“Really?” I say. “You’d rather a dog in your bed than a man? Oh, Sunny….”
This of course just frosts her. I can’t help myself. I love my mother, but she’s just so easy to torment.
By the time Evie has opened and poured the red wine her father brought, her father has finished fixing the hinges, and is surveying the rest of our apartment like a contractor. Evie still hasn’t opened the gift he brought, it’s just sitting in the middle of the table, driving me nuts with curiosity. My father’s graduation gift to me was the summer rental of this flat in Amsterdam—not exactly easy to wrap, but a very good gift.
“Hey, puss,” Evie’s father says, “do you, by any chance, still have that toolbox I gave you?”
The phone rings and Evie shoots me this look like don’t you dare. “Let the machine get it,” she says. I know she thinks it’s Billy. We don’t even have a machine. I wonder for half a second if it might be Gerhard, but I don’t care if he calls or not.
“Of course I have it,” she says. “Some girls have hope chests, I have a toolbox.” She keeps it under her bed. Her father gave her the toolbox when she went off to college, you know, a go-forth-and-be-independent gesture. She’s got one of everything in there; we used to use the pointy screwdriver to open cans of condensed milk when we were in our Turkish coffee drinking stage.
Toolbox in hand, her father repairs the latch in the bathroom—“Just a little wood putty and a screw”—and by the time he’s finished his second glass of wine he’s patched and rewoven our windowscreen. “That hole will get bigger and bigger until one morning you wake up with a pigeon in your bed, or a squirrel.”
I had to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t say, “Or worse, a Lang.” But I wouldn’t do that to Evie, not in a million years, even just teasing. We don’t make each other feel bad. Some nights we lie in the dark and just talk and talk, having these conversations where you find yourself saying things you didn’t even know you thought, confiding stuff you would only tell somebody after you’d slept with them.
I don’t tell her that I think Billy is a big poser—after all the boy went to Brown and he lives in a squat and plays in a band called the Seven Plagues that, incidentally, only has three people in it. I figure that they’re still auditioning for lice, pestilence, and locust, and oh, yes, a bass player who can turn water into blood. To me Billy is just another one of those once-preppy boys who, because he has a cock ring in his sock drawer, now thinks he is living on the edge.
But because Evie is my best friend I never complain about how Billy and his roommate, Franz, the drummer for the Seven Plagues, just drop by unannounced at all hours of the day and night. I don’t dwell on the fact that Franz throws up on people and then steals their wallets. A common pickpocket.
Billy insists that Franz is a revolutionary. “He’s just reacting to the wholesale destruction and commodification of his city. Tourism has turned his homeland into a gaudy sexual theme park. It has no soul anymore. Franz is an artist, man.”
Franz is also the band’s manager. His vomiting has paid for amps, a new drum kit, and more. I had a little scandal with Franz once. Evie dragged me to a Seven Plagues “show,” which was really just the boys jumping up and down in a smoky little club, screaming like lunatics. Afterward, the boys were understandably thirsty and in need of forgetfulness, so we all went drinking. At some point during the evening Evie and Billy peeled off, and I found myself alone with Franz, going in and out of bars looking for a place that sold decent hash. We were just strolling along when all of a sudden Franz stops and throws up all over some guy in a Planet Hollywood jacket. Unbelievable. It was horrifying but very funny. Of course the man froze, and for a split second I was certain he was going to throw up too. The trick, Franz told me later, was to hit your mark square in the back so they can’t see too much of the vomit, but can absolutely smell it. Otherwise, you run the definite risk of them throwing up on you. Which is truly disgusting. The trick was to boot just enough to allow you license to touch them, and rifle their clothing—understandably, they desperately want you to wipe your vomit off them. You could even be a little rough, all in the interest of sanitation. I never even saw Franz lift the billfold, but the rest of the night drinks were on him.
Later at a bar he’d said, “You know, a pretty girl like you could make a nice chunk of change…you could lift their fucking contact lenses.”
