“I was talking about hypothetical women. As far as you know, I’m a virgin.”
I nearly swallow my tongue in shock. “Wait, are you a virgin?”
He bursts out laughing. “No. I’m not. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”
“Well, I’m not either. Is that a disappointment?”
“No. Pushing past that particular barrier has never been a fetish of mine.”
“So you have fetishes?” I can’t help myself.
He chokes. “Hold on a minute.” I hear a rustle and then a door closing. “I’m in my office and I don’t know if I should be talking to you with the door open. Someone might come in at the wrong moment. I don’t know if I have fetishes. I’m pretty sex agnostic, if there is such a thing. Do you have fetishes?
“I don’t know. While I’m not a virgin, I don’t have a lot of experience.” I shrug, but since he can’t see it, I tell him, “Adam, my ex, wasn’t anything to write home about.”
He makes a tsk sound. “I don’t know whether to be glad that Adam was so inept in bed or whether I should find him and punish him for being such a poor representative of the male gender. Your sex life should be fucking spectacular, sweetheart.”
It occurs to me that I’ve never asked him about a wife or girlfriend or anything. I’ve just assumed he is single, but now that seems spectacularly dumb. “When’s the last time you were horizontal with someone, and was it spectacular?”
“I broke it off when it stopped being spectacular.”
I don’t like the kind of sex talk where he admits to having great sex with some other woman.
“Is this your hypothetical woman or some piece you’re currently banging?” I ask, and I can’t keep the snideness out.
“And I don’t love hearing about your past sex life either,” he growls back immediately.
A silence so long that two moon cycles could have taken place passed before either of us says another word.
“I’m afraid,” I finally admit.
“Of what, sweetheart?” He’s no longer growly. Instead he sounds relieved.
“Of everything. You know that. I’m afraid to open the door. I’m afraid of being outside. I’m afraid of talking about your past sex life because I don’t think I could please a man like you.”
He snorts. “What kind of man do you think I am?”
“A really wonderful one,” I say, getting tearful again.
This time the quiet that settles makes me feel prickly and hot.
“I want you,” he says with calmness. “Think about that and forget the rest. I’ll call you when I get to your place tonight.”
I want you.
Those three words ping-pong around my head all afternoon. I manage to pound out a few words on a page, but they look like gibberish and I end up deleting everything.
I ignore the inbox that contains three emails from Daphne, each of them wondering where my next chapter is. I wish I knew. The medications that Dr. Terrance has prescribed sit in a precise row on the edge of my desk. I’m tempted to push them over, right into the wastebasket.
I hate not feeling. It’s almost worse than being anxious. Daphne says my writing is completely toneless when I’m on the drugs, and I end up having to do major revisions on those pages that I do write.
From the middle drawer, I dig out my journal. Even though I didn’t agree with Dr. Terrance’s therapy direction, the small, red, leather-bound notebook has been more helpful than all of the prescriptions and breathing techniques.
It holds the history of the times I’ve left the apartment and how far I got. It took me 108 tries during the first year to open the door and then 74 tries to push the elevator button. That process took about a year and a half. After that, each step took fewer tries, with a lot less time in between each step. I remember the days I spent sitting in the lobby like a statue, getting up and looking out the glass doors and then returning to sit on the chairs.
The doorman at the time was Chris Murphy, a young man who was taking night classes at SUNY. He helped support his mother and his teenaged sister. Chris is now the night doorman. He takes classes during the day because of a new building scholarship. He doesn’t know that the scholarship was made up by Oliver and me.
I trust Chris, but not the new daytime doorman, who always looks at me like I’m a crazy person and makes the winding gesture next to his head when he thinks I’m not looking.
Those glass doors are like mirrors! How can he miss that? But I guess he’s prettier than he is smart.
With the leather journal in hand, I walk back to the door. So it took me 108 tries before. I’m going to beat that this time.
By five o’clock, I’m a sweaty mess, but I feel triumphant. I didn’t get the door opened, but I had my hand on the knob, and I’m going to count that as a success. Dr. Terrance says to celebrate every victory, even the small ones.
While I’m not supposed to open the door for Jake, I still won’t feel attractive or wonderful unless I shower, do my hair, and put on something sexy. Although he can’t see me through the curtains he’s instructed me not to open, I’m going to do everything I can to make this a real date. Because it is. It is a goddamn real date. We’re just not sitting across from each other.
It’s like he’s deployed and we’re having a Skype chat. Maybe later we’ll do something naughty together. A girl can hope.
At precisely fifteen minutes to six o’clock, Jake rings. “I’m on my way.”
“You are so punctual,” I tease.
“I don’t want to keep you waiting,” he says in his warm, honeyed voice.
“So you have my noodles?”
“I’ve got everything you need.” His tone is matter-of-fact despite the innuendo-laden words.
It breaks my heart a little to tell him I can’t open the door. “I tried to open the door and I think it’s going to happen soon, but maybe not tonight. How’re we going to do this?”
“I’m going to sit on your balcony,” he says, as if having dinner with a glass door and closed curtain between two people is an everyday occurrence.
