by Andrea Meyer
“Sounds lame,” Anthony says. “Wasn’t Ben gonna be some big political journalist or something? He just dumped all that to do what? Import tiki dolls and incense? Big whoop. His wife must have a real nice tight leash on him.”
“It sounds pretty great to me,” I say. “Dropping everything and moving to some beautiful spot and doing what it takes to get by. I’ve always kind of fantasized about that when the city has gotten oppressive. I figure I could write anywhere. Anthony, you could make movies anywhere, too; I’m sure there’d be something interesting to document in Bali, or wherever. I respect people who just go for it, you know, team up and go out and conquer the world together. It’s bold and romantic.”
“Well, apparently that’s what Ben and his wife did,” Suzanne says.
“Ben, Ben, Ben. I liked it better when we were talking about me,” Anthony says with a cocky grin.
“Well, you might not have the balls to move to Bali, but you sure do like to take your life in your hands,” Suzanne says.
“Oh here we go, Hawaii and the mountain bike,” says Bill.
Suzanne nods and says, “Don’t remind me. It was a bloody mess. He flailed over the handlebars at some outrageous speed, he was probably riding with no hands, knowing my brother. That’s how he chipped his tooth,” she tells me. Anthony grins, proudly displaying his battle scar. “My brother lives for danger, and besides the occasional bump or bruise, he is good at everything he does, you will learn, and even worse, he never, well rarely, gloats about it.” My chest swells with pride as we all serve ourselves another round of food.
“In any case, Jacquie,” Suzanne says, “if he’s going to shack up again, you seem like a good person to do it with.”
“Thanks,” I say, glad I’ve made a good impression. Shack up again, huh?
“It’s true what you were saying, Tony,” Bill says. “I know unhappy couples who have stayed together for years just because they can’t afford another apartment in the city. It would be their financial ruin. You two just might be the archetypal New York couple.”
“Fate brought Jacquie to my door,” Anthony says, provoking guilt so strong I start coughing on it. “I am aware that sounds hokey, but how else can you explain it? Babe, are you all right?” I’m coughing uncontrollably, holding a napkin over my mouth with one hand and waving away their offers of help with the other. As Anthony bangs my back, I guzzle a glass of water and my fit slows to a chain of sporadic hacks.
“God, sorry, something went down the wrong way,” I say.
We make our way up First Avenue past a crowd of “Olé olé olé olé!”-chanting NYU students. When we’ve almost reached Suzanne and Bill’s car—they are one of the few New York couples I’ve met who have a garage in their Upper West Side building and actually drive in the city—Suzanne links arms with me and tries to get personal. “So, I feel it’s my womanly duty to warn you that my baby brother, how do I put it, really likes long-term relationships,” she says.
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” she says, drunkenly bumping her hip into a parking meter. “But in his case, I’d call it serial monogamy.” Better than serial killer, I think. “It’s like a sickness,” she says. “He’s with woman after woman for years at a time, but then somehow when it comes to taking the plunge, he always seems to find an excuse to get out. One girl started applying marriage pressure and he suddenly needed to focus more on his work. I have a sneaky suspicion the next one got knocked up. They started fighting all the time and one day she was gone. We all really liked that one, Natalie. Oh, and there was this one girl a few years back who wanted him to move in with her and bam, he realized he wasn’t really in love with her after all.”
“Well, he and I have already moved in together,” I say. “Maybe it’s different this time.”
Suzanne halts at her black BMW SUV. “That’s what his last girlfriend said.” It occurs to me that maybe she’s saying all this because she’s loyal to the ex. Maybe she’s trying to get them back together.
“I guess you really liked his ex-girlfriend, Natalie.”
“She was all right. I like you better already,” she says, swaying. The boys arrive and everyone hugs. As they’re settling in to the car, Suzanne waves me over to her window and rolls it down. “Hey, I didn’t mean to worry you. You’re sweet and I can tell my brother likes you. Who knows? Maybe he’s growing up. You’re right, you did get him to move in with you. It’s a start!” When they drive off, I walk slowly over to Anthony and he wraps his arms around me. As we come out of our embrace, we practically bump into Serena, my subletter, who’s stepping out of the health-food store next door to my favorite café, where I’ve been buying my groceries for years. I open my mouth but no sound comes out.
