by Jill Kargman
“Hi, I’m Nick.” He was adorable, but hello? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?
Okay, so I soon discovered he was twenty-eight. But at thirty-four, that felt like waaay too tender an age for me.
“Holly, what can I get you?” he asked. He whipped his sweatshirt off, revealing a white T-shirt and his forearms, which were sleeved in tattoos.
“Um, I’m, uh, not much of a drinker.”
“Come on, don’t make me drink alone—I’m gonna surprise you, how ’bout that?”
“Uh . . .” I looked at Kiki, whose eyes were widened as if to say, Don’t be an idiot, get a drink! So I agreed, though I had to be up bright and early to give tours the next day at Miles’s school.
The next thing I knew I was clinking glasses with Nick and his roommates, all three chefs at various restaurants I had never heard of. And I loved that.
NICK MATH
As my eye fell on his tats, he clearly saw me register that they were . . . well . . . in your face. But somehow weirdly appealing.
“This one’s great, isn’t it? My friend Scott Campbell in Williamsburg did it. He’s a fucking artist, man.”
I asked about his cooking, thinking how nice it would be to sit in his kitchen and have him whip up something delicious and have Like Water for Chocolate sex-through-food, minus the whole dying-in-a-fire thing.
I felt myself getting drunk. As in, hammered, old-school-style. I don’t think I ever once lost control in my ten years with Tim—okay, maybe once in a blue moon a little too much champagne at a wedding, but not like this, in black tie, laughing with people in their twenties who didn’t have children. But it felt refreshing. Freeing. I had turned back the clock. At least until my morning hangover, which felt light-years away in the current haze of neon, clinking glasses, and vintage Blondie.
24
“God gave us all a penis and a brain, but only enough blood to run one at one time.”
—Robin Williams
As I lay, head throbbing, trying to get out of bed and don a pantsuit fit for touring prospective parents, I tried to piece together the prior evening, since I truly didn’t remember getting home. Thank God I’d had a relatively quick divorce settlement or Sherry Von would have had PIs trailing me to see if I was some lush and unfit mom, not that I ever would have pounded like that were Miles not with Tim. Thirty-four is too old to be on the hooch like that, I thought, even if for one night in eons.
Then I remembered all of us stumbling outside onto the Bowery, Kiki kissing some chef boy, and Nick putting his arm around me. His motorcycle jacket felt tight around my shoulder and I felt protected. I remembered my speech wasn’t that clear as I uttered something about there being no cabs and he said, “I have a ride.” In Tim’s world, that meant a chauffeur-driven car waiting outside. I said, “Great,” and was then led by Nick through the cold air to a motorcycle in front of the old CBGBs. It was starting to come back to me: My mom would have spazzed. I stuttered something about this maybe not being such a good idea, picturing myself in a full-body cast peeing through a hole cut out of the plaster into a bedpan.
“Come on, Holly. Chill out. Live a little.” At least he had a spare helmet so I wouldn’t be some decapitated headless horsemom with brains scattered along Park Avenue. I am so not wired for risk. If I hadn’t been drunk, it would be safe to say I would have gotten on that hog over my dead body.
But there I was. Flying up First Avenue. Though my thoughts were hazy, I remember thinking that if someone I knew could see me, they would probably faint in shock. Or at least thought I’d gone off the deep end. Holly Talbott with some guy on a motorcycle? Not a chance.
When we got to my neighborhood, the night doorman was already on duty (translation: asleep on the lobby couch), so there was no one to witness my very un-uptown chariot’s arrival. Nick helped me off the seat, dress pulled up by my thighs. It was semi-undignified but, dare I say, badass?
