I'm Your Man Read Free

best.”
    â€œI’m not surprised,” she said. “You’ve always been supportive of him. He had the best. I don’t understand how he let it slip away.”
    â€œI’m not sure I understand it, either,” I admitted. “I don’t think I realized how many problems we had until after the Maddie Awards.”
    Gretchen sat back to indicate that she would listen while she ate.
    The Maddie Awards were held at a gala dinner and recognized people who’d done outstanding work in Manhattan advertising. I’d been nominated for a campaign I did for my advertising firm that featured Sheila as our model. Sheila’s fiancé, photographer Josh Clinton, was nominated for a Prada spread he’d shot for Ultimate Magazine. We were all excited about the nominations and, at Daniel and Sheila’s request, broke tradition and sat with one another rather than at tables with the other nominees and executives from our respective employers. When both Josh and I won our awards, the night was declared a triumph, and we partied until dawn.
    During that evening, I’d experienced a vague uneasiness, but I didn’t have time to analyze it because Sheila and I took an extended business trip to Europe immediately afterward. We came back to endless photographs of Sheila and Daniel looking like a radiant couple in publications like People, W, and Variety. When an entire paragraph of Lola Listeria’s gossip column in the Manhattan Star-Gazette described Daniel and Sheila as the coming century’s first supercouple, I hit the roof.
    I agreed with Daniel when he pointed out that my work in advertising should make me understand the value of publicity, even when it was contrived or false. But I was furious about feeling used and managed to that end, reminding him that he’d not only capitalized on an event that was meant to be for Josh and me, but he’d been more than a little deceptive in how he’d turned the situation to his advantage.
    After I explained all that to Gretchen, she said, “I guess I can see why you were annoyed with Sheila and Daniel. But it doesn’t sound serious enough to break up over.”
    â€œIt wasn’t,” I agreed. “There’s more. Over the past year, he and I made a lot of plans for our future. The big ones were moving in together and eventually having kids. The whole package. I think as his part on Secret Splendor got bigger and more demands were made on him to promote the show, our goals stopped being a priority for him. I didn’t get that until one night when we were already having a bad fight. He started talking about problems that I didn’t even know we had. The stuff he said . . .” I looked at her. “I don’t want to get into that. We both said awful things to each other. He told me it was over. I walked out. I haven’t seen him or talked to him since.”
    â€œYou’ve both been traveling,” Gretchen reminded me. “Maybe when he comes back, the two of you can talk more rationally about your problems.”
    â€œI think it’s beyond that, Gretchen. But I don’t want it to hurt my other relationships. Like with Sheila. I hope it doesn’t cause problems for you to be friends with me as well as Daniel.”
    â€œAre you kidding? You and I will always be friends,” she assured me. “Who else would sit through Woody Allen movies with me? Plus you never give me unsolicited advice about my love life. You always heed my recommendations about your investments. You’ve given me free advertising expertise on my various Happy Hollow ventures. You’re my only gay friend who doesn’t tell me when my hair is a disaster. You can call me anytime. Except, of course, when Lou Dobbs Moneyline is on CNN.”
    I laughed and shifted the conversation to more neutral topics. After we split the check, we walked outside. It was no longer raining, so once I saw Gretchen into a