For half a second, with his hand on the inside of my thigh, I thought about it. A barfing Bonnie and Clyde but with good sex. Me, a former debutante. I loved it! Just the fact that he even considered it was charming.
Back at the apartment I made him take a bath. I did. I filled the tub up so high it was positively sloshing over and I got in with him. We laid in that tub for a long time, not even talking. I did make him use soap and brush his teeth with his finger.
The next morning it was sort of cute, the four of us getting up together in the apartment, calling in sick to work, eating pancakes Billy made. It was sweet.
Anyway, now I am seeing Gerhard. Gerhard is an art dealer. He has a real job. Evie hates hates hates him. She thinks he should call me ten times a day and tell me how fabulous I am. She thinks he doesn’t appreciate me. I can just tell.
Evie’s father finishes fixing the hole in the screen, and sinks down into the cushions of our badly stuffed couch. He doesn’t even ask what happened to the screen. I guess he doesn’t want to know. I wonder if Evie would tell him that she kicked it in the other night at two A.M. when we found ourselves locked out.
Even though I was absolutely exhausted I’d dragged Evie out for a drink. She was in a blue funk. I’d staggered home from my job at a small private art gallery, where I was basically paid to sit there, hand out price lists, and cross and uncross my legs, to find her curled up in the armchair eating Cocoa Puffs, listening to that god awful mopey music (I swear that played backward, those Cure lyrics say, Make yourself hideous), and cutting her hair. These days the look was Tinker Bell by way of Attica. It was because of Billy that she’d cut off perfectly nice light brown hair, bleached it golf ball white and streaked it purple. It was because of him that she’d started tricking herself out like some street urchin. The metamorphosis was certainly not lost on her father. When Evie opened the door the poor man looked stunned, though he held his tongue admirably. “Wow,” he said, “tell me about the hair.”
Evie said, “Do you like it?”
He said, “Do you like it?”
The very picture of parental diplomacy. I just cannot imagine.
In any case, Ev was depressed because last week, while Billy was off playing screeching guitar and nowhere to be found, she had a scandal with one of her art student boys. One with green striped hair and a pierced lip, a budding abstract expressionist, I believe. Maybe, just maybe, she touched his peepee.
Evie thinks it is perfectly acceptable to get completely naked with a man and then say, “Oh let’s just kiss.” It’s true. More than once I have heard her out in the living room talking some guy out of date-raping her on the sofa. Forget being a painter, she ought to work at the United Nations. Of course, I knew she was upset, but I just couldn’t let her get all tied in knots over this silly little fling.
“Blame it on the make-out sweater,” I said. The make-out sweater was a white angora sweater, so impossibly soft it felt like fur. Boys couldn’t keep their hands off it, and once they petted, they were powerless. All my roommates wanted to borrow it in college. It had an incredible track record.
“Yeah, right,” she sighed. “That damn sweater.”
“It’s past tense, darling,” I said. “You did nothing wrong. You and Billy are just dating, after all,” I reminded her. “Anyway, Billy didn’t call. He hasn’t called in two days.” I stopped myself from saying anything else, but it was hard.
Evie took it all in. First she looked just pained and then she looked grateful, so absolved it was almost sad. I have never understood the need to inflict guilt on one’s self.
“If
I get off this sofa,” she said, “will you buy me a mai tai?”
How could I say no?
Arm in arm we strolled along the canals, checking out the hookers disguised as female tourists milling around as though lost (who can resist a lady in distress?), vinyl flight bags hanging from their shoulders, stuffed, no doubt, with Jesus dildos and nipple clamps. After a few beers and a little space cake we bought ice cream cones and tried to find our way back home. Amsterdam is a fabulous city to get lost in. We’d follow what seemed a familiar canal until we were hopelessly turned around, and then we’d backtrack; at the time it seemed a great adventure. Some sailors ready to ship out the next morning on leave actually attempted to waylay us for a nightcap, but by this time we were too happy holding hands and singing that silly children’s song, “They all went down to Amsterdam, they all went down to Amsterdam, Amster, Amster, shh, shh, shh…”
Back home we soon realized neither of us had keys, so we climbed up the fire escape and Evie kicked the screen in. It’s an absolute miracle we didn’t fall to our deaths. I always forget how nice and homey and sweet it feels when Evie and I come together, just us two. Like girls. Evie put on water for pasta, then fell asleep on the kitchen floor. I made a risotto, then woke her up, and we ate it in my bed with the TV on.
