Ellen started in with the pressure. "'When are you going to meet my grandfather, she kept asking me. 'He really wants to meet you. "
"I wanted to meet her grandfather," Stephen said. "He was a huge deal. But I couldn't. When you meet someone's grandparents, it means the relationship is real."
To solve his problem, Stephen began pimping for Ellen, trying to fix her up with guys. They would talk about guys she could date. One night, Ellen went to a party where she was supposed to meet
one of Stephen's friends. But the guy wasn't interested in her and she got upset. She went to Stephen's place and they had sex.
A couple of weeks later, Stephen met a girl, a babe, late one night at a party in a grungy loft in TriBeCa. He introduced her to his parents almost immediately, even though he had none of the kinds of conversations with her that he had with Ellen. He continued to sleep with both girls, taking what he had learned from sex with Ellen and applying it to the new girl. Ellen wanted to hear all about it. What they did. What the new girl was like in bed, what she felt like, what they talked about.
Then she broke. She went to Stephen's apartment on a Sunday afternoon. They had a screaming fight. She was punching him, "literally raining down punches on me," Stephen said. She left but called two weeks later.
"We made up on the phone," Stephen said, "and I went to her house for the usual. But when we got to the crucial moment, she kicked me out of bed. I didn't get mad at her.
I was too angry with myself for that, but I respected her, too. I thought, Good for you."
Walden put a knee up against the bar. "About six months after I stopped seeing Libby, she got engaged. She called me and said she was getting married."
"I was in love with Ellen but I never told her," Stephen said.
"I was in love, too," Walden said. "In love in an utterly mundane way."