I folded it up and tucked it in my pocket, where an erection had already begun only inches away.
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
When I plugged earphones back into the sides of my head I didn’t think about my surfer girl on the shores of Bolsa Chica. I switched songs to I Get Around and imagined what my flight attendant might look like in the nude and then zeroed in on the astonishing maneuvers she had in store for me from the gunshot of dusk till the marathon finish line of dawn. I studied the satellite map on my front console. From the looks of it we were only flying over Lake Michigan. I peered over Alex’s shoulder and gaze thousands of feet below to sparkling waters and the white city of Chicago gathered in a small grape cluster, glimmering in the sunlight. Couldn’t this plane go any faster?
2
Named after the park that it surrounds, Gramercy is a tiny isolated neighborhood situated on the lower eastside of Manhattan, composed mostly of Victorian townhouses and practically hidden from the noise and bustle of the city’s commuter-life. What makes the area particularly unique is the fact that it contains the highest ratio of trees-to-people outside of Central Park. Not everyone can afford to live there, unless you’re wealthy or a Wall Street banker. Lucky for my Cousin Joe, he was both wealthy and a banker.
When Alex and I arrived Cousin Joe was waiting to answer the door. In fact, he was late for a dinner reservation. Joe’s expansive townhouse opened up before us, broad windows that absorbed a plethora of light and captured the greenery of Gramercy Park below with vintage furniture that harkened back to the better bachelor days of the Eisenhower administration. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got Swing) played over loudspeakers. Alex was in awe.
After a quick exchange of hugs I explained that our JetBlue airliner was late on departure and even slower taxiing into its concourse and we were the very last passengers to receive our luggage.
“You must have been a total bastard in another life,” Cousin Joe said.
“Yes, but our taxi driver made up for lost time.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he said.
Joe was ten years older then I and handsomely dressed as always. Pinstripe shirt and vest, red tie and handkerchief to match and a custom made suit in a slim yet noticeably muscular frame. To accommodate his stunningly handsome attire, a gorgeous tall anorexic woman with strong jaw-like features, thick ruby lips, piercing auburn eyes and dark hair that was cut off just below her ears stared down at us. I couldn’t blame her. I’d probably date him too.
“Natalia’s a Russian supermodel,” he said in a hushed voice, as if he only wanted Alex and I to hear, but he spoke it loud enough to flatter her. “She’s here to do some photo work with Vogue Magazine.” When he said the last part, he spoke it louder. She stared down at us like we were strange specimens that might contain diseases or germs.
Alex didn’t seem to notice. He was in awe. For Alex this was the Big Leagues. For me it was an alien planet altogether. Not that I wasn’t an explorer of alien worlds. It just wasn’t a world that I cared for or thought much of inhabiting once I was away.
“I’ll be back after midnight. You two kids have fun and don’t wait up for me. It’s always good to see you, Joshi-boy. I can’t wait to catch up with you bright and early in the morning. Another words, don’t wait up.” Cousin Joe shut the door while Natalia waved at us from the hall as if we were odd little boys, unschooled in the ways of adult love. Alex didn’t seem to notice. I didn’t think he stood a chance with her.
“Joshi-boy?” Alex started laughing as he absorbed the intricacies of Cousin Joe’s townhouse. I ignored Joshi-boy for the moment. I figured even granting the courtesy of a polite dismissal would only encourage more of it. I told him a place like this would probably cost somewhere in the ballpark of twenty million, but I wasn’t completely sure. How he’d come to acquire all the money I couldn’t say.
“I’ve finally met the man of my dreams.” Alex stared out the window at the few people drifting by in Gramercy Park like a hawk from its towering nest. “And his name is Cousin Joe.”
“He’s a republican, you know.”
“Must you spoil everything?”
