Room for Love

by Andrea Meyer

  “Come on, Jeremy, you know that’s not what I mean,” I say. “I wouldn’t care if he didn’t invite me. It’s that he did invite me and then uninvited me or forgot he invited me, or I don’t know what he did. I just don’t like to be disappointed.”

  “Oh waaaaaaaaa!” he says. He holds out his hand in front of his face and starts counting on his fingers. “He’s hot, although I wouldn’t know firsthand because I’ve never met him. Alicia, is he hot?”

  “Who?” she asks, coming back to the table.

  “Duh, Anthony,” he says.

  “He’s cute,” she says, turning to face a busboy who arrives at our table with our fourth basket of bread, but still no dinner. “Basta with the bread!” she says to the busboy and turns back to Jeremy. “Yeah, Anthony: tall, dark, scruffy, nice eyes, five o’clock shadow. Very Calvin Klein model in the eighties before they started employing fourteen-year-old girlie boys.”

  “Okay,” Jeremy says, continuing to count fingers. “He’s hot. He asked you to move in with him. He told you he loved you after what? Two weeks?”

  “Something like that.” I smile, feeling ashamed.

  “His apartment looks like it’s been through a major earthquake,” Alicia chimes in, Miss Tidier-than-thou herself.

  “Unimportant. That’s what cleaning ladies are for. Even the most anal among us needs a cleaning lady,” Jeremy says. “He calls you every night before bed while he’s out of town and promises to take you on a romantic trip as soon as he gets home. He thinks you’re a total goddess and tells you all the time.”

  “Actually,” I say, pulling in close and keeping my voice down, “he was pretty secretive the other day about going to get something in Chicago.”

  “Maybe he’s getting you an engagement ring!” Jeremy says.

  “Maybe he was getting a colonic,” my sister says.

  “Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Jeremy says. “Our little Jacquie married!”

  “I don’t know about that,” I say. “But the other day he said I gave him the best blowjob of his life.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you didn’t mention that before, that changes everything,” Jeremy proclaims. “Now we have definitive proof that he will never, ever leave you.” He pauses for effect, then adds, “And he’s gorgeous and loves you and is probably asking you to marry him. And you’re still bitching, because why? Because he doesn’t want you sitting bored in his hotel room while he’s shooting? He’d rather you be happy and drunk at home with your friends? Jesus, Jacq, repeat after me: I am a lucky bitch.”

  “I am a lucky bitch,” I say.

  “I am the luckiest bitch,” he says.

  “I am the luckiest bitch,” I repeat, laughing.

  “I want you to repeat that to yourself every day eight hundred times, okay? Say it when you wake up in the morning. Say it before you go to bed at night. Because you are getting much too spoiled, missy.”

  Duran Duran’s “Rio” comes on, and Jeremy starts bobbing his head and singing and the food finally arrives, an enormous thin-crust pizza with proscuitto and mushrooms and a family-size spinach salad. We attack.

  * * *

  On a perfect Saturday afternoon in June, Alicia and I go to Sam’s wedding at a country-quaint restaurant with a garden around the corner from the beautiful three-bedroom brownstone with a garden that she and Charlie are in the process of buying in Brooklyn Heights. About seventy-five people squeeze in and crowd around the happy couple for the brief, moving ceremony, in which Sam and Charlie drink from the same wineglass and promise to love, honor, and cherish each other forever. Sam is even more beautiful than usual in a simple, flowing white gown, her golden hair tied back with an ivory ribbon. The occasion is so solemn and heartfelt, I find myself choked up and almost liking her. All the Flicks folks and our guests sit at one table, drinking bottle after bottle of Cabernet, making progressively sillier toasts—beginning with “Here’s to Sam and Charlie’s happiness” and degenerating into “Here’s to always having a condom available when the moment strikes” and “Here’s to Belmondo making one more decent flick before he croaks.” We get sloshed and then walk over the Brooklyn Bridge together. It’s a warm, breezy summer day, the kind that lures the masses out of hiding to walk their dogs and ride their bikes, while the music of birds and voices fills the air and children chime in with their babble and tears. Chester and I hold hands for a while, and I rest my head on his shoulder. My sister saunters dreamily along in a chic, brown-and-beige-striped strapless dress. We walk silently and float on the smells and sounds of the afternoon toward the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, which glimmer ahead of us as picturesque as a postcard. I wish Anthony were here.