“Amster, Amster, shh, shh, shh,” we sang, flipping channels.
It was just like old times. I hated thinking that one day we wouldn’t do this.
She got under the covers. “Tell me again,” she said as she was falling asleep. “One more time.”
“You did nothing wrong,” I said, and tucked her in.
Things felt so incredibly comfortable, and safe, and easy, that I considered telling her about what had happened with Gerhard—why he hadn’t called me in days and why I was jumping out of my skin whenever the phone rang. It was bothering me and I hated being bothered.
I wanted to tell her that Gerhard had invited one of his friends to watch us having sex, but I knew she would just die. I nearly died, at first. It wasn’t like he said, “Hey do you mind if my friend watches?” Of course if he had, I’d have said, “Are you out of your mind? What do you think I am?” And I would have missed out. Evie would freak if I told her the whole thing turned me on more than it did him.
It sounds completely unbelievable to say it just happened, but it did. We were in the back room of the gallery—we often had sex there, there was a four-poster bed, and a gorgeous Tuscan-tiled bathroom. But I suppose I should have guessed something was up by the way Gerhard was actually moving around. Usually I was on top, but that night it was one minute on my back, legs in the air, then he wanted me up against the wall, then doggie style. Then, at some point, I turned my head and there was Peter, this sculptor friend of his that he represents, sitting in a chair inside the doorway. I never even heard him come in. I had no clue how long he’d been sitting there. I started to pull away, of course, but then I saw how Peter was looking at me, how into it he was getting, and I thought, I will never be this young again. It’s Amsterdam. Nothing that happens here counts.
Ultimately I don’t think Gerhard even came, I think he faked it, but I did. I did and it was amazing. I never imagined I could do such a thing.
And I never imagined that I’d want two men at one time. That I’d be looking at Peter looking at me while Gerhard was inside me, and I’d wish that Peter’s cock was in my mouth. Who could imagine that? But I did.
That night I could have done anything. Gerhard knew it, Peter knew it. Maybe they’d talked about it earlier, maybe the plan had been all along for the three of us to have sex. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I just know that while it was happening I felt good. For the first time there was enough, like everything I wanted or needed was being taken of. I was filled up.
I know it should have made me sick, but it didn’t. It didn’t. It was like something just opened up inside me. It was good, believe me. But I could never tell anybody, not even in confession. I could never tell Evie. Not that I was ashamed. I wasn’t. I just knew I couldn’t make her or anybody else understand that the thought of having sex with just one man seemed boring now. And the thought that I would never ever have sex in front of another person again, that prospect made me unreasonably sad.
Evie and her father are sitting together on the sofa, he’s telling her about some dinner party he and her mom threw recently. Her sister came down and they roasted a suckling pig, and there was dancing in the backyard—a real suburban bash. Evie’s head is tilted, she’s listening and laughing at all the right times, they look so Hallmark it’s just amazing. I excuse myself to no one in particular, they’re too caught up even to notice, and go into my room to smoke a cigarette and change. I wouldn’t smoke in front of Evie’s father, absolutely not. I still cannot get over how Jackie Onassis was never ever photographed smoking. She never smoked in public. No one outside her inner circle even knew she smoked. I can’t decide if it shows incredible restraint, or incredible self-consciousness. Instead of the long black skirt and fitted jacket I’d picked out earlier, I decide to be festive, why not, and go for the Nicole Miller cocktail dress—low cut, off the shoulder—after all I am not the daughter. I am a person.
