Spooning

by Darri Stephens

  Instead, I donned my faux Burberry hat and pulled it low as I exited the apartment the next morning. I made sure to wave to Doorman Juan on my way out so that he could be a witness for the prosecution at my murderer's trial. I walked with my head down (nothing new as a New Yorker) and felt paranoia swirling all around me. It snuck through the protective barrier in the cab, and it squeezed through the closing elevator doors at work. Smiles became sneers. I had never noticed how the magazine guy in the lobby smiled with only one side of his mouth, how the security guard's whole face squinched up when he said hello (suspiciously happy), and how the Diva's total lack of smile could be construed as criminal.

  “You look horrible,” Julie commented as I walked in, my head whipping left and right in true surveillance form.

  “Not feeling so hot,” I responded. No need to connect her in any way to my impending murder.

  “You!” Jane hollered at me in the hallway. “Let's gooooo!” Julie rolled her eyes. The Diva was pissed.

  “Wooden bowl!” she bellowed. “Is it so hard to find me a wooden bowl?” I had been tagged to put the apples in a wooden bowl—repeat, wooden bowl—on the set's kitchen counter.

  “Why would anyone put them in a crystal bowl?” she snapped. “Just what I need—the set lights reflecting off the bowl and blinding my viewers! Plus, think of the image of my hips as I pass behind this bowl. Let's make Jane's hips appear even wider! Do I have to think of everything?” Wow. I rushed forward with the wooden bowl, reminding myself that one didn't get to this level of success without being detail oriented.

  “And you,” she continued as the finger swung toward me, “Never use yellow apples again. Actually, go to the test kitchen and get some Granny Smith green apples. Yellow doesn't look good near my skin.” I nodded and ran off. It wasn't that Jane was simply shallow; she just knew that a bad image would turn people away from buying into her cult. And we wouldn't want that! Shit, now I couldn't remember what type of green apples she wanted. Were there many types of green apples? Thankfully the kitchen chef knew what I meant when I smiled and asked for the “green apples.”

  I finally lost it before lunch and burst into hysterical hic- cups when Margaret tapped me from behind, causing me to jump a mile high and slam my big toe into the copying machine while doing my rendition of a karate kick.

  “Gosh, aren't we jumpy today,” she snickered. I tasted blood from my tongue, which I had just bitten. “You should know better, you know.” No, I didn't know.

  “What's that, Margaret?”

  “No copying between 10:45 and 12:30,” she informed me. “Everyone knows not to use the copier then.”

  “Why would that be?” I asked.

  “Jane doesn't like to be bothered with the noise during her lunch break,” she spat as if I were some first grader. Luckily, Margaret began to back away as my hiccupping grew worse. I gathered my stack of papers and ran to the HR woman's office. Feigning food poisoning (an absolute sin to the staff at S&S), I took the rest of the day off. Hat lowered to my chin, I hobbled home as quickly as possible.

  As I entered my apartment building around noon, I began to assess my neighbors. One never feels alone in New York, but on the flip side, you rarely ever feel part of a close-knit community. I knew some other young girls lived in our building because they had winked at Macie one night while she was making out in the lobby area.

  “Great, now I'll be seen as the slut of the apartment building,” she moaned.

  “Don't worry, darling. I will do my best to dethrone you. I've been thinking that the couch in the lobby looks comfy, but the plastic would probably stick to my ass,” Tara grinned. Macie didn't seem amused.

  We also had a couple who lived next door to us. We weren't sure of their ages since Manhattan practically had Botox in the air. We did know that they didn't approve of our late-night antics. We'd received a note under our door back in November that read:

  Please be more respectful of your neighbors. With shared walls, we cannot only hear but feel the vibrations of your head- boards banging incessantly against the wall late at night. We would appreciate it if you could curtail your activities or move your bed.

  Thank you, the McManns, apt. 5D

  “I can't put my bed anywhere else in my room—there's no space!” Tara, the guilty party, had objected. Syd was doubled over in a fit of giggles.

  “Maybe we should pad your headboard like on Trading Spaces!” she had suggested.