“How?” Do I take a pill and run into the bedroom and wait for him to walk through?
“Your neighbor is letting me look at his balcony. I have to tell you that the security in this building bites.”
“That’s not making me feel better,” I say, and then the full import of his words hits me. Is he going to leap from my neighbor’s balcony onto mine? I rush over to my French doors and peer out. From inside, it’s hard to judge the distance but it appears to be over six feet. I have trouble jumping over a puddle. “How do you know my neighbor?”
“It’s my business to know.” I hear the sound of a car door closing and then the throaty purr of an expensive engine. “The good thing is that before we eat, I’m installing proximity sensors to make your place safer.”
“Won’t you need a power source?” I try to figure out how all of this is going to work. I’ve learned that if I have control over my environment, then I feel safer—unfamiliar things can cause more anxiety. Inside this apartment, I feel safe, but now Jake is introducing new things and new fears.
He doesn’t seem to mind the questions, though, and explains, “It uses a mix of solar energy and a permanent wired source. For now they will run on battery power. If the battery power is turned off by someone, there is enough energy stored from the solar panel to send a signal to our base. That alert will send someone over to check out the intruder right away.”
“I like that.”
“Good. It’s not perfect, but it will be a start.”
“What would be perfect?”
It’s a throwaway question, but his response is not.
“My home is more secure than a bank.”
My heart skips two beats. “I—I—” I stutter because I don’t have a response to that.
“Yeah, so let’s just table it for now. Call your doorman and have him let me up.”
His suggestion shocks me so much I’m only able to m
umble, “Okay.”
I hang up and obediently call Chris in a slight daze. “Chris, I’m having a visitor at six. His name is Jake Tanner. He’s six foot three and two-sixty.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Did Jake just invite me to move in? I know that it’s for my safety as much as anything, and yet here is an opportunity, not just to get out of my home, but to be with someone who is genuinely into me.
When my phone rings, I answer it immediately. “Hi,” I say slightly breathless, thinking it’s Jake.
“Are you running on your treadmill? I hope you are running on your treadmill and that you’ve been working hard on your chapter all day.”
Definitely not Jake.
I open my mouth to tell Daphne about Jake, but for some reason I stop. Which is strange, because I’ve always told Daphne everything. She is my closest confidante since the attack, and we’ve only grown closer over the years. But this thing with Jake is so new and different and strange that I don’t want to jinx by talking about it with anyone.
“I’m running on my treadmill and working hard on my chapters.”
In the background I hear papers shuffling. I’ve never seen Daphne’s office, but she admits to being rather disorganized. I envision her sitting under a towering pile of manuscripts going through each with a ruthless red pen. “I’m going to pretend that you aren’t completely lying to me.”
“House Hunters International was in the Bahamas last night and I couldn’t stop watching.” That technically wasn’t a lie, because before I pulled my vibrator out of the nightstand and settled down for a long fantasy session with imaginary Jake, I did watch television. The Bahamas looked gorgeous. I have never been, although my former coworkers and I’d joked that if Saturnalia became successful, we’d take our money and run for the border. I know that three of them bought a boat together and went on a sailing trip. I wasn’t sure about the rest of them. I cut them all off after the subway attack. I don’t want to lose Daphne; I can’t.
She releases a long, exasperated breath. “What am I going to do with you? You know that your deadline is looming. I’m not saying this to pressure you, but I’m worried. We don’t want to disappoint your fans.”
“I don’t want to disappoint anyone either,” I say with earnestness. “And haven’t I met every deadline I ever had?”
“To be fair, honey, when I signed you, you already had one book done and the second one nearly complete. The third one you knocked out before the series started to take off. You haven’t written a book in a year. You need to strike while the iron is hot.”
“I know. I know. I just was focused on other things.” Like overcoming my anxiety. Getting outside. Doing stuff.
“I want you to get better as much as you do,” Daphne continues, barreling over my protests. “But the truth is, you are more productive when you’re not focused on going to the subway and counting how many seconds you can stand in one place. It takes so much of your mental energy to just open the door and leave your apartment, sometimes I wonder if you’re not just better off staying home.”
That hurts. My throat tightens for a moment. I’ve never heard her say that she thought I was better off being a shut-in with no life. No friends beyond her and Oliver. No dinners out. No boyfriend. No lover. No children. A long, lonely life alone in this apartment. Quietly, but fiercely, I tell her, “I would rather never write again if, in exchange, I could leave the house. I don’t want this anxiety to be constantly paralyzing me and preventing me from living a full life.”
She huffs as if offended by my tone or maybe my words. I don’t know. “Before you had the attack in the subway, before you closeted yourself up in the apartment, you didn’t live any differently. You sat in your apartment over in Brooklyn and you worked day after day, hour after hour on your computer program. You lived out your life on gaming boards, forums, Twitter, Reddit. That’s how you and I met—online. That’s how you met all of your friends. They were all online. You never left! I had to beg and plead to get you out of Brooklyn, because coming over the bridge was like taking a trek up Mount Everest!”
