Is that red mark on my lip the beginning of a cold sore?
I wipe the red blot away.
Phew. Just tomato sauce gone awry.
I hate cold sores.
My father gets them, supposedly my grandmother got them, and way back somewhere in Europe my great-grandmother probably got them. When I was four, I tripped on a pair of Dana’s discarded fluorescent-pink Cindy Lauper-esque leggings and ripped the left side of my top lip on her carpet. Since then, about once a year, I suffer from a cold sore in that exact spot on my lip. It could be worse, though. My father told me my grandmother got them in her nose.
Steve has never seen my reoccurring deformity. One major advantage of living in different cities. Last time I had one, about four months ago, I claimed I had the flu, couldn’t fly and had to postpone my weekend trip. By the next weekend I was able to camouflage the tiny scar with a cover-up stick Dana helped me pick out to match my skin tone and my lipstick.
I wheel my first fits-under-your-seat suitcase, purchased at the beginning of the Steve relationship as a time-saver investment, out of the bathroom and into the miraculously short line of cabs.
“He’s not picking you up at the airport?” Dana asked, which sounded suspiciously similar to her “he’s not taking off work on Saturday night for you?”
“Should he pick me up on his flying carpet?” I said. He couldn’t take off work on Saturday night, anyway. This time of year Saturday is his busiest night. Since Steve’s grandfather opened Manna in 1957, it’s always been closed on Friday evening and Saturday, reopening after the sun goes down on Saturday. According to Jewish law you can’t run a restaurant on Shabbat, because you can’t work. In the spring and summer the restaurant stays closed all day Saturday because the sun sets so late, but in the fall and winter it opens one hour after Shabbat ends.
There’s a calendar of this year’s Shabbat’s starting and ending times taped to his fridge. When I first saw it there, after pouring myself a glass of post-sex water during my first weekend sleepover, I did a little cringing. I had no intention of dating anyone religious, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, whatever. Any type of complete devotion to any deity was too much commitment for me. And besides, it was eleven-thirty and I wanted to watch Letterman and turning on the TV is somehow considered work to religious Jews. Thank God, I thought when Steve explained that the calendar was for work purposes only. When he took over the restaurant, he decided to keep it kosher. He’s actually quasi-kosher in private—no bacon or shellfish at home but anything is game when we leave the apartment.
I position my luggage in the trunk and slam the door shut. “Sullivan and Houston please,” I tell the cabbie. He grunts his response.
“Hi! I’m Jennifer Aniston,” a recorded voice in the taxicab says. “I tell all my friends to buckle up!”
I fasten my seat belt. As a kid, I used to mentally leapfrog over the streetlamps when we took the highway. As we approach the city, I do my imaginary exercise with the building-size billboards on my left.
I’m not sure if the funny feeling in my stomach is because of excitement, nervousness or because of the meatball sandwich they served me on the plane.
I give the cabbie twenty-six dollars, which covers the fare, the toll, the additional nighttime charge—what’s a nighttime charge?—and exactly a fifteen-percent tip.
“Can I help you?” the doorman asks, his head bobbing up from his small television set.
“Apartment 7D,” I say to the man who works every Friday night and never remembers me.
He dials upstairs, waits a minute, then scratches his goatee. “No one’s there. I think I saw Steve leave about an hour ago.”
I pull my suitcase toward the elevator. “I’m Steve’s girlfriend? Remember me? I have a key.” I have a key. A key. A key, a key. Sounds like yucky if you say it too fast.
“Right. Go ahead,” he says.
In the elevator the poster tacked below the emergency phone advertises, “Dog walker available! I live in the building and am very responsible!” If I can’t find a job, I can always become a dog walker. I’ve always wanted a dog. My father wouldn’t let me have one in the house because he didn’t want anything scratching his wood floors, or discoloring his white furniture. My college dorm didn’t allow pets. When I took the job at Panda and moved to Fort Lauderdale, I felt too bad leaving a poor pet locked in a one-bedroom apartment all day by himself.
