteful, undignified, immature, and eventually left him for someone less like him. Someone, it happened, she hadn't met yet, but was sure she would. No, she'd told him, they could not be friends. They had been a couple despite these things she didn't like about him, she had loved him despite these things she didn't like about him but ultimately realized—after knowing him for a year, dating him for the last six months—that his identification with these traits she had overlooked had kept him from appreciating her, his personality kept him from overlooking what he didn't like about her and, most importantly, loving her in the way she wanted to be loved.
One thing he'll give her: He doesn't need the horn, not in this car. The gas pedal and steering wheel are all he needs, a mirror now and then, and his knowing, practiced hands. He zips in and out of the empty squares as if he is a red checker being picked up by an invisible hand, jumping over the other pieces, advancing down the board, on his way to being kinged.
~
They had looked good on paper.
The online service that connected them served only graduates of top schools, people who had entered the professions: law, medicine, finance, enterprise. Lane had stood out for him from the others. She was not much smarter than he, not much more ambitious, and not quite as attractive. She called him, as a term of endearment (he'd thought) her metrosexual jock nerd. She teased him for his bi-weekly manicures and his religious use of hand lotion, but she'd also appreciated his soft touch, had called it more than once an unexpected thrill she could get used to. She found his job—designing marketing plans for a sports clothing and equipment company—pedestrian but she liked the dinners it bought her, along with the monthly weekend jaunts to wine country cottages and coastal hamlet cabins and ski resorts.
But ultimately she had been turned off and pushed away by the very qualities that had attracted her, that would attract any woman, though which had not yet attracted another to him yet, six months after they'd split. The dating service was giving him bum leads—women who were interested on the first date, sometimes on the second, but never let him take them on a third. Not that he'd been deeply into any of them, either. But still. Would three dates, one hookup kill anybody? For god's sake, he has hands of silk, patient and practiced as a surgeon.
There was one other thing, the thing that really did him in. OK, two things. Two things he hasn't thought much about until now, because until now there hasn't been a parting in the clouds that might bode well for him.
Lane had hated his cellphone. More specifically, she had hated the fact—and fairly enough—that he didn't seem to hear it at the most important times: namely, when she was calling him. Ted had to admit, even to her, even then, that this was uncanny. He was late to pick her up from work one time and somehow he had missed four calls from her. Finally, when he was a block away he heard the phone and picked up on the first ring, not even noticing she'd made the call from a friend's phone. He totally got why Lane took that personally, how that looked very suspicious—his being so late, ignoring her calls but picking up a call from an unknown number. His silence in the face of her tirade had not helped him. He offered, weakly, that the radio was probably too loud or something, or he was distracted by the sports talk, which was, after all, part of his job to listen to, and he knew Lane didn't like to listen when she was in the car, so he was absorbing what he could before picking her up—she sat with her arms crossed in front of her chest and he couldn't really blame her. But he wasn't cheating on her, god.
Unfortunately, earlier that day Lane had learned that he hadn't deactivated his profile from the dating site. One of her friends had been emailed his picture as a potential match and had forwarded it to Lane. Now what are the chances of that–especially since this chick had gone to a second-tier school and shouldn't be using this particular service anyway.
Of course, this didn't come up until he'd spent the 30-minute ride across town, dancing through traffic, all the while trying to make up for being a late, phone-ignoring dick, telling her how excited he was to take her to this new place for dinner, rushing her to the restaurant where he'd made reservations on the way to pick her up—and come to think of it, at least one of her calls probably came through when he was on the phone with the restaurant and he always avoided incoming rings when he was on a business call—Lane crawled through dinner, tight-faced, had let him dance and contort himself to try to make up for something she wasn't even mad about anymore.
She'd waited until they were in the car again, had spared him the indignity of a public spat. Little matter, Ted thought, as everyone in the restaurant could see that he was the only one talking, that Lane hardly touched her meal, that their chairs, though side-by-side, were far enough apart from each other that halfway through the meal, when clearing their appetizer dishes, the waiter had stood between them to ask if they needed anything, as if playing unofficial referee, ready to throw a flag on the play at any moment. This is what Ted had thought about as she told him how humiliating it was for her to have a friend forward his picture and short bio to her, to joke with her, ask her what she thought of this guy.
