Managed Expectations, Part 11 of 14: A Trip to Little California

The Test — Pretty in Bed — Little California — The Problem with the Coop — Oh No, Eva! — A Hideous Proposal

Nicole and Darshan sat facing each other on the blue and white tile floor of Nicole's bathroom with the pregnancy test between them.

"How do you feel?" Darsh asked.

"I feel," Nicole started to rub her eyes, "pretty weird."

"Shouldn't you be relieved?" The test had revealed just one pink line: not pregnant.

"Yeah, but I guess I thought that having a baby or even just having an abortion would give my life some direction."

"But, sweetie, I'm going to be as tactful as possible when I say this: you don't have health insurance. You use your AmEx to buy Metrocards. I've seen you cry over the pain of a stubbed toe. Not to mention the fact that Elias is seeing, like, three girls right now."

"He is?"

"I think you should be happy. You dodged a bullet."

"I am," Nicole said quietly. She sighed, looked at the floor, and massaged her temples.

"Do you want to go to BAM and see (500) Days of Summer and complain loudly through the whole thing?"

"No, I think I want to be alone. But did you see Zooey Deschanel and her sad indie dream girl eating disorder on Top Chef?"

"You know, it kind of made me want to give up soy, too," Darshan said, looking more contemplative than usual. She hugged Nicole goodbye and left.

Nicole got up off the floor, poured herself a vodka soda, enabled Gmail Goggles, got out a post-it note, on which she wrote, "DO NOT CALL OR TEXT ELIAS!!!!!!" and affixed it to her iPhone. Then she got in bed with her drink and her laptop. She clapped to get Toussaint to hop up. Then she and the dog watched Pretty in Pink in memory of John Hughes.

The next day, she woke up feeling triumphant and hungover and in need of caffeine. She walked to Little California, the strip of Union Avenue between 6th and 7th Avenues. When Nicole moved to New York after college, her mother had expressed concern about her welfare on the east coast to her Feldenkrais teacher Samantha, a native of the Upper West Side. Samantha asked which neighborhood Nicole was moving to, and when she heard it was Park Slope, she said, "Park Slope is sort of like not leaving California."

The strip on Union had Union Market, the kind of fancy, kind of healthy grocery store that bore too much of a resemblance to all the mediocre gourmet shops in Manhattan that Nicole hated. This was where she was forced to shop since she had become a member in bad standing at the Park Slope Food Coop, for failing to show up to a number of food processing work shifts. After hearing that Adrian Grenier was also a member, she had tried to make some kind of plea bargain to get back in the Coop's good graces. Nicole had even called her father, a criminal lawyer, for advice on how best to make her case. "Never admit your guilt," he had advised. The Coop had not been amenable to a compromise.

There was also a yoga studio and a pilates studio and a bike shop and an organic dry cleaner and a place to get frozen yogurt. Nicole went into Tea Lounge for a chai and was so relieved to find that there was no childrens' concert or Park Slope Mommy Meet-Up going on that she decided to sit down. And then she saw Jared's fiancée Eva on the sofa facing her and tried to hunch over her phone so she wouldn't be seen.

She wasn't successful. "Hi Nicole," Eva said.

"Oh hi Eva! How are you?"

"Great! Jared and I just bought tickets to visit Dad's family in Africa." Eva's dad was some kind of ancillary member of the royal family in Ghana and she was fond of bringing it up as frequently as possible. "He said it was such a shame that the two of you hardly got to travel all those years you were together. I guess seeing the world isn't a priority for everyone."

"Eva, I have a conference call I need to get on pretty soon, so-"

"I had actually been meaning to talk to you about something. It'll just take a sec." Nicole nodded for her to continue. "I was at Duane Reade yesterday," Eva said brightly. "And I saw you and Darsh standing in front of the pregnancy tests."

"Okay," Nicole said, narrowing her eyes.

"And I bet you probably wouldn't want Jared to know about that."

"What do you want, Eva?" Nicole wanted to hit her but thought that fisticuffs would not go over well at the Tea Lounge.

"I've been trying to convince Jared to get a King Charles spaniel, but he won't because he's so devoted to the big, dumb, furry dog of yours," Eva said. "So I thought of a compromise! What if you decide to have full custody of Toussie and I decide to forget I saw you buying a First Response?"

Nicole blinked several times. "Um, are you trying to blackmail me?"

Behind? Catch on up!