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in that disorganized house. What else could he do? He was broke.)
    But it wasn’t just the money that made him indebted to Vanessa. Everyone made too much of money, he thought. (He dimly acknowledged the fact that this assertion was usually made by those with not much of it.) The more important thing, though, with him and Vanessa was what went on emotionally. She had supported him in much more important ways. She encouraged him through those long deserted stretches when if he had to go out one more night and answer questions about what he did and have to say again
working on an independent feature
whenhe’d rather have put a bullet through his head. She’d stuck by him when even
he
didn’t think he was worth sticking by. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t love her for it. He did. She was    well, his best friend, he guessed. They’d been together since college nearly the whole time. With only a few on-and-off periods. Part of senior year was one. And after graduation when he
needed to be on his own
. He moved to Paris. He’d gotten a scholarship. The idea was to study film, but he dropped out of the school and used the money to watch two or three movies a day (easy to do in Paris), which he thought was as good a way as any of studying film, actually, but extremely lonely. He thought a lot about Vanessa, but was not ready to    to    what? To be only with her.
    So he had little flirtations in Paris, mostly with other Americans at first. Then he branched out to the more adventurous Swedish hippie and eventually landed an actual Parisienne (though she was technically from Dijon). Vanessa came to see him once and they fought the whole time. They had agreed
to be honest with each other
about the other people they saw, despite the fact that it never made either of them feel better. But neither of them would admit to wounded feelings and instead tossed back and forth little grenades of amorous details—the length of hair of a girl he’d messed around with, the skiing weekend she ended up in bed with two guys but
only kissed one of them
. In telling the stories they’d begin tentatively, concerned with each other’s feelings, then, as the stings increased, would find it not so bad after all to divulge more. He remembered one fight (but not what it was about) walking by the Seine on some gray afternoon and how she stormed off and he waited for a few good hours before finding her again in the café near his apartment (belonging to friends of her parents). She stood out, a big-boned blonde, clearly American, at the corner table with a cup of coffee, scribbling furiously in a little book. When he approached, she reached for her cup and drained it, not looking at him. When she did look up, red-eyed, he saw she wasn’t mad anymore. ‘You had the keys,’ she said, suppressing a smile of relief. ‘So I had to wait.’
    By the time he moved back to New York they were both so emotionally worn out from the separation they fell back on their original arrangement of being only with each other. Since Vanessa already had an apartment—she was in her short-lived art school period—it was only natural he’d moved in. They never really discussed it. He stayed with her when he got back and just kept on staying. After six months they were engaged. He couldn’t remember the actual moment they decided. There hadn’t really been one. He hadn’t gotten her a ring or anything, it just became obvious. It wasn’t really official. Though she definitely wanted to, Vanessa didn’t want to tell her parents yet, not until Benjamin’s career was a little more established. He agreed with that. His career wasn’t exactly what one would call
on solid footing.
So they kept it between themselves. Though her family did like him, at least her mother did and that’s pretty much all you could expect as far as the family was concerned. Her