  Serena left me a message the other day saying that she didn’t think she’d mind all the boxes of books everywhere, but now they’ve begun to bother her. I’ve dragged my heels because I didn’t know what to do with them. Obviously I can’t bring them over to Anthony’s. He’d wonder where the hell they came from and why I would suddenly need them. I have a small storage space in the basement and dread lugging them down there, but I guess I don’t have a choice. I bribed Alicia with sushi tonight to come over and go through them with me. We’ll sell anything I’m willing to part with to the used-book counter at the Strand and store the rest in my basement. It will be a pain in the butt, but I don’t have much time. Serena gets back to town tomorrow afternoon, so I called her this morning and said I’d get them all out today.

  Making our way up Avenue A, Alicia drawls, “When did the East Village become so retarded? Look at all the dorks and losers. Where did all the cool people go?”

  “They all fled to Williamsburg when they heard you were moving there,” I say.

  When we finally make it to my building after the hour-and-a-half-long walk home from Brooklyn, it’s five o’clock, and my red-wine buzz has turned into a hangover. Two buildings over, an entire family—mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, a bunch of kids—is hanging out in a beat-up van parked in front of their apartment, spilling out onto beach chairs parked on the sidewalk, either listening to or ignoring the aggressively lyrical tones of gospel floating through the closed windows and door of the nondescript Baptist church squeezed between their building and the old-folks’ home on the corner. It always amazes me that there are two churches, three bars, an old-folks’ home, and a Bible lady all on one block, an intriguing balance of conscience and debauchery. The neighbors’ Yorkie, happy to be free from his usual post at the window, is running around barking as his humans sit quietly enjoying the evening air. No one seems to notice us except the woofer, who licks my heel as we pass. “Hey, little bear,” I say, bending over to rub his furry back. Alicia starts whistling a tune I recognize.

  “Is that the ice-cream-man song?”

  “Yeah, so?” she asks. “That’s my next career move. I’m going to get an ice cream truck.” I laugh, imagining my sister becoming the ice cream man. I want to tell her how funny it would be to tell our parents’ friends that my smart, hypereducated sister is the new ice cream man in town, but I’m laughing too hard to get the words out.

  Two lanky Latin guys half our age pass us and one of them says to my sister, “Hey, you look like someone I want to hang out with.”

  “I have a terrible personality,” she says. “You don’t want to hang out with me.” The guys walk on, perplexed.

  “I hate your stairs,” Alicia moans, like she does every time we climb them. When we push open the front door, though, our fatigue disintegrates magically: Along the wall running from the kitchen to the back windows is a beautiful, wooden bookcase that runs almost all the way up to my nine-foot ceilings. My books have been unpacked and neatly stacked on the shelves and the cardboard boxes have vanished. Alicia and I stand gaping.

  “What the hell?” I ask, breaking the spell.

  “Who got these?” Alicia asks, walking toward the shelves. A blue Post-it is stuck to my copy of The Portrait of a Lady. “These are amazing books! Now they have a nice home,” it reads. There’
s a dustpan full of sawdust on the floor placed neatly next to a toolbox, an electric saw, and a bucket of wood stain.

  “Nobody,” I say. “He built them.”

  “Who?”

  “Serena’s boyfriend, I guess. Maybe to surprise her while she’s gone?”

  “I thought you said they broke up.”

  “Well, I guess they’re back together,” I say, noticing another note on the counter.

  “Hey S,” it says. “Took care of your book problem while you were gone. Now slow down and relax into this beautiful place, okay? Remember what Oscar Wilde said (Chrissie Hynde quoted him): ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ Chin up, lovely!—Z.”

  “‘Z?’” I ask. “Who the hell is Z? Serena’s boyfriend’s name is Rory.”

  “Maybe they play some Zorro sex game?” Alicia suggests.

  “Or maybe she has a new boyfriend.”

  “A really cool one,” Alicia says. “I bet Anthony doesn’t know how to build bookshelves.”

