Dream Lover Read Free Page B

we were together.
    So that was my life for three years. We never had a real date that I remember; just an evening in the hotel. He never took me to a show; we didn’t spend a weekend together. It was so textbook. He wouldn’t give me a phone number. I did finally find out that his last name was Smith, and when I did, I laughed for at least five minutes. There are over two hundred Jack Smiths in New York, alone. How would I ever find him? It once occurred to me to follow him into his building to try to find out whom he worked for, but he caught me and I didn’t see him for a week after that. I learned my lesson.
    Another time, we were on the street together and someone with whom he worked saw us. He didn’t say who, just that that person had questioned him later in the day about the woman he was lunching with. After that, we didn’t stop at our usual vendor for lunch. We ate closer to the campus bathroom. Our love nest.
    I got to carrying around one of those metallic blankets that folds up into a tiny, silver dollar-sized bag and we would spread that out on the floor of the bathroom. He would lie down because his knees couldn’t take the hard tile. Or he would sit on the toilet and I would sit on him. Only once did someone interrupt us, and Jack just yelled that he was in there, sick. The person wasn’t waiting when we came out. For three years, I made my clothing choices to accommodate my lunchtime trysts with Jack. I would go shopping and see something, a dress with a full skirt, or a wraparound skirt, and think, This would be good for seeing Jack .
    I’d never had many friends, but now I was completely isolated. My sisters didn’t question what I was up to.
    “I am almost afraid to ask,” Heather stated. “I just hope you are safe.” Prophetic. Now Heather and Mark are back together with one son and another on the way. Will they ever allow me to touch their children again?
    After the first week of Jack’s disappearance, I started to get frightened. During the first few days that he didn’t show up, I examined each move I had made and word I had said, to try to uncover anything that might have annoyed him. There was nothing. I had become a voiceless, selfless automaton. So that left the possibility that he had gone on vacation and forgotten to tell me. It had happened before and he wasn’t apologetic when he returned and I confronted him. I factored nowhere in his life. I was a hand job in the bathroom during lunch for the price of a hot dog and soda.
    By the tenth day of his absence, I was frantic. What if he had moved away, or gotten another job? I had a friend from yoga who worked in the ER at St. Vincent’s; she suggested I check out the obituaries in the New York Times when I confided in her. It took another week and two sick days of searching, but that’s where I finally found him. Jack Edward Smith. I couldn’t read further. It was the correct Jack; this one was fifty-five, lived at the beach, but on Long Island, not in New Jersey. I lay down on my bed and pulled the covers up under my chin. He was dead! His funeral had come and gone. I needed a calendar to check the dates, to see where I was and what I was doing when he died. I got out of bed and brought the calendar back. Somehow, I had to force myself to read the obituary. There was a related story.
    Why would anyone write about Jack? The article would tell a lot. I was fucking a well-known person! Jack Edward Smith, born September 30, 1955, died May 28 in Manhattan. Mr. Smith suffered a massive heart attack on a train bound for Long Island. He was mugged sometime before passengers discovered him. He later died in the hospital. His wife, the former Pamela Fabian of Brooklyn, was unavailable for comment. Mr. Smith was a partner in the firm Lane, Smith, and Romney. His partner, Peter Romney, stated that it was “a sad day for the company. But business will go on.” I sat back against my pillows. The story about the boss being a tyrant was a lie. I