3
After a flirtatious, almost surreal phone conversation with Delilah, light bowl of soup on my own, fresh shave and shower, I arrived at her hotel finely dressed as the sun began its final descent over the Appalachian Mountains. It was happening. I couldn’t believe it, it was really happening. I was about to have sex. I felt like a fifteen year old kid again. The bulging in my pants was well secreted and begging for release. I stared up at the hotels copious line-up of windows, some lit and others darkened, wondering which one might be hers. I was about to get tutored in sex…. from a woman. My legs trembled.
I looked around for the nameless hitchhiker. It was a force of habit. It just felt right that he should be there. But he was dead, wasn’t he? I watched him die right in front of me. Strangely enough I missed the hidden Waldo in my crowd. Even sadder was the realization that I’d never figure out the mystery of him.
My legs wobbled all the way into the hotel lobby. The desk clerk stared at me. He knew. I knew he knew. You’re about to have sex, aren’t you? I could hear him transfer his thoughts into mine…. in my hotel…with a woman.
Yes. I transferred my thoughts right back. I’m about to get some…. and by some I mean sex… in your hotel…I’m going upstairs to get some sex from a woman. I wondered if he would still be stationed behind the desk in the morning to see my triumphant parade out the door – the same woman’s man walk that the Bee Gee’s sang about in Stayin’ Alive, the stride that’s graduated countless adolescent boys into the pants sizes or togas of men since the beginning of human time. I’d place a wager that men strolled by on parade often.
I walked towards the elevator. I was nearing the elevator now. I was about to get on the elevator. I was really about to do this, get on the elevator, ride it up to the fifth floor, and have sex…with a woman. The elevator doors opened. I started to enter. And then I diverted from my mission. I took a sharp turn and headed straight towards the hotel bar. I looked back towards the desk clerk. He was still staring at me. I wondered if he saw that happen frequently.
Two Johnnie Walker Red Labels later and I was finally on my way back through the hotel lobby. I defiantly ventured past the desk clerk and marched head-on towards the elevators without deviating. I hit the call button. When its doors scrolled open I stepped inside. I hit the number 5 button. It’s doors closed. This was it. I was about to have sex with a woman who wasn’t my wife. There was no turning back now.
The doors opened on the third floor. An elderly couple with handsome features, both finely dressed, coats draped over their arms, stepped inside. The doors closed and we continued on. They probably knew I was about to have sex with a Greek flight attendant. It was written all over my face.
“Hitting up the town?” I asked them.
“Why yes,” the man said. “We’re on our way to see REPUBLICAN BLUE.”
“I heard that was good,” I said.
The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor. I exited, retrieved the folded piece of paper from my pocket, and read off Delilah’s room number. I studied the room assignments on the wall and headed in that direction. When I reached Delilah’s room I adjusted my tie in its vest and made sure my shirt was tucked in all the way around my belt. I breathed into my hand. I’d consumed six mints on the way over, but I popped in my seventh just to be certain that my kisses would match that cinematic embrace between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr at Halona Cove.
I raised my hand to knuckle Delilah’s room. And then I paused. I let my fingers rest on her door. As they slid down, I frowned disapprovingly on my marriage finger, already absent of its ring. I reached into my pocket to retrieve it, but it was missing. My God, I’m an adulterer. I’m about to be an adulterer, aren’t I?My entire body trembled. The long lasting bulge in my pants shriveled.
The nightmarish thought occurred to me that it would remain shriveled from here to eternity no matter how much she tugged at it. I raised my hand to knock a second time then walked away.
A door opened.
“Joshua?” I heard Delilah say.
I hustled around the corner of the hall, skipped the elevators, and scrambled down the staircase. I didn’t give the desk clerk eye contact as I passed him.
On the return to my hotel I wondered what she was wearing, if she was wearing anything at all. I tried to imagine what her body must have looked like, much as I did lying in bed the other night conjuring Erica, the Chicago bridesmaid, Marcia, the New Orleans bridesmaid, and most importantly Leah, the Boston bridesmaid; angelic, and spotless as each of them climbed over my thighs, raised their heads, thrust their bodies and groaned in turn. And then it occurred to me. I was picturing my wife’s body on each and every one of them. Elise was to me the woman, the only woman I’d ever known. It was her body that substituted my frustrations; only I’d cut out her face and pasted Delilah’s and Erica’s and Marcia’s and Leah’s in her place.
