Cupcake

by Rachel Cohn

Luis is indeed beautiful to look at, but lately I'm distracted.

  I'm thinking more about the passengers he looks at in the rearview mirror of his livery car. Something could definitely be wrong with me if I could have a Hot Nude Luis lying in my bed next to me, stroking the blue side of my hair as I pressed my cheek against the soft skin of his rock hard chest, and my postlust conversation was this: "So the customer you dropped off at JFK terminal three for Aeroflot. You didn't even ask him why he was going to Omsk, Siberia?"

  "No," Luis whispered.

  I said, "Danny's not here. You don't have to whisper." Commandant and Aaron went to an old movie at the film museum in Queens, which left, by my approximation, a good hour and a half alone in the apartment for me and Luis. Since we'd already completed the primary

  140

  purpose of Luis's visit, that left time to try to get to know Luis a little better--at least try to know him some way other than physically.

  "I'm not whispering because of your brother, niña," Luis whispered. "I'm whispering cuz it's, like, sexier after ... you know."

  "Oh," I stated. Loudly. If you have to proclaim moves as sexy, are they thereby rendered unsexy? "So when you finish earning your night school degree, do you think you will ever want to go to Siberia?"

  "No." Too bad. Cross Luis off my future Siberia adventure passenger list. Last year when I asked him, Shrimp totally said he would go.

  "Do you think you will still drive a livery car to make ends meet after you get that business degree?"

  "Hopefully not. That's kinda the point of busting my ass working days and going to school nights."

  "When you're dropping customers off at the airport all day long, don't you ever think of getting out of the car and hopping on a plane to some random place, just because? Doesn't the sight of all those planes, all those people of all those nationalities and all their luggage and their passports and all that, doesn't it make you wanna go somewhere?"

  "I live in New York City. Why would I ever want to go anywhere else?"

  Point taken.

  141

  I kissed a map of the long, narrow island of Manhattan down the length of Luis's chest. Then I rested my chin on his innie belly button and asked him, "If you had a time machine and identity theft abilities, which New York Knick past, present, or future would you want to be? And don't say Wilt Chamberlain because he had the legendary way with the ladies. That would be boring."

  "Wilt Chamberlain didn't play for the Knicks, he played for Philly. Also boring. If I was gonna be a ghost of New York Knicks past, I'd probably want to be Patrick Ewing."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. But I'd cheat a little, go pre-Knicks, back to Ewing's college hoops days. I'd get to be a scholarship student at Georgetown-- no complications of having a part-time job making airport runs in a Lincoln Town Car to deal with, you hear what I'm sayin'? I'd be coached by John Thompson, I'd play March Madness against Michael Jordan, I'd be set for life. How righteous would that be?"

  "Righteous for sure, so long as you don't have inferiority issues over the whole Michael Always Prevails thing. I mean, it's your time portal, you shouldn't have to deal with being a chronic second best, when in fact you're a superior player--just competing against the ultimate superior player ever. Okay, next question ..."

  Luis rolled over on top of me and pinned my arms above my head. "What's it gonna take to get you to shut up?"

  142

  My dark coffee eyes met the light honey of his. I smiled sugar back. "You know what it takes."

  Luis kissed my wrist, en route up the length of my arm, placing kisses so alternately soft and hard and delicious that my fist wanted to punch the air in frustration when he stopped. He'd reached the obscure underside of my upper arm. He pointed to the tattoo on it. "Why do you have a tattoo of a piece of shrimp on your arm?"

  "In honor of my ex, Shrimp," I sighed. "We got tattoos together when we broke up. He got a Nestlé Crunch bar tattooed on his upper arm in honor of my favorite candy bar habit, and I got a little shrimp." I almost started to tell Luis how my great admiration of Johnny Mold's full-body collection of tattoo art has inspired me to consider adding on to my Shrimp arm tattoo with new tattoos symbolic of each successive lover I have in my life--maybe I'd get a Jell-O logo in Luis's honor? But Johnny Mold has advised that while the charm arm bracelet of lover tattoos is a promising concept, it could also be considered a potential serial-killer move by future boy prospects, so I haven't acted on it yet. I didn't say anything about it to Luis.