The walls of this apartment are like tissue, this is how I know that Billy told Evie he loves her and wants her to move in with him—into his squat—how ghastly is that? Squat. Classy with a K. Just the word squat implies public defecation and people sitting back on their heels staring into sooty little pits where they roast pigeons. Because the walls are so thin I could hear the silence that followed his invitation, but I don’t know, perhaps she whispered her answer.
Because the walls are so thin I can plainly hear Evie and her father arguing in the living room.
“Listen, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared,” her father says, his voice rising.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Evie says, like she’s joking, but she’s obviously not.
“You asked.”
Evie doesn’t say anything. The big problem with eavesdropping is that you can’t see anything. It is such a tease.
“You asked if I felt good, if I was a hundred percent, and I’m answering you honestly.”
“Okay, okay, enough honesty,” she says. “But you’re fine, you said so, you said the doctor said everything is fine. Right?”
“For now, yes. I have no reason to think otherwise, but…”
“Mary Beth,” Evie calls out, I hear her standing up. “Hurry up, or we’re going to be late.”
I wait a second, best not to appear like I’ve been spying. In the living room her father is at the far end of the couch doodling on the back of a magazine. He looks annoyed.
“I’m ready,” I say. She is looking at me to save her. “You’re right, we best go if we’re going to make our eight o’clock,” I say, tapping the spot on my wrist where a watch would be if I could ever hold on to one.
“Is this the restaurant you were talking about taking your father to?” Evie asks, and as soon as the question is out of her mouth I can tell she regrets it. Obviously she thinks my father not visiting bothers me, but it doesn’t. The restaurant is beautiful—intimate tables, big flower arrangements, oil paintings, a few lesser Cezanne charcoals. Evie and her father choose to sit with their backs to the terrace; I get the view.
“My father just got remarried,” I explain, “for the third time. And can you imagine, my new twenty-three-year-old stepmother doesn’t want to spend her honeymoon in Amsterdam with her husband’s twenty-one-year-old kid?”
“Oh,” her father says, not like a word, just the sound, as if the idea of a twenty-three-year-old wife hit him in the stomach like a fastball. I can’t really remember what Evie’s mom looks like—pretty, I thought, but I’m not sure. She’s certainly no twenty-three-year-old.
Her father moves the knot in his Ferragamo tie. Lovely. As though he’d never thought of dallying with younger women. They all do. When I was a child my father’s passion was baby-sitters. Once,
when my mother was at Canyon Ranch, he actually had one of them dress up as the tooth fairy and slip money under my pillow. She reeked of Gilbey’s. To be fair, he figured I was asleep, but really.
Everybody has something.
“You know what’s rich?” I say. “Megan, and I, that’s my new stepmother’s name, we used to date the same guy at Andover—Chip Barton—he’s into bonds now, lives in Darien.”
“My God,” Evie said. “Are you joking?” I hadn’t mentioned the part about Chip before. I really just remembered it myself.
“I know. Couldn’t you just die?”
“So.” Evie’s father turns to her. “Have you been able to find time to draw?”
He’s uncomfortable I can tell. I hadn’t figured him for the puritanical type. Maybe it’s that he doesn’t look old and stuffy. He’s tan, his dark hair is a little longer than the norm and just touched with silver, so he looks like a liberal politician or an aging actor who still wants to get the girl. He coughs, and for a long second we all just sit there.
“Yes, some, not much,” she says. “You know I’ve been working a lot at the museum, it’s inspiring, and of course terrifying to be surrounded by such amazing work.”
“She ought to work, she’s good,” I say.
Her father smiles at me, “We think so, but you know, we’re prejudiced.”
“I still have trouble with hands. Everybody has to keep their hands in their pockets or behind their backs; anxious people in china shops,” she says, “that’s my speciality,” and with that she elbows her wineglass off the table and on to the floor.
“Don’t worry,” I say, “it just increases the value of the rug.” This is what Evie says every time anyone spills something on our floor. It occurs to me, judging by her father’s smile, that he is the source of this saying.
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