“Holly. That was fun—”
The next thing I knew, he had kissed me, hard. He put his hands on my face and leaned me against his bike, grabbing my back as his mouth moved on mine forcefully. I finally had my own taste of a no-strings-attached kiss. It was a very rock-and-roll moment for me. I’d always been a prude, “saving it” for my first love. But I was now taking a page from Kiki’s book—a little black book—and while making out was phenomenal, with the sound of Nick’s leather arms moving around me as a sound track, it was also just a page from the book and not the whole book. In other words, I might have been able to engage in street-corner kissing, but I would not be sleeping with Nick. When I finally disentangled myself from his embrace and looked at him, he knew right away I would have to bid adieu and that he would not be scoring beyond this, but he was very cool and simply took my hand, gave it a squeeze, and got back on his bike.
After a long day of tours, I scooped up Miles and took him out for an early dinner in our favorite old-school diner, Three Guys, on Madison. He was so excited about some game Tim had scored tickets to, and I tried to just nod and be excited for him, but I knew this would mark the beginning in a grand game of one-upsmanship, where I was the Lame One because I wasn’t ever going to be able to get backstage passes at concerts the way Tim could through his connections, or go to the Super Bowl or Olympics or God knows what else. While my ex provided Le-Bron James, I could only offer a grilled cheese.
It was cold on our walk home, but the twinkling Christmas lights that had sprung up everywhere somehow warmed us. Thanksgiving was a week away, and the vision of a majestic streaming row of glittering trees down Park Avenue soothed our bones despite the arctic chill in the air.
After some hot chocolate and homework, Miles was ready for stories and we climbed into his bed, piled among stuffed animals and fluffy pillows. He was in his favorite Spider-Man pajamas and leaned on my shoulder as we read Rotten Ralph, about a mischievous cat who did mean things like take a bite out of every cookie at a birthday party. But it had always made me smile since it mirrored the other side of childhood, the kooky one that is sick of the incessant litany of brush-your-teeth, wash-your-hands, manners manners manners. And somehow through the prism of my wild night before, I was happy to break free from my own locked-in rules of what was acceptable and go crazy. Maybe not rotten, per se, but definitely, and happily, a little less tame.
25
“The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.”
—Woody Allen
Two nights later, after Miles went to bed, Kiki called to report that, third grade-style, Nick the chef had told his friend that he wanted to see me again. Just thinking about him, and the fact that he was a Wrinkle in Time doorway to the youth I’d never had in my married twenties, gave me a little spring in my step. The following Saturday night we’d all hang out again when he finished work at midnight. Tim took Miles every weekend he was in town, and so I’d be solo and able to sleep super-late Sunday, but before I could get ahead of myself, I remembered I had roped Kiki into coming with me Thursday to the Lyle Spence Gallery for that opening of the other suitor in the hopper. It was amusing to me that there were twenty years between the two men. Nick (a.k.a. Chef Boy to Kiki) and John (whom she’d dubbed “L’artiste”) could not be more different. Both intrigued me. Both were NOTHING like Tim, so both were appealing just for that. I wondered which one I’d end up dating.
“You don’t have to pick one,” said Kiki over the phone on the eve of John’s opening. “You’re just back out there! You have to have many irons in the fire.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means keep a bunch of possibilities hot. Stay open. Date up a storm.”
And while I loved stories and TV shows about women on the town juggling men, I never knew how they could sleep with all those different people. I’d gone off the market at twenty-four and was still frozen in the land of sexual baseball bases and hookups without full sex. But at thirty-four, no one was going up the shirt and stopping. It was kissing on
a corner or pulling out the condom. After years on the pill I had forgotten I’d actually have to have someone bag it up for fear of diseases. Great.
“I don’t think I’m an irons-in-the-fire kinda gal,” I confessed.
“Come on, Holly. Guys do it all the time. There’s such a double standard.”
“But it’s different. Women are more selective. It’s like the egg and the sperm. We choose, and they spread their seed everywhere. I can’t slut out and start sleeping with every guy.”
“What’s with the word ‘slut’? Are you from the Stone Age? I feel like Sherry Von has entered your body like Patrick Swayze inhabiting Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost.”
“I’m not Sherry Von. I don’t judge people who do it,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not that—it’s just that I’ve personally never . . . slept around.”