  "You're a weird girl," Luis said. He gave up on my arm. I turned over onto my stomach. Luis ran his fingernails down my bare back, not quite a massage, not quite a scratch, but altogether mmmmmm to the ahhhhhh.

  143

  "Thank you," I whispered. Verdict on pillow talk whispering: medium sexy. My face pressed against my pillow, I whispered one more question, "If I hadn't gotten a morning-after pill and it turned out I got pregnant on Halloween, what would you have done?"

  Luis drew his own map of kisses on my back. Felt like the Bronx, wide and dangerous, tantalizing. Then he said, "I would've said nine months after that night you'd make a great babymomma, because I don't believe in abortion, and I don't believe you or me is ready or wanting to be married."

  "Oh," I stated again. Not so loud this time, and definitely not at all sexy.

  144

  ***

  TWENTY-THREE

  All my investment in cleaning out Max's apartment paid off.

  Yvette Mimieux has finally acknowledged me. She's evolved from Max's phantom roommate, heard scurrying around the apartment but not seen, to occasionally peering out at me from behind bookcases or underneath the sofa, to teasing me with sly rubs against my ankles as she darts from room to room, to now she's a full-on slut.

  "It's about time," Max said. "Cyd Charisse, meet Yvette Mimieux. Yvette, meet Cyd Charisse." Max's scaredy-cat laid next to me on the couch, nestled against my thigh, purring as I rubbed her belly.

  "I'm a dog person," I told Max. "I don't understand this." Not only am I surprised that Yvette decided I am worthy of her attention, especially after she invested weeks in hissing at me as I cleared away piles of magazines and newspapers and closets full of junk that

  145

  have traditionally been her hiding places, I'm also shocked that I could enjoy the cat-petting experience at all. Cats are so hateful and useless and entitled, like heiresses with their own reality TV shows. Give me a slobbering dog with farting problems any day. Dogs are pure love, not discretionary love.

  Max said, "Yvette may take a while to warm to people, but once she does, she's irresistible. As you can see."

  "Why'd you name her Yvette Mimieux?" As Yvette's spotted near-tiger face of copper, black, ginger, and white fur stared up at me, she rivaled in adorableness the faces of my younger sibs Ash and Josh that used to melt my heart even when I was screaming at the squirts to stop messing with the stuff in my bedroom. It's like I would scream at them just so they wouldn't know how madly I loved them--and needed them.

  "Asks the girl whose mother named her Cyd Charisse? Probably for a similar reason as your mom's. Yvette Mimieux was Tony's favorite movie star." Max lit a fresh memorial candle and placed it on the piano, next to Tony's framed picture. Max may be a crank, but he's one who could teach the Commandants of the world about true, true love. Max's partner has been gone since before I was born, yet Max keeps his memory alive every single day.

  "Subtitles didn't bother him?"

  "Of course they bothered him. They bother everybody. But while Yvette Mimieux had a French name, she acted in American

  146

  movies. Really, Cyd Charisse, I count on you to know these things. However, Tony was a subtitle sucker for foreign movies with any guy named Jean-Paul or Marcello."

  Max sat down on the piano bench and lit a cigar. I said, "Max, you promised on the days I'm visiting and it's too cold to smoke out in your garden that you would not light up at all."


  Max shooed me with his hand. He repeated his adage, "My apartment. My rules."

  "I don't like your rules." Yvette backed me up with a Mimieux's miaule, "meow" en francais. I patted her head in appreciation, then walked over to Max. I took the cigar out of Max's hand, walked it to the kitchen, put it out under the kitchen sink's tap water, and chucked it into the garbage. Then I told Max, "I have not invested all this time in making this apartment look like a Village palace after decades of neglect, bloody scrubbed the walls down with bleach, and had the furniture and carpets steam-cleaned to get rid of the funky smoke smell, just to watch you defy all that work with one of your cigars."

