oh my heaven her lips around me, her tongue a quick swirl, her mouth up and down and up and down and wet and hot and dark. My hips rose of their own volition, my hands in her hair as her head moved over me, and I groaned and shuddered and harshly whispered her name—
before she stopped and then was above me, her body against mine, her breasts against my chest and I felt myself against her, there, against Veronica, felt another warmth against me, and I whispered that I had condoms in the dresser but she whispered that she was on the pill and she trusted me, and then I was insideindsideinside of Veronica Sawyer, and though I had idealized her before, though I had romanticized her, in that moment we formed each other, made each other real; in that moment of darkness and glory we called to each other by name across the universe, our cries a summons less to each other than love in the world, acts of defiance against fantasy and romance, truths lighting each other our ways to ourselves.
We clutched each other, there in the darkness, solid and tangible and there in a world so often too quick to rend asunder, and afterward, Veronica and I rolled sideways, her bottom pressed to my stomach, and I kissed the back of her shoulder as I found in the nuzzle of her neck the space in which I might find rest. The morning after crept closer toward us, but in the meantime the darkness and the joy of deep, peaceful slumber interrupted only by cherished moments of bed.
Chapter Fifteen, in which I see Veronica off before I attempt unsuccessfully to cancel one appointment on my way to a second
Whenever I have an important appointment, my body tends to anticipate it to such an extent that it sets its own internal alarm clock; given a day I’m looking forward to, I tend to beat the alarm by a solid ten minutes. Usually, I spend those ten minutes in quiet contemplation of the excitement to come, but that morning I discovered an even better way to use them by having a pre-dawn quickie love-fest with Veronica, all lips and breasts and ass, morning breath and bedhead, reveling in the feel of the City and the previous night and sleep on our skin like nebulous grit. Dry tongue collision and the soft-hard angles of intersection and penetration, wet waking dream of full-on arousal and incredible execution.
If there’s a better way to wake up, I have not experienced it.
The morning: a high-comic trapeze act of routine and preparation, a quick together-shower before we engaged in a domesticated dance of jean-pulling and tooth-brushing and hair-doing. Veronica let me take priority given that I was leaving for the office while she was just taking the train home, and by the time we closed my apartment door behind us, we were a little breathless and a little flushed but totally ready for the day. Our fingers found each other as we descended the stoop to the street, blocks to the PATH station, where we waited on a platform.
“You go back to school soon, don’t you?”
“Next weekend. But I was thinking—maybe I could come back tomorrow night? We could spend the weekend together?”
I mean, come on—was I really going to turn that down?
We got on the first 33rd Street train; she was headed for Penn Station and points West after I got off at Christopher Street, smack in the middle of the gayborhood and just a few blocks north of my destination. I stopped at a corner breakfast truck to buy a large coffee (dark as night, sweet as sin) and a cranberry-orange muffin, then continued slightly South along Hudson to the Weinstein headquarters. I can’t say the City was waking up all around me—because it never does sleep, after all—but it was certainly coming to vibrant, winter morning life, early-morning sunlight glittering like topaz off windows and highlighting the hard angles of corners and rooftops.
That was when I remembered Angus. I nearly cursed but didn’t care enough to do so; by then I planned on calling solely to cancel, which I did then and there, clutching my muffin bag against my coffee cup as I retrieved my cell and found his number in my dialed history. I pressed the send button as I pulled the phone to my ear, ready to wait for the ring Brigid would answer, but it never came. Instead, just the three-note sequence of disconnection, so familiar I hung up before the robot-operator could explain my call could not be completed as dialed.
I frowned. I hung up, and tried again, but heard again those same three notes.
I thought about fishing the card from my wallet, checking the number for certainty, but by then I could already see the building that housed the Weinstein offices. I clipped my phone shut as I crossed Hudson to enter, elevator up to the indicated floors . . .
***
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked a temporary administrative job the contract for which you obtained through an agency specializing in such, but they’re all pretty much the same. You arrive early by, say, ten minutes or so. Sometimes you wait in the lobby for your liaison; other times, the receptionist places a quick call and another assistant comes to show you the way into the offices, leading you to a small cube with the same computer and fiberboard desk you’ll find anywhere else. That first day accumulates minor tasks like Post-Its on a computer monitor, which is largely the best way to accomplish things if only because plucking that sticky paper and crumpling it in your fist before you toss it in the can offers a quick, if minor, sense of achievement.
That was how it was at the Weinstein Company that first day: all downtown-hip, hardwood floors and glass walls with frost-etched lettering. A constantly busy lobby with continuous traffic and a phone whose every trill sounded the kind of urgent that makes or breaks Hollywood careers, the receptionist a brisk, efficient girl with brisk, efficient blonde hair razor chopped and held in place by a wireless phone headset like a Bluetooth boom mike, silver spaghetti looped around her ear and hovering just at the corner of her lip like it hung on her every word. She asked me if I wanted anything to drink and to have a seat all in the same breath even as she finger-pressed a button on her phone like she was gesturing at it.