  “He doesn’t even know how to use them. The cleaning lady he pays to pick up after him twice a month is the only person who ever puts a book on a shelf, let alone dust them.”

  As Alicia watches Arsenic and Old Lace for the fourteenth time on TV, I unpack a box of tchotchkes that I didn’t know where to put before. I unwrap my treasures—an assortment of candles, a tiny statuette of a cat I bought in Madrid, a Day of the Dead doll my sister brought me from a shoot she did in Mexico, my grandma’s ceramic angels that I got when she died, a bobbing-head Chihuahua that was a gift from Jeremy and Napoleon, stones and shells I’ve collected through the years, miniature Chinese lanterns, a Rubik’s Cube my dad gave me for my fifteenth birthday, small framed photographs of my family and friends—and place them in front of books, on top of them, around them. I’m pleased with my creation—or rather mine and Serena’s lover-boy’s creation.

  Anthony is arriving home on the Fourth of July and I’m so excited I could scream. In the end he wound up being gone almost six weeks and I don’t think I can go another minute without him. He’s coming home around eight, so I blow off the rooftop party in my neighborhood that everyone I know is attending and stay home and roast a chicken and open a bottle of wine. It’s the first real meal I’ve ever cooked for Anthony, I realize as I’m mincing garlic and chopping a red onion. We always go out or order in. I’m too antsy to focus on the slow Chinese movie I have to watch for work—I look at my hands and realize over the past few weeks I’ve bitten off all my nails—and instead stick in Sliding Doors, the Gwyneth Paltrow movie where she gets to live two alternative lives with two different men. The door finally squeaks open at around ten, right at the end of the movie when Gwyneth is falling down a flight of stairs after learning that her boyfriend’s mistress is having his baby. Suddenly there in front of me is Anthony, my boyfriend, whom I haven’t seen in a month and a half.

  “Baby!” I say, leaping off the couch.

  “What are you watching?” he asks.

  “Chick flick,” I say, pulling away and stopping the DVD.

  “Why do you watch that crap?” he asks, flinging his bag to the floor. “Such a load of bullshit they feed you. When will someone make a movie that shows the truth about love?”

  “They exist,” I say. “Sid and Nancy, Annie Hall, Scenes from a Marriage, God, tons. Someone usually winds up dead—or at least alone—but they do exist. I’ve got to say I love a good, corny romantic comedy, as long as the writing is smart.…” I could babble on, but he’s not listening. He’s squatting on the floor, playing with the loose skin around his faithful dog’s face. “Did you miss me, baby? Did you miss me? I missed you, baby girl,” he says. Lucy licks his face giddily. He looks up at me and grins irresistibly. “Did you miss me, baby girl? Did you miss me?”

  “More than you can imagine,” I say, meaning it. I fantasized about jumping on him immediately, but I feel timid after not having seen him for such a long time. I ruffle his hair and he straightens up to put his arms around me. He reeks of BO, but I don’t care. He squeezes me tightly.

  “I made dinner,” I say. “Want some?”

  “I’ll pick at it,” he says. “I’m exhausted.” I put some chicken, salad, and roasted potatoes on a plate for him and pour him a glass of Syrah and sit on a stool to watch him wolf it down.

  “I was hungrier than I thought,” he says. He reaches over and grabs my waist and pulls me toward him. “Let’s go to bed.”

  After we roll around for a while, I think he’s fallen asleep, but he crawls out of bed and walks naked into the living room and calls out, “I got you something.” He comes back with a shopping bag from the airport. In it is a girlie T-shirt that says, SOMEONE WHO ME WENT TO CHICAGO AND ALL I GOT IS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.

  “Thanks, baby,” I say. “Thanks so much.” He reaches into the bag again and grins up at me mischievously.

  “And another special treat.” My heart pounds. “He pulls out an iPod in a bright pink case.”

  I bounce on the bed and hug him and cover him in kisses.

  “Honestly, honey, you were the last person in the world who didn’t have one. It was a mercy purchase.”

  “I love you,” I say. “Thanks.”