When the elevator stops, I wheel the bag toward Steve’s door. Here it is. The momentous occasion. I pull the key, my key, out of my purse and insert it into the lock.
And insert it into the lock. Still trying to insert it into the lock. It’s not inserting. Why isn’t it inserting? What floor am I on? The sticker beside the peephole says 7D. Maybe someone changed the label as a practical joke? Did I press the right floor?
I wheel the luggage toward the apartment beside his. It says 7E.
He gave me the wrong key. I ring the doorbell in case he’s home, after all. No answer.
He’s a riot, I think as I wheel my bag back toward the elevator. This is by far one of the top five Steve-isms, as I’ve coined them, on the Steve-ism list. The Steve-ism list includes his leaving a bag of Gap purchases on the subway after an afternoon of shopping. Then there was the time he forgot his cell phone at my apartment post a weekend visit. When I answered the ringing under my bed he was laughing hysterically from the airport. Silly, Stevie.
My sentimentality lasts until the elevator doors open at the lobby level. I’m moving in with a man who might one day accidentally leave our child at a baseball game.
“Key’s not working,” I tell the doorman.
He looks at me suspiciously. Yes, I’m a crazy woman who gets off by riding elevators with luggage. “Can I use your phone?” I ask. Despite its supposed roaming capabilities, my cell phone never works in New York.
Steve says that while most of New York has gone back to normal post 9/11, cell phone service hasn’t been the same.
Sometimes when I see a stranger on the subway, I wonder if anyone she knew or cared about was killed. No one Steve knew was in the towers. He had friends of friends of friends that were killed, but no one whom he knew personally.
He was asleep when the planes hit, heard the commotion outside and watched the burning from his roof. For the next two weeks, he needed to show identification every time he came home from work because his apartment is below Fourteenth Street, where the lockdown was. He told me that for the following two months, he kept a pair of sneakers beside his bed in case he needed to make a run for it.
My father was on a project in Montreal when it happened, which I didn’t know. I called his office, his cell phone, his home number but I couldn’t get through. I knew he worked in midtown, but I still wanted to hear his voice to hear he was okay.
He called me on September fifteenth.
The doorman nods reluctantly and waves me toward a rotary behind his desk. Who still uses rotaries? Thankfully, the other amenities in this building aren’t also from the 1950s.
The message on his cell phone clicks on right away, so I know he’s left it off. He always leaves it off. What exactly is the point in having a cell if it’s never on?
Why can I remember this seemingly innocuous idiosyncrasy and he can’t even remember to give me the right key?
I call the apartment in case Steve decides to call in from whatever nook of the city he’s hiding in.
“Hey, this is Steve and Greg. Leave a message.” Beep.
“Hello, Steven, it’s me. I’m standing in the lobby of your building. You gave me the wrong key. If you’re checking your messages, please come home. I’m going to wait at the Starbucks on the corner.”
When do I get to leave the announcement on the machine? Hi, you’ve reached the happy residence of Steve and Sunny. We’re very much in love and are too busy expressing our love (wink, wink) to come to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number, time you called, and maybe when we’re taking a break from all th
is exhausting loving (wink, wink) we’ll call you back.
Why hasn’t Steve taken Greg’s name off the machine? I guess he’s still paying the rent, but he’s never there. He’s not moving in with his fiancée until the first of November (that’s when he officially starts splitting her rent) but he’s been practically living there for the past four months. His room at Steve’s is empty except for his double futon. Steve also has a double futon. What is it with bachelors and their double futons? What is it with bachelors maintaining college-esque décor?
Not that I’m an interior designer, but their place looks like an abandoned warehouse. The living room could use a comfy, fluffy, non-cigarette burned couch, a TV stand, a coffee table, lots of throw pillows, some blankets, picture frames, candles, a plant or two and some funky posters. (The current décor consists of: Reservoir Dogs poster, a beer bottle collection, a Dennis Rodman–signed basketball on the television and a few sports magazines on the kitchen table and in the bathroom.) The kitchen could use some cutlery (due to no dishwasher, they prefer plastic disposables). The bedroom could use a queen-sized bed, inviting duvet, a dresser (belongings are supposed to go in piles on the floor?), a night table (alarm clock is often found under bed) and some candles and picture frames. And every wall in the apartment is thirsty for some color.