“No way! Serena?!” This is Anthony talking. I’m baffled.
“Anthony!” she exclaims, and they hug each other.
“Wow, Jacquie, Serena and I haven’t seen each other since, God, is it actually since film school?” he says. “Serena, this is my girlfriend, Jacquie.”
As she says, “Oh, Jacquie and I actually…” I take a step behind Anthony and perform the universal hand signal for slitting my own throat.
“Um,” she says, “I think we’ve seen each other around, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, you look really familiar,” I say, finally letting out my breath, which I’ve been holding since her brutal appearance.
I have to tell Anthony, I just have to, I think as they reminisce about the years that have passed since they went to film school together at NYU. I can barely hear their chitchat over the racket in my skull. No one in downtown New York has more than two degrees of separation from anyone else, if you ask the right questions. Anthony is bound to find out that I lied to him. He’s bound to find out that I have my own place and showed up at his door because I was researching an article. He’s bound to find out that the girl who starred in the first short he ever made is sleeping in my bed because I lied to him so that I could sleep in his. He’ll hate me. I smile at their conversation when it’s appropriate.
“You’re doing a show with Will?” Serena asks. Will is Anthony’s editor. “He’s so talented.” New York is a frighteningly small town.
“The best,” he says. “I can’t tell you how many times he’s saved my ass.”
“Well, if you ever want to get into commercials, you should send me your reel.”
“I’ll get you one anyway. I’d love to hear what you think.” They exchange cards, I say goodbye without looking at Serena’s eyes, and then finally we’re alone again.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Tired, really tired,” I tell him. “It’s hard to meet so many of your people all in one night. I feel like I’m taking Anthony 101 and cramming for the final.”
“All right then, let’s get you home to bed,” he says, thrusting his arm into the street to hail a cab.
9
* * *
Misery loves company. I need a roommate. No, I’m not clinically depressed. My girlfriend moved out and left me with a big 1 BR in Gramercy I can’t afford on my own. Sm office can fit a bed. Don’t worry, there’s space for two. 24hr drmn, great vus, cable modem. Call if interested (or if you want to help me drown my sorrows at bar downstairs. Grt bloodies). Rory
* * *
“I told my parents we’d come over for dinner when I get back from my shoot,” Anthony says, lounging on the couch, picking up a piece of tuna sashimi with his fingers. He pulls the bright red flesh apart with his other hand, puts one half in his mouth, and gesticulates with the other. “Take a trip to the ’burbs for a night. That cool?”
“That is so gross,” I tell him, amused.
“What?”
“Picking up fish with your fingers.”
“Does that gross you out?” he says, waggling the fish at me. Lucy lifts her head up out of dreamland and sniffs it, and Anthony pushes her away with his elbow. He plops the stinky pink morsel into his mouth and wiggles his
fishy fingers as he scoots over to me on the couch.
“Eeeuw!” I yelp as he pins me down and tickles me with his rank, sticky fingers. I’m the most ticklish person on the planet and laugh so hard I’m afraid I might choke. Lucy lifts her head, shakes her droopy jowls at us, and goes back to sleep. Once I calm down, Anthony kisses me. We’re just getting into it when the phone rings. We ignore it. He takes off his shirt and flings it toward an armchair, but it doesn’t quite make it and lands on the plate of half-eaten sushi. I giggle and run my fingers along his lovely bare chest. His cell phone rings.
“My mom or my sister. They’re the only ones who call both lines,” he says before wrapping his arms tightly around me and kissing me again, more passionately this time. Suddenly the TV comes alive, with Elizabeth Taylor squawking at Richard Burton about what a pussy he is. We paused Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when the delivery guy buzzed and forgot to turn it back on. “Jesus Christ, it’s the attack of the technology!” Anthony says and grabs the remote off the coffee table to turn off the TV. His cell rings again and, before it’s even stopped, mine joins its irritating jangle.
