Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  And pretty soon I would be, too, judging by the look I was getting from his daughter.

  Eventually Mrs. Belarus came to my rescue, bringing a glass of water from the kitchen. I would have kissed her, but I was clenching my jaw too hard to form a pucker. After I’d choked down a couple of swallows, I managed to get myself under control and find my voice.

  But now that I’d found it, the challenge lay in what to do with it—a challenge I failed miserably.

  “Rhea Polster,” I croaked. “That’s just about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, what are the odds?”

  Renée looked at me as if we’d just arrived at the prom wearing identical gowns.

  “Guess it’s time to be going,” I said, gauging the distance from my spot in the sunken living room to the front door. I estimated it to be, oh, about seven hundred miles or so.

  The sound of voices at the top of the stairs signaled that now was the optimal time to flee the premises. Not only would the Adidas family create a diversion, but Renée would be less likely to strangle me in the presence of additional witnesses. With a nod to Mr. and Mrs. Belarus and a tight-lipped smile for my would-be real estate agent, I headed toward the foyer, and freedom.

  A young couple, writhing toddler in tow, reached the bottom of the landing just as I was stepping into my second boot.

  “They did a fabulous job on those upstairs bedrooms,” Mrs. Adidas said. “Aren’t you going up there to have a look?”

  “No, I—I—I—”

  She peered at me more closely. “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

  Of course I wasn’t all right. Ray Devine was dead. Plus the bitch had called me ma’am.

  I didn’t respond in words, but she got her answer anyway—in stunning fashion. I bent over and, in one interminable instant, unleashed a torrent of puke, the bulk of which landed directly inside Renée Devine’s pale pink suede Uggs.

  “Ugh,” said the toddler.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IDOL WORSHIP

  It would have been convenient to blame the entire, humiliating incident on my former coworker, but Lark was only partially responsible for my trip to Bay Ridge.

  “I’m in love,” she’d confided over lunch two Wednesdays ago, the day I’d found myself in Chelsea and decided to drop by the gallery where I used to work—ostensibly to see their latest installation, but really to catch up on gossip.

  “I’m happy for you,” I told her, although Lark was so ridiculously stunning and youthful and all-around perfect that it was pretty much impossible not to be happy for the girl every second of every day. “Do I know him?”

  She blushed, so adorably that the German couple at the adjoining table stopped eating and beamed at her. “It’s… Sandro.”

  “Sandro Montevecchi?”

  She frowned. “You look upset.”

  I was upset. Not as upset as I would have been to hear that Lark had fallen head over heels for the Antichrist, but only by the narrowest of margins.

  In short, the man was a snake—an unctuous ogler who made me feel like running home to shower if he so much as glanced in my direction. Plus he was much too old for her—and a rotten artist, even if he was the gallery’s biggest moneymaker. The public seemingly couldn’t get enough of his altarpieces designed to mimic the Byzantine style—only his painted panels depicted celebrities, not saints. Naked celebrities, complete with halos.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  I leaned forward. “Lark, trust me on this. You do not want to get involved with a married man.”

  “Oh, Dana. I know you’re right. But—”

  But I already knew what she was going to say. “The time you spend with Sandro is the only time you feel genuinely happy. And he tells you how much he worships you a dozen times a day, even if it’s only over the phone.”

  “But—”

  “You meet for drinks in some crummy, out-of-the-way bar where there’s no possibility of running into anyone he knows, and it feels as though you’re sipping champagne at the Waldorf,” I continued. “And if you can arrange a couple of extra hours together, it’s as luxuriant as a three-day weekend at some cute little B and B in Montauk. Am I right?”

  Her pale blue eyes widened. “How do you know all that?”

  I just sat there, sipping iced tea while she figured out for herself exactly how I knew all that.

  “Oh my god,” she finally said. “You had an affair… with Sandro?”

  I would have burst out laughing, or shuddered in horror, but Lark needed guidance, not derision. “Of course I didn’t,” I told her. “But back when I was your age, I got involved in a… similar situation. And I know you don’t want to hear me say it, but these things never work out.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it, Lark. They never, ever do. No matter what Sandro might be promising you.”

  Her eyes welled with tears, and within seconds she was sobbing uncontrollably.

  Swell, I thought, handing her my napkin and scrupulously avoiding the outraged glares of the German couple.

  “I’m not trying to upset you,” I went on, pretending not to hear the impassioned achs coming from the next table. “But I wish someone had told me what I’m telling you now.”

  Not that it would have made a bit of difference. I would have simply sat there, nodding energetically, all the while thinking, “But you don’t understand. This is true love.”

  Which, no doubt, was exactly what Lark was thinking that very moment as she sat there, nodding energetically.

  That was when I realized there wasn’t a thing I could say to change her mind. All I could do was pacify her—and brace myself for dozens more conversations identical to this one for the foreseeable future.

  She dabbed at her eyes with the napkin, chin quavering. “I swear I never meant for it to happen. But Sandro’s so talented. And mature.”

  Wrong on both counts, I thought to myself.

  “He told me he’s never met anyone like me.”

  This year, I thought to myself.