After years of living in my father’s sterile white-walled, minimalist decorated house, I prefer my living environments to be homey.
Greg deciding to move in with Elana, his fiancée, was the impetus for Steve asking me to move in with him. Steve said he’d lived with enough roommates. He had always figured that when Greg moved out he’d find his own place—he couldn’t afford to keep a two-bedroom on his own. But then it occurred to him that maybe I could move in and split the rent.
I give him the benefit of the doubt that his desire to move in with me is based on wanting our relationship to proceed to the next level and not because he’s cheap or too lazy to move.
I hang up the phone and turn back to the doorman. “Can you tell Steve to come get me next door when he’s back?” I consider leaving my suitcase behind the desk while I go for coffee, but what if he’s a pervert who wants to smell my underwear?
My suitcase bumps down the concrete stairs outside the building. My jacket is in my bag and I contemplate pulling it out, because the crisp wind is blowing straight through the light sweater I’m wearing. It’s only the end of September and it’s already freezing. Why couldn’t Steve have asked me to move in during the summer? What if I turn into an ice sculpture when the snow starts? I think I’m going to miss the ocean even more than I’m going to miss the perma-warmth. I’ve been a swimmer forever. I was the only girl in my bunk at Abina, the Adirondacks summer camp my father shipped me off to every July (he had gone there as a kid—he was from New York originally) who didn’t pretend I had my period every time we had swim instruction. I was also the only one who didn’t cry every time a nail broke. I still loved camp though. I got a job there as a junior lifeguard, and then eventually as a senior lifeguard, and then eventually as assistant head of swimming.
I should have been the head of swimming: I was a better lifeguard than the guy who was above me, but for some reason I hadn’t applied for the top position. The idea of being ultimately responsible for children’s lives was a little too scary for me. I liked knowing there was someone looking over my shoulder. In case I screwed up.
Where am I going to swim here? In the Hudson?
I’ll have to spend half of my first paycheck on winter appropriate clothes. After living with minor variations of one season, hot, I’m going to need a coat, scarf, hat, boots. Tomorrow might have to be a mall day. I hate malls. Today is an I-have-to-drag-my-suitcase-to-a-coffee-shop-because-I’m-lockedout-of-my-apartment day. I pull my suitcase down the last step and get mad about the key-thing all over again.
Do they even have malls here?
“Changed your mind already?”
Steve is standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building carrying a bag of groceries, a bottle of wine popping out the top. A lock of light brown hair has fallen over his right eye and into his wide smile, and he’s trying to shrug it away. He has a bit of a bowl cut, the kind that all the boys I went to grade school with had. When Dana met him, she told me he needed to see a stylist. I think it’s sweet. He has a dimple in each cheek. How can I be mad at a face like that?
“Had the locks changed already?” I ask. “I couldn’t get in.”
He pulls me into a hug, squishing my chest into the groceries. Then he starts humming “New York, New York” as he’s done on my voice mail every day since I agreed to move here. He waltzes me back up the stairs toward the entranceway. The top of my head reaches the bottom of his chin.
I laugh and try to get him to stay still. “What are you doing?”
“Celebrating.”
A woman trying to open the front door, which my suitcase happens to be blocking, glares at me. “Can we celebrate inside?” I ask him.
“Hey, Frank,” Steve says to the doorman in passing. After the elevator door closes, he pushes the grocery bag between us and kisses me gently on the lips. Then the kiss becomes harder and his tongue slips in and out of my mouth. I love the way he kisses me. His face is smooth and soft and freshly shaven. A trickle of dried blood is on his neck, from where he must have cut himself. It seems he can never use a razor without leaving a nick.
“Hey look,” he says pointing to the poster on the wall. “Let’s be dog walkers. Or let’s get a dog.”
“I’d love to get a dog, but I have a bad feeling about who’s going to have to remember to do all the feeding and all the walking.”