I declined, happy enough with my coffee, and sat for thirty seconds before a guy strode through the office-way, crossed the lobby hand already extended. Crisp blue open-collar shirt over graphite slacks, smiling my name and informing me he was Ben even as I stood to shake his hand. If Angus had shaken my hand like closing a deal, Ben shook it like he looked forward to working with me, and I very much agreed.
That first day was very much as I described. I could tell you more details—the flat panel monitors, the exposed brick walls, the boutique atmosphere and the casual environment that not only realized but downright embraced the fact that it didn’t need a tie to conduct its business; I hadn’t gone fifteen minutes before I’d loosed my tie to stow in my desk drawer. I kept my blazer, tailored as it was, and my smile, genuine as it was, and I enjoyed that first day like I’ve enjoyed few other days in my life, of course excepting the one most immediately previous.
Feet light as I descended the building’s steps to the street, sun setting down on rooftops and in tree branches, City in a magic hour, and damned if I didn’t want to skip as I hiked back to the Christopher Street station, where I caught the train home to Hoboken.
***
As I ascended the steps of the Hoboken PATH station, my cell dinged that I had a message. Veronica had called to see how my first day had gone, and I’m certain when I called her back I couldn’t keep the excitement from my voice mainly because I didn’t think to try. It had been the sort of first day you dream of, and the next day continued the same trend. I liked the people, the environment, the offices, even the commute. I was doing light administrative work, nothing major, some coordination, calls here and there, a spreadsheet how’s-the-numbers, chores not exactly challenging or demanding but somehow lent some satisfaction by the environment. Everyone and everything buzzed with energy and enthusiasm for what they were doing, and we were constantly reminded of what we were doing by the movie posters on the walls: The Libertine and Hoodwink’d, The Matador, Clerks II, all flicks in the can or in the process of canning and many already in general distribution. It was nice to work in a place with range and diversity, a place as comfortable with a CG-animated chi
ldren’s cartoon as with the possibly Oscar-worthy turn Johnny Depp had delivered as the licentious Earl of bawdy Rochester. Whereas the New Yorker had steadfastly kept its tie straight and even with a perfectly set dimple, the Weinstein company seemed more happy to eschew the neckwear altogether.
I felt comfortable right away, and the feeling didn’t go away. By the time Friday afternoon hit, I was already looking forward to Monday morning. And of course I knew that might not last, that the proverbial honeymoon might end, but still it lent to that weekend a buoyant quality part surreal and all fantastic.
Veronica could see it immediately when I picked her and her luggage up at Penn Station. “Don’t you look like the cat that ate the canary?”
“Do I? I’ve never caught said cat canary-mouthed,” I told her as I took her bag and hefted it over my shoulder.
“Thank you. And you don’t want to. Rather gruesome. But I’m guessing today was as good as yesterday.”
“Even better.”
“And yesterday was awesome.”
“It was indeed,” I told her as we followed signs and corridors in the labyrinth that is so many Manhattan subway stations, and certainly Penn Stations; across the platform and up above ground for a block and a half before descending again into the PATH station to HOB. All the while I chatted about work, about my new colleagues and my new boss and my new breakfast truck and my new jobborhood, my new digs in my new office in my new building. The movies they were producing and distributing and marketing and promoting, the constant rush of posters and reels and contracts, in and out and through, messengers with orange bags and mailroom delivery guys who carried thick bundles rubber-banded together and dropped them on the corner of my desk to distribute to my principals. I was working in the production department as assistant to a handful of producers whose days were spent viewing casting tapes and coordinating budgets and making Hollywood shoots happen from several thousand miles away, and I loved it.
And even better: they had extended my contract. They had told Force One that they’d like to keep me for the foreseeable future.
“Which could be a long time,” Veronica said as we ascended the Hoboken stairs onto Washington Street, the air brisk and sharp and so full with the scent of food you could taste it, Indian and Thai and Italian, burgers and fries and chili dogs from Johnny Rockets.
I smiled. The sun had set and evening had fallen and the night was tinged orange by the streetlights and alive with the bustle of post-commute restaurant-goers and happy-hour revelers, some buzzing with the excitement of the night ahead and some already full swing into it. The evening was alive and Veronica’s hand in mine hummed. “Totally,” I said.
“Then it’s going to be.”
We continued back to my apartment, where we set Veronica’s bag next to my bed before turning on our collective heels and striding back out into that same sublime darkness. “What’re you in the mood for?” I asked her.
“What’s around?”
“Here? Pretty much six of the seven continents, and that’s only because there’s nothing to eat in Antarctica. Within a few blocks we’ve got Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern, French, Italian, English, Mexican, Spanish—which are not the same thing, mind—Brazilian, not to mention, like, seven different kinds of American, including barbecue, steakhouse, and burger. And that’s not even mentioning the fusion, which is like they all had sex and made happy babies. But edible.”
“Unlike babies.”
“I’ve heard baby flesh is soft and succulent.”
“I’m totally going to pretend you didn’t say that. And you’re leaving this up to me?”
“I’m good wherever.”
“Awesome. Then you’re going to lead me to the Italian place, where we’re going to order calamari and bruschetta and heaping plates of pasta we’re going to consume with a fine bottle of wine, and I am going to treat you to said meal—.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that—.”
