All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,25

with my boyfriend. The last thing I was expecting was to find anyone in the apartment, even if that someone was kneeling just inside the door, holding a ring in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. All I recognized when I pushed open the door was a person where a person ought not to be, and instinctively I reached for my bottle of Mace. I think Christian was either professing his eternal love or he was on the verge of doing so; either way, he wasn’t focused enough on what I was doing to avoid the spray aimed directly into his eyes. It was around the moment he hit the ground, his howl of pain still echoing, that I realized who he was and what he was trying to do. Needless to say, it wasn’t the neatest of breakups. His eyes were bright red from the Mace before I turned down his proposal of marriage, but to this day I’ve never been quite certain where in his eyes the crying ended and the Mace began.

So that was the boy who wanted to marry me. There have been any number of others who came later, after Phillip, when I was no longer quite so certain of my footing, and I suppose I’d have to admit I’ve occasionally allowed myself to occupy a place in relationships that I’m not so proud of. Let me give you a few examples and you tell me if these sound like a woman whose self-esteem is in the right place.

There was Alan, who dumped me in couples therapy. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that being in couples therapy before we were even engaged should have been a sign.

Henry was adorable. I once cooked dinner for him and he arrived, broke up with me, and then asked if he could still stay for dinner and perhaps watch a bit of television until the traffic died away, and I let him.

Jack was even worse. I tried to end it with him one evening while we were out for dinner. Tearfully, he talked me out of it. Then we went home and had sex, and then he told me I was probably right and we should break up.

But none of them hurt the way Phillip hurt. Hell, all of them put together didn’t hurt the way he did. And to have to see him now, as I do every day, is sometimes more than I think I can bear. I suppose that’s why I start every morning with the words “fuck him.” I assume healthy, well-adjusted people have a more optimistic way of greeting the new day.

Perhaps tonight will be different. Perhaps this will be better. Perhaps this fellow Marie has arranged for me to meet will be unlike the others. Perhaps we’ll have great chemistry and he’ll be funny and smart and handsome, though that’s the least of it for me so long as he’s not repugnant. If I can tolerate the sight and scent of him (if he smells, it’s over) he doesn’t have to look like Pierce Brosnan. In fact, I think I’d prefer he did not. If he looked like Pierce Brosnan, I would spend every moment we were in public acutely aware of everyone wondering why this guy who looks like Pierce Brosnan isn’t with a woman who looks like Sandra Bullock. I would be wondering myself. There is such a thing as being too good-looking, as far as I’m concerned. You can’t be too rich but you can be too handsome.

Maybe this one will look more like Matthew Broderick (so funny) or Denis Leary (so manly) or Stephen Colbert (I know I am not the only one who is attracted to him). And he’ll be sweet and smart, and appreciate how hard I work, and maybe he’ll love old movies and Italian food, and he’ll drink dry vodka martinis and wear elegant suits and just a hint of facial hair, not a beard or anything, maybe just long sideburns or a neatly trimmed goatee. Maybe he’ll be hugely successful and we’ll be a power couple, and he’ll send me naughty texts during a break between meetings in Hong Kong, telling me all the fun things he’s going to do with me when he comes home.

Maybe the start of a new decade will really be a new beginning for me. Maybe forty will be my new thirty, or better yet the thirty I missed out on because I was