Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  And everything was fine—until the following morning, when curiosity lured me into the front parlor for a closer inspection of Hank’s tree stand.

  At first I thought he must have tossed the bulk of it into the Dumpster out front. The only part that remained was a three-foot square block of thick plywood, a bent nail protruding from its surface.

  Wait a second, I thought, lifting the board. Was this the entire tree stand? Had Hank simply placed the plywood against the base of the trunk, pegged in a single nail, and expected it to keep a Christmas tree erect for the duration of the holiday?

  “There you are.” Hank stood in the doorway holding two mugs of coffee. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”

  In response, I brandished the plank. “What the hell is this supposed to be?”

  “A tree stand—what’s it look like?”

  “A Dadaist sculpture by Marcel Duchamp.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you honestly believe this would work?”

  “Well, sure. It worked for a couple of days, didn’t it?”

  I just stood there for a moment, trying to come up with a plausible explanation for all the discrepancies I’d shrugged off for the past two months. “Hank, are you… a squatter?” I finally said.

  “What? Hell no! If I didn’t have a client, how could I be shelling out all this cash on plumbers and roofers and refrigerators and stuff?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, brushing past him and heading for the back room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Dana…”

  I didn’t respond. I marched into the bedroom and stuffed my clothes into my backpack. I needed time to sort things out, and this was the last place I intended to do it.

  Hank was waiting for me by the front door when I was ready to leave, my Christmas present dangling from his finger. “I wish you’d stay.”

  I noticed he’d attached the brownstone’s key to the silver ring. “Are you sure you want me to have that?”

  He reached over and dropped the key chain into my coat pocket. “Dana, we’re doing good here. Let’s not mess it up now.”

  Dinner emerged from the back hallway and looked up at me with an expression nearly as mournful as his master’s. You’re not making this any easier, I thought, returning his gaze.

  “I don’t want to mess anything up. But if you’re not going to be honest with me—”

  “That’s what I been. Look, Dana—contractors… contract. That’s the job. I hire guys and tell ’em what to do.” He smiled, shaking his head from side to side. “Wish I could hire you. Then I could tell you to stick around.”

  I have to admit, I was tempted. It would have been so easy to go back to the bedroom and not reemerge until Monday morning. But if Hank really was the perfect boyfriend, then how come I found myself kissing Billy Moody every time the opportunity presented itself?

  I hugged him, and he hugged back. “I just want to take a breather,” I said. “At least give me a chance to miss you, okay?”

  “Does that mean you’ll come over for New Year’s Eve?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Oh, come on, Dana. That’s a whole week from now. Isn’t that long enough for you to miss me?”

  I leaned against the wall, thinking it over. Usually I spent New Year’s home alone, avoiding the drunks who flocked to my neighborhood leaving broken glass and vomit in their wake. I’d been looking forward to spending it at the brownstone. And I couldn’t imagine having a whole week pass by without missing Hank.

  “You’re on,” I said. “We’ll talk things over then.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” He kissed me on the cheek and opened the front door.

  I walked down the stoop in a daze. What had possessed me to flee the premises just as the relationship seemed to be getting serious? Was it nothing more than garden-variety fear of commitment?

  No, it was Hank. And his tree stand, and his floor guy, and his ever-changing autobiography.

  Or was it Billy?

  I shook my head. Billy hadn’t influenced my decision. He wasn’t even around this week. He was in Allentown, spending the holiday at his parents’. Right now he was probably out with his old high school gang, doing something youthful. Like snowboarding. Or ecstasy.

  He’d still managed to intrude on my Christmas with Hank the previous evening. Shortly after hearing the words “Circus Circus,” I was off and running with another theme for a puzzle. Could doubled word phrases—tautonyms, I believed they were called—be combined with another word to form a new phrase, such as “buddy buddy system”?

  Damn. Sixteen letters.

  Ah, but “Sing Sing praises” was fifteen!

  “You okay?” Hank had asked me, his hand poised over my belt buckle.

  “I’m sorry. I was a million miles away.” In Walla Walla. Or Bora Bora.

  Or, to be completely honest, Circus Circus. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t manage to buy another one of Hank’s stories.

  I sighed. Billy was off the hook. Hank wasn’t.

  I arrived at my building and reached into my pocket for my house keys, but I pulled out my Christmas present instead.

  Maybe I’m being too hard on Hank, I thought to myself, eyeing the key chain. After all, this gift was hugely significant. It meant he wanted me around. All the time. Giving me a key to the brownstone had been a major declaration of affection. It meant so much more than if he’d given me…

  Bling bling. Ten letters.

  I’d barely hung up my coat when I heard pounding from below. I reached for the phone.

  “I’ll be right down,” I told Vivian.

  “No, you won’t. I’ll be right up.”

  I slammed down the receiver and groaned. She wasn’t likely to arrive empty-handed. What would I be required to work into my canvases this time?

  Hats, as it turned out. An enormous box of them.