  “And then he told me he and his wife haven’t gotten along for ages now, and they’re going to get a divorce any second, and—”

  “Well, then, there’s nothing to cry about, is there?” I said, suppressing the urge to lunge across the table and shake her until she came to her senses. “Once Sandro’s divorce is final, there’ll be nothing to stand in your way.”

  “I… guess not.”

  “Then don’t you think you should wait until that happens before you get any more involved with him?”

  “I… guess so.”

  “Lark, I know so. And if Sandro really loves you, he’ll think so, too.”

  She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Oh, Dana. I am so lucky to have you for a mentor.”

  God knows it hadn’t been my idea. But one morning Lark had materialized behind the front desk at the gallery, and by nightfall she’d managed to convince herself I was mentor material.

  “What makes you think so?” I asked her, wondering what had possessed me to invite the new girl out for a drink to celebrate her first day on the job.

  “You seem so… like—you know things.”

  Boy, is this girl lucky I’m not a guy, I’d thought at the time. Lark was a fine-boned beauty, with enormous, trusting blue eyes and a blond, supershort haircut that would be unflattering on just about anyone alive but only served to accentuate her delicate features. My boss had hired her for the receptionist’s job on the spot, before she’d spoken a single word.

  “Of course I know things,” I replied. “I’m older than you.”

  Twice as old, in fact, but really it felt like five times that, since I couldn’t possibly have ever been as young as Lark Darling.

  “But you get to work with clients. And you’re a real artist—somebody at work told me you’re a painter. And—and I love your necklace. I bet you even have your own apartment, with a lease and everything.”

  “Well, sure I have my own apar
tment.”

  “Where?”

  “East Village.”

  She clapped her hands together in delight. “See? You’re exactly who I want to be!”

  It was no use arguing with her. I’d been drafted.

  Although to be honest, I hadn’t minded all that much. In fact, I hadn’t minded in the least. There’s nothing quite so flattering as seeing yourself reflected in the shining eyes of your most ardent fan.

  But it was more than that. It was impossible to dislike Lark. She was so eager, and lovely, and solicitous. She spent her idle moments sewing tiny beads onto a black satin clutch bag she was customizing with a leaf pattern, and she left a faint trace of honeysuckle in her wake as she ushered clients in and out of the gallery. In short, she inspired protection.

  I ultimately decided that the least I could do for the girl was convince her that Sandro would be a tremendous waste of her time—about fourteen months, if history repeated itself. But before I could make my case, I had a few questions for Ray Devine. If anybody had experience seeing himself reflected in shining eyes, he was the man.

  Or, more accurately, he’d been the man.

  Rounding the corner of Perry Terrace, I leaned against a mailbox to catch my breath, shaking my head in disbelief. Of all the ways I’d imagined the morning would turn out, this scenario hadn’t even made the list.

  I descended the steps to the Bay Ridge Avenue station just in time to witness a Manhattan-bound R train disappear into the tunnel.

  Thanks a lot, Lark, I thought to myself.

  Because of course this entire, humiliating incident wasn’t just partially her fault; it was entirely her fault. Ever since that lunch two Wednesdays ago, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Ray Devine.

  Mainly to keep reminding myself that our relationship bore absolutely no similarity to Lark and Sandro’s.

  Because that just couldn’t be true, or it would mean I’d wasted half my life holding out for someone who would love me the way Ray had.

  But what if it was true?

  I sighed and took a seat on a battered wooden bench at the end of the subway platform. What did it matter now? Ray was gone, and maybe that was all the answer I needed. Maybe it was time to forget about the past and move on with my life. After all, I was a mentor now. I was supposed to be older and wiser. People—well, Lark, anyway—looked up to me.

  An elderly woman passed by and gave me such a concerned, pitying look that I had to wonder if she’d borne witness to my meltdown at Renée’s open house a half hour earlier, even though I didn’t recall seeing her there. “Ma’am?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded and smiled reassuringly. Of course I was all right. But why was half the population of Brooklyn calling me ma’am all of a sudden?

  Another train roared into the station and I boarded the rear car, taking a seat across from two girls around Lark’s age. The taller one looked like a younger version of myself, with her wavy hair and long, skinny legs clad in tight jeans. She looked unhappy. She probably had an older man of her own, who was currently making her life miserable. I gazed across the aisle at her, hoping to convey my support with a single, comforting glance. I wished I could be her mentor, too, sharing all my hard-won wisdom and experience.

  That was when she looked up, met my eyes, and flinched.

  I pretended not to notice when she gave her friend a subtle nudge and the two of them rose from their seats and moved to the other end of the car. But it wasn’t until the train arrived at my stop and I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass of the subway door that I realized why they’d done it.

  The bright red lipstick I’d worn to the open house was smeared halfway across my left cheek. And my fit of hysterical laughter had caused my mascara to migrate down my face in watery black streaks.

  “Some mentor you are,” I muttered under my breath, skulking toward home with my head down, eyes riveted to the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GULP

  There was only one item on my to-do list upon arriving back home: Swallow the very last Quaalude in New York City. At least, I was pretty sure it was the very last one; the government had discontinued their manufacture decades earlier. Mine was definitely a bootleg. The ROHRER stamped on the tablet was missing its h, but at least they’d gotten the number right: 714.