“Elise,” I said out loud for anyone who cared to listen. “The sun will rise in the morning, and I’m already certain of it. This one is going to be immaculate.”
Another morning would come and I wasn’t an adulterer. I can’t recall another time when I felt so much relief.
4
“What the hell?” Alex said from the couch as I entered Cousin Joe’s townhouse. “I sent you off to Shangri-la not more than an hour ago. What happened? Did you forget a pack of condoms or something?”
“No.” I unzipped my suitcase and combed through clothes for my wedding ring. It wasn’t there.
“But you went to her hotel.”
“Yes.” I opened up my camera bag and pulled everything out. It wasn’t there.
“So what happened?”
“It just wasn’t right. I couldn’t do it.” I entered the guest bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. It wasn’t there.
“What’s not right about it?”
“Say what you will about sex, but I believe it was designed in a perfect world for marriage…. by God. I guess I’m just old fashioned like that, and I have to believe, if anything, that God won’t lead me astray. What else is there to believe?”
“Look, I say this as a friend. With all due respect, you’re walking around with a broom up your bomb bucket. Everyone can see it. Sure, God intended sex between two consenting adults in a dedicated relationship, but this isn’t a perfect world anymore. You’re wife left you, man. He certainly didn’t intend for guys to walk around without a release every now and then. Why would God design us one way and then demand we be something else entirely? It goes against everything in our construct. When it comes to sex, we need it like we need oxygen or food.”
“I’d agree with you there.” I searched my suitcase again. It still wasn’t there.
“What you need,” Alex paused for the effect to sink in, “is a hooker.”
“I’m not getting a hooker. They probably smell like cheese down there.” I couldn’t find my ring anywhere. Had I left it at home? I felt so completely naked without it.
“Suit yourself. But if you’re one of those guys who goes off the deep end and shoots up a school, I’m not gonna be the one on TV claiming I never saw this coming. I’m gonna be straight with the world and tell them you were walking around with a broom up your balloon knot because you refused to get laid.”
“Yeah, you do that. I’m sure Matt Lauer will be calling.”
5
I woke up early the next morning, somewhere around six, which made it 3am in my own home time zone, laced up my jogging shoes, jumped on the L train with Cousin Joe and rode to 14th Street where we made a transfer on the 2 train and rode it all the way up Broadway to Columbus Circle. We jogged into Central Park together. Wherever I went, morning was always my favorite time of the day. The jetlag almost always felt worst going east than west. I was tired and groggy. But the cool air and the quiet streets easily made up for it. And the joggers, I liked being surrounded by joggers. I couldn’t always identify with the millions of pedestrians trudging throughout the New York grid, but when it came to the joggers I was just as New York as the rest of them.
We passed the Mall and the Alice in Wonderland statue, among several other locations, and exited the park for Fifth Avenue. I didn’t feel as welcomed jogging there. Pedestrians in expensive clothes that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe were already bustling about, carrying briefcases with the sort of important documents that likely kept the world spinning on its axis. We crossed over to Broadway, which was emptier that time of day, and kept a lookout for the theaters of various shows, Mama Mia, Chicago, and Phantom of the Opera, among others, and the crazy people. In a city of nine million, you could never go far without finding a crazy person.
That’s when we passed the corner of 42nd and Broadway and I saw her picture. LEAH BISHOP: the Musical, or REPUBLICAN BLUE if we’re being technical. Close enough. Leah Bishop was its star. After my trip to Boston I’d read all about it, a spare-no-expense musical drama featuring America’s fictional First Lady, a closeted democrat married to a republican president and an all republican staff currently engaged in a war that she couldn’t bring herself to believe in. It was quite the rave in the final years of the George W. Bush administration. Democrat politicians hailed it as the twenty-first century Gospel, the GOP labeled it flimsy and as pigeonholed as the liberal agenda, and everyone else not currently elected into public office fell in instant love with its leading lady.
