Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts Read Online Free PDF Page B

O.J. Simpson Defense Team’s theory of the Brown-Goldman murders, but that didn’t keep me from attempting to engage with Frank, using the skills that Roberta had taught me.
    As I plowed through my meatloaf, I surveyed the scenery. I wasn’t going to go through another year of this. One of us had to make up our mind.
    I started in. “Listen Frank, it’s time to stop screwing around.”
    “OK, OK…” he mumbled, “I’ll leave your mashed potatoes alone.”
    Hmmmmm. This was
not
going to be easy. “No,” I said, “cut it with the potatoes. Where is this relationship going?”
    If there are five words which can stop a man’s heart quicker than those, I don’t know what they are. Frank looked like I had just sucked the life out of him.
    “Well… you know,” he said, “it’s going.”
    I shook my head. “Not good enough,” I said. “That’s not an answer.”
    I’m sure that Roberta would have counseled me to create a safe place in the dialogue where Frank felt that he could “be present” with me. I wasn’t having any part of it.
    “Look,” I said, “we’ve been engaged for over a year. I still don’t have a ring. Every time I suggest a date, you make it six months away. When three months pass, you put the date out another six months. Enough already.”
    Although I really should have seen it coming, when I heard it I laughed so hard that I fell right out of my Copper Pan chair.
    “I still have so much work to do,” said Frank, with the chastened look which I had seen so many of Roberta’s patients adopt.
    “Oh my God!” I said as I spit out my mashed potatoes. “Frank honey, the only work you need to do is to figure out how you can get it constantly, instead of occasionally.”
    I attempted to address the issue.
    “Look, time is moving on. And while I’m willing to be in this relationship with you, I’m not willing to do it as your girlfriend.”
    Frank looked around the room.
    “Well,” he said, “I need more time.”
    “Well, I’m going to give you more time—two months to be precise. Two months to make 50 percent of the decisions in this relationship, two months to take 50 percent of all of the responsibilities, two months to pay 50 percent of all of our bills. And, two months to pick a wedding date, which must be executed by the end of this year, not the decade.” I paused for a moment to get him some water because he appeared to be choking on his burger.
    “Also, I want an engagement ring. So, I’ll give you two months to find one. And I want at least a one carat ring,
with no inclusions
in it.”
    I knew perfectly well that there was no chance on God’s green earth that any of this was going to happen. Frank had been ruined by therapy. His ability to make any decision, from what color car to buy, to whether he should still be mad at his dad, had been handed over to Roberta. And unless Roberta gave him the “thumbs up,” he wouldn’t marry me. And I knew Roberta wouldn’t.
    But it was time to move on and this was another decision that he would not openly make. So I gave him his out. By doing what he always did—nothing—he would end the relationship.
    As a matter of fact, he never did say or do anything. He just stopped coming over. Then he stopped calling. One morning when I went to make orange juice, I realized that his juicer was gone. And then his keys arrived in the mail.
    About the time that the juicer disappeared, my friend Stefan met Frank at a gallery opening. Frank never did tell him that we had broken up. He just said, “Courtney was great to me. But it just wasn’t right. And I have so much work to do.”

2
    Almost Single
    “So?” asked my therapist, Roberta.
    “Can we wait until my Blueberry Tea seeps?” I said.
    Like into a Slurpee or Jell-O.
    “Tick-Tock,” said Roberta.
    “More like cha-ching,” I said.
    “I don’t like that.”
    “Sorry. Frank’s juicer is gone. I’m pretty sure that this means he is gone.”
    “Yes. He told