  “Whatever. I've heard her high-pitched groaning before! They're just morning people,” observed Tara. “It's a nice way to start the day, but in my experience the guy usually already has his mind on impending work issues, preventing him from focusing completely on me.” The problem however was soon forgotten after Tara ditched her flavor of the month later that week.

  We did have one spooky guy in our building and I still hadn't figured out if he was always drunk or just slow. He also lived on our floor. One afternoon, he had passed by me and I'd given him the obligatory, neighborly “How are you?”

  Rather than playing the polite game, he'd turned around and said, “Not so good. I was beaten up last night.” His face was indeed bruised and banged up. I had tried not to wince. He didn't elaborate as to whether he'd been beaten up in a bar brawl, beaten up because he'd fallen down some stairs, or beaten up by some crazed girlfriend.

  “I'm so sorry!” I squeaked. What else do you say? He stood there staring at me with his two enormous dogs who could have easily eaten me. Did management really allow such dangerous-looking pets in the building?

  “Feel better!” I'd exclaimed as if he had a runny nose and hurried on my way. Thinking back, this encounter had taken place outside of our apartment door and he knew where I lived. Maybe my sympathy hadn't been enough, or maybe he was now in love with my kind ways and wanted more!

  This, I reflected as I lay huddled on the couch, was the longest Friday of my life. I couldn't risk going out tonight; my assailant might be hiding among the throngs in a stale beer shroud. I couldn't even think about all the days that lay ahead. What to do?

  Suddenly it hit me. Why, redecorate! Our apartment deserved a snappy spring makeover, just like a Cinderella in waiting. Jane had been espousing the wonders of spring cleaning and reorganization all week. I turned to the piles of catalogs in our basket for inspiration. (I wasn't about to touch today's mail!) Sadly, the Pottery Barn catalog was usually too steep in price and lacking in originality, so I set it aside. I wavered over the dream catalogs: Neiman's, Saks, and Hammacher Schlemmer. Who wouldn't want an electric hot air balloon to get to work? Putting down the catalogs, I took a deep breath and dug down deep into my inner core of creativity. I stood back and assessed the layout of our humble abode. It was a square, no actually, more rectangular space. One wall was unusable because our front door was smack dab in the middle, another wall contained the one outlet into which the TV was plugged. Well, I could use an extension cord and wind the cord along the baseboards and put the TV in the corner. Much better!

  “Noooo!” a scream came flying through the front door. “What do you think you are doing?” Sydney was standing in the doorway with a panicked look on her face, as if she had walked in on the worst scenario imaginable. Her wide eyes mimicked my sixth-grade teacher's when she'd discovered me reading test answers off of my elbow. Did you know that it is physically impossible to kiss your elbow? Well, it is just as difficult to read notes from your elbow—hence my thwarted efforts.

  “What?!” I screamed back. Hysteria has a way of spreading. “What the hell is the matter, Syd?”

  “You cannot, cannot use an extension cord in our apartment!”

  “Why the hell not?” I demanded. Why was I still screeching?

  “Because they cause so many fires!”

  “Stop yelling! They're perfectly safe—you just can't plug like eighteen million cords into one!”

  “No!!”

  Okay. Roommate lesson number one: know when to just back down. Some months later, I would r
ealize how serious she was when she whispered, “Cords! Check the extension cords!” to Kurt Russell as he was searching a burnt-out shell of a house in Backdraft.

  I hadn't shared with Syd that Mr. or Mrs. Death was waiting for me somewhere outside of our apartment, so she couldn't be blamed for making me age another few years. And what did it matter anyway, since it didn't look like I would reach the age of twenty-three? Our TV was destined to remain in its one and only spot. I was fine with that, really. When faced with one's mortality, the little things didn't matter so much. Someday though, should I live, I planned to invent a TV with an extra-long retractable cord already attached. Kind of like a vacuum, just for neurotic nitwits like Sydney.

