Read Ellipsis for Free Online

was if I was happy, and if I was, how I got there was irrelevant. I tried to believe that as long as I treated people with sympathy and respect, and asked no more of life than what I was willing to give to it, I was as valuable as the next guy. The problem was, it didn’t often work.
    When my mental masochism became epidemic a few years back, I began a process of self-medication. I drank to forget, I ate to feel better, I took silly risks to agitate my adrenaline, I made love to strange women to elevate my ego. Still not enough. So I tried Saint-John’s-wort, but that only made me exhausted. And I read some self-help books, but that only made me mad. And I saw a shrink for two weeks, but that only made me insolvent. So I make do with Centrum Silver and a C and E supplement and I’ve cut back TV to three nights a week and don’t do anything at all on the Internet, and I’d been feeling pretty decent till this birthday nonsense came along. But the only time I feel great is when I’m with Jill.
    Will we stay together? I don’t know. I think I know I want to. And I think I know she enjoys her time with me as well. But I also know for a fact that we never discuss our future, whether joint or separate or somewhere in between, and never pledge undying love or extrapolate the mathematics of our alliance much beyond the end of the week.
    There are a lot of reasons for her to move on. She’s a dozen years younger than I am. And a lot more attractive. And earns more money. And has medical and dental and PERS for retirement while I’m barely hanging on to Blue Cross. She likes doing things actively and outdoors and she’s stylish and social and sophisticated. At times her energy is a lightning bolt that threatens to give me a heart attack. But at other times, her incessant buoyancy approaches the transcendental and promises to be my salvation. At times like those, it’s easy to see my future happiness as entirely dependent on her continued presence in my life. Which, among other things, is terrifying.
    I read Ward Just for a while, and drank the Scotch and ate the cookies. Then I looked at my watch and did what I had wanted to do in the first place, which was pick up the phone.
    â€œHi,” I said when she answered.
    â€œHi, yourself.”
    â€œJust checking to make sure you made it home okay.”
    â€œI always make it home okay.”
    â€œI wish you’d let me drive you.”
    â€œI’m armed, I’m paranoid, I drive a fast car. What could possibly happen to me between your place and mine?”
    Since I’m more than current on crime in the city, I chose not to answer the question. “What I really wish is that you’d spend the night.”
    â€œNot during the week, remember? It throws off my biorhythms or something. We’ve been through that, ad nauseam.”
    â€œThen I wish you’d move in,” I said before I knew I wanted to say it.
    She treated it as the caprice it was. “And do what with my stuff? My cat has a larger closet than you do.”
    â€œSo we get a new place somewhere else.”
    She hesitated. “Not yet.”
    â€œThen when?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œJill?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’m sorry. It’s too soon. I know that. I just get …”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI like waking up with you.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI think I love you.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œShouldn’t we do something about it?”
    â€œWe are, aren’t we?”
    â€œWhat are we doing?”
    â€œWe’re talking on the phone in our jammies.”
    I was back in bed and under the covers before I realized that in response to the flood of feeling I’d spilled so abjectly, Jill hadn’t said a word of reciprocity. Not for the first time in my dealings with women, I felt like a blithering idiot.

Chapter 5
    Although the ex-husband seemed the most likely prospect