I can’t help smiling, because I really am trying hard to be a nice guy. “Yeah, I know, but now she’s always following me all over town.”
“What do you mean?”
So I tell Cliff that since the dinner party, whenever I put on a trash bag and leave my house for a run, Tiffany is always waiting outside in her little running outfit and pink headband. “Very politely, I told her that I do not like running with other people and asked her to leave me alone, but she ignored my request and simply jogged five feet behind me for my entire run. The next day, she did the same thing, and she keeps on doing it. Somehow she’s figured out my schedule, and she’s always there when I leave my house an hour before sunset—ready to shadow me wherever I jog. I run fast, and she stays with me. I run on dangerous streets, and she follows. She never tires out either—and just keeps running down the street when I finally stop in front of my house. She doesn’t even say hello or goodbye.”
“Why don’t you want her to follow you?” Cliff asks.
So I ask him how his wife, Sonja, would feel if some hot woman shadowed him every time he went for a run.
He smiles the way guys do when they are alone and talking about women in a sexual way, and then he says, “So you think Tiffany is hot?” This surprises me because I did not know therapists were allowed to talk like guys do when they are buddies, and I wonder if this means that Cliff thinks of me as his buddy now.
“Sure, she’s hot,” I say. “But I’m married.”
He grabs his chin and says, “How long has it been since you’ve seen Nikki?”
I tell him I don’t know. “Maybe a couple of months,” I say.
“Do you really believe that?” he asks, grabbing his chin again.
When I say I do, I hear the yelling in my voice and even allow the f-word to slip out. Immediately I feel bad because Cliff was talking to me like a friend, and sane people should not yell and curse at their buddies.
“I’m sorry,” I say when Cliff starts to look scared.
“It’s okay,” he says, and forces a smile. “I should believe that you really mean what you tell me.” He scratches his head for a second and then says, “My wife loves foreign films. Do you like foreign films?”
“With subtitles?”
“Yes.”
“I hate those types of films.”
“Me too,” Cliff says. “Mostly because—”
“No happy endings.”
“Exactly,” Cliff says, pointing a brown finger at my face. “So depressing most of the time.”
I nod wholeheartedly in agreement, even though I haven’t been to see any movies for a long time, and won’t until Nikki returns, because I am now watching the movie of my life as I live it.
“My wife used to beg me to take her to see these foreign films with subtitles all the time,” Cliff says. “It seemed like every day she would ask me if we might go to see a foreign film, until I broke down and started taking her. Every Wednesday night we’d go to the Ritz movie theater and see some depressing movie. And you know what?”
“What?”
“After a year we simply stopped going.”
“Why?”
“She stopped asking.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But maybe if you take an interest in Tiffany, ask her to run with you and maybe to go out to dinner a few times—maybe after a few weeks, she will grow tired of the chase and leave you alone. Let her get what she wants, and maybe she will not want it anymore. Understand?”
I do understand, but cannot help asking, “Do you think that will really work?”
And Cliff shrugs in a way that makes me believe it will.
I Can Share Raisin Bran
On the drive home from Cliff’s office I ask my mom if she thinks asking Tiffany on a date is the best way to get rid of her once and for all, and Mom says, “You shouldn’t be trying to get rid of anyone. You need friends, Pat. Everyone does.”
I don’t say anything in response. I’m afraid Mom is rooting for me to fall in love with Tiffany, because whenever she calls Tiffany my “friend,” she says the word with a smile on her face and a hopeful look in her eye, which bothers me tremendously because Mom is the only person in my family who does not hate Nikki. Also, I know Mom looks out the window when I go on my runs, because she will tease me, saying “I see your friend showed up again” when I return from a jog.
Mom pulls into the driveway, shuts off the car engine, and says, “I can loan you money should you ever want to take your friend to dinner,” and again, the way she says “friend” makes me feel tingly in a bad way. I say nothing in response, and my mother does the strangest thing—she giggles.
I finish my weight training for the day and put on a trash bag, and as I begin stretching on the front lawn, I see that Tiffany is jogging up and down the length of my parents’ block, waiting for me to begin running. I tell myself to ask her out to dinner so I can end this madness and get back to being alone on my runs, but instead I simply start running, and Tiffany follows.
I go past the high school, down Collings Avenue to the Black Horse Pike, make a left and then another left into Oaklyn, run down Kendall Boulevard to the Oaklyn Public School, up past the Manor Bar to the White Horse Pike, make a right and then a left onto Cuthbert, and I run into Westmont. When I get to the Crystal Lake Diner, I turn and jog in place. Tiffany jogs in place and stares at her feet.
“Hey,” I say to her. “You want to have dinner with me at this diner?”