Smaller

“Oh, Jason,” I said. “I can’t join you for the movie tomorrow evening –“

I thought about what would come next. I’d decided on a white lie, that I’d be working on getting the apartment ready for my next tenant all day long, I’d be too tired, let’s play it by ear … and we all know what “let’s play it by ear” really means, don’t we? It means no, but I’m too co-dependent to come right out and say it? Or I could say that I needed to visit my mother in the nursing home in the late afternoon and didn’t want to make any evening plans – but not. Lies like that bothered me, and I’d had enough. After all, there was nothing wrong with –

“And the reason is,” I said, taking a long breath and swallowing, “I have a friend coming in from New England. I haven’t seen him in four years, and he’ll only be here this weekend –“

“Oh,” Jason said, “so I’m not as good as this friend of yours?”

“—and I likely won’t see him for another few years, and you and I can go out to dinner any time –“

“What about my surgery next week? Maybe I won’t survive?”

“Oh, you’ll survive,” I said and laughed a little. Jason would live to be a hundred, I knew it, the way he took care of himself. “You’ll live to a hundred.”

“I don’t know,” he said and shook his head. Such a yenta. But I still felt pretty small. I didn’t tell Jason that the friend would be around for several weeks. Truth be told, I felt very small.