“You’re so right, Trip. We totally don’t,” I said, clutching my little stress ball even harder. “In fact, just the other night, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio and I, like, didn’t even care about it. Didn’t even think twice.”
“DiCaprio’s back in New York this week?”
“I don’t know. You see, that’s how little we care about movie stars in New York. It’s, like, I didn’t even check to see if it really was Leonardo DiCaprio. And neither did anyone else. We’re, like, far too busy reading books and stuff.”
“Gosh, Brooke, you’re taking this really well. You know, I was kind of nervous to call you. I thought that you might get upset or something.”
“Upset? Me? I never get upset! Why on earth would I get upset?”
“You know, Brooke,” he said, “we always did have that little competitive thing going on back in law school.”
“We did?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed. I must have been too busy making Law Review.”
“I made Moot Court,” he said. I could practically see him pouting through the phone wires.
“I didn’t want Moot Court,” I said, tossing my little stress ball into the air and catching it.
“That’s because you couldn’t argue your way out of a paper bag,” he said, his faux “I’m just kidding!” laughter rising an octave.
“You’re right,” I said, “I was far too concerned with my writing. I guess that’s why I got my Student Note published.”
“I guess that’s why I won the National Moot Court Competition,” he retorted.
“Because I got my Note published? How very interesting,” I said with a smile. Dead silence on the line. And he says I can’t argue?
“Well, I’m just glad that you’re not upset.”
“Not in the least,” I said.
“What was that noise?” Trip asked. Hmmm. That noise may have been the sound of me throwing that little stress ball against the back of my office door. Okay, yes, now that I’m telling you about this, I distinctly recall slamming that cute little stress ball against the back of my door, just before I cleverly said:
“You know, Trip, life is so funny sometimes. You see, I’m engaged myself!”
“You are?” he asked. I am?
“Why yes!” I said, suddenly sounding like Barbra Streisand at the very end of The Way We Were, “Don’t sound so surprised!”
“I’m not surprised at all. I just didn’t hear about it, is all. And I was just e-mailing with Vanessa all last week,” he said. “Any guy would be crazy not to nab you. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“His name is Douglas. He’s fabulous. He’s Scottish.”
“I forgot how much you love Euro-trash,” he responded. He was probably smiling his Cheshire-Cat smile when he said that little gem to me.
“He most certainly is not Euro-trash. He is a very class act. In fact, speaking of movie stars, he looks like a movie star, but he’s far too intelligent for Hollywood.”
“And probably has no time for Hollywood what with reading all of those books.”
“No offense,” I said.
“None taken,” he said.
“I’m sure Ava can read, too.”
“Yes, she can,” he assured me. “Well, then, I can’t wait to meet him.”
Okay, so it was a little white lie. But, as I already told you, I believed myself to be practically engaged at that point in time, so I figured that by Trip’s wedding, I would surely be engaged. Who knew, depending on timing, I could even be married before Trip was!
4
Yes, married! It wasn’t so far off to think. You see, Douglas and I had a real whirlwind romance. The night we met, he swept me off my feet, and I fell head over heels in love with him without even thinking twice about it.
It was a perfectly magical evening at the charity party the Guggenheim Museum threw each year on Halloween. The Guggenheim has long been my favorite New York museum, as the museum itself is a work of art, with its sweeping lines and interior painted a pristine white. The artwork adorning its walls seems the perfect accessory to the main attraction — the architecture. The Met, to me, was always too immense and imposing, and the MOMA was simply too complicated.
For their annual masquerade ball, orange spotlights wash over the museum’s milky walls and floors, giving the space an intense and entirely unfamiliar glow. A string quartet plays quietly in a corner, reminding you that you are at the most exclusive charity ball of the season, rubbing elbows with the best and brightest New York has to offer. Waiters surround you, enticing you with the sweet smells of hors d’oeuvres too fancy to even identify. Follow the clickety clank of wine and champagne glasses, and you will find that the bar is off to the side, leaving a large space in the middle of the entranceway, which will later be used for dancing, once the guests have paired off.
“Act like we’re together,” Douglas whispered, as he slunk over to me seemingly out of nowhere with eyes shifting all over the room. He was dressed as a rugby player and I was dressed as a French maid.
Oh, please. As if you never used Halloween as an excuse to dress like a slut.
“Excuse me?” I said in my most righteous voice. Granted, he really had me with the accent, but what exactly did he take me for? Okay, don’t answer that one.
“Please,” he begged with enormous brown puppy-dog eyes, “this girl has been following me around all evening long. If you pretend to be my girlfriend, I will treat you to a dinner at any restaurant in the city that you want.”
Without waiting for an answer, he pressed his lips against mine.
My knees got weak. I actually felt my knees get weak. He later told me that he “had” to do that, since said girl-stalker was quickly approaching us. I never saw her, though.
“So, do you want to get out of here?” he asked me with sexy bedroom eyes. I didn’t really know who he was or where he was going, but when he looked at me with those eyes and leaned into me the way he did, there was no place else I’d rather have been.