“How many guys have you slept with?”
I stopped for a sec to count. On my fingers. On one hand. Tim was the thumb on the next.
“Six.”
“Holy shit,” Kiki said, laughing and covering her mouth. “Six?”
“Sorry, what, is that too lame for you? I’m like some church choir girl?”
“No, but you’ll definitely think I’m a road whore. Add a zero.”
I was stunned. Even with Kiki’s bold personality and various rolls in the hay with randoms since her split, I had no idea it would be that high.
“Sixty?!” I asked. “No way.”
“Okay, not that many. Maybe forty. There were a lot of fun quickies, after only a few dates. Or none, like that 9/11 firefighter who had lost half the guys in his ladder. I truly thought I was doing something good for my country.”
I decided to wear a plain black dress with silver buttons down the side, a gift Tim had bought me (probably out of guilt) from Barneys the previous year. I could only wear it in thin, non-period phases, and it zipped up perfectly. Miles was going to the Big Apple Circus with Sherry Von, and her chauffeur, Hubert, was in the lobby when I walked him downstairs and out to the awaiting Bentley.
Hubert looked at me and smiled as Miles piled into the car.
By the look on Sherry Von’s face when she saw my spike heels and fur-collared coat, I could tell she was expecting my standard Theory black pants or Earnest Sewn jeans, Hollywould flats, and ponytail.
“Well, Holland, my, my, where are you off to?” she asked as if floored that I had access to someplace other than my apartment. She probably though it was covered in Kleenex from my tears. Which it had been certainly, but the white balls gathered at the foot of my bed from weeping were becoming less and less frequent. “Just a gallery downtown.”
“Oh. How nice,” she said, with acid, forcing a saccharine smile.
“With Kiki, actually!”
The corners of her smile slowly turned downward into a full-on grimace of Estée Lauder red lipstick. She said nothing, just flared her nostrils as if the two syllables of Kiki’s name had somehow elicited an acrid odor out of the ether.
“Well, have fun!” I said, blowing a kiss to Miles. I could tell by her shocked face that she’d rather I’d said I was meeting my meth dealer.
“Miss Holland—” I heard Hubert whisper as he walked around the back of the car to his driver’s seat. “You look divine.”
26
“Is there a cure for a broken heart? Only time can heal a broken heart. Just as time will heal his arms and legs.”
—Miss Piggy
Thank goodness Kiki, who is usually always a half hour late, was standing by the door when I arrived on West Twenty-seventh Street. It was frigid out and just the half block from Tenth Avenue was enough to make me want to crawl into a vat of lava and boil myself.
“Hi! You look . . . wow. I might turn lezzie,” joked Kiki. “I just got here. Wait till you see these paintings.”
I had been curious. My Google image search had turned up mostly still-lifes, renderings of objects such as a spoon, a pipe, and a half-eaten slice of pie. But the gallery’s website said that this show contained John’s first-ever group of self-portraits. So I was intrigued, but not prepared for what was on view in the packed, bustling space filled with shaven-headed art people and their fashionista muses.
In a word: Buck. Self-portraits, as in stark-ass-naked self-portraits. Oh, sorry. I think the arty term is nudes. I moved into the room, past a stenciled charcoal gray heading that read “JOHN TAPLETT: SELF-PORTRAITURE,” to see eight huge images of John in full.
JOHN MATH
The six-foot canvases reminded me of a softer Captain Von Trapp, but with sausage in my face. My jaw dropped. But the images were good, really good. Sexy. They were done in heated, frazzled, impetuous lines, like a sketchbook come to life in oiled color. They were life-size and sometimes headless, just the neck down to the calves, with each in a different pose. I felt myself getting guiltily aroused, like this was art porn. Every muscle in his ripped but not-too-ripped torso was there, every crease and line in his pelvis and, yes, WIENER. I could not believe it. Wasn’t he so embarrassed? I was fascinated.
Naturally it took Kiki all of five seconds to start teasing me. “You better shack up with this one, Holly. He’s fucking hung like Seabiscuit.”
