Once More with Feeling Read Online Free PDF Page B

flyers, but mostly there were couples. Men and women strolled along, talking and laughing together, paired off like passengers on the ark.
    Laura shut her eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t block out the bad feelings. For the past two days she’d felt as if she’d stepped onto a roller coaster. The car was moving slowly but already picking up speed, embarking on a ride she knew would raise her up to exhilarating highs only to plunge down to valleys far below. Yet she had no choice but to hang on, clinging to the thought that, in time, it would all be over.
    She cast a grateful smile at the waitress who placed an icy glass of ginger ale in front of her. All the tears she’d shed had left her feeling drained and dehydrated. The surge of sugar, she discovered, was even more comforting than the Valium.
    Telling the people closest to her was apparently the first gut-wrenching drop on the roller-coaster ride. She’d put off calling her two best friends, Claire and Julie. She hadn’t been ready to speak the words, but she wasn’t able to lie, either, to act as if everything were the same as it had been a mere forty-eight hours earlier. And so she’d avoided them, wincing at the cheerful sound of their voices on her answering machine, dreading the moment she’d have to tell them.
    Saying it out loud, she knew, would make it real.
    The idea of ending her marriage, discarding what had been her life for well over a third of her nearly forty years, was something she wanted to keep inside a little longer. Until she went public, she could still turn back. Change her mind. Tell Roger she had simply been angry, neatly putting everything back the way it had been before.
    Then, suddenly, she found she could no longer put it off. She’d told Julie first, suspecting that Claire would be miffed but feeling it safer to try it out first on her softer, less judgmental friend.
    Julie Cavanaugh, with her cascades of long, wavy red hair, pale skin, and soulful green eyes, looked as if she’d just stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Her manner complemented her waiflike appearance. Her voice was soft and breathy, her movements graceful. She had a reassuring way of focusing on people as she elicited every detail of their problems, listening intently, sighing with indignation, then spooning out solid, commonsense advice.
    People who didn’t know her well were surprised at the competence with which she performed the duties of her rigorous job as a massage therapist. Giving expert massages was only the beginning. Her devoted clientele contended that she not only worked the knots out of their muscles, but out of their minds as well. That had certainly been Laura’s conclusion three years ago, when too much time hunching over a word processor had brought her to Julie’s massage table.
    “Laura, where have you been?” Julie’s voice had been filled with concern the day before when she discovered who was on the phone. “Didn’t you get the message I left yesterday?”
    “Yes, I—”
    “Oh, that’s right. Weren’t you signing autographs at a new bookstore?”
    ‘The signing’s tomorrow night. Julie, listen to me.” Laura took a deep breath. “I’m getting divorced.” She’d promptly burst into tears, her resolve about staying calm forgotten.
    “Oh, Laura! Are you all right? What do you need me to do? Have you told Evan? How’s Roger taking it?” Julie paused to catch her breath. “You must be a bundle of nerves. Would you like me to come over and walk on your back?”
    Telling Claire had been more difficult. On the one hand, Laura mused, hesitating before dialing, Claire was bound to be better at empathizing, since she herself belonged to the sisterhood of divorced women. On the other hand, while Claire Nielsen meant well, her sledgehammer style was sometimes hard to take.
    “Well, it’s about time!” she’d exclaimed over the phone in response to Laura’s announcement. “I never could figure out what