And then slowly, slowly, his tastes changed until he was telling me that he enjoyed the dinners out with other lawyers rather than finding them tedious. And then slowly, ever so slowly, he started stretching out his day until he was working more than he was not working.
At the same time, I was losing my drive and desire to become the best little graphic artist in the world. I was reading house-decorating magazines and talking about which neighborhoods had the best schools and could he please come home before nine o’clock so we could have some time together before bed?
And slowly, slowly, my heels and skirts changed to cords and sweatshirts. And slowly, slowly, I started to find things about Adam that annoyed me, like the way he discussed how much he missed the Hamptons with his mother or the way he flossed his teeth in the bedroom or the way he left his damp towel on top of our bedspread. And then slowly, ever so slowly, I started wearing out the sofa cushion directly across from the clock which I watched as if it held the answer to when Adam would be returning home.
These are the things I should not be thinking about five minutes before a dinner party.
I throw the noodles in my serving bowl and place the salad into a tacky dish I picked up in Bar Harbor , Maine , in the shape of a lobster. I work the serving dish a little too hard, lining up the strips of steak to look like the claws, and then change my mind and toss the whole thing together.
At
eight o’clock
, the table is set and the food is all cooked and no one is here. I sit down to check my email. I wade through a few comments from my latest blog post—an internal debate on whether or not I should attempt baking projects now that I am the owner of a bag of cake flour. The unanimous vote is “Yes,” though no one can agree if I should begin with the angel food cake or something easier.
There is an email from a PR person wondering if I’d write about her client’s product on my blog, which is ten kinds of weird, and I don’t even know how these PR people find me. A few notes from mailing lists, an email from an online friend, and a recipe contest announcement from the site, Epicurious . And then, tucked between a note from Arianna telling me she secured babysitting for tonight and an advertisement from an online bookstore is a note from the Bloscars.
It is obviously a cut-and-pasted message to all nominees, but it congratulates me on being a finalist for the 2009 Bloscars and passes along a series of important dates (the opening and closing of voting being two of them) and a Bloscars icon in case I want it for my blog.
I am fumbling frantically to add it to my sidebar when the buzzer rings.
I buzz the person into the building by hitting the button on my wall and then go back to trying to figure out my blogging software. The icon is a plain grey box, but I am strangely proud to have made it to the finalist round. I finally get it uploaded and admire it for several moments on my site before a knock comes on the door.
“I’m a finalist,” I crow, throwing the door open.
But instead of finding Ethan or Arianna on the other side, I am facing a tall, droopy-eyed man with carefully tousled hair holding a wine bottle.
So, naturally, I scream.
Which causes my next-door neighbor to instantly throw open her door as if she were waiting for this exact moment to happen and hiss at me because she has a baby sleeping. I apologize to her and to the man while my brain catches up with my body, and I realize this must be one of the two men my brother said he would bring along. Silly me, I expected them to come with him, as in at the same time, so that I didn’t have to entertain a stranger in my apartment, alone. But unless you specify these things with Ethan, it’s always a guess as to how things will play out.
“I apologize,” the man said in a thick accent of European origin. I guess Spain . Or maybe France . Or Portugal . “Ethan told me to come here
At the same time, I was losing my drive and desire to become the best little graphic artist in the world. I was reading house-decorating magazines and talking about which neighborhoods had the best schools and could he please come home before nine o’clock so we could have some time together before bed?
And slowly, slowly, my heels and skirts changed to cords and sweatshirts. And slowly, slowly, I started to find things about Adam that annoyed me, like the way he discussed how much he missed the Hamptons with his mother or the way he flossed his teeth in the bedroom or the way he left his damp towel on top of our bedspread. And then slowly, ever so slowly, I started wearing out the sofa cushion directly across from the clock which I watched as if it held the answer to when Adam would be returning home.
These are the things I should not be thinking about five minutes before a dinner party.
I throw the noodles in my serving bowl and place the salad into a tacky dish I picked up in Bar Harbor , Maine , in the shape of a lobster. I work the serving dish a little too hard, lining up the strips of steak to look like the claws, and then change my mind and toss the whole thing together.
At
eight o’clock
, the table is set and the food is all cooked and no one is here. I sit down to check my email. I wade through a few comments from my latest blog post—an internal debate on whether or not I should attempt baking projects now that I am the owner of a bag of cake flour. The unanimous vote is “Yes,” though no one can agree if I should begin with the angel food cake or something easier.
There is an email from a PR person wondering if I’d write about her client’s product on my blog, which is ten kinds of weird, and I don’t even know how these PR people find me. A few notes from mailing lists, an email from an online friend, and a recipe contest announcement from the site, Epicurious . And then, tucked between a note from Arianna telling me she secured babysitting for tonight and an advertisement from an online bookstore is a note from the Bloscars.
It is obviously a cut-and-pasted message to all nominees, but it congratulates me on being a finalist for the 2009 Bloscars and passes along a series of important dates (the opening and closing of voting being two of them) and a Bloscars icon in case I want it for my blog.
I am fumbling frantically to add it to my sidebar when the buzzer rings.
I buzz the person into the building by hitting the button on my wall and then go back to trying to figure out my blogging software. The icon is a plain grey box, but I am strangely proud to have made it to the finalist round. I finally get it uploaded and admire it for several moments on my site before a knock comes on the door.
“I’m a finalist,” I crow, throwing the door open.
But instead of finding Ethan or Arianna on the other side, I am facing a tall, droopy-eyed man with carefully tousled hair holding a wine bottle.
So, naturally, I scream.
Which causes my next-door neighbor to instantly throw open her door as if she were waiting for this exact moment to happen and hiss at me because she has a baby sleeping. I apologize to her and to the man while my brain catches up with my body, and I realize this must be one of the two men my brother said he would bring along. Silly me, I expected them to come with him, as in at the same time, so that I didn’t have to entertain a stranger in my apartment, alone. But unless you specify these things with Ethan, it’s always a guess as to how things will play out.
“I apologize,” the man said in a thick accent of European origin. I guess Spain . Or maybe France . Or Portugal . “Ethan told me to come here
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