“He is ugly, but you can’t help but love him,” Sheila said. After a pause, she asked, “How’d he look?”
“He was as scruffy as ever,” I said, pretending to misunderstand her. “I think he has a rash on his ass.”
Sheila nearly dropped her wine and said, “How’d you see his ass?”
“He’s always shoving it in my face, and I think he’s losing some of his fur there.”
She let out a peal of laughter and said, “Not Dexter. Daniel. How’d he look?”
“He was with someone,” I said after I’d stopped laughing.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see him.”
“Daniel?”
“No, the man he was with.”
“He was with someone that you couldn’t see?” She looked at me quizzically and moved my wineglass out of my reach.
I laughed and retrieved the glass, taking a slug from it. “I didn’t say that I couldn’t see him; I said I didn’t see him. It’s not that he was invisible; he was behind a cereal display.”
“Oh. Did Daniel see you?”
“Yeah.”
“How was that?”
“It was strange to see him with a new boyfriend.”
“Daniel has a boyfriend?” Sheila gave me an odd look.
“Doesn’t he?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” she answered. “I mean, I have been busy lately, but I think that’s something Daniel would have told me.”
“It sure seemed that way to me.”
“Did you introduce him to Gavin?”
“No.”
“How do you know he didn’t think the same thing about Gavin? Maybe Daniel was with his personal assistant, too.”
“Daniel has a personal assistant?” I asked.
“Not that I know of, but I didn’t know about yours until five minutes ago. So what did you say to each other?”
“I congratulated him on his movie. He congratulated me on my job. Then he walked away.” I let her digest that, then added, “I guess it bothered me more than it bothered him. Unless you’re only pretending that he didn’t tell you about it.”
“I didn’t even know he was back from L.A. But if he’d told me, why would I pretend otherwise?”
“Daniel tells you everything. Probably because you’re good at keeping his secrets.”
“If you’re talking about your breakup, he’s told me the same thing you have. Nothing.”
“Gosh, things have changed,” I said.
She looked confused and said, “Not really. I’ve never been in the middle of your relationship.”
“The middle? No. In fact, you were front and center for the cameras, weren’t you?”
Sheila blushed and said, “I was stupid. I had no idea getting a little publicity for Zodiac and Secret Splendor was going to get so out of control.”
“If I’d been handling things, it wouldn’t have. There’s good publicity and bad publicity. Your job is to promote Zodiac, not that fucking soap opera. I’ve since learned that Lillith and Bonnie Seaforth-Wilkes—you do remember who that is?”
“Secret Splendor’s sponsor. The Fiberforth woman.”
“Right. Lillith and Bonnie can’t even be in the same century without going for each other’s throats. You’re lucky that whole thing didn’t backfire on you.”
“It did!” she said. “Josh and I nearly broke up over it.”
“Excuse me for my lack of sympathy, but Daniel and I did break up.”
“About that?” Sheila asked, horrified.
“Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m not playing!”
“You know we fought because Daniel failed to mention that Blythe was moving into the town house. Are you going to pretend you didn’t know about that before I did?”
“I knew he was thinking about it. So what?” I was speechless, and my expression made her scoot toward the opposite end of the sofa. “You live in the town house; you live somewhere else. What’s the difference?”
“I wanted to live with Daniel.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“I didn’t—what?”
“So it wasn’t going to be the town house,” Sheila finally said. “Why couldn’t the two of you live somewhere else?”
“I’m sure if I was willing to wait a few years for Daniel to process the idea of living together—”
“What made you think he wasn’t ready? Did he tell you that?”
I stared at her a minute, then said, “Did he tell you he was?” She looked uncomfortable and took a drink of her wine. “Sheila, if you have some information that you’re not sharing, I can arrange for you to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel in the next Zodiac ad.”
“I told you, I’ve never been in the middle of your relationship. I’m not going there now, either.”
“The barrel is optional,” I warned. Sheila took a large breath of air and bulged out her cheeks so that she looked like a bullfrog. “What are you doing?”
She exhaled audibly and said, “Learning how to hold my breath for long periods of time. I’m not talking about this stuff with you. These are things you should be discussing with him.”
I shook my head and said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be if the two of you talked it out.”
“Too much damage has been done,” I said.
“Damage can be fixed. You know how when you’re a kid and you accidentally break some porcelain statue or something? And you have to glue it back together if you can? When it gets put back together, it doesn’t look the same. But you mend it so that the spirit of why it was bought in the first place, the beauty of the piece, the sentimental value, can live on. It might have a chip, but it still has meaning. If it’s worth putting back together, that is.”
“I didn’t break it,” I said.
We heard the front door open and shut, then Josh walked into the living room, loaded down with photography paraphernalia. “Hey, you two!” he said, dropping the bags to the floor where he stood. I could sense that Sheila was regarding the mess he was leaving with annoyance. In fact, I realized that their apartment was oddly uncluttered, which was unusual for Sheila. She generally left mayhem in her wake, all the while looking as if she’d emerged from one of our print ads. Now the apartment was orderly and Sheila was a mess.
“Hi,” we chorused solemnly.
Josh froze. “Something wrong? Am I interrupting?”