I couldn’t believe it. There she was, the Boston bridesmaid, the girl from high school homeroom, Leah Bishop, picture plastered on a billboard as large as life itself. My fingers shook as I slowed down to stare up at her stunning furnace-like eyes and the golden flowery hair flowing wild and free around them. Cousin Joe slowed too, but only because he thought I was trying to catch my breath. As soon as we passed the theater that housed REPUBLICAN BLUE I hurried my stride to 41st and cut a sharp right towards 7th Avenue.
“My apartment’s this way,” Joe protested.
“I just want to jog around the block,” I said.
Joe probably thought it was an odd request, but he followed anyways. I turned north up 7th Avenue and made another circular turn on 42nd, slowing to a steady walk as I approached the stunning portrait of Leah Bishop. As soon as we passed the theater I hurried my stride to 41st and cut another sharp right.
“You do realize if you keep running in circles,” Joe grasped for a breath of air, “you’ll never really go anywhere.”
“Unless this is exactly where I want to be,” I slowed for the billboard portrait of Leah Bishop again.
Joe finally took a long lasting look at her. “She is beautiful, isn’t she? A seven or an eight maybe.”
“She’s a ten.”
“If you want a ten, I’m taking you to the best club in town tonight.” He patted me on the back. “You’ll be soaked in vaginal secretion.”
“That’s gross,” I said.
“Yeah, if they’re three’s or fours it’s gross. But not if they’re tens.”
“That’s the only girl in New York that I’m interested in. I could care less if she’s a four or a six. If she’s not a ten, then I don’t want one.”
“Leah Bishop, the star of REPUBLICAN BLUE? Good luck, Joshi-boy. I’m definitely Russian supermodel material, but when it comes to these Broadway types, I’m not even that good. Broadway babes apparently believe in something other than money. Can you believe that?”
“Do you remember the week of September Eleventh?” I said. “It was the week I stayed here with you.”
“How could I forget? How could any New Yorker forget?”
“Do you remember why I came all the way here?”
“Yeah, you were trying to climb into some girls panties. You knew her from high school or something.”
I nudged my chin towards the billboard. “Tha
t’s her.”
6
Ellie Alexander, America’s favorite naked atheist, was on NBC being interviewed in Studio 1a at Rockefeller Plaza by Matt Lauer as soon as I turned the television on. Lauer was my favorite morning news anchor and I felt betrayed, despite the fact that Ellie looked pretty good on the flat screen. She was wearing a one-piece skirt with imprints of black paisley, a glimmering leather belt, turquoise jewelry, and knee-high boots. Matt Lauer looked good too, but that’s a given.
“She’s that hot atheist that posed naked, isn’t she?” Cousin Joe grinned.
He had just exited the shower and was only wearing a bath towel as he stood at my side. I was impressed. Joe was going on middle age but had the temple of a twenty-five year old.
“Uh-huh.” I sipped on coffee from a mug illustrating all three hand-signals for rock, paper and scissors, with text that read: CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON. “Her book’s called Babies Are Atheists.”
“Sounds kinky. I love atheists, especially in the sack. They don’t get weighed down by morals.”
“She also happens to be one of Elise’s best friends,” I sighed.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“What is it with you and women?”
“My heart only belongs to one, Joe.”
“Yeah, that is a problem.” He massaged both shoulders. “It was a problem seven years ago too, and look where it got you.”
“A roundtrip ticket to your townhouse, apparently.”
“I guess its not all bad, then.”
7
As soon as Alex was up and the dealers were open I found a jewelry shop in hopes of buying the cheapest wedding band available. I didn’t find one at the first dealer. I found one at the third store we visited. It only cost fifteen dollars, but I was satisfied. I didn’t feel naked anymore. I just hoped it wouldn’t turn my finger green. Then I’d have to throw it away, and there’s nothing worse than a green naked person.
Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1) Page 29