  Back on the redecorating front, I was now limited to the last two walls in the apartment. Currently the couch resided along the wall that faced the windows. So I changed the couch to the wall that had the windows. True, we wouldn't have the cityscape of the blinking hotel sign in front of us, and I couldn't watch the naked singing woman across the way who had an interesting way of ironing in the morning, but already the room looked completely different!

  When we'd moved in back in August, the four of us had made some simple decorating concessions. Since we were out of college and entrenched in real life, gone were the framed Monet prints that we'd bought at the co-op for fifteen dollars each. Gone was the initial futon inherited from Macie's older brother. We had splurged over the winter for a Jennifer Convertible sofa. I owned one-fourth of a plush couch! Well, actually it was a loveseat. Which, at this point, I must take issue with. Actually, Tara had been the first one to raise the point about a week after the new couch's arrival.

  “Loveseat, my ass! Okay, so I hooked up with Ben on the loveseat,” she'd informed us. Syd, Macie, and I had turned and looked at the new sofa with a bit of repulsion. No stains were visible to the naked eye, but each of us probably had the same vision of naked butts rubbed along the brushed cotton finish. “You can't properly kiss, never mind make love, on that thing,” she continued. “Ben's legs hung over the arm at his knees, my elbow kept hitting the back cushion, which does not come unattached—did we know that when we bought it? But the bottom cushions do slide off and flip off, as Ben and I found out as we groped toward the unattainable.” So much for my thoughts of simply flipping the cushions.

  “Do not blame the couch for your lack of orgasms,” reprimanded Macie, still eyeing the couch with hesitation.

  “Only 64 percent of women ever reach an orgasmic state and most do so by their own hand,” quoted Tara.

  “Sweetie, you just keep trying. This Ben guy, maybe he can break the curse!”

  Tara believed she had been cursed from ever experiencing orgasms during sex by an ex-boyfriend who turned out to be gay. His being gay was not an issue for Tara—it was that he had proclaimed himself a follower of witchcraft. Meaning, he had the power to cast spells and, after they broke up, Tara believed that she was doomed. Though she hadn't given up on trying!

  Unfortunately, Tara had been cursed before. During college at Georgetown, she had lived in a row house in Washington, DC. Her castle was little more than a ragged, party-torn town- house whose scaffolding was barely tied together in order to extract rent from eager coeds (whose parents were footing the bill). In order to make the worn-down house a little more presentable, she and her roommates had adorned the windows with plastic window boxes filled with flowers: bright pink geraniums at $1.99 a piece planted every six inches. However, Tara and her beautiful geraniums had an enemy. Two houses down lived Helena Humperstein, aptly named, who was at least eighty years old and she had lived in her red row house at least that long. Needless to say, she did not appreciate the college spirit at her age. Nor did she appreciate Tara's torrid fight with her umpteenth boyfriend that first September.

  Tara was “not allowed” to brawl in the house (House Rule 6, right after House Rule 5: No piggies are allowed to eat leftovers not belonging to said little piggy!), so she'd taken her issues outside, right in front of Helena's house. Tara's dramatic fury was soon upstaged by Helena leaning out of her window muttering under her breath (this was after she went after the male coed neighbors with a Wiffle ball bat—their bat, mind you). The syllables were indistinguishable (even to Tara, the linguistics major), but the guttural noises couldn't be denied. Tara ended her riot act, grabbed the boyfriend, and dragged him back to her place. And the next morning, the geraniums were dead. One day alive, next day gone. Life, so short. Helena, so freaky. Tara, so cursed.

  I put all thoughts of Tara's, Ben's, and whoever else's bodily fluids from my mind as I finished centering the couch against its new wall. I stood back and suddenly, in my mind, rich silken drapes appeared above the windows. The Diva had hung similar drapes on the set last Tuesday. I envisioned ours falling in soft billows and puddling on the floor like the trail of a luxurious ball gown. I then began to ponder the color. A sky blue—no, a deep wine red! Why does everything tie back to drinking? How amazing they would look. However, reality quickly set in. Unlike the Diva, TV hostess extraordinaire with millions of advertising dollars on her side, with a budget like ours, we would be lucky to be able to afford her cheap signature line of sheets. Maybe Mom could sew us some balloon curtains from those puppies. (Note to self: Call Mom to see if she knows what balloon curtains are.)

