October 29 - I'm at a loss

Every year, Dean began to panic at the advent of the holiday season. He was a wealthy man – a self-made man; his father had sold goods for a baking company door to door in a suburb outside of Philadelphia and his mother was a third grade teacher. Dean himself had moved to New York and become an investment banker at one of the larger firms, and didn’t have any qualms about the fact that he enjoyed his yearly bonus and sending his parents off on cruises through the Aegean Sea - he was a wealthy man and he took pride in his wealth, and as a result, he tended to attract women who expected much of his wealth and little of the rest of him. So as the holidays drew nigh every year, he found himself breaking into cold sweats in the middle of the night as he lay on his four-hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, or suddenly losing his appetite while dining with work buddies at Tao or club-hopping in the Meatpacking district, because he was caught by that familiar dread that accompanied not knowing what to get this year’s girlfriend that would possibly satiate her appetites.

“Diamonds,” advised the women he worked with, still a small percentage next to their male counterparts, and always eager to share the secrets of their sex. “Buy her diamonds and she’ll be smitten.”

“Chicks dig fur,” noted one of the buddies he worked out with as they sweated side by side on the treadmill at Equinox. Dean would comply, but the gifts felt cold, and the calculating looks that entered the women’s eyes as they peeled back store-wrapped paper made him even more certain they saw a wad of green money when they rubbed his cock at night, not the man attached to it.

This year, he had a different panic in his throat when he thought of what to buy his girlfriend for Christmas. Bethany was different than the women who had come before. They had met a literary event held at the Museum of the City of New York, and she was obviously there for the brains behind the evening, not the glitterati. Bethany was beautiful – stunning, even – but seemed oblivious to it. She didn’t dress well – it was not that she dressed poorly; she simply had no taste for labels or trends, shrugging into sweaters and jeans like they were her uniform. Dean felt double the intimidation of shopping for this woman. They had only been seeing one another for two months, and he wanted to impress, but felt that anything monetary he came up with would fall flat.

“Money can’t buy happiness and all that?” his best friend, Jason, said, elbowing him in the ribs with mirth. “Yeah right, man.”

“Diamonds,” counseled the women he worked with, as always, but he shook his head. Bethany was simpler than that. He had only ever seen her wear one piece of jewelry, and it was an antique locket that her grandmother had bequeathed to her in her will. He felt that Bethany would find diamonds gaudy, in poor taste, a waste of money.

“Chicks dig fur,” said Jason as he pushed his treadmill up to eight miles per hour with a grunt. That would be worse than the diamonds; Bethany wouldn’t even dig being referred to as a chick, much less wearing something that had once been alive; she ate strictly vegetarian. Jason shook his head and wiped away the sweat beads the dripped into his eyes. He felt like he needed to come up with something more personal, but couldn’t quite figure out how. He told himself he’d concentrate once things quieted down at work.

Only work got busier in the days leading up to the holiday. He already only saw Bethany once a week, which seemed fine to him since he couldn’t really think about her when he was squinting at his computer screen long past midnight. When they did squeeze in dinner or a movie, she seemed resentful, restless. She’s waiting for her present, he thought with a worried frown. It was the same look all the other women had begun to wear when the calendar ticked into December, the calculating stare that measured every penny of his worth, could miraculously see every stock and bond to his name.

So he did what he knew how to do and he opened his wallet.

When Bethany arrived home the next day, he had hired a small, four-piece orchestra to serenade her just outside her apartment, with lines from Beethoven’s Eroica symphony. The next morning, he waited for a phone call of thanks, but it didn’t come. He opened his wallet again, placed a phone call.

The next day, twenty bouquets of roses arrived at her doorstep; he figured she could flood the place with them. Still no word of thanks.

“Diamonds,” said the women he worked with, with a roll of their eyes.

On the third day, he sent diamond earrings. He waited all day for the phone call, the text message, but nothing came. He worked past midnight, even though it was Friday, and extinguished the life of his computer with a sigh once he was finally done working, rubbing his eyes and stumbling out for a nightcap before falling into his bed.

The next morning, Saturday, he ventured to her apartment early. She was already up, toweling damp hair when she opened the door, a cup of home-brewed coffee in one hand. Dean idly wondered who still made their own coffee instead of going to Starbucks.

“Did you like the orchestra I hired?” he pressed like an eager boy.

She took a sip of coffee. “They played well.”

“The flowers I sent?” He looked over her shoulder and noticed all twenty bouquets had been pushed into one corner; they really didn’t fit well in her small studio, he realized. Bethany had confessed she could afford a much larger place in one of the new condos that had gone up, uptown, or over in Hell’s Kitchen, or down near Wall Street, but that her studio was exactly as much living space as she needed or wanted, so why have more. He should have thought of the inconvenience when he ordered from the florist, he thought guiltily. Bethany didn’t even respond, her eyes flickering to the corner and back again.

“Did you like the earrings I bought?” he pushed. She was not, he noted, wearing them, still had that infernal locket about her slim throat. Her eyes narrowed.

“They were all beautiful gifts, Dean,” she said.

“But…” he asked, hearing the unspoken word.

She looked at him with a flat, unimpressed stare. “Things don’t buy my love, Dean. I’m sure they would be exactly the right gifts for some other woman, but they don’t do anything for me.”

Dean threw up his hands. “I’m at a loss, then!” he cried to the water-damaged patch of her ceiling. “What could I possibly buy you for Christmas that’s good enough?”

Bethany tapped one finger against her lower lip, as she always did when thinking.

“Come,” she said finally, setting her coffee mug down on the one patch of counter space and taking his hand. She led him from the building.

She took him downtown. They had brunch at a corner café with small brown tables and paned glass windows, and the menu written in chalk on a placard by the bar. They walked along the cobblestone streets of the Village that stopped running in a grid and started making funny angles. Who knew 10^th Street could intersect with 4^th? They stared into book store windows and admired the architecture in the neighborhood, as they walked around with her arm laced through his, bundled in coats and scarves. At first, Dean couldn’t help looking at his watch incessantly; there was still work to catch up on, but she playfully grabbed his wrist, hid the dial from view. His Blackberry buzzed every few minutes. She snatched it from his hand and put it on silent, hiding it in her purse. She took him to a small park, where the trees were festooned with white lights – not a display to rival the garish Rockefeller Center tree, but somehow holier, more refined, simple but elegant. They drank hot chocolate purchased from an outdoor vendor, cupping cold fingers around the plastic cups on the sidewalk and watching their breath mist in the air.

Dean waited all day, but never once did she pull him in a store to show him what gift she desired, as he had expected. When they reached her doorstep once more, he asked with exasperation, “Well? I thought you were going to show me the gift you wanted for Christmas.” There had been no trip inside a lingerie parlor, no fittings in a dressing room while he yawned with boredom, no hint-hint pointing at a jewelry store window.

Bethany smiled and kissed his cheek. “Yes, Dean,” she said. “I just did.” And shut the door behind her.