“Oh my God!” I scream, and Anthony grins at me while jumping off the couch.
“Come here, baby, let’s go hide from the world.” He holds out his hands. I reach up and he pulls me off the couch and into the air. As I land on my feet, a brutal buzz from the kitchen announces that our clothes are dry. Lucy barks at it three times before going back into her coma and a car alarm screeches outside. We laugh our way into the bedroom, where I leap onto the bed and Anthony takes his clothes off, ranting about the noisy city and how someday he’s going to live in a little cabin by a lake where the only sounds you ever hear are the loons calling out to each other and the rain batting against the roof. I watch him pull off one sock at a time, in awe of his beauty.
“You are the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell him.
“I am not cute. I am a handsome and dashing man.”
“That’s what I meant.”
He grins slyly and pounces on me.
I wake up a few hours later and drag myself into the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth. One shelf in the medicine cabinet is all mine. I also get one in the vanity underneath the sink, and there’s a basket full of my makeup and assorted products on the deep windowsill. When I first moved in, there was some negotiating of space to deal with. Apparently Anthony’s former roommate didn’t have much in the way of toiletries, probably because Anthony’s share engulfed the entire bathroom. I made fun of his ten different hair products and the pretty little wrapped soaps and bath beads he’d probably gotten as gifts for college graduation. Or maybe one of the exes left them. When I asked where they had come from, he suspiciously said he didn’t remember. The bottles and boxes and tubes and tubs he was willing to part with filled two plastic grocery bags, which we hauled outside to spread their contents on top of the four garbage cans lining the side of the building. By the time we came home from dinner an hour and a half later, everything was gone, except for an unopened jar of bright blue hair goo that he must have bought in 1987. You’ve gotta love New York. By the next morning, even the blue goo was gone, most likely pinched by a homeless person who would try to sell it on Bedford or some kid bent on bringing Mohawks back into style.
I turn my face slightly, push out my lips, and make a sexy face at myself in the mirror. It’s strange having a boyfriend. For a love junkie like myself, it’s been a while. Of course there was Jake, but that didn’t really count. With Anthony, I’m amazed at how smooth the transition has been from singledom to being half a couple. I’ve been living here for almost a month and, besides the medicine cabinet incident, it’s been easy. I’ve been working my buns off at the magazine—we’re shipping the issue in a few days, so the office has become chaotic again—and Anthony is in preproduction on a show about three kids recently released from juvenile detention centers and figuring out how to function in society again, so he’s working long hours. During the week, we tend to just catch a glimpse of each other before bed. I’ve met a couple of his friends, but he hasn’t met mine. I’m nervous about his first encounter with Courtney, considering her opposition to my move. Things have been a tiny bit icy between us. I should probably ask her to tea or plan a trip to the baths, but she’s spent quite a few weekends out of town with Brad and my weekdays have been packed.
I’m planning to turn my text in to Clancy tomorrow, so, while I’m awake, I boot up my computer for a final read-through. I’ve spent the last week refining the piece and doing a little reporting to flesh it out. I ran an ad on Craig’s List asking if anyone had ever dated someone they met through an apartment ad and got a few responses. One guy married a girl who had once been his roommate and spoke so sweetly about how they slowly fell in love watching the news together in the morning and chatting late at night when they’d bump into each other in the kitchen, both fumbling around drunkenly for a snack. Another guy told me about a friend of his who met so many girls in the course of interviewing potential roommates that he kept inviting them over even after he’d found one. He said the guy had never had more sex in his life. I also interviewed Sam about how she and Charlie had gradually realized that they had a real connection beyond a shared electricity bill. She said it took a while to figure out that she wasn’t blushing out of embarrassment when she walked in on him in the bathroom and he scrambled to cover himself with a towel, but because she wanted to sit down on the edge of the tub and watch while he dried himself off.