  "Is that the reason, or are you worried about my health? I suspect the real reason you took on this job to begin with is you're just a cleaning fetishist at heart. My God, I've never seen such a passion for Clorox. Nor anyone as obsessed with making me the perfect dinner bowl of ramen noodles before she takes off for the night with her fella." Max got up, opened the piano bench, and plucked a fresh

  147

  cigar from a box inside the bench, and then lit up once again. "These are genuine Cubans. Please don't waste them. They're the perfect way to close out that perfect bowl of ramen noodles. Only because your name is Cyd Charisse, which almost makes you a sister to Yvette Mimieux, shall I forgive your momentary indiscretion. And may I remind you--I lost not only Tony, but a whole generation of friends. The prospect of cancer doesn't scare me after what I've lived through."

  Max glanced in the direction of the front hallway that led from the apartment's front door to what he calls his "Wall of Sadness." I hadn't spent weeks removing pictures from the walls so I could scrub the walls down, then dusting, polishing, and returning the pictures to the walls, to not feel intimately acquainted with the ghosts on that particular side of the apartment. The wall pictured a generation of lives shared together, from beach vacations to Fire Island with Tony, trips to Europe and South America with their friends, and summer stock performance troupes touring the U.S. of A. The Wall of Sadness looked like it could breathe eternal life, however bittersweet, for the souls of Max's loved ones who couldn't be here to go on with him.

  Dismantling, refurbishing, and resurrecting the Wall of Sadness has helped diffuse the Danny situation. I still don't like Danny's rules, but he's who I have here in New York City, the person in this sphere who cares most about me. I can't imagine how it would feel

  148

  to, like Max, within only a few years' time lose your true love and a majority of your friends to a disease that nobody back then even wanted to acknowledge, according to Max. When they were young, Sid-dad and Frank-dad both lost friends who'd fought in the protest war, but their friends had whole cemeteries and holidays dedicated to their memories. Max's generation got Walls of Sadness in the homes of those lucky (or unlucky) enough to be left behind. Maybe that's why Max has little pride flags, and country flags from the places where his friends were from, like Brazil and China and Alabama and Greenwich Village, affixed to the old photos of his friends--to level the field of memories.

  The need to level Danny has passed, sort of like a kidney stone. It was there, it hurt like hell to hate like that, and now there's still a tender sore spot, but the resentment is dissipating. And like a true soul-mate brother, Danny sensed the Cold War thawing in my heart without my having to announce its temporal opening. He appeared at LU_CH_ONE_TE and instead of calling me out on my state of employment, which I still hadn't bothered to tell him, he ordered a straight espresso shot. Danny kept his say simple. He announced, "I can only hold the part-time assistant job in my baking business open for so long. The cupcake world is expanding into lascivious cupcakes, if you know what I mean. So if you're acquainted with any culinary school dropouts who might be interested, have them contact me ASAP before I give the job away to

  149

  someone else." He chugged down his shot. "Crema on top just right, my compliments to the secret agent barista bringing the long lines into this dump. Pass on the word for me, will ya?" He winked at me and left.

  I'll try working for Danny now that the Max cleaning job is complete, but I'm still not telling him about what is or isn't going on between me and Luis. That's my business, just like it's Danny's business why now that Aaron and Blip appear to be getting serious, all of a sudden Danny urgently needs exclusive access to Aaron's time for help going over the accounting books for Danny's baking work; anybody who knows Aaron knows when it comes to work-related issues, he only cares about food--Aaron couldn't care less about numbers being in the black or the red, a primary reason why his and Danny's former café went under. It's Danny's business why all of a sudden he's jeté'ing to performances of Aaron's beloved New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center when Danny hates ballet, says it's only useful for catching up on nap time--a sore point of irritation for Aaron back when he and Danny were a couple. Now Danny is wide awake at those performances on the occasions Blip can't make it. Or so says lisBETH in our regular text messaging sessions analyzing Danny's business.

  Can't keep Max from knowing my business. When my cell phone rang, Max waved his hands in the air and said, "It must be Luis! The fellow with the swarthy biceps who waits for his girl

  150

  outside on the street rather than come inside and be subjected to the weird old queen."

  "I'm not Luis's girl," I told Max. "And you're no queen. Your lavender robe has sweat stains, it's hemmed too short, and a proper tiara would surely fall off your comb-over hair, even with bobby pins to hold it in place."