“No,” I said, getting up. “I was just about to leave. It’s been a longer day than I thought.”
“Sheila, do you remember where I put those wrist weights that I wanted to show Blaine?” Josh asked.
We both stared at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking Japanese. Considering the workouts I inflicted on myself at the gym, wrist weights would be like attaching a couple of sparrows to my arms. I wasn’t sure what Sheila’s expression indicated.
“I do have my ovarian tracking device in; let me look for them,” Sheila said.
After she stomped out of the room, Josh hissed at me, “Did you just tell her?”
“Tell her what?” I whispered back.
“The pregnancy thing. Gretchen.”
“Oh. No,” I said. “She’s in a mood because we were talking about Daniel.”
“Okay. Please warn me before you drop the baby bomb on her, okay?”
I couldn’t ask him why he sounded so ominous, because Sheila returned with the wrist weights. Josh and I embarked on a completely inane discussion of their merits, while Sheila stared at us with obvious suspicion until she’d had enough.
“What’s going on here?”
“She caught us,” I said, giving Josh a guilty look. “I swear, Sheila, there won’t be any strippers or women jumping out of cakes.”
“You’re planning a bachelor party? Considering our guest list, it might be more exciting to have a man jump out of the cake.”
“I told you she’d try to organize that, too,” I said, sacr
ificing myself on the altar of Sheila’s nuptial madness. “The bachelor party is for Josh. Not all your gay friends.”
“We’ll see,” Sheila said. She followed me to the door. “Can we finish our conversation later?” she asked, fidgeting with my collar as an excuse to give me a piercing look.
“Let’s not talk about Daniel anymore,” I implored. “I feel like we cleared the air between us. That was more important to me.”
“You!’ she said. “I was beginning to fear for my life.”
“I’ll admit I’ve been annoyed about you and Daniel, but I’ve never threatened your life,” I protested.
“The danger of a Zodiac shoot is directly proportional to your dissatisfaction with your personal life,” Sheila insisted. “Remember last year, when you had me stringing a garland of flowers around that bull’s neck for Taurus? I think you and Daniel were arguing about vacation plans.”
“Not true,” I disagreed. “And this year’s Taurus ad required nothing more than boxing gloves.”
“Excuse me. Pisces? In a tank with a shark?”
“Six inches of Plexiglas between you,” I reminded her.
“Aries. Head to head with that goat.”
“It was a ram,” I said, laughing.
“It smelled like a goat. Now you’re talking about barrels and Niagara Falls—”
“Your safety always comes first,” I insisted with finality. “Our insurance company demands it.”
She smiled and said, “Blaine? I need for things to be okay between us. I’ve loved you all my life. Maybe I don’t always handle things the best way with you and Daniel. But I never meant to hurt you, and I’m sorry.”
I hugged her and said, “It’s okay. I love you, too. That won’t ever change.”
After she shut the door, I paused on the stoop for a moment, thinking about the question she’d asked earlier that I hadn’t answered.
How’d he look?
“Beautiful,” I whispered to myself.
That night, though I fell asleep quickly, my Daniel voice-over evidently silenced by my reconciliation with Sheila, I had a dream that left me puzzled when I woke up. I stepped into the bathroom to shave and shower. Afterward, I donned a charcoal gray Hugo Boss suit and combed my hair, all the while trying to remember the details of my dream. Martin had been telling Daniel how boring I was, Sheila had been miffed that I’d given my sperm to Gretchen, and Daniel had watched me with sad eyes.
While I ate my breakfast, I couldn’t get Daniel’s expression out of my mind. Maybe we hadn’t really tried to resolve things. Maybe we’d taken the easy way out and let it all crumble to nothing. Or maybe I was just nervous about how Daniel would react if Gretchen and I had a child.
I considered the range of possibilities. He might feel like I’d preempted his relationship with Gretchen, somewhat the way I felt like he’d taken Sheila from me. Or maybe he would wonder why Gretchen had chosen me instead of him to be her child’s father. Or he could simply resent being out of the loop, especially if anyone else found out before he did. Even worse, what if he thought I’d be a lousy father?
I looked at Gavin and said, “If I don’t leave soon, I’ll be late for a meeting downtown. I have no idea what time I’ll get home tonight, so just do something like a chicken Caesar salad that I can eat cold. Could you call Violet for me? I want to put apartment hunting on hold for a while. I have too much going on at work to worry about that right now.”
“No problem,” Gavin said. “Anything else?”
“Do something fun tonight. Reconnect with old friends. I’ve been monopolizing your time.”
“I’ve only been here a few days.”
“And I’ve barely let you catch your breath.” When I tried to take my dishes to the sink, he took them from my hands. I grabbed my keys, then dropped them and picked up the phone, walking to the window to glance down at Daniel’s patio garden. I dialed his number without letting myself think about what I was going to say.
“Hi, this is Daniel. If you’re a friend, I’m on location. If you’re planning to break into my apartment, bring a couple of raw T-bones. The rottweilers are hungry.”
I smiled, realizing he’d forgotten to change his greeting, which was unlike him. I hung up without leaving a message, since I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say.