I swallow hard at this accusation. I didn’t go out much before the attack due to the shyness of being a new person in a new town. But not to the extent that I could not meet new people, or go to the movies, or check out that new restaurant that just opened in Midtown. I had choices and options, and none of those choices and options exist for me now. I feel that just when the world is expanding, what with Jake coming into my life, Daphne is trying to zip me back into the bubble of supposed safety. “I’m sorry,” I say for lack of anything else in my head at the moment.
“Look,” she says, “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just want what’s best for you. And what’s best for you is to finish this book. You’re almost done. You have maybe eight chapters left. You’re over the hump.”
I answer in the only way that I know is acceptable, both to her and me. “I’m going to finish on time. I will meet the deadline.”
The phone beeps to inform me I have a new call. “I have to go.”
“Is that Oliver?”
“Yeah, Oliver,” I lie.
“Tell him I said hello.” Her voice switches from business to flirtation with no hesitation. “If he’s single these days, tell him I’m available.”
“Someday I am going to tell him that and then he’ll take you up on your offer.” I know she’s just joking. Other than these teasing asides, she never shows any interest in Oliver beyond that he’s the quarterback for the Cobras, which is good because Oliver doesn’t really have any interest in her either. “I’ll have pages for you tomorrow.”
After Jake and I have dinner, I’ll have something to write about. I’ll need to take out my sexual frustration on something, and it might as well be the book.
I switch over. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s no problem. Your doorman let me up. I’m in the elevator—if I get cut off, I didn’t hang up on you.”
“It was my editor. I’m behind on my book so I needed to take a well-deserved tongue lashing.”
“Do you need to postpone our dinner?”
“No!” I nearly shout in alarm. Calming myself, I say in a more controlled tone, “No, I’ve got time.”
I wouldn’t miss this dinner for all the advances, book awards, or good reviews in the world. I’ve got all the time in the world to write, but only one night to have dinner with Jake Tanner.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JAKE
I turn my Bluetooth headset on and pocket the phone. The duffel slung crosswise over my back holds the electronic equipment. I jimmy the lock on her neighbor’s door. It’s so cheap and unsophisticated all it takes is a bump key. I don’t even have to pull out the lock-picking set.
I wasn’t kidding when I told her to move. This place is a security nightmare, with the property management offering only token protection—a doorman, a security feed in the lobby and elevators, and locks you could buy at any local hardware store.
“I’m going to need a picture,” she’s saying as I walk through the empty apartment. Per surveillance, this neighbor left to go to dinner about fifteen minutes ago.
It strikes me that she’s never seen me in person.
What I look like clearly doesn’t matter to her.
“Why do you need a picture?” I ask, not that I care. As for me, like I’d told her, I like a good visual. I’d stared a good long time at her before leaving her apartment the other day. And I am damned curious about other things I haven’t seen . . . or touched.
She hurries to explain. “Not because it’s important. But my phone has the little gray outline, and you are the only person in my contacts without a picture. It bothers me.”
The corner of my mouth twitches up. Of course that’s the reason. She likes order in her life. Her office is devoid of extra papers and paraphernalia. Her home—the two times I saw it—was clean, not a pillow out of place. Even her bedroom had no clothes on the floor or scarves draped over the c
hairs. Sabrina’s room is bursting with things—clothes, shoes, handbags. There seem to be a dozen lip glosses scattered over every flat surface, but then Sabrina’s not had anything traumatic happen in her life that would cause her to want to exert rigid order over everything within her reach.
“I generally don’t let people take pictures of me. But I tell you what, after dinner, I’ll send you one.”
“It’s a deal.” She sounds pleased and satisfied, as if getting a picture of me was her only goal. “Where are you right now?”
“Walking through your neighbor’s apartment. You have the better apartment of the two.” This place is a cross between ultra-modern and man-cave chic. Lots of black lacquer, black leather sofas, and mirrors. I bet if I went into the bathroom, this guy would have five bottles of shampoo along with a cologne for every day.
“It’s also a more expensive apartment.”
“Yours is decorated better. This one has too much black leather, which is saying something because I’m a man and we tend to love black leather.”
“Is it bad that I don’t know my neighbors? Oliver once told me who lived where, thinking it would help me out, but it kind of went in one ear and out the other.”
Because at the time he’d told her, she hadn’t thought about leaving her safe place, is my guess. I step out onto the balcony of her neighbor’s and eye the distance. I had brought a rappelling rope, just in case, but there should be no problem in jumping between the two. There’s less than ten feet in distance.
“What’s your place look like?” she asks.
I tighten the strap across my chest and test my left leg. I should’ve worn the blade for this, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing out the prosthetic. Plus, I’ll admit to being a tiny bit vain. On the off chance she does open the door, I’d rather have her look at the straight fall of my jeans rather than the alien appendage strapped to my stump. I shake my head at my clearly wishful thinking.
Natalie isn’t opening the door, let alone letting me into her bed.
“I call it breakfast decor. Lots of oatmeal-colored things along with some egg-yolk yellow and toast brown. I’m sure there are better terms for it, but those three things go together on some sort of decorator tree. My mom and sisters did it.”
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