In all honesty, Ted had told her, I just forgot. After we started dating exclusively—he'd repeated that word and pointed out that he was the one who'd offered his monogamy first—I didn't go back to that site anymore, so I forgot. But you still got referral emails, Lane had said. Like most people, most sane people, Ted had replied, I use a special email address just for those sites until I know a woman isn't psycho. Yes, I've probably gotten more referrals, but I haven't seen them. I don't want to see them, but I'll unsubscribe from the site as soon as we get home.
Well, as for monogamy, Lane had whispered, it was already a done deal with me anyway, automatic from the first time. The way Lane had sniffled, he knew it didn't matter what he said or did. They would make up but she wouldn't get over it. She'd be watching him and every time he spaced and didn't hear what she'd said, every call he missed, every sidelong glace at a pretty woman that lasted too long would be another hatch mark in the con column and eventually he'd be back to that site, or probably this time, another one.
Despite the bullshit—and Ted still thinks Lane's reasons for breaking it off with him, which included and were precipitated by the phone and undeleted profile episode, are bullshit—Ted holds a few endearing memories of Lane and hopes that today's phone call means she also holds some endearing memories of him, so that they can at least have a friendship, if not get back together. Of course for Ted, a friendship would mean the possibility of getting back together, but that's a distant thought at this point.
One thing Ted had always liked about Lane was the way she told people, with earnest sincerity, Call if you need anything. She said it when someone left on a trip or when an out-of-town visitor went home. He found that charming. He'd remarked to her once, half teasing, that she never said it to him when he went away on business trips. And she'd said to him, but Sweetie, I know you will. I'm the first person you'd call. He'd pulled her into him and kissed her forehead, which reached to his chin level and he'd joked, Yeah, and you'd actually hear the phone ring. He can't recall if they made love after that, but he remembers it as a romantic exchange, a warm moment of understanding in which they stepped closer together, he had anyway, moved closer to Lane than he'd stepped toward anyone before.
~
So Ted is glad that he is the one Lane had thought to call when she fell sick at work, when she needed someone. Actually someone else had called, but he was the one who she'd asked for. He'd been in a meeting, was expecting a call from a client, so he'd left the room to answer the phone. Someone from Lane's office said she'd fallen terribly ill with a migraine and needed someone to take her home. Ted hadn't thought twice about it, had gone back in the conference room to collect his portfolio and nod to a colleague while patting his breast pocket to indicate that this was the call he'd been awaiting so he had to run.
He pulls into the parking lot, pushes the 10 mph speed limit, rolls into the white loading zone right in front of the door. He nods to the female security guard as he enters the doorway, and strides to the receptionist, whose head is all that is visible over the circular white Formica desk. When Ted indicates he's there to pick up Lane, the receptionist flusters, a bony hand flutters in front of his mouth, his eyes blink furiously behind his frameless glasses, and the hand flits up to his temple. He does not look at Ted's face as he speaks; he musters the energy only to lift his head high enough for his eyes to meet Ted's chest as he explains that he was mistaken. Someone had asked him to phone Lane's boyfriend, so he had called human resources to find out who was listed as her emergency contact in her file. In the meantime, Lane had given the number to someone else to call, a different number, it happened, from the one in her file. The young man had phoned Ted back to let him know it wasn't necessary to come after all, but Ted missed his call. The receptionist turns away, letting the fact sit there between them and feeling as awkward, Ted is sure, as he feels, if not more, only because his capacity for awkwardness exceeds Ted's own. Though Ted feels that might be changing.
Ted knocks the desktop twice with his knuckles and nods as he turns away. His walk looks as smooth as it ever has, and the woman security guard watches him all the way to his car, watches him make no show about clicking the alarm, inhales sharply as he disappears from her view, sliding behind the wheel. She has no idea, as she watches Ted pull out of the parking lot, following the direction of his right turn signal, that for the first time in his adult life he is driving a fast machine with conscious care, and slowly.