“Yes,” I replied breathlessly. And with that, this man that I had just met grabbed my hand and we were off into the cold New York City night. Although it was only the end of October, it already smelled like winter. He introduced me to his friend, Franc, and Franc’s girlfriend, Allie, a couple of Parisian transplants. Neither had come dressed up to the party. They were both young and attractive, but somehow, they didn’t look as if they fit one another. We all hopped into a taxicab together and Franc gave the cabbie directions to a loft party in Tribeca. Now, I probably would have followed Douglas to a pizza place in Queens to play tabletop Pac-Man if he’d asked me to, but I was nonetheless delighted to be going somewhere as hip and fabulous as a loft party that was probably even more exclusive than the party we’d just left. I immediately looked down at my French maid getup and quietly removed the little doily that was on my head.
I was between Allie and Douglas in the back, with Franc in the front. Douglas’s left leg pressed against my right and I smiled to myself. This is one of those perfect New York City nights when you live for the moment and don’t think about tomorrow, I thought. I turned my head toward Douglas and caught him looking at me. We locked eyes and I began to think wicked thoughts.
“I don’t want to go to another party!” Allie screamed to the front, interrupting my thoughts, “I want to go home!” Franc looked back at her and laughed and shut the plastic divider that separated the front of the cab from the back of the cab and told the cabbie to keep driving. The cabbie had to stay toward the middle of the road to avoid the massive potholes that were lined up like a collision course along Broadway.
“I am getting out right now!” Allie yelled again, opening the divider as she yelled. When Franc didn’t turn around, Allie pretended to open her car door, with the cab still moving, for effect. How very French, I remember thinking to myself. The cabbie began to yell something in a foreign language while Franc tried to calm him down. I looked at Douglas and he rolled his eyes. I smiled a quiet smile back as he mouthed the wo
rds drama queen to me. I giggled a silent giggle that only Douglas could see and he put his hand on my leg. I giggled out loud.
“I am getting out of this cab right now!” Allie screamed, and the cabbie pulled over to the right-hand side of the street to a chorus of assuring “She is not getting out!” coming from Franc. Allie, on the left side of the cab, swung the door open wide into traffic just as we stopped on the right-hand side of the street. As quickly as she opened the door, another cab came whizzing by and knocked Allie’s cab door right off its hinges.
Everything was silent for a moment. The cabbie turned around, and upon seeing that Allie was all right, began to yell at Franc very fast in a foreign language. Franc began to yell back in French and Allie sank deep down into her cab seat. Douglas got out to referee and I stayed in the cab with Allie. I was surprised that she didn’t feel sorry for what she had done, rather, she somehow thought that it was the cab driver’s fault, or Franc’s fault, or just anyone’s fault but her own. I heard Franc outside talking, now in English, to the cabbie about what he should do and how he could fix things. When it seemed that Franc had squared things with the cabbie, Douglas opened the right-hand door of the cab, where I was sitting, and put out his hand for me to take.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything will be fine. Let’s go to that party now.”
I agreed, but suggested that we walk instead of taking another cab. Douglas laughed and we began to walk. I told Douglas that I somehow felt like a fugitive leaving the scene of a crime or something and asked him if he thought that Franc and Allie would really stay and do right by the cabbie.
“Allie? No. Franc? Yes,” he replied. I agreed, but told him that I still felt as if we were fugitives. He told me that he did, too.
It was cold, so we soon began running, holding hands and laughing. We were running in the middle of the streets; it was so late at night there weren’t any cars on the tiny downtown side streets. I was scared that I would fall, but I somehow knew that Douglas would catch me if I did. We reached Varick Street, where the next party was still going strong. You could hear the pounding bass of the music coming out of the windows and see the empty cups lining its sills.
“I don’t really feel like going to another party, do you?” Douglas asked with those bedroom eyes. It was so cold out that I could see his breath as he spoke. I shook my head no.
In an alleyway somewhere off Varick Street, still feeling like fugitives, we kissed again.
One heavenly month later, Douglas begged me to move in with him. Seriously. It was, like, embarrassing. I really couldn’t say no. I mean, the guy was deeply, madly, passionately in love with me! You would have done the same thing. But, don’t worry about me, because I did it all very much by the rules. Literally. I was reading that book called The Rules at the time. It’s all about snagging a man and then getting said man to marry you. Quickly. Okay, so even on its truncated deadlines, that book didn’t suggest even having sex with a man within the first month of dating, much less moving in with him, but those girls never met Douglas. And if my grandmother asks you, we may have been living together, but we most certainly were not having sex. You know what, if my grandmother asks you, don’t even tell her that we were living together. That’s just easier. And anyway, I don’t think that Grandma even realized it at the time. Even when Douglas picked up the telephone, he had such a thick accent that she usually hung up thinking it was the wrong number. But I digress.
The whole thing seemed to be in the bag. By the time I got Trip’s wedding invite, I’d be blissfully engaged (or even married!) to my handsome Scottish boyfriend. Piece of cake, right?
5
No! That’s not right! It was definitely not a piece of cake! By the time Trip’s wedding came around, not only was I so not engaged, but Douglas and I had also broken up, leaving me both boyfriend-less and homeless! And he proposed to another woman! Who, as you might have caught earlier, had a stupid, stupid name!