  The pill had been a graduation gift from my philosophy professor, Dr. Spatzman, who was known around campus—for good reason—as Space Man.

  “I heard you’re moving to New York City,” he’d said on our last day of class, pressing it into my palm. “You’d better be prepared.”

  “For what?”

  He stroked his goatee and stared into the distance. “There are so many answers to that question.”

  I’d been saving the Quaalude for ages, to be used in case of only the most dire emergency. I’d reached for it on various occasions, even held it in my hand with a water chaser at the ready, but I’d always returned it to the little enameled box I kept hidden in the back of my underwear drawer. It seemed that nothing the city of New York threw at me—not rats, not transit strikes, not even the Giuliani administration—would ever be catastrophic enough to warrant its ingestion.

  But the shock of Ray’s demise called for a Quaalude; a pharmaceutical Quaalude, optimally, but where was I supposed to find one of those—the Museum of Banned Substances?

  “Drugs won’t do you any good,” Elinor Ann said, just as I knew she would, during our regular afternoon phone call. “Can’t you just have a good cry and get it out of your system?”

  “You’re forgetting a crucial point. The last time I had a good cry, I was probably teething.” I never saw much point in tears. Eventually they stopped flowing, and the source of your anguish was right where you left it—staring you straight in the face.

  “Dana, please don’t take it. It must be years past its expiration date. You could get sick—or die, even.”

  “By taking one potentially ineffective pill? I should have known better than to say anything to you. A piano could drop on your head and you’d turn down a Tylenol.”

  “That’s not true. I’d take a Tylenol. Probably. Unless I was dead, which I most likely would be if a piano fell on me, and stop trying to change the subject.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh no. You just took it, didn’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I was a bit surprised when a delicious stupor began to sink in almost immediately. Perhaps emptying the contents of my stomach into Renée Devine’s boots had helped speed the process along. Or perhaps undernourishment, lack of sleep, and my stupefaction at her father’s passing had combined to create a state of psychosomatic narcosis. In any case, I was soon gliding languorously from room to room, propelled by the strains of Nat King Cole’s “Blue Gardenia.”

  This didn’t last long, since I live in a two-room apartment, not counting the bathroom, and the song clocks in at just under three minutes. What now?

  My eyes alighted on the New York Times Magazine at the foot of my bed. Of course—the crossword. I hadn’t had time for it earlier in my haste to get to Bay Ridge, and taking it along for my ride on the R train had been out of the question.

  In my opinion, everyone has at least one thing they do exceptionally well, and in my case, it’s crossword puzzles. This is more a result of solving them every day—even the humdrum Monday-through-Wednesday run—than innate acumen or a stratospheric IQ. On Sunday mornings, it was my custom to sit myself down and, after the hard news and real estate sections, but before Styles, Arts and Leisure, and the Book Review, devote my undivided attention to filling in the squares—always in pen, ideally without errors, and preferably in under twenty minutes (which sounds impressive, unless one is aware that a Sunday puzzle is really just a Wednesday with a weight problem, and nowhere near as challenging as a Friday or Saturday).

  But that day the clues seemed to hover in blurry streaks above the page; threes morphed into eights, and the grid strobed lik
e op art. My reading glasses didn’t help at all; a magnifying strength of 175, as it turned out, was no match for a “Rorer” 714. When I filled in 18-Down with SST (“Retired boomer”), only to realize its rightful place was one square to the right, in 19, I tossed my pen in disgust and reclined on the bed. There was nothing to do, I concluded, but ruminate on the late Ray Devine.

  I’d begun to nurture a crush on him less than an hour after beginning my illustrious career at Prints on Prince, my first job out of the gate—and the only one I could get—when I arrived in town with my useless BFA in studio art and dearth of experience. He was cute. Really cute. But just unkempt enough to convince you that he never gave his appearance so much as a thought. And when he looked at you, he looked at you, and all of a sudden you felt like the wittiest, most desirable woman in downtown Manhattan, if not all five boroughs. Or maybe even the entire state. East Coast. Time zone.

  Within a week or two I’d discovered the man was a walking testosterone bomb, one who held universal appeal. The other salesgirl and the gay guy who worked alongside Ray in shipping and framing had been instantly smitten as well. Plus the married (but not to each other) co-owners had issued him a standing invitation to join them in a threesome.

  “Caligula himself would turn down that offer,” he said after confiding in me one evening when I was stuck in the gallery until its nine p.m. closing. “Man, I hope there’s no such thing as hell. I can just see myself arriving there and being ushered to a room with a heart-shaped bed. Bernie and Felicia are lying on it, naked, of course, opening up a tube of K-Y Jelly while Lionel Richie—the real Lionel Richie—croons ‘Endless Love’ in the background.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. “Now I’m going to have to squeeze in a lobotomy over the weekend just to permanently delete that image from my mind’s eye.”

  “He sounds dangerous,” Elinor Ann said when I called Pennsylvania that night. “And what a thing to tell you about Bernie and Felicia!”