“This Swank place is supposed to be the hot spot,” Kayla says, her words muffled by a massive black scarf that hides all but her eyes. She links her arm with Jeff Brice’s, a corporate associate, fellow Greenwich kid, and friend of Cameron’s. “Who knew meatpacking would become the mecca of cool?”
“Meatpacking. God, it just sounds so gay. Meat. Packing,” Jeff says, lighting a cigarette.
“They used to pack meat there,” Kayla says.
“I’m pretty sure they still do,” Jeff says, guffaws, and strokes his balding head.
“How’s the Propecia treating you?” Cameron asks, and laughs, stroking his hand through his own thick hair.
“Fuck off, Stone,” Jeff says, smiles, and takes a drag.
“Hot spot, K?” I say. “Maybe if we’re really lucky we’ll spot some celebrity slipping in a pool of her own vomit.”
“Or forgetting to tip the waitress,” Kayla says.
“Or having a dance-off with another celebrity,” Cameron says, no doubt referring to a fallen pop princess and her estranged soul mate.
“Ahh, someone likes the gossip mags. And I thought readership was limited to those without a Y chromosome.”
Cameron’s face reddens. “Sue me. I have a sister.”
“Sure you do,” I say.
“Meatpacker,” Jeff says, flicking ash.
“This one’s got a phobia,” K says to Cameron, and points at me, and I wonder which one she’s thinking of.
“Is that so?” he says, looking at me.
“I’ve got plenty of them,” I say. “I’m a New Yorker.”
“She doesn’t like the subzero set, the nocturnal skinnies who prance around these places.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” Cameron says, looking me up and down. Thankfully, my coat, my cat hair–covered cashmere, hides my body. “We’ll have to stick together then.”
“Deal,” I say.
“A little meat is a good thing,” Cameron says, his Southern accent echoing with the howling wind.
“Meatpacker,” Jeff mumbles.
“On the bones,” Cameron says.
Kayla and Jeff walk away arm in arm and leave me talking with Cameron. I slide in the backseat with them, and before I can shut the door, Cameron grabs the door, holding it open.
“Want to be on top?” he says, ducking down and smiling. He holds his hand out. His breath condenses on the tinted car window.
“Get in the front seat,” I say, and smile. “You’re dirty when you’re drunk.”
The driver starts moving things from the passenger seat; a phone book, an empty bag of Cheez Doodles, a tattered blanket.
“And she’s flirty when she’s drunk,” Kayla mumbles to Jeff, but I hear.
Cameron hasn’t moved. He stays there, propping the door open, letting the cold wind slice through the backseat. The driver in the car behind ours honks the horn.
“Goddamn it, Stone, get in the fucking car,” Jeff says.
Cameron forces himself into the backseat, sits on me, and slams the door as we pull away. “Have it your way,” he says. “I’ve never objected to riding a pretty girl.”
“Dirty,” I say.
Cameron reeks of sweat and whiskey. He braces against the window so as not to crush me with his two-hundred-plus pounds. Under his weight, I feel warm, trapped, and secure. As the car shifts and turns, Cameron shifts his weight, rubbing up against me.
“You okay under there?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Thankfully, I’ve got some meat on my bones.”
“Just the right amount if you ask me,” he whispers.
“I didn’t,” I say, and hesitate. “But thank you.”
I look over at Kayla. She fights the weight of her eyelids, barely keeping them open. “Whore,” she says to me, and smiles.
“Yo, man. Will you pump up the radio?” Jeff hollers.
The driver—small, quiet, potentially Puerto Rican—turns and looks back at us. He squints his beady black eyes as if to say, Who do you think you are? Frankly, a very good question if he is in fact thinking it. But the man humors Jeff, turns a knob, and rap music pours from rear speakers.
“Thanks, man. You da bomb,” Jeff says, and I wonder if that term of endearment is PC these days. “What’s your name?”
“Don’t be a punk, Brice,” Cameron says. “He’s a punk,” he says in a whisper to me.
“Juan,” the driver says. “My name is Juan.”
