Any Place I Hang My Hat Read Online Free PDF Page B

filmmaker. He wasn’t one of those vitamin-D-deficient downtown guys with black-framed glasses to match all-black, all-the-time clothes. His style was casual but cool, like an academic who got good consulting fees. Mostly he wore khakis or jeans with hand-knit sweaters and denim shirts that fit as though they were custom-made.
    I got back to the milk. “If I had to guess? I’d say more than repulsive, but it won’t be totally gross until tomorrow.”
    “Water’s good,” he said.
    Before he could get up, I did one of those flying leaps that gets you from supine to upright in one fluid instant. “It’s okay, I’ll get it.”
    Over the years, I’d gotten enough compliments and seen enough of myself in those three-way mirrors while trying on bathing suits to be relatively confident about my rear view. This was not to say I would jog through Central Park bare-assed at noon, but I figured fetching a glass of water, high-butted and low-cellulited, was the kind of visual I wanted looping in John’s mind after I dumped him.
    Maybe “dumped” sounds a little harsh. Well, I suppose I was still angry and/or hurt from Valentine’s Day. I’d been expecting a small, lightweight box. He’d handed me a heavy, medium-sized one. Oooh, I’d said, hoping I sounded more pleased than surprised. I opened it to find an electric appliance that produced heart-shaped waffles. It wasn’t the fact of a waffle iron that had upset me so much.
    It was that despite what I thought of as his apparent clinging—the same behavior he referred to as enjoying my company—our relationship was stuck in the mud. Yes, he wanted to be with me when I was buying groceries, and no, he didn’t want to go off and pick up a roll of paper towels while I was checking out the green teas because Wouldn’t it be more fun if we did both things together?
    Yet he was perfectly capable of telling me he was going to the Fulton Fish Market the following morning, just to see what sunrise there looked like, then calling two weeks later to say sorry, he’d been out of touch. But hey, he’d been to a soybean-processing plant in Ohio, a pig farm in Georgia, and Safeway headquarters in California because he’d gotten backing to do a documentary called Food Chain. And what did I think of the idea?
    One time, when I asked him how come he hadn’t called, he’d replied, “Amy, the phone’s a two-way instrument.” It wasn’t that John was undependable. I saw him as a man of enormous enthusiasms. He could become intrigued by a fly perched on the edge of a beer can, start to gather footage on houseflies, put together a film crew, set out a bowl of sugar, and wind up finding someone to pay for a documentary. And also make a profit on it. A small profit to be sure, but then he hadn’t become a documentarian because he wanted to be rich.
    After two years of seeing each other exclusively, I realized I’d become one of his lesser enthusiasms. No matter that we could talk about politics for hours, or even whole weekends, analyze the lives of our friends. No matter we both loved classic Hollywood movies, the Yankees, and walking for miles and miles all over Manhattan. He had never once said I love you. And after the waffle iron, I couldn’t see asking him, Hey, John, do you love me? Because I knew he didn’t.
    Not that I loved John either—of that I was sure—but he’d taken me on such a damn long ride. Two years, two months. We’d gotten past his friends, then gone on to meet his family, then down to his assistant, his summer intern, and his professional pals at the History Channel and A&E. Naturally I figured: Well, he’s revving up to ask the Big One. I’ve got to at least give it consideration, because John all but wore an identifying neon sign flashing Hey, Women of New York! Great Catch. After I wound up on New Year’s Day minus a ring, I’d been positive February fourteenth would be the day he’d pop the question. Maybe he’d even have a ring ready.