Even Your Friends' Husbands

"I really must stop drinking so much," she said while contemplating her second shot of Scotch. "There are men—all over 30—who ask you questions about child-rearing on the first date, and then won't even commit to a double feature."
   He'd said you reminded him of something out of Riefenstahl's Olympia. You'd seen it at the same time, 500 miles apart. You'd been at your father's house. You'd talked about him. Even your dad was jumping on the are-you-seeing-someone bandwagon.
   For two days you'd said no, but after visiting your great-grandmother (you were her last hope), you'd admitted you were "dating."

   A leading women's magazine asserts that the mark of a good date is her ability to say, with utmost sincerity at least twice during the course of the first dinner, "That's absolutely fascinating."

   Several weeks after the Olympia incident (which you still persist in thinking was a compliment), he moves to Los Angeles to be with tall, leggy blondes who can almost, but not quite, beat him at tennis.

   You begin having Drew Barrymore moments.

   Eventually you grow up. You become a success. You find someone even your great-grandmother can't refuse; after all, he is Absolutely Fascinating.
   Within five years you are drinking straight gin. Then people start to die. Your social life seems to consist of one wake after another. While commemorating the suicides and the overdoses, you delight in whispering to the ridiculously bereaved (the ones who howl "He wouldn't have done it if he'd been here with his friends!"), "You don't know what goes on in people's heads—at the time he probably wasn't thinking about you at all."

   One night your husband comes home late; very late. You ask if she's tall; if she's blonde; if she's got a good serve. He doesn't get the joke. He doesn't even hear you. He is walking on air.
   You can only think of Angie, your gastroenterologist, who told a story once about a man who'd come to see her about his liver. He'd vomited an entire Hefty bag full of blood. "Did he get better?" you asked. But all she'd say was, "Eventually, all bleeding stops."

from Hand Over Fist