Over the next few days, I had to work twelve- and fourteen-hour stretches, arranging to shoot Sheila’s three ad layouts back to back. I relocated the Cancer shoot from L.A. to Colorado, timing things so I could make a quick stop in Wisconsin to check on my mother. I scheduled both the Leo and Virgo shoots for Miami, saving time by hiring one crew to do both.
Over the weekend, I participated in a seemingly endless round of conference calls with Lillith, Frank, and Adam, who’d agreed to fly in the following week to go over our networking needs in the new office space. I didn’t mind working over the weekend, however, since it made the time go by quickly. Monday was the big day when Gretchen and I would find out the results of the insemination.
While clasping her hand in the waiting room, I stared at a gold-framed illustration of a long, pink flower. I shuddered, thinking of those Georgia O’Keeffe paintings that resembled vaginas. I wondered if the flower was meant to bring luck to the women who came to the fertility clinic.
Gretchen and I could have passed for any of the married couples who also waited in tense silence for their names to be called by the nurse. The door from the doctors’ offices opened as a young couple came through the waiting room, their faces depicting the news they’d received. The woman had tears forming in her eyes, while the man gently held her arm with one hand and caressed her hair with the other. Seeing the disappointment on their faces made me feel sympathetic. It also filled me with anxiety that our own results would be negative.
I must have begun to squeeze Gretchen’s hand tighter, because she emitted a quiet yelp. “Watch it, Hercules. I may be a tough cookie, but I’m not made of steel,” she whispered.
“Sorry. I’m more nervous than I thought I’d be.”
“That makes two of us,” she admitted. “I’m optimistic, though. Aunt Rose hasn’t been to visit me yet.” It took me a second to remember what Aunt Rose was a euphemism for. I felt only slightly more at ease, though.
The nurse behind the desk let her thick, black glasses slide down her nose as she stood up and leaned over the counter to call out the next name on her list.
“Schmidt? You’re next.”
Gretchen and I looked at each other as we stood up. We both took a deep breath and proceeded to the door. A buzzer sounded as my hand reached out to take the knob. I opened the door and looked down the hall toward the doctor’s office, desperately searching my memory banks for her real name. Just as I’d predicted, the only name that came to mind was “Dr. Gibb.”
The walk to her office seemed longer than I remembered. “Come in!” called the familiar voice when Gretchen knocked.
We stepped into her small office, sitting across from her while she pushed away folders and opened the one I presumed was ours.
“It’s so good to see you two again,” she said. Just then, the red light on her telephone began to pulse urgently. “I’m sorry. Excuse me for one second.”
She picked up the phone and greeted the person on the other end. She riffled through the stack of folders she’d pushed aside, found the one she wanted, and opened it. She made a few notes, periodically glancing at Gretchen and me with an apologetic smile. I wanted to jump up and grab the phone out of her hand. I felt even tenser than when I’d waited for the results of my HIV tests.
“Now then,” the doctor said, placing the telephone back in the cradle, “where were we? Oh, yes, the results.” She opened our folder again and skimmed through a few pages. “It looks like you two are going to be parents.”
Neither Gretchen nor I spoke immediately. We turned to each other and stared for a second before Gretchen’s face was split by the brightest smile I’d ever seen. We fell into each other’s arms and h
ugged. When we separated and faced the doctor again, she, too, was smiling. She obviously enjoyed doling out good news.
“This is incredible! I can’t believe I’m pregnant. I spent the last couple of weeks preparing myself for the worst. I was willing to keep trying, if we had to, but I didn’t really want to go through this again. I mean, it’s an election year, so now isn’t the time for frivolous spending. Not that this is frivolous, but you know what I mean,” Gretchen gushed.
“I think what she’s trying to say is thank you,” I said.
“Yes!” Gretchen exclaimed. “Thank you so much!”
“Don’t thank me,” the doctor said. “Thank Blaine’s tough little sperm and your egg for being willing. All I did was introduce them. There are a few things I need to tell you.” She gave Gretchen advice about prenatal care, then said, “Your OB/GYN may give you a different date, but I’ve calculated your due date as December fourteenth. It’s not an exact science though, and can be affected by several variables.”
“Thank God neither of us works in retail,” Gretchen commented.
“You can basically live life as normal,” the doctor went on. “On your way out, the nurse will give you the book that we give to all of our successful candidates. It’ll walk you through what to expect throughout your pregnancy. Congratulations to both of you!”
When we stepped out of the clinic into the cool, early spring air, I hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of Gretchen’s Tribeca loft. I wished I could spend the next few days with her, as I had done after the insemination procedure, but the sadistic timetable for the upcoming Zodiac ads wouldn’t allow me that luxury. But I could see her home and spend an hour with her to rejoice in our good fortune.
I wanted to share the good news with everyone we knew, but most of the books we’d been reading advised waiting until after the first trimester to tell people, especially in high-risk pregnancies. Gretchen was considered high risk because she was experiencing her first pregnancy at age thirty-eight.
When I turned to look at her, she was absolutely aglow. She grinned at me and said, “I know you didn’t know him very well, but I wish Ken was here. I could tell him, and the news would go no further. I wish there was someone else we could tell.”
I'm Your Man Page 16