“No, Sun, I’d be great with a dog, I swear.”
“You can’t even remember to give me the right key. Go,” I say when we’re at seven.
“What’s wrong with the key I gave you?”
“Maybe someone gave me the wrong key?”
He seems to be mulling something over and then laughs. His green eyes turn to little moon slices and his mouth opens. He has great big white teeth. His laugh is loud and deep and waves through his body.
Another Steve-ism is coming, I bet. “Yes?”
“Guess who has a key to the restaurant?” he sings to the tune of “New York, New York.” He pulls me close for another hug.
“You gave me the extra key to the restaurant instead of the key to the apartment?”
He continues his made-up song, unlocks the door and tries to waltz me down the hallway and past Greg’s empty room.
I put on my mock-concerned face. “Does one of your waiters now have the key to our apartment?”
“Is that bad?” He cracks up and then says, “Our apartment, huh? Say that again.”
I’m concerned that I’m not more concerned. I kiss his neck. “Our apartment. Our room. Our fridge. Our phone. Our answering machine. When do I get to change the announcement on the machine? I want to leave the new message, okay?”
He puts the groceries on the kitchen table and tugs me the short distance to his bedroom.
I still can’t get over how small New York apartments are. My place was bigger than his, and his is a two-bedroom. His is also older. The appliances have a gray sheen. Or maybe that’s just dirt.
I hope he’s not thinking of touching me before he cleans his hands. “I want to wash up,” I say.
He follows me into the bathroom. “Yes, my little sex-pot.”
I pick up the half-dissolved bar of deodorant soap he uses for his hands, body, face and hair, which is wedged to the side of the bathtub. “We’re taking a trip to the pharmacy tomorrow to buy some supplies.” Like a non-corrosive facial soap. And shampoo and conditioner. I used to bring my own whenever I came to visit, but moving here entitles me to invest. As Steve lifts my hair and kisses the back of my neck, I notice that the soap scum around the sink has fermented into miniature statuettes. “We’re also going to invest in some sponges,” I add. “Do you have Comet?”
&nbs
p; He bites my shoulder. “Let’s go into the bedroom and I’ll show you my comet.”
Tingles spread from my neck, to my stomach, down my legs. Mmm. “Bedtime already? And it’s not even eight o’clock.”
I follow him into the bedroom and onto the bed. His faded gray sheets, which I assume were once black, are crumpled in a ball with a long tail draping the floor. You’d think he’d make his bed for me, wouldn’t you? How long could it possibly take to straighten the sheets and throw on the comforter? Half a minute? I’m not talking hospital corners here. I don’t like immaculate, but I like tidy. He moves what I’m assuming are yesterday’s jeans, straddles my thighs, then pulls off his sweatshirt and T-shirt. I love touching his chest. The hairs feel soft and ticklish like blades of grass.
I push him down on the bed and undo his pants. I trace my way down his body with baby kisses. At his waist I add a little tongue for effect.
“Mmm,” he groans.
The woman across the street is loading her dishwasher. “I’m just closing the blinds,” I say. “Do you want to listen to music?” I press Play on the CD player. James Brown “I Got You” comes on.
“Let’s sixty-nine,” he says, pushing his pants off and onto the floor.
The thing is, I hate sixty-nine-ing. It’s not something I’d ever admit to Steve. What guy wants to hear that the girl who is about to move in with him hates a sexual position? That’s like a man telling a woman he never wants to get married. It’s not the oral sex part I don’t like. It’s the two-in-one action that bothers me. First, I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing. I’ve always prided myself on giving good head and I absolutely cannot concentrate on two things at once. Television and conversation, driving and cell phones, salad and pasta. I like my salad first, my pasta second. Why have them both on the plate at the same time? You end up with tomato sauce on your lettuce and noodles in your Thousand Island. It’s a mess. So I end up focusing on what he’s doing until he’s limp in my mouth or I concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing, unable to compute what’s going on down there. It’s a waste, I tell you. A complete waste.
As Seen on TV Page 3