  "Ooooh," Max squealed. "Bobby's!"

  I rolled my eyes at Max and answered Luis's call with a simple, "I'll be outside in a few."

  It almost seemed a shame to take off with Luis when Yvette Mimieux and I were just getting to know each other. I went outside to where Luis's Lincoln Town Car idled, double-parked in front of Max's building. Luis rolled down the window, smiling that honey smile that truly toys with my resolve to not think of him as anything more than a friend with benefits. "You ready for the trek up to Washington Heights for the best Dominican food you'll ever have, or what?" he purred.

  "What do you say about a new plan? Park the car in the garage and let's hang out with Max. You always just say a quick 'Hi' to Max and never get to know him. He's a cool guy, trust me. We'll order in and play Monopoly or something."

  "How fun for me," Luis monotoned. "No, c'mon, niña. Let's go."

  Max had a point about Luis being uncomfortable hanging out with a queen. "Why do I have a feeling you'd have no problem

  151

  staying in if it was my brother we'd be hanging out with and not Max?"

  Why did I suddenly have a painful stab straight through my heart that Shrimp would have no problem hanging out with Max and playing Monopoly, so long as we let Shrimp be the racer car and no player could be the thimble cuz Shrimp has a superstition about the thimble bringing on bad luck and bad waves?

  Luis exercised his fundamental-boy-flaw muscle, answering too fast, too honestly. "Your brother's easier. He's a dude, not all flaming."

  No. Our differences in attitude could no longer be bridged. "What are we doing here?" I said, all of a sudden into my own business. My experiment in fling: quite nice indeed, but ready to be over, done, finito.

  Luis paused before answering, like it took him a moment to realize I was talking about more than where we'd go on a Saturday night. He did the classic head-dropping-followed-by-head-shaking guy maneuver, as if to say, You're gonna make me have this conversation when I'm double-parked, my driver's side window down so I can look up at your serious face wanting serious answers to something I wasn't considering seriously at all a minute ago?

  He reached through the window and tugged gently on my hand. "I thought we'd already established that we didn't know what we're doing here besides having a good time together, and we were gonna be all right with that. Why does it matter now?"

  152

  "I don't really understand it myself, but because a
ll of a sudden it just does matter." I pulled his hand to my lips and placed a light kiss on his palm. "You are a great catch--maybe now you should go on out and get caught by someone as great as you are. You hear what m sayin ?

  Again he waited to respond, like he was trying to decide whether to lodge a protest. Then:

  "I hear you," Luis acknowledged. That smile, one last time. "Disappointed, but I hear you."

  No block in this neighborhood is ever empty of people or cars passing through, no matter what time of day or night, and I wondered if the folks strolling past us with their grocery bags in hand or dogs on leashes, or the delivery truck driver honking at Luis for blocking the narrow street, knew or cared that they were watching two friends expire their benefits.

  I kinda think if I can't have pure love, I'm not feeling like discretionary love anymore. I'd rather be on my own, enjoying my sphere of people.

  153

  ***

  TWENTY-FOUR

  With the San Francisco side of my New York sphere of people

  deciding to relocate back home, I decided Autumn and I needed one last blaze of Manhattan glory to share together before she returned to the land of fog and yummy dumplings. Our choices for how to spend our last time together included:

  1. Circle Line boat tour around island of Manhattan--nixed due to complete cheesiness of the idea (also, we'd be too cold);

  2. An afternoon at the arcade playing DDR/Dance Dance Revolution--nixed due to my namesake Cyd Charisse's spirit intimidating my lame CC white girl fumble-dance abilities;

  3. One last round of sittin' round Central Park, people-watching--nixed also due to EXCUSE ME, IT'S

  154

  COOOOOOLD in December, and we are from San Francisco and thought we understood the concept of frigid, but hah, we've been proven wrong about that; and so we settled upon

  4. The space show at the Museum of Natural History, in celebration of Autumn pulling off a B-minus miracle in her astronomy class and therefore not completely closing off her future ability to transfer to Berkeley, and because the Laser Zeppelin show that was our first choice was sold out (damn us for not realizing that good stoners have the foresight to order tickets in advance before arriving baked at the show).