Slightly Engaged

Well, it makes me sicker than the ice cream would if it sat out in the sun for an entire ninety-degree day before I ate it.

Will dumped Esme, as all my friends predicted he would, and came crawling back, as all my friends predicted he would, right around the time I met Jack.

Maybe even because I met Jack, since Will certainly wasn’t interested in me when I was whiling away a solitary New York summer with only cabbage soup and Gulliver’s Travels for company.

Fortunately, I was never the least bit tempted to hook up with Will again.

All right, maybe I was tempted just once. The night Jack almost chose the Giants playoff game over me, I almost made a huge mistake.

But he didn’t choose the game, and I didn’t choose Will, and Jack and I are living happily ever after—more or less—while Will the Flaming Metrosexual is still trying to become the next Mandy Patinkin.

He calls often to update me on his progress.

This morning, in response to my fake-jovial “Will! How the hell are you?” he jumps right in with, “Tracey, guess what?”

Will is not the kind of person who requires much conversational feedback, so I don’t bother to guess. In fact, I don’t bother to stop checking my Monday-morning e-mail, which is what I was doing when the phone rang.

“I’ve got an audition.”

Yawn.

“And it’s not stage this time. It’s for a film,” he adds quickly lest I erroneously assume it’s for a stool-softener commercial.

“That’s great, Will.” So he’s given up on becoming the next Mandy Patinkin in favor of becoming the next Johnny Depp. Yeah, that’ll happen.

I reach for my cigarettes before remembering that I can’t smoke here. Damn. I clutch the pack anyway, planning to make a beeline for an elevator to the street the second I’m done listening to Will spout gems like, “Trust me, Tracey—this role is so me.”

“I trust you.” So there’s obviously an open casting call for a self-absorbed drama queen cheating bastard flaming metrosexual? Talk about typecasting.

“I’m going to blow them away, Trace.”

Trace, he calls me, because we’re just that cozy.

“That’s awesome,” I say in a tone that might hint that awesome semi-rhymes with ho-hum.

“I know!” he exclaims, too caught up in this revolutionary moment in the Life of Will to catch any hint of hohumness on my part. “If I don’t get this, I’ll be shocked.”

“So will I,” I say blandly, scanning an e-mailed chain letter on the off chance that forwarding it to five hundred people in the next minute will shrink Will’s ego to the size of his—

“It’s a romantic lead,” he tells me. “That’s my thing.”

Yeah, not in my life.

“The only thing that could really put a lock on the role for me would be if it involved singing.”

“No singing?”

“No, but I’ve got the acting skills to carry it, you know?”

Naturally, he waits for me to confirm his well-rounded fabulousness. “Yeah, I know,” I say unenthusiastically.

“Fifi told me just Thursday that I’m at the top of my game.”

He’s talking about Fifi La Bouche, an eccentric Parisian choreographer friend of his. She’s about eighty and still looks great in a leotard. I know this because that’s what she’s wearing every time I’ve ever met her. She wears it everywhere, to lunch, to shop, to stroll—just a leotard under a trench coat, as if at any moment she might be asked to put together a jazzy chorus-line routine.

“That’s great,” I murmur, finding it hard to believe that I was ever an avid player in the Life of Will, starring Will, directed by Will, produced by Will.

“What film are you auditioning for?” I ask, because apparently it’s still my turn.

Dramatic pause. “It’s actually really hush-hush. I can’t really say.”

Okay, ten to one that means he’s auditioning for the role of Pizza Deliveryman or Crowd Spectator #4 in one of those Lifetime trauma-of-the-week movies, or something of that ilk.

“Well, good luck,” I tell him, methodically deleting spam without bothering to muffle the mouse clicks. “I hope you get it.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about it,” says Will, who has a good feeling about everything he’s ever done, is now doing, or will someday do. On camera, onstage, in the bedroom, even in the bathroom, because I’m certain Will honestly believes that when he takes a shit white doves fly down from heaven to bear it ceremoniously away.

There was a time when I almost believed that, too.

Thank God, thank God, thank God he dumped me.

If he hadn’t, would I have found the common sense to dump him?

Or would I still be his girlfriend?

Or, God forbid, his wife?

I’ll tell you this: I’d definitely rather be not engaged to Jack than married to Will.

The irony is that just a few years ago, I had this whole vision of our future mapped out, oblivious to the fact that all Will had mapped out was the fastest route to the bright lights of North Mannfield’s Valley Playhouse.

When he left New York and then failed to call or write, then cheated, then ultimately dumped me, I had no idea he was doing me the biggest favor of my life.

Which just goes to show you…

Well, I’m not sure exactly what it goes to show you, but it showed me that I wasn’t always the best judge of character back then.

I am now, of course.

And I’m definitely as over Will as I am My Little Pony, jelly bracelets and slumber parties.

As Will talks on about his latest audition and the hush-hush movie that he can’t discuss but it has some major stars and a famous director and if I knew I would just die, I click on through my e-mail, deleting most of it.

Until I get to the most recent one, from my friend Buckley, which just popped up.

“…and they said I absolutely have the look,” Will says, “and that I…”

With Will, you barely even have to offer an occasional uh-huh to keep the conversation going, so I can to focus all my attention on Buckley’s message.