“Kiki, shut up!” I said, blushing. “I don’t even know him!”
She walked up close to the, ahem, intimate painting, looking back at me with a smirk. “I’d say ya do now.”
“Holly, I’m so glad you made it,” said John, taking my hand in his, then looking up to find me reddening into a pomegranate hue.
“Th-this is my friend, Kiki Talbott,” I stuttered.
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. She still had that huge Cheshire Cat grin on her face, no doubt thinking of measurements. And I’m not talking about canvases.
“Can you join us as well for the dinner afterward?” he asked.
Before I shot her a longing look begging her to come, she had already began her weasel out.
“Oh, I wish I could, but I’m seeing Interpol tonight at Hammerstein. So sorry!”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear it, but hopefully we’ll see each other again—”
Just then an attractive man with longish hair and bright green eyes approached. “Hello,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I’m Lyle Spence.”
“Hi, Holly Talbott, nice to meet you. This is such an amazing gallery,” I said, recognizing him immediately from countless party pictures in magazines. “And congrats on the show! To both of you. I see some red dots already.”
“We’re very pleased,” he said, while looking at Kiki. “And who is this beautiful creature?”
“Ugh, creature? Nice. That sounds like something from Animal Planet!” Kiki said, crossing her arms.
I almost spat out the white wine John had handed me. Here was the most powerful man in the art world and she blew him right off. In his own gallery, no less. While any girl in the joint would have her panties in a twist over a flirtation from Mr. Heartbreaker, she clearly didn’t give a shit. And right away, Lyle Spence was intrigued.
“This is Kiki Talbott.” I said, trying to pave over her diss.
“Any relation?” Lyle asked. “Same animal phylum perhaps?”
Kiki smiled, reluctantly.
“How about joining us for dinner afterward? I have Bottino rented out in honor of John.”
“Oh, no thanks,” Kiki said, looking at her watch. “I have concert tickets. Sorry!”
She managed to bolt, but not before Lyle begged her twice more to reconsider. She wouldn’t, and instead pulled away from him to give me a kiss and head toward the coat check to retrieve her fur. I watched Lyle trace her every move until her exit.
“Kiki! Stay!” I whispered at the door. “Lyle Spence is staring at you.”
“Yuck. Too good-looking. Too cocky. So not my type.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” I replied, watching him watch us.
“I don’t read books. I read magazines.” Kiki winked. “And you only j
udge magazines by their covers.” And with that, she was gone.
At the dinner, John was seated next to Lyle and some mega-collector whose name I couldn’t remember, a huge hedge funder from Greenwich, Connecticut. His wife, Missy, was familiar from the various charity circuits, and her boobs were literally defying gravity.
I almost started laughing in the poor woman’s face because I remembered Kiki’s comment at the gallery about her beaded beige number: “If you could weave vomit, it would be that dress,” she said.
So there sat Missy in beige as her husband went on and on about futures markets and China. Word had it they’d met when she was a flight attendant on his NetJets charter, and with her bod, she gave new meaning to the word “liftoff.”
“Excuse me, honey,” George said, hailing a waitress. “But can I get some fresh cheese on the arugula, please? This Parmesan tastes like sawdust.”
“Mine, too,” chimed in Missy. “It’s inedible.”
Nice. Stifling a grimace, the waitress swiftly removed the offending plates from his and her majesty. I felt disgusting, remembering countless nights out with Tim’s friends, who often spoke to waiters that way. Plus, Missy was once serving pretzels and peanuts herself, so why the turbulent ’tude?
The chair next to me remained empty during the salad course, until a man I instantly recognized pulled it out and sat down with profuse apologies. “The traffic was a disaster. The U.N. is a nightmare, I’m so sorry—”
“Is it Elliot? I just met you recently, right?” Super-green-eyes guy.
“Yes. And you’re Holland.”
“Good memory.” I wondered what he was doing at the dinner. “Everyone calls me Holly, though.”