  “I can’t sell these goddamn things to save my life,” Vivian said as she shoved the open carton across the threshold. “I was thinking if you put a few of them on that pig, it might generate interest.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Women tended to purchase clothing that transformed them into something other than swine. But the hats were actually quite charming—little felt-and-feather concoctions in a full spectrum of colors that probably dated to the late 1940s.

  “I’m thinking window display,” she said. “Hang the paintings with invisible wire and line up a row of mannequin heads in front of them.”

  I was thinking grid—a large grid, maybe four canvases by four, each about a foot square. If I gave them all a decorative border and they were hung close together, the grouping would resemble a patchwork quilt. “I can work with these.”

  “Of course you can. So start working already.” She waved a hand at the box of hats before heading for the door.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “There’s something different about you.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She stood there scowling while I scrutinized her appearance. At last I figured out what had changed: I could see her entire left hand.

  “What happened to your engagement ring?”

  Vivian rolled her eyes. “That fucking Chad, that’s what happened. He’s in Baja. He’s… fishing.” She made the word sound like a felony, punishable by twenty years behind bars in the company of amorous, weight-lifting lifers.

  “I take it you’re not a fan?”

  She looked at me as if I were pointing an Uzi directly at her forehead.

  “Guess not. Sorry to hear you guys broke up.”

  “I’m not. You should have seen the performance of his hedge fund last quarter. All the numbers were in parentheses.” She yanked open the door and stalked out.

  I watched her go, suppressing a smile. “At least I’m not that bad,” I said to Puny, filling his bowl and reaching for my coat. Time for a run to Utrecht on Fourth Avenue to replenish my canvas supp
ly.

  The intercom buzzed as I was locking up; Vivian must have forgotten to tell me something. But when I walked down the stairs, there was a different blonde waiting on the other side of the front door.

  “I’m engaged!” Lark shrieked, presenting her…

  Right hand?

  I opened the door and let her hug me while she jumped up and down. “That’s… great,” I finally said. “But I think you’re wearing that ring on the wrong finger.”

  Her face fell. “Oh, Dana. I know. But Sandro said seeing me at the gallery party made him realize he didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  I’ll bet, I thought. Once he saw the attention you attracted, he knew it was just a matter of time before another guy made his move.

  “He told me I could switch hands as soon as his divorce is final,” she said, breaking into a beatific smile.

  You poor, young, dumb girl, I thought but didn’t say.

  She held out the ring for inspection. The diamond was similar in size to Vivian’s, but Sandro, never one to stint on glitz, had outdone Chad by flanking the stone with square-cut rubies. “So? What do you think, Dana?”

  I think you should pawn it and spend the proceeds on therapy and a master’s degree. “It’s… singular.”

  “Isn’t it? I was in the neighborhood, and I just had to show it to you.”

  For someone who lived all the way up on West 108th Street, Lark was in my neighborhood with astonishing frequency. “I’m glad you stopped by. I’d invite you in, but I’ve got to pick up some art supplies.”

  “Can I go with you?” She sighed. “Sandro’s busy all day. His son’s visiting from Santa Barbara.”

  “Why not?” Sandro is always going to be busy, I thought, wishing I could tell her this but knowing she’d never listen. You’ll waste years of your life, and eventually you’ll move on.

  We turned up Second Avenue, where a billboard of Ray Devine smiled down at us from a tenement wall.

  And I ought to know, I silently added.

  I finally arrived back home, tiptoeing so Vivian wouldn’t find out I had yet to start my latest Hannah. I cut the twine holding the canvases together and vowed not to focus on anything but work for the remainder of the afternoon.

  Just as soon as I checked my email.

  There were a few forwarded jokes and a request from eBay to leave feedback on the vintage Pyrex nesting bowls I’d purchased for Elinor Ann’s Christmas present, but nothing from Billy Moody. Which was unusual. He’d been relentlessly in touch ever since our lunch at Katz’s, whether to solicit my opinion on a section of a grid or to ask if I wanted to get together—a query I always deflected with some variation on “not a good idea.” Had I finally gotten through to him?

  If so, I should be delighted, or at least relieved—not sinking into despair and debating the wisdom of sending him a partial clue set based on tautonyms.

  I rummaged through Vivian’s box, pulled out a maroon cloche with a mini-veil and a rakish spray of pheasant feathers, and reached for my palette. There was no point in furthering a dialogue with Billy Moody. The odds were firmly stacked against anything but a tawdry affair, one that would induce cringing and remorse—and more cougar jokes from Elinor Ann—for years thereafter.

  I managed to prime exactly one canvas before convincing myself that my tautonym theme was simply too compelling not to share.

  But Billy had beaten me to the keyboard. His email was waiting in my in-box, with a subject line of “Miss me?”

  Sitting here stuffed with pie and dutifully wearing this year’s ugly Christmas sweater from Grandma. (She’s outdone herself. There’s a big jolly snowman on the front of this one.) My three-year-old nephew is screaming so loud that I’m tempted to feed him a peanut and put him permanently out of his misery. Give me a light at the end of the tunnel. Have dinner with me when I get home tomorrow.

  W.W.W.

  P.S. In a blatant attempt to influence your decision, I got you a Christmas present.

