“My mom—I’m going to tell her this is the last time she can stay with me, and I’m going to stick to it. I can’t—if there’s any chance you and I, I mean, I know you may be leaving…” My heart was sinking. “But I can’t let her do again what she did with me and Trish. I’m not going to let that happen again. Even if it means cutting her off entirely.”
He leaned over and kissed my forehead, then my lips. His forehead rested against mine as he breathed in and out. I could feel how much he trusted me. I could feel what it would be like to stay with him.
“Paul,” I whispered.
He kissed me again.
“My work says I may have to go back.”
He blinked once, then slid away from me by a few inches. He was just looking at me, waiting, and the vulnerability nearly killed me.
“I just found out, and I don’t know yet if it’s definite. And I really like you, too, so much. But I don’t want you to make decisions based on me being here when I don’t…I don’t even know if…” There were tears in my eyes.
He nodded, his expression turning bleak again. I should have lied, I thought. But I couldn’t lie to him. Not when he was like this.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said quietly. He shifted to move away.
I wanted to take him in my arms, but I could see it on his face. He was already a million miles away.
Tryingto distract myself that night, I ended up reading another one of the improv books. This one talked a lot about impulses…about how to trust them, how you had to let them act through you. As long as you weren’t molesting your fellow actors, you were allowed to go for it, to try things, to break the rules. In improv, you could talk about things nobody wants to talk about: masturbation, fear of dying, having a crush on your friend’s spouse. You could push boundaries, release truths. It was okay to let that stuff come out, because the harder you worked to repress it, the more it killed your creativity.
It seemed to me, though, that maybe improv was the only safe place for acting on impulses. My mother had been impulsive. So was Paul’s mom, it sounded like. Impulses weren’t all they were cracked up to be. The basic problem was that it was easy to call something ‘trusting your instincts’ when you just did whatever you felt like—whenever you were afraid, or angry, or lonely, or horny. How could you tell the difference?
I missed Laura. She was the one person who I could listen to when my instincts were sending me badly astray. Because right now, my instincts were telling me to quit my job and stay with Paul forever.
11
“TRY NOT TO GET ATTACHED”
The next day,after not hearing from Paul all day, I finally broke down and called Laura. I picked the evening to call, when I knew Nick would be out playing one of his gigs.
I left a quick message. “Laur? Can you call me?”
Laura called me back a half-hour later, and I wondered if I had interrupted a later-than-usual bedtime routine.
“What’s wrong?” she said. She sounded worried enough that I felt guilty.
“It’s stupid. I just—I like this guy up here.”
“An improv comedy guy?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, honey. Please tell me he doesn’t pretend props on stage are his dick.”
I thought of Paul’s brilliant ‘toilet’ routine and decided not to bring it up.
“So what’s the problem, then?”
“The problem is that I may have to go home. Kedar said the work-from-home policy may be ending, and he’s not sure when, but it may be immediately. Next week, possibly. And I don’t know what to do. I like him so much.”
Laura hesitated before answering. “You could do a long-distance thing.”
“To Newfoundland? Long distance works from Boston to New York, maybe. Newfoundland to New York? Two flights away? It’s impossible.”
“Well, yeah…I couldn’t manage with Nick when he went to L.A., and we were married.” Laura fell silent. Her silence was thick with something unspoken.
“Are you okay?” I said.
