Page 23 of Engineering a Love Story

After a week of hunting, I’ve nearly given up finding an apartment of my own, thinking I’ll have to take a roommate or find some kind of house share, though I hate to do it. Almost more than anything else, this feels like a backslide. I want to be a grown-up, to have my own space. But I don’t have endless time. The offer from that midwestern family did come, though it was almost exactly what Ash and I paid for the house a year ago, meaning we’ll make no money on the sale. Still, we accepted. We’re scheduling inspections and completing paperwork. Denny has reiterated our buyers’ urgency.

I do my best to cram apartment hunting into lunch breaks and after-work hours; I’m determined to start this quarter off right and not fall behind again. Evan and I get a good jump on the Market Spotlight, and I push out a couple of other briefs.

When I’m not working, I’m combing the Globe for new listings, visiting potential units, commuting, getting home late. Mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, sorting through my meager finances, trying to figure out how it’s all going to work, forcing food into my body at somewhat regular intervals. As June ends and we move into July, I’m worn thin by how exhausting and excruciating it is to disentangle two lives, even if it’s the only way.

On the Friday before the Fourth when most everyone has gone from the office, Travis pops into my cube with a tattered copy of the Boston Phoenix. Coffee rings and smudgy food stains indicate the paper’s come from Gilroy’s break room.

“Look at this one.” Travis has half an old doughnut braced in the corner of his mouth, and he holds out the newspaper. It’s folded tidily so only a few of the classifieds show. I scan the listing and call its number, but I go to voicemail. I leave a message saying I’m anxious to see the apartment, if it’s still available. I know it’s a long holiday weekend, but I’m free. Could they please call me back?

Travis shrugs when I hang up. “Want to get a bite?”

Acknowledging I won’t accomplish anything else this evening, we decide to go to the Blue Note, a regular Gilroy hangout about a mile from our office. Since Ash and I moved to the suburbs around the same time I started at Gilroy, I don’t get to the Blue Note often, as the long commute makes it impractical. Tonight, I determine I’ll go and enjoy it. I need a break.

On our way out, we collect Lian Kim. Like Evan, Lian is in Gilroy’s research associate program, though when Lian joined, she was disappointed to find she’d been paired with an older analyst who covers mainframes. Her lack of enthusiasm for this topic is obvious and understandable.

Wanting to enjoy the nearly endless evening light, we set off walking. The early July air is humid but not unbearably so, and we pass sleek new Kendall Square buildings done in chrome and creamy stone. There are so many more of these now than just a half dozen years ago when Ash and I first moved to Cambridge. These shiny places still butt up against empty lots, ones that hold nothing more than crumbling cement foundations and half-hearted grass.

As we walk, Lian updates us on her long-distance boyfriend Ryan, who she’s been dating since college. He was a year ahead of her at Boston College and moved to San Francisco after graduation. A venture capitalist, she’s said. One of those twenty-four-year-olds who had been giving money to other twenty-four-year-olds for nonsensical business ideas.

With that all now going up in smoke, Ryan recently relocated again, this time to Austin, and Lian is waiting for some kind of invitation to join him there. She’s told us before about her strict Korean parents, who hope she’ll meet a nice young man who also has strict Korean parents. She’d like to spare them the disappointment of Ryan, a white kid from Westchester County, unless it’s serious.

“He’s still dodging,” Lian says now. “I’m not sure if I should start looking for jobs in Austin. Or not.” She shrugs, and I recognize the uncertainty and possibly even ambivalence in her face. It can be so much easier when someone else lays out a path for you. Trailing a finger along one of the endless lengths of chain link fence, I wonder how Lian really feels about Ryan, or if she even knows. I’m sure being Mrs. Ryan Westchester seems more appealing to her right now than writing market research about mainframes. And she might not see other options.

We arrive at the Blue Note, which has a new tapas place on one side and a diner that’s been slinging hash and eggs for forty years on the other. As we pull open the pub’s heavy door, the smokestack of the NECCO candy factory rises in the distance.

Inside, the Blue Note is all twenty-first century Cambridge, with a massive wraparound bar done in a dark wood and twenty beers on tap. Blue drinks are served in icy martini glasses. We find seats at a high top and order blue drinks and burgers.

Travis tilts his drink toward a TV hanging high above the bar and makes a snarky comment about the screen’s display of George W. Bush’s potential running mates. When our burgers arrive, Travis is poking fun at Bush’s latest gaffe.

“I think he said he wants to put food on our families.” Travis rests an elbow on the table and wags his burger, repeating the line in an overdone twang. “I mean, what the fuck,” he says, dropping the accent.

We laugh, but there’s a tightness in Travis’s face. He’s mentioned before how just seeing the Bush name in the news gives him painful flashbacks of Bush Sr. I also find the rise of the younger Bush alarming, all that style and seemingly little substance, the carousing and drinking of his younger days apparently forgiven or forgotten.

Still, the laughter is a relief. This night out is much needed, as are these new friends. It’s quickly becoming apparent that ending my marriage is going to mean losing not only Ash’s family but also many friendships. The people Ash and I used to socialize with, our couple friends from college, his friends from prep school and their wives—I have heard nothing from any of these people in weeks. Though I’m sure everyone knows what’s happened. Nobody wants to take sides, I imagine. Or, more likely, it’s too difficult for anyone to take my side.

Lian asks Travis for an update on Daisuke, and he explains they’re crafting plans for additional visits. “I’m trying to get on the agenda for The Symp’s APAC edition next year,” Travis says. “It’s in Singapore. But that’s close enough.” I startle a little, still surprised sometimes by how large Gilroy is.

Halfway through the meal, Lian’s phone vibrates. She snatches it up, pulls a few bills from her wallet, tosses these on the table, and leaves us with a wave.

After that, we’re joined by a former Gilroy analyst, Lars Eklund. I’ve not met Lars before, as he left for a start-up in the Bay Area before my time at Gilroy began. Still, I’ve heard about Lars.

“I think I sit in your old cube,” I say, reaching to shake his hand.

Lars releases a blasty laugh. Travis catches my eye and moves his mouth in a way that tells me he’s suppressing a laugh of his own. He pulls a cigarette from the pack at his elbow, and as he lights it, Travis asks Lars why he’s in town.

Leaning back in his stool, Lars catches the attention of a waitress and orders a blue drink. Then he sits straight again. “Turns out, no one wants to buy perfume online,” he says. He sounds as if he’s mourning this fact, but the corners of his mouth twitch. “The internet is great. But it doesn’t yet enable the power of smell. So, an online perfumery is basically fucked.”

Now his laugh is truly loud. Travis smirks around his cigarette.

Lars goes on to tell us that he has a new job back here in Boston and he’s just rented a place on Mass Ave. I’m about to ask if he’s in that glossy building when I hear my phone ringing. I scramble in my bag to find it.

“Hello? Yes? This is Chelsea.” I hold a finger against one ear, trying to block the noise of the bar. It’s the agent I’d called earlier about the apartment. “I can definitely meet you tomorrow. Anytime this weekend is fine.”

Travis guns a finger at me, and I make a face. Again, I have no plans at all for a long holiday weekend.

I arrange to meet the listing agent the next morning. “Fingers crossed,” I say, tucking the phone back into my bag.

“Moving?” Lars asks. He’s taken a cigarette from Travis’s pack, and he taps this against the table.