How Nancy Drew Saved My Life

You know, none of this ever would have happened, were it not for that Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times. After all, it's not like grown women over the age of twenty think very much about Nancy Drew, is it? Besides which,as a young girl,I'd not been much of a Nancy Drew fan. Sure, I'd seen the shelves of her books in the libraries and bookstores I frequented whenever I got the chance,but she'd seemed so other-timely,outdated,so retro in a way that would never be fashionable again. At least that's what I thought. Anyway, the article had one of those oblique angles, as these things so often do, but it was generally about Iraq and the Osama bin Laden Presidential Daily Briefings. The tiein with Nancy Drew was that we really needed someone brash and intrepid like her involved, and questioned where all the brash and intrepid people had gone. As for me, at the age of twenty-three, I no longer felt brash and intrepid, since events had conspired to rob me of those feelings. I had committed the cardinal sin of many a young woman before me, something Nancy Drew would never do: I had fallen in love with a married man--named Buster, no less; with two kids,no more.I know it was a foolish thing to do, inexcusable, too, and I know it sounds lame to say he made me fall in love with him. Except that's the truth. I would have been content to admire him from afar, but he drew me in,came at me like a freight train,convinced me his wife neither loved nor understood him and they hadn't had sex in forever--I can hear you laughing at me now!--and I was the only woman he'd ever really been in love with, that no other woman had ever been as smart or as sexy or as funny or as wonderful and nothing better had ever happened to him in his life than loving me. He convinced me it would be a crime against the universe were we not to reach for this rare chance so few people ever know in this life: to be with someone,not because both parties are settling or desperate or fooling themselves,but because all the crossed stars in the firmament had deemed it should be so. And I fell for it. He was like a master glassmaker, building a floor underneath me, sheet by sheet of perfect glass, laid one next to the other like the most sparking tile in the world. And he led me out to the center of that amazing floor, had me stand right in the middle waiting for my Cinderella moment. But before I got my chance to dance with the prince, the craftsmanship turned into a game of Don't Break the Ice. You know the game, where you take turns using little red and green plastic mallets to knock the cubes of white plastic ice one by one through the red plastic frame until one poor sucker dislodges the catastrophic piece that sends the little red plastic figurine at the center thudding through to the floor. Well, it was just like that, with me playing the part of the little red plastic figurine. Only it was so much worse. Buster got me right where he wanted me, out on that amazingly gorgeous crystal dance floor, constructed solely for me, and then he began smashing those glass tiles he'd made for me,one by one,until at last I fell through the floor, flaying my skin, shredding my soul and breaking my heart in the process. I had always believed there are keys to the inner workings of every person alive. When love is wrong or insufficient, people jealously guard those keys, preferring to play games instead, making the other person guess at what is required, knowing the other person will fail miserably. When love is right,good,you gladly hand over the keys; you trust, and let the other person know exactly what makes you tick, for good or ill. I gave Buster so many of my keys, I let him inside me.I thought I had his keys,too,and he just ransacked the whole fucking place, like the Grinch paying a call on Cindy Lou Who the night before Christmas, and left me with no more than some picture-hBaratz-Logsted, Lauren is the author of 'How Nancy Drew Saved My Life', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373895915 and ISBN 0373895917.