“Juanny, man, nice to meet ya. We’re celebrating a cool twenty-K,” Jeff says. “How much do you pull in driving this boat around?”
“Brice, don’t be a dick, man,” Cameron says, flipping his cell phone open.
“But Cam, man, I am a dick, and my mama always told me to be myself,” Jeff says, laughing, spraying vodka-drenched saliva, playing with his watch.
“This isn’t the place, mama’s boy,” I say.
“What, O’Malley—the bonus means nothing to you now that you’ve found yourself an i-banking knight?” Jeff says.
“Something like that,” I say.
“Knight, huh?” Cameron says. “That’s tough competition for a measly little lawyer.”
“Not so measly,” I say, trying to revive my legs.
“Some of us,” Jeff says, burps, and pinches his fingers together, “have these little things called loans.”
“Cry me a fucking river, Mr. Rolex,” Kayla pipes in.
“Why not just a regular river?” I ask.
“Because sometimes it’s not just a river, but a fucking river,” K explains.
“Got it,” I say.
“My buddy from law school works at legal aid and he just got word that his loans are being forgiven. Hell, I need some forgiveness too.”
“He’s helping people who need it,” I say.
“So are we,” Jeff says. “So are we.”
“Yeah. We help people,” I say. “Rich men and some rich women. We help them get rich and stay rich. We help partners work their way to a second home in the Hamptons or the Vineyard. We help executives who’ve dabbled in insider trading, or set up offshore accounts, or defrauded shareholders.”
“So much for Project Optimism,” Kayla says.
Not too long ago, the executive committee, the team of rich and powerful, circulated a memorandum announcing our year-end bonuses. The announcement came three weeks later than it usually does because our firm had to wait and see what the “market” did. What that means is our firm waited to see what Cravath did. So, when Cravath decided to fatten first-year associate paychecks by a whopping twenty thousand dollars, our firm matched the number.
When I got that memo, I was happy too. Of course. Jeff’s right; I don’t have loans, but money is always a nice thing and I do feel that sense of satisfaction that in some way, in some small way, I’m being rewarded for my hard work even though I know all too well what we all should know: My bonus has nothing to do with the work I have done.
The snow has stopped. The streets have lost their temporary magic. The traffic isn’t terrible, though, and with little Juan at the wheel, we zoom through the streets, weaving in and out of other late night traffic, speeding through lingering yellows and stopping short at the occasional and sudden red. We bounce around, the four of us, packed like sardines in the pine-smelling backseat of this car chartered for our convenience.
Cameron still fiddles with his phone, thumbing blue buttons that flicker like fireflies against the dark windows. Even as the car jerks and he readjusts his body weight on my numbing legs, his fingers remain still, in control, as he text messages someone.
“So, where’s your girlfriend?” I hear myself ask.
“Which one?” he says.
Sirens slice through the rap music and an ambulance flies around the corner, nearly grazing the front of our car, which Juan manages to halt just in time, lurching all of us forward, and sending that little phone flying from Cameron’s hands.
He reaches down to retrieve it from the dark slushiness by o
ur feet. Feeling around, fishing for his phone, he brushes my leg with the back of his hand, and I hope that my stockings will somehow disguise the fact that I haven’t shaved in weeks.
“Got it,” he says, slowly coming up again. The car hits a pothole. “Shit. Lost it again.”
I feel a hard object slide toward me on the seat, wet against my inner thigh, and then Cameron’s big hand comes crawling for it. I feel as his hand settles around the small phone. His hand stays down there, on the edge of the leather seat, motionless for a second or two, in the dark. I don’t move. The music pumps on, seems louder all of a sudden.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he whispers in my ear.
“Good.”
And then I feel his fingers moving around, gently tracing the length of my thigh. Those fingers stop where they shouldn’t. He rests his fingertips there, firmly, against me, that spot—warm, hidden to all, now moist.
Thankfully, there’s a fortress of nylon when I need it; control top pantyhose all of a sudden takes on a new meaning.
I think he waits for me to slap him.
