Hit and run The case of the disappearing date BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

I’ve spent the last two weekends finally pulling all of the plastic off my windows, getting my studded tires taken off my car and ridding my closets of my winter clothes — the majority of which I am so completely sick of, I’ve decided to take a pile of them over to Material Objects with the hope that someone else might find them useful. I’ve been particularly cold-blooded this year in the clothes department — fewer hang-ons for sentimental value. I even threw away all those pairs of threadbare underwear that have been hanging around my drawer under the category of "period underwear." Who needs holey panties and old sweaters when everything is finally blooming all fresh, beautiful, and brand new?

Maybe it’s this universal inclination to toss things aside, but I think spring sees the largest breakout of what I call the hit-and-run breakup. My guess is that it’s happened to all of us. Maybe you’re guilty of doing it — I know I am. This is the relationship, or even great date, that ends with . . . absolutely nothing. No closure, no sign, no talk — just dead silence, while you sit and watch the phone not ring and recite in your mind Dorothy Parker’s A Telephone Call, where she pleads and begs God for days on end to please make him call her now. Until finally, one fine day, you just go clean your closet.

It could be worse. A roommate of mine from college recently told me about her breakup with a guy for whom she had moved across the country. Right around Valentine’s Day, when things were springing out in southern California, he decided (after seeing Mystic River) that he needed to leave her — at least for a week. So he packed his bags, walked out the door, jumped into his Jag and went speeding away to the airport and off skiing in Colorado. Then he came home to an empty pad — she was away on a business trip — and moved all of her things into a motel room and changed the locks. Guess that asshole needed more than a week. He had her father’s lawyer break it to her. Hit and run? I’d call that a drive-by shooting.

My friend Mitch told me a story about a friend of his who went out on three dates with a man she thought was the most perfect male specimen she had ever beheld. The moment we think "he’s perfect" is probably when, ladies, we should run away. His persistent pursuit was followed by long candle-lit dinners where he reached for her hand and cupped it in his own as he gazed into her eyes — "incredibly attentive" is what she said. They soon had great sex. Everything, she swears, was ab fab, even his abs. It seemed safe to tell her friends "I think this is serious." And then, all of a sudden, he just up and disappeared. Nothing. No call, no letter, no e-sympathy card with a cute little duck flapping in a pond.

Okay, yes, I have a chip on my shoulder. I admit it. I’m sure men do this more than women. And my theory on this — despite the fact that I, myself, did it once; I have had it done to me more times than I’d like to remember — is that men believe in what I call the Jerry Maguire complex. They believe, somehow, that it’s okay to go away, disappear — go do a walkabout for a while — and that somehow this will be the best test with empirical evidence of whether or not "it’s meant to be." If a woman shows enough "balls" to keep it together and not get desperate, still radiate love on some wavelength invisible to everyone but dogs and guys, and (this is the important part) never call him, then maybe there’s a remote chance he’ll come back.

But then I wonder, What if it’s actually the women who think this? That if we’re good enough girls and do all the right combination of silence and love and care and understanding, then Tom Cruise will come back into our lives and say, "you complete me." The ugly reality is, more often than not, that silence means over and done with — he’s not coming back. He’s just a spineless self-absorbed jackass. Trust me.

I can tell you that the one time I never called someone back with whom I’d gone out on a few platonic dates, I just didn’t know what to say. I liked the guy as a friend, but I didn’t really need any more friends. And then there was a humiliating evening when I bumped into him in the Old Port so plastered and high and God knows what else that he needed a ride home. I drove him to his apartment while he said inane things like "How can you live with yourself for driving me home?" and then because my passenger side door was broken he pulled his drunk elfin self out my back door with his biceps and then stared at me from his apartment window as I drove away.

What am I going to say to this person? What kind of closure would really approximate how not interested I was? At least we had never kissed — my only defense for doing the magical disappearing date act.

Last week, during a rainstorm, the power went out in the West End. At first I panicked and called Erika to make sure that I wasn’t the only one sitting in the dark. But then I just lit some candles and enjoyed silence. No phones ringing, no conversations, no email — just silence in its most inoffensive and wonderful sense. Silence just might be liberating at times.

Caitlin Shetterly can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com . Her book, Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce (Putnam Berkley Group, 2001) is now available in paperback.