  Next up, the white walls. Until I marry, I have come to terms with the fact that I will be surrounded by white walls. Harmonious and serene. And boring! Most apartment buildings in the city will not let you paint the walls even if you promise to paint them back to their boring old selves. And our lovely little multiethnic walk-up was no different. Our super was the building's sniffer. He'd roam the halls investigating and sniffing for any foreign scent. Whether it be pot, burning cookies, kitty litter, wet dogs, or paint fumes, he knew it all. So white walls it was.

  I surveyed the rest of the space and reflected that in years gone by, the ritual of getting married was designed to outfit you for grown-up life. Hence, bridal showers, which in theory gave you the goods you'd need to set up your first apartment or house. But these days, with women getting married later in life, bridal showers had become redundant. What we needed instead were Real-Life Showers, which could be thrown for girls when they first moved out on their own. Who wouldn't benefit from registering for home goods upon entering the real world? After all, that's when you really need them. Think about it. When you move into your first apartment, you rack up a tremendous amount of credit card debt within the first couple of weeks buying just the bare essentials. From knives and plates, to toilet brush cleaner and bath towels, there is so much stuff you need at the beginning. My own wish list would have included:

  Flatware (fancy word for kitchen utensils)

  Sheets (at least 300 thread count)

  Towels (who knew the bath size cost so much?)

  Silk flowers (that is, if no one signs you up for one of those amazing month-by-month fresh flower delivery services)

  A compact microwave (versus the vintage, big-ass one you inherited from the 'rents)

  Cappuccino maker (frothy milk and all)

  Pant hangers (yes, they add up)

  A vacuum (no reason for the insane cost)

  Stainless steel step-open wastepaper basket (instant kitchen chic)

  Cloth shower curtain (mildew problems be damned)

  Throw pillows (just a few with tassels to dress up that college futon)

  Wine rack (for the necessary collection)

  (Note to self: Be sure to bring up Real-Life Shower idea at work. Could totally be a Wow segment for the Diva.)

  As I settled back down on the couch, my domestic inspiration drained, I found myself wondering who would protect me in the event that my stalker came calling. My father was miles away, 289 miles to be mathematically precise, and our super would only rise from the subbasement depths to defend me if my attacker stood in the way of Krispy Kreme's doorway around the corner. A boyfriend would have been the obvious choice, but I was all alone i
n that regard. Mr. J. P. Morgan had worked out religiously and had a body to do the bragging for him, but would he be willing to defend me if he saw me on the street in need of help?

  Maybe this stalker episode would bring us together again. He'd be so concerned that he'd rush over to guard my humble door. Very movie-esque. I'd boil him coffee (Note to self: Does coffee really boil?) and serve him some of my newly learned Cooking Club delights like the cinnamon buns. I'd brush his bangs out of his sleep-deprived eyes and his lips would catch the ends of my fingers. With that innocent finger kiss, we'd get it on right there in the hallway. The McManns from 5D would ignore the sensuous noises in the name of love, and the old man in 5B was a recluse anyway—no problem there. The romance would ignite again. Every cloud has a silver lining, right?

  Exhausted from the drama of the detailed fantasies in my mind, I headed for the kitchen. I needed one of the cool-down pints of ice cream in the freezer. Yet when I opened the door, all that was left was one tiny cup of Tasty Treats. Apparently Sage had come over and spring cleaned our fridge. Ugh! Tasty Treats was definitely not ice cream; it was a newfangled trend of dieters. Someone, somewhere, had “invented” (because it's obviously not a natural process) ice cream that had no calories, no fat, and get this, no carbs. The name itself leaves something to be desired because all I could think of was dog snacks every time I heard it. But the line of salivating girls outside any one of the Tasty Treats kiosks in the city often resembled a pack of eager puppies. Famished, I snatched the cup and scoffed down the appetizing air in about eight seconds flat. In the midst of licking the last dribbles off my spoon, my cell phone rang.