But I don’t.
His fingers flutter, tapping me, one finger, now two, now one, and then stop.
Now I reach my own hand down there, to find his, to stop this. I grab his hand, large, warm, now still. He grabs my hand as if he’s been waiting for it the whole time, patient bait. He holds my hand in his and then moves my fingers where his have been only seconds ago, pressing my own fingers there, firmly against myself, as if to prove something that’s already been proven. He loosens his grip on my hand and then laces his fingers in mine, pulling both of our hands out from under my skirt. Before he lets go, he traces the outline of my diamond, slowly, carefully, and gives it a gentle tug, spinning it on my finger, so the stone faces in and not out. Then he closes my hand in a fist around it.
Cameron Stone.
Finally he pulls away, slush-slicked phone in hand, and mumbles, in words presumably clean to all but the two of us, “Did I get you wet? I’m sorry.”
Chapter 11
I wake up in my own bed. Good sign.
Teeth chattering, covers to my nose, I fight a spotlight of sun. My head throbs. My thoughts jump between Sage and Cameron before landing with a thud on the control top pantyhose I’m still wearing, apparently the only thing I’ve slept in. Still damp. Full of runs.
Sage pulls the covers back, crouches at the end of the bed, and starts tugging at the toes of my stockings. Snow has accumulated on the bars outside the window. Only in Manhattan would you shell out a million for prison bars on a bedroom window. All of a sudden the white stuff doesn’t seem so pure and innocent. This morning, the frost is ominous.
“I’m frigid,” I say. Hardly.
“I’m not surprised,” Sage says, and laughs. His hair sticks up. “Sexy PJs, Bug, but they aren’t going to keep you very toasty.”
“Apparently not.”
Did I get you wet? I’m sorry.
Cameron. His words come back to me now.
In one final yank, Sage separates me from my pantyhose and drops them to the floor. They land in a sad moist beige pile. Hula sniffs them.
“No undies?” Sage says, flashing a wicked grin. “Now we’re talking.”
I don’t tell him that this isn’t part of a special plan of morning seduction, but simply that hose and panties are redundant.
Sage nuzzles his nose between my legs. He gives me a sweet little peck down there, naughtiness at its most innocent, and I push him away. I push him away, the man with whom I’ve agreed to spend the rest of my life, and yet hours ago, I spread my legs in the backseat of a corporate car and let a relative stranger play me like a piano.
“What’s wrong?” he says, staring up at me. I’ve never been one to turn away this kind of attention.
“I just can’t,” I say, running my finger along that deep red groove those dreadful hose have left around my waist.
I look at him, his pleading blue eyes, his straight nose and strong jaw. Mom says he has the bone structure of a Disney prince.
I don’t deserve him.
“You’re killing me, Bug,” he says, smiling, fiddling with his boxers, reminding me of all those silly jocks in college and their blue balls conspiracy.
Mom taught me about blue balls myth. The night before I left for college. It was a footnote to her respect-your-own-body speech.
Dad’s advice was not about sex—that was Mom’s territory—but tolerance. For an atheist, the man sure could preach. College—and then the real world—would be filled with different kinds of people, he said. No kidding. Different races, cultures, religions, socioeconomic brackets. Yup. I wouldn’t always understand everyone I encountered, but I should respect them nonetheless. Blah blah blah. I nodded my head at the banal and very un-Dad-like words of wisdom he seemingly collected from some send-your-kid-to-college guidebook. He ended his homily on tolerance by becoming more like the dad I knew, by addressing the tolerance I’d in no time confront and repeatedly ignore.
Know your limits, Prue. Now, those limits might be quite high, he said, smiling. You are an O’Malley after all. But a limit is still a limit, he finished, forcing away that grin that wasn’t appropriate for such a sober matter.
Amen, Father, I said, and that smile of his returned as he poured the three of us a glass of wine.
“Please, no references to death,” I say to Sage, unconsciously pulling that good old bait and switch. And cry. Big, fat, salty tears.