The piece has gotten good and it couldn’t have a more perfect ending—meeting Anthony, of course. “I haven’t figured out yet how to tell Anthony that I own a beautiful one-bedroom apartment and that I’m subletting it to his friend,” it says. “Maybe on our wedding day I’ll reveal my secret and he’ll recognize that my deceptiveness was in the name of a good cause—love—and all will be forgiven.”
I hear the door creak behind me and turn as Anthony creeps in, looking at me with sleepy eyes. “Whatcha doing, pretty?” he says, as I click swiftly on another document that covers the article on my screen. He kisses me on the head. “I gotta go back to bed.”
“I’ll be right in,” I say, gnawing a hangnail and wondering if I should ask Clancy if I can run the piece under a pseudonym, then zap my wrist as I decide it wouldn’t be a good career move and realize once again that I’m going to have to tell him about the piece before publication. Even if Anthony doesn’t read chick rags, it’s too likely that someone—his mom, his sister, a friend with a secret passion for fashion don’ts—will see it. I tiptoe back into the bedroom and look down at his peaceful face on the pillow, his hair pointing limply at the thick wooden headboard above him.
Baby, I have to tell you something, I think, wishing I could confess telepathically without having to open my mouth. The phantom words in my head are enough to make my heart flutter. “Baby,” I whisper. He doesn’t stir. “Baby?” I say a bit louder. He continues breathing as lightly as a puppy. Not tonight, I think, I won’t bother him with it tonight. Instead, I turn off the living room light, crawl under the covers next to him, and wrap my cold body around his warm sleeping one.
A few days later, Anthony is packing to go to Chicago for a shoot that could last as long as a month. I get teary when I leave for work and he’s throwing sneakers, sweatshirts, tapes, and his digital camera at a duffel bag on the floor.
“Nice technique,” I tell him.
He grins. “I’m gonna miss you, too.”
After work, I go by my place in the East Village to pick up the mail. I haven’t been there once since I moved out. Serena and I have spoken a couple of times and she didn’t ask why I acted strangely toward her in front of Anthony, just said she’s always thought he was cool and thinks we make a cute couple. She left today to shoot a commercial in Miami, so it’s probably a good idea for me to stop by and empty the mailbox. The neighborhood hasn’t changed in the weeks since I left. The man who runs the photocopy shop on my old block calls ou
t my name as I pass. The scraggly mobile bike-repair guy has hauled his mountain of greasy parts out onto the corner of Tenth and A, like he does every year when the weather warms up. I take a detour through Tompkins Square Park, hoping I’ll bump into Jeremy, and sure enough, he’s sitting in the small dog section of the dog run with Napoleon in his lap. When the furry munchkin sees me, he starts moving his butt around ecstatically. I let myself in and sit down beside them on the bench. Napoleon jumps into my lap, grins up at me, and scampers back onto Jeremy’s. I give my gay boyfriend the kind of hug usually bestowed on someone who’s been away at war. I feel emotional being in the neighborhood where I’m used to bumping into my friends often. I guess I miss it more than I realized. Or maybe it’s PMS.
“I haven’t seen you here in a while,” I say.
“I haven’t been in here much,” he says. “And when I see you coming, I hide behind a tree.”
“Very funny.” I watch a Scottish terrier and a pug in a pink leather jacket running in circles around each other. “You dating anyone?” I ask Jeremy.
“Oh, didn’t you hear? I’m getting married,” he says, sarcasm oozing from his perfectly nonexistent pores, insinuating that I’ve been so out of touch, he’s met someone, fallen in love, and become engaged since we last spoke.
“I get to be a bridesmaid, right? I mean, you are the bride, right?”
“Easy, girlfriend.” We link arms and Napoleon growls at me. He’s possessive of his daddy and doesn’t like it when others get too close. “Napster, you be nice to Auntie Jacquie even if she has been hiding her new boyfriend from us. It’s been, what? Two months? When do we get to meet him?”