  When I wake up at around nine the next day, Anthony isn’t in bed with me. I figure he’s making coffee or has run out for bagels. I wander into the living room and find a note on the counter: “Run to the editing rm, have to get tapes to editor. Back soon. Sushi tonite? I’ll call. xo.” I make a cup of mint green tea and watch the last few minutes of Sliding Doors in my underwear, with Lucy snoring at my feet. Then I call Alicia.

  “So, he gave me an iPod,” I tell her.

  “That’s way better than an engagement ring.”

  I spend the rest of my day finishing up my workaholic piece, which I like even more than the first one. I’ve dug up all sorts of obscure movies old and new about men who love their work so much that they end up alienating the women in their lives. Sometimes workaholism, I find, is indicative of a deeper rift in the relationship, like in Far from Heaven, in which Julianne Moore’s husband, played by Dennis Quaid, spends all his time at the office but also happens to be having an affair with a man. Joanne Love, my new best friend, has hilarious things to say about these screen jerks. She thinks most of them need psychoanalysis, but some are just in the wrong relationship. “A man having a love affair with his work will probably be happier with a woman who doesn’t demand much of his time. Conversely, a woman who requires solid pampering and a daily orgasm should seek a man who makes her needs a priority.”

  By the time I’ve put the final touches on the piece and e-mailed it off, gone grocery shopping just to get out of the house, and i-chatted with my sister for half an hour about how neurotic our mother is—she’s flipping out that Alicia hasn’t found a job and offered to pay for her to see a therapist—it’s seven o’clock and I still haven’t heard from Anthony. I call his cell.

  “Whoa, is it that late?” he asks. “I’m sorry, baby. You wouldn’t believe the footage we got. It’s outstanding.”

  “Do you still want to get sushi?”

  “I’m not quite done here, but…”

  “I could come over there and we could order in,” I suggest.

  “Would you mind? You could watch what we’ve done so far. I think you’ll love it.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  * * *

  “What are we ordering tonight, guys?” I ask.

  It’s Saturday night and I’m in the editing suite with Anthony and his editor, Will, a natural-born funny guy who’s extremely enthusiastic about the show. I’ve been there almost every night for the past two weeks. It’s the only way I get to spend time with Anthony, so I’ve stopped fighting it. A couple of times I’ve even spent the night on the leather couch. We hauled in some old sweats and a down comforter for my personal use. They should probably give me an associate-producer credit at this point, considering how involved in the intr
icacies of telling this story I have become. I think the guys appreciate my perspective as a woman and an objective viewer, although the first few nights Anthony resisted.

  “Thai,” says Anthony.

  “No more Thai!” Will protests. “Anything but Thai. Or sushi. Italian, the place with the lobster ravioli and garlic rolls, or the awesome salad place.”

  “Awesome salads,” is my vote. “I love the one with cranberries and blue cheese.”

  “Lord help me, the one with tuna and olives and parmesan is delizioso,” Will says.

  “Ooh, there’s also that really fattening one with shrimp,” I say. “I can’t decide!”

  “Whatever, you guys. Salads,” Anthony says. He can’t understand Will’s and my obsession with food. I persuade the delivery guy to stop by the deli and pick up a six-pack and chocolate chip cookies for us.

  “And a pint of strawberry-cheesecake ice cream,” Will adds at the last minute.

  At this point, Anthony and Will have a rough cut of the first episode, in which the three main characters, Mikey, Delores, and a manic-depressive kid named Stu, are introduced. Anthony was right about how gripping the material is. Per the reality-show formula, we’re given just enough backstory to make these three likable, so the audience can’t resist suffering along with them. They shot four stories but are keeping only the best three. I feel bad for Bernie, a pale fourteen-year-old with a lisp who got caught shoplifting seven times before the cops hauled him in. Anthony’s crew shot over fifty hours of him and none of it will be included, except for some early moments when he appears in court alongside Mikey. While I know my storytelling instincts are right on and my input helpful, I also know I’d be terrible at Anthony’s job, because cutting out someone’s story would kill me. I’d be so attached to the footage, my version would be twenty hours long. Plus, I’d want to save all the kids. I’d want to hug them and give them money and invite them over to my house for lunch. I’d want to help them study and make sure they get into good colleges. I’d want to adopt them. I’m a completely useless distanced observer of real life. Better stick to celebrities.