Page 62 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Before I could stop myself, I was telling her how awkward I always felt. I would act too intense and put people off. I told her about my high-energy, outgoing, tech-challenged family and the jokes that I was maybe switched at birth. You’d think a family like that would’ve made me more socially adept. It didn’t. We joked that we were aliens who’d found each other.

By her own admission, she remembered a lot of that night. Not all of it but a lot. Enough.

Mac gets back to me: ottoman blanket storage, another feature for guests that never gets used.

Mac was adamant I keep guest amenities just in case, and I went with it, more to placate him than anything. Because what the hell do I need with guest amenities? I only have business visitors, and if and when I would ever have a non-business visitor, I would put them up at a hotel, including my parents, though they never visit. The few holidays I ventured back to Michigan, I always stayed at a hotel. We’re not close like other families.

I bring her the blanket and then I go back and get the water and the aspirin and I bring it in and I set it on the bedside table where she’ll see it. I decide that’s everything I can do, so I head back to the kitchen to make a bagel.

I stuff the two halves into the slots of the toaster, watch the wires turn red.

The Monique and Igor thing was the first time I’d ever engaged in any kind of joking or humorous interaction whatsoever, though I would have never admitted it. What kind of person doesn’t joke? It sounds psychotic. It’s not that I couldn’t recognize or appreciate humor—I always have appreciated humor and I laugh when things are actually funny—a rare occurrence, but it happens.

However, Francine’s Monique and Igor thing was one of those rare instances when something was actually funny, though I seemed to be in the minority about it. Cast members would smile politely as if her fake daughter stories were simply odd, but really they were hilarious. The one thing that was missing from those jokey humblebrag stories of hers was a competitor for Monique. With that, Igor was born. Unexpectedly. A surprise baby like me.

Suddenly I was telling an Igor story, putting it up against her Monique story.

And suddenly we were having fun.

Me. With a sense of humor. It had everything to do with Francine; we clicked invisibly. Synergistic operating systems under the surface. Two fake children, uniquely ours.

The night that we got married, she described the picture she had in her head of Monique, which looked suspiciously like her. And the picture that she had of Igor looked like me. “Igor is brilliant and misunderstood like his papa,” she’d said, “though one must overlook the tragic little teapot performance incident.”

* * *

When I getup the next morning, there’s coffee made and the cutting board has a little puddle of juice from an orange sliced into six sections.

I flip Pandora on the penthouse-wide sound system, assuming she took off, but when I wander into the den, she’s on the couch with Spencer. Her hair is down, glossy as a mirror. She’s in a T-shirt and pajama pants, one leg outstretched with the pants leg rolled up. She’s pressing an ice pack around her knee, forming it into a semicircle.

The Beau Cirque dancers used to do that, trying to press the ice or the heat all the way around their sore joint. Usually they preferred pressing it for each other, so that the person with the injury could focus entirely on relaxing it. That seemed to be the gold standard—somebody else doing the pressing while the injured person relaxed.

But of course, I’ve ripped her away from all of her girlfriends who would probably do this sort of thing for her.

“Good morning,” I say.

She looks up. “Thanks for the aspirin.” I can read everything from her tone. She feels angry. Shut out.

The heat pack is draped over on the back of the couch, probably having cooled off. That’s the dancer technique from Beau Cirque—ice-heat-ice-heat-ice. They were always very specific about beginning and ending with ice. It was considered a bad sign when a dancer was ice-heating a lot.

“What?” she asks.

“You want me to heat that?” I ask.

“No.”

“Is that a yes?” I ask.

She looks up. If she thinks that’s funny, she’s disguising it well. “No.”

I stand there, frustrated. I want to heat up the heat pack for her. And what about this injury? A picture pops up in my mind of her confiding in me about it. Maybe I can help her think this thing through or find resources for her knee. I want to protect her wishful thinking. I want to pick her up and carry her across the condo again—not to her bedroom, but to mine. I try to look annoyed while I fight like hell to get my reactions to her under control. There’s a first—metryingto look annoyed.

“I’m standing right here. I may as well.”

“You don’t get to be a cold and remote captor one minute and then a caring husband the next. I’m your show horse that you need for whatever reason. I’m a convenient employee for the next two weeks. Do you go around getting ice packs for your other employees?”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I say, frustrated. “It’ll ruin the whole process if you have to get up and walk all the way back to the kitchen. Lest you forget all that time I spent in the auditorium. Why not maximize all of the tools that you have at your disposal?”

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