“In celebration of your brand new job you so obviously love, and I will harbor no arguments about it.”
“Well, if you’re not going to harbor any, I’m not going to offer one,” I told her.
We found a quaint place right on Washington, where we waited for one of fifteen tables in a small dining room with exposed brick walls, and which smelled like my grandmother’s homemade meatballs and marinara. We started with the crisp give of fresh calamari, drizzled sharp with lemon juice and tangy with balsamic vinegar, dipped in hefty, still-steaming marinara. Crunchy, just-from-the-oven garlic bread slices topped with diced onions and tomatoes, pure olive oil, dashed with basil that might have, judging by the taste and scent, been picked only a few moments before from the owner’s backyard herb garden.
Our entrees came on plates steaming so thick and hearty we could have eaten the vapor, the sauce light and complementing—rather than overwhelming—pasta so distinctively cooked it could only have been handmade and only hours before, just the right combination of doughy and light, tiny tortellini pressed like their little-ear namesakes around chicken and artichoke, long linguine perfectly al dente. We consumed between us one of the best cabernet sauvignons I’ve ever drunk before we split a perfect tiramisu.
By the time we left we were warm and happy and tipsy. We walked out into that still-cold evening so close and comfortable we projected our own private bubble of intimacy, sealed off from the rest of the world by giggles and held hands and slurred chatting.
We found ourselves near the PATH station, across from which we stumbled into a quaint bar with a comfortable vibe and a DJ spinning a delirious remix of old-school Motown as filtered through guys like Z-Trip and Fatboy Slim, exuberant without being loud, vibrant without being intrusive. We weaved through to the bar, paused just a moment considering an order until the dude with the headphones and the turntable spun those singular, oh-so-recognizable notes that begin “Let’s Get It On,” and then Veronica’s hand was pulling mine. She led me onto the hardwood dance floor under the dim but multi-colored lights, spinning like a disco ball-produced laser-light show, and then she was up against me, her body so close, her whole body, and my whole body wanted her feeling of love. I wasn’t pushing, but come on, and we danced like electrons in a bond, barely touching but sharing nearly the same space, held together by ab-clenching, barroom gravitation, our bodies colliding and bumping and deflecting like hyper-charged particles in a super-collider. It was like we were building up potential energy, and I could only imagine the kinetic motion it would become.
But not then. Then we danced. Then the DJ spun and spun again, songs like meteors in an asteroid belt, slipping in and out of their orbits, teasing with a beat or a melody before another swooped in to take its place for a tantalizing moment before again retreating much as Veronica’s body against my own, hips slithering like the offer of an apple, a promise worth falling for.
As if I hadn’t already.
So we danced as the music spun and burst through moods like chemical reactions, changing moods almost as easily as the songs changed notes, through Motown and into funk before it went 180 into full-on Def Leppard rock and roll with a chorus the whole bar shouted, at which point Veronica pulled me close, elbow crooked hard around the back of my neck, and spoke, clearly and surely, into my ear:
“Take me home.”
Which I did.
Chapter Sixteen, in which we montage for a moment.
Because I think that would be appropriate here. We could start with that weekend: a movie would depict Veronica and I at the Cloisters and the Met, burgers and beer at Chumley’s on Belvedere and Barrow, and we would be laughing like we were having way too much fun because we very much were. That weekend was an even balance of fun outside and fun inside, because we got our City on before we got it on ourselves, shagging like it was the most urgent and important thing in the world, because isn’t it always? I saw her off at Penn Station, worked for a week, and then went back to Penn Station to catch the train back home the
following weekend, helping Veronica pack and relax before she left for school again.
The first night, we decided to stay in and watch a movie. It had just ended when Veronica excused herself, and Tom came home while I waited for Veronica to return.
“Dude,” Tom said. “What’s going on?”
“Just finished watching a movie with your sister. You?”
“Just some practice. We’re working out a few new covers, playing with some new stuff. Next gig’ll be comin’ up pretty soon.”
“You know I’ll be there.”
“You always are. So what, Ronnie duck out for a minute?”
“Refreshing our drinks.”
“Oh, good. So you got a minute,” he set down his guitar and sat next to me.
“Sure. What’s up.”
“You’ve got a sister, right?”
“What?” Tom knows my family, including my siblings, pretty well.
“Your sister.”
“What about her?”
“Just hypothetically, let me ask, what would you say if your sister and I started dating?”
“You and—are you? She didn’t—.”
“I said ‘hypothetically.’ Which tends to mean not actually occurring but as a possibility.”
“So you’re not?”
“No. But pretend, for a moment, we were.”
“Okay?”
“How would you feel about that?”
I thought about it a moment, and I said, “Well, I’d be happy for you, first, because she’s my sister and you’re my best friend, and that’d be pretty cool. I’d probably put the whole physical thing out of my head. But I’d kick your ass if you hurt her.”
Tom listened, nodded. “Good. As long as we understand each other. So, since you’re my best friend, and you’re now dating my sister, how about we just pretend I just said all that to you and we’ll leave it there, shall we?”
Meets Girl: A Novel Page 17