  Even though I knew better, I highlighted his postscript and hit Reply.

  Would said gift happen to be an ugly Christmas sweater? What color?

  He was still at his laptop:

  I have no idea. I’ve got red-green color blindness. And that’s not what I got you. Say yes.

  W.W.W.

  His affliction inspired me to respond one more time:

  Color blind? No wonder you’re misreading my signals. Those are red lights, not green ones, I’ve been giving you.

  P.S. I have to admit, I’m curious about that gift. A first edition of Anne of Red Gables or The Green Badge of Courage? A CD by Red Day or the Green Hot Chili Peppers?

  My email probably hadn’t even reached its destination when inspiration struck. By the time he wrote back, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I had a tidy list of potential phrases for a clue set:

  Little Green Riding Hood; Red Thumb; Green-letter day; Red-eyed monster; Better Dead than Green; The Red, Red Grass of Home…

  I didn’t even bother with the pretense of returning to my easel. I just sat there until I heard the ping signaling his reply.

  Little Green Riding Hood is 21 letters. I think we’ve got a Sunday puzzle on our hands. If you don’t meet me for a brainstorming dinner, I’ll be walking around with green-rimmed eyes for the rest of the week.

  W.W.W.

  Of course I knew I should say no. And, as I’m sure we both knew, any brainstorming could be accomplished on our respective computers.

  But Hank and I were on hiatus.

  Or were Hank and I on hiatus because I’d known it was just a matter of time before Billy turned up?

  The way I looked at it, there was only one way to find out.

  Not dinner. Quite honestly, I don’t trust myself to spend that much time with you.

  But I will agree to one drink. Meet me tomorrow night at 9 in front of the bar just north of 13th on Avenue B.

  I’d never patronized the establishment, but it looked appropriately low-key from the outside. Its main selling point was its relative remoteness from my apartment—and Hank’s brownstone. Northeast was the least likely direction in which he would wander if out for an evening stroll.

  And on this particular evening, only a masochist would be out wandering. The temperature had plummeted to the low teens and the wind had buffeted my hair into Southern-beauty-queen dimensions by the time I arrived at my destination.

  Billy was out front with his head down, shifting his weight from foot to foot with his back to the entrance, when I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped roughly twelve feet, then turned to face me.

  “Yow! You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

  “Weren’t you expecting me?”

  “Well, yeah, but—uh, have you ever been to this place before?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I didn’t think so. It’s, uh…” He began to smile and looked into my eyes. “I’ll explain in a minute. Hey, Dana.” He leaned me against the wall and kissed me, and instantly I forgot about my hair and the suitability of the bar and the arctic chill and kissed him back.

  I would have happily spent the next hour or so risking frostbite, but the door swung open and two patrons exited the premises.

  “Breeders,” one of them hissed when they passed by.

  “Ohhh,” I said to Billy.

  He chuckled. “Yeah. Oh.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that kind of bar.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He picked up a shopping bag that I surmised held my Christmas present, took my hand, and started up the avenue. “There’s a place right around the corner on Fourteenth. It’ll be full of old geezers, but they won’t object to having us there.”

  He was right. None of the customers even looked up when we walked in, presumably because they were too loaded to lift their heads.

  Billy hesitated after closing the front door. “Hope the ambience isn’t too… louche for you.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s perfect.
”

  Ray and I had never rendezvoused at this particular establishment, but I felt right at home. All the dives in Manhattan seemed to have identical feng shui. I’d been immediately transported back in time the instant I spotted the scuffed, red and black linoleum floor tiles and breathed in the familiar combination of ancient beer and wet wool.

  There were a few battered booths in the back of the room. I slid into one, taking the side that faced away from the action—if guzzling boilermakers could be construed as action. Billy slid in next to me after he returned from the bar with our drinks and immediately resumed kissing me.

  I’d expected this, and I had a plan to shut him down after a minute or so—ten, tops—but my brain just couldn’t seem to manage to send the correct signals to my body. Man, this kid was talented.

  He was the one who ultimately backed away. “Are you sure that guy you were telling me about is your boyfriend? Because you’re kind of acting like you like me, Dana.”

  Like, schmike, I thought. Let’s hop a red-eye to Rio.

  But now was no time for dangerous fantasy. Did I really want to throw Hank over for a kid?

  “Yeah, I like you. Obviously. But you’re just not… tenable.”

  “And this boyfriend guy is?”

  “He’s the right age, and he’s devoted, and he isn’t too young for me, and he’s decent, and we were both born in the same decade, and he has a pet pig.”

  “Whoa. Why didn’t you tell me he had a pig? That explains everything.”

  He put his arms around me and was nuzzling my neck before I could think of a single preventative action. “I’m an old soul,” he murmured in my ear.

  “And kissing you is as addictive as opiates,” I said, finally backing away. “But I’m serious. This guy’s good for me. I mean it.” Why was I so unwilling to say “this guy” ’s name? Hank. Hank Hank Hank Hank Hank.

  “I guess you spent Christmas with him, huh?”

  “I did. And he met my big brother.”