Aren’t you even paying attention?!
Luckily for me, my best friend Vanessa was paying attention. Post-breakup, she was my rock. She was even kind enough to let me stay with her and her husband Marcus. After I showed up on her doorstep crying hysterically, begging to come in, that is.
Even in my time of need, though, I was really a pleasure to be around. In fact, I think that in their heart of hearts, they actually enjoyed having me there. Marcus was always working late and was never at home, so I kept Vanessa company on the nights that we, ourselves, didn’t have to work late.
I was also very helpful in the kitchen. I even made dinner once or twice. Well, not so much made dinner as stood in front of the fridge staring blankly into its vast coldness. But it’s really the thought that counts with those things.
“Did the governor call?” Vanessa asked me on one such evening, as she walked into the apartment. She took off her three-inch stiletto heels, which she wore every day despite the fact that she was five foot eight.
“No,” I told her, marveling at the fact that I have such impressive friends, they were actually sitting around waiting for the governor to call. Yes, my friends were out waiting for heads of state to call, while I was standing in front of the refrigerator in my bathrobe, eating raw cookie dough straight from the package as if it were a hot dog, or some other food product that might be acceptable to eat while clutching said food product in one’s fist.
Oh, please. As if you never did that, too.
I guess that’s the way life is when you are the sole offspring of glamorous parents like Vanessa’s — her father, originally from the West Indies, is a world-renowned heart surgeon, and her mother, a former model, now owns a gallery in Tribeca that specializes in African-American art. She grew up in a palatial house in New Jersey that was in the same cul-de-sac as a hip-hop mogul and his child bride. The only famous person in my family is my mother’s cousin Ernie, who once placed second in the Ben’s Kosher Deli matzo-ball eating competition.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, sliding her long legs under her body as she sat down at the kitchen counter.
“Me? No. I’m absolutely fine. Why on earth would I want to talk about it?” I asked.
“When I come home to find my best friend eating like she’s going to the electric chair, I figure she needs to talk about it,” she explained. Electric chair? Governor calling…Clever.
I suppose to some people, that sort of behavior screams “cry for help.” To me, it screams “typical Monday night at home.”
“No, Vanessa. I’m okay,” I said, slowly backing away from the refrigerator. The truth is that I did want to talk about it. It was the only thing that I wanted to talk about, but it seemed as if all I did all day was talk about it, so at night, I would be better off doing more productive things with my time. Like standing in front of the refrigerator in my bathrobe eating raw cookie dough from the tube.
You see, Vanessa never had to worry about the things that I worry about on a daily basis. Will I ever find someone? Will I ever get married? Will I ever have children? Or am I destined to end up like Old Mrs. White, the lady who lived next door to me growing up? I used to pass by her house every day on my walk home from elementary school. She always seemed like such a kind woman, tending to her garden and waving hello to every neighbor who passed by. There was always the faint smell of vanilla on her hands, as if she had been baking cookies all day. Some days, she would even bring out chocolate chip cookies to the neighborhood kids when she saw us playing kickball out on the street (store bought — go figure). One day, she told me that she recently became a grandmother and wanted to show me pictures. I was delighted! After all, what eight-year-old girl doesn’t love babies? She pulled out the photos, and I was so excited to see them that I could barely get my hands around the pictures fast enough. Holding the photos by their edges, ever so carefully, I took a peek. To my horror, they were photos of kittens. Kittens! As in: baby cats. Basically, her kittens
had been more successful at finding a mate and reproducing than she had. I was scarred for life. I went home that very night and threw out all of my Hello Kitty stickers. The sight of a cat still makes me cringe.
Vanessa, on the other hand, met her husband Marcus on her very first day at Howard University. How’s that for luck? He spotted her attempting to pull her suitcase up a flight of stairs, and, ever the gentleman, offered to help. The rest is history. They got married exactly one year after graduation. Isn’t that so cute you could die? I think that the story of the day they met also involved him inviting her to a fraternity party that same evening, and then making out with her shamelessly at said party, but that part of the story usually gets edited out in polite company. There’s a rumor among people who have known her from her Howard days that one groomsman alluded to the alleged make-out incident at Vanessa and Marcus’s rehearsal dinner. As the story goes, that man never made it down the aisle.
The first man that I met on my first day of college asked me who the “hot blonde” helping me move in was. It was my mother. I told him so. He asked if she was single. When I told him that she was not single, and in fact, was very much married, he asked, “Happily?”
And he didn’t even offer to help me with my bags.
I met Vanessa at a law school event being cosponsored by the Black Law Students Association and the Jewish Law Students Association. We gravitated toward each other, seemingly the only two people there solely for the free pizza and beer. We spent most of our free time from then on out together, studying and just generally trying to make it through law school as a team. Marcus was rarely at home, since he was first in medical school and then starting out his residency in surgery. Trip, who became the third in our study group after we met him at a Student Bar Association happy hour, used to accuse Vanessa of making up Marcus entirely so that no one would ask her out, thus leaving her more time to study (logic that completely escapes me).
Scot on the Rocks Page 3