Five Things I Can't Live Without Read Online Free PDF Page A

deconstruction of my dream.”

    “I’m not taking it apart. I’m trying to help you put it together. A dream needs to be broken down into goals, right? And objectives.”

    “What’s the difference between a goal and an objective?” I asked. It was my turn to stump him.

    “That’s what I mean about the breakdown. You start with the dream: ‘I want to be a writer.’ Then you say, ‘My goal is to write for travel magazines,’ and then you look at the steps it takes to reach that goal and those would be your objectives.” He stood up. “You want a drink? I’m doing a shot.”

    I shook my head and watched him walk to the beautiful mahogany bar he’d built into the living-room wall. He’d combed estate sales until he’d found one he both loved and could afford. He loved bars—not the actual watering holes, which he liked pretty well, but the bars themselves. He’d never been to bartending school, but he could mix anything and he came up with new concoctions all the time. Naively, that night I’d thought maybe he’d invent the Animal Liberation in my honor. Instead, I was watching with mounting anxiety as he downed top-shelf tequila.

    Numerically, there are many software engineers in the Bay Area. Categorically, there are only two: those who want to stay in computers, and those who want to do something else. I only date the latter, and I’ve dated four of them. One wanted to be a musician, one wanted to be a cartoonist, one wanted to be a barfly, near as I could tell (which made for the temporarily arresting combination of the sexy bad boy in a programmer’s body), and Dan wanted to own a bookstore with a liquor license. He figured it would officially combine the bookstore and the pickup joint. He had this vision of writers doing readings there and then hanging out at the burnished, turn-of-the-century bar drinking a Scotch with him. It was an appealing vision for me, too. I liked the thought of being the proprietress of such an establishment, mingling with literati, maybe even being literati someday.

    Dan’s not one of those people who tells you all his dreams the first time you meet him. He’s not the kind to doodle the floor plans for his bookbar on a napkin. I wouldn’t want that kind anyway. Dream whores get boring after a while. When you’re underemployed and you meet another person who’s underemployed, telling your dreams right off the bat is the quickest way to establish your identity. But Dan didn’t consider himself underemployed. He generally felt lucky to make a good living at something he just happened upon out of college, and he’d been living below his means for years to save up for the bookbar. He wasn’t cheap; he just figured out what mattered to him and put his money there. If something didn’t matter, he didn’t spend on it. He could probably have started the business already, but he’d done a lot of research and was trying to do it at the optimal time with the optimal amount of capital, so he figured it’d be in five years or so. He got antsy sometimes, but mostly he was okay with the wait.

    And I loved him for this. I loved him for his methodical mind and his patience. I admired him tremendously. From the first time I met him, I adored the way he tilted his head to really consider what I was saying, and the confidently long pauses he allowed to elapse between my question and his answer. I adored it, but it made me self-conscious about my own answers. I wondered if what I’d said stood up to that kind of scrutiny. Scrutiny’s the wrong word, though; it implies appraisal and there was something wonderfully accepting about those pauses. It was more like I wondered if what I’d said deserved such consideration.

    “I wish I was like you,” I said sadly.

    He sat down close to me, and his voice was low. “What you did scares the shit out of me. You’re someone who can just say, ‘Fuck it, I’m gone.’”

    I took his hand. “I’m just getting here.”

    “I