He wipes my eyes, staining his fingers with last night’s mascara, and kisses me on the forehead. He doesn’t say anything. I know he thinks this must be about Dad. My father died mere months ago and I’m allowed to have my moments.
“You look like a raccoon,” Sage says, presciently comparing me to that nocturnal creature known for being clever and mischievous.
“He hated raccoons,” I say. Dad was an animal lover, but never fond of the little critters who ruined his camping trips.
“Well, they are mischievous little fucks,” he says, and I laugh, because hearing him swear sounds so wrong and he’s just described the woman he’s due to marry: a mischievous little fuck.
I look at Sage, the genuine concern plain in his eyes, the blond stubble on his chin, his chapped lower lip. He smiles, trying to get me to do the same.
I cry a little harder.
“A very beautiful raccoon?” he adds, and hugs me tight as Hula chews my discarded hose.
We sit in silence and watch snow fall.
“He loved the snow though,” I say. “We used to make snow angels in Central Park the weekends he wasn’t on call. They were the only angels he believed in.”
Dad was wary of religion. Said it caused more harm than good. When one of his patients miscarried, he’d never say things like That was God’s will. No, he’d say, Things happen. He told me all about natural selection and survival of the fittest before any teacher did. The man had a way of explaining most occurrences in the context of the natural world. We think we’re above it, he said. But we’re not. We’re animals, in the business of surviving and dying.
“Everything will be okay, Bug,” Sage says, hurling that vague promise at me. He hops up from the bed. “You know what you need?”
Alcoholics Anonymous? A chastity belt?
“Bacon,” he says, hopping off the bed, pulling on jeans. “Bacon can fix anything.”
“What about Wilbur?” I say, and smile through new tears.
Sage smiles. “Even he’d approve this time.”
Dad read me Charlotte’s Web when I was six. One chapter a night, on that old porch swing at Bird Lake. I immediately fell in love with Wilbur, that fat old pig awaiting his demise. And the little spider who saved him from his bacon fate.
But then I grew up to love bacon.
What about Wilbur? Dad would ask as I stuffed one strip after another into my mouth.
I’d shrug. No good answer for his good question.
But isn’t this what happens? As chil
dren, we care deeply about a fictional pig. As children, we dream big, nurture great ideas; we practice musical instruments and collect things. We play the what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up game, and no answer is too silly, or impractical, or indulgent.
Then we grow up. We spend spare time watching TV, dying our hair blond, working out. We become doctors and lawyers and bankers. We dream a bit smaller—hoping that nothing disastrous happens, that we’ll be reasonably happy, that the stock market won’t crash, that our country won’t be attacked again.
“I’ll run out and get some,” Sage says. “Now, this is what the city’s good for. A package of bacon thirty seconds away.” But his optimism isn’t so contagious this morning and I immediately think of the things we give up in exchange for convenience: grass, affordable housing, smiles from strangers.
Before he walks out our bedroom door, he turns and looks at me. “Okay, now you’re a goth raccoon. You’d scare even a friendly spider away.”
He leaves me, and I can’t help but think of Dad, that rusty old swing, the little story he read to me in his gravelly voice between tears he probably thought I never noticed. Leave it to Dad to enlighten a six-year-old on the fundamental fact of lingering mortality. But when Dad talked of death, he talked of nature, of life cycles, of ecosystems. He said death was not bad or scary, just a fact of life.
I decide to clean up while Sage is fetching bacon. On the way to the bathroom, I trip over my heels. I look at myself in the mirror above the sink. My eyes are puffy, and corners crusty. My hair is a forest of knots.
I attack my teeth and gums with my electronic toothbrush and think of Dad and his anti-technology rants. The thing stops buzzing, but my tongue still tastes like wine.
I don’t remember. I don’t remember coming home.
I walk into the kitchen. Three empty beer bottles are lined up on the kitchen counter.
Did I drink those? I don’t remember. I swirl my tongue around my mouth to see if I can locate the taste of Coors Light. It’s unlikely that I drank these. I don’t like beer. But the truth is I really don’t know.
Life After Yes Page 11