by Tia Williams
“The title of your autobiography,” quipped Billie.
“Put this on.” Jenna handed Elodie her May tee shirt.
“I adore May, but Jenna, your Virginia is showing.” She slid her sunglasses atop of her head. “So, you’ve pulled quite the disappearing act over the past couple months. Are you ready to discuss the fact that you’re in love with the devil’s spawn?”
“Who said anything about love?” Jenna could barely get the sentence out without smiling. “Fine, I’m so in love with him, I can’t even think straight.”
“Obviously,” said Billie. “You have a lit-from-within glow that’s usually only achieved with YSL Touche Eclat complexion highlighter.”
“You’re telling me that this kid is the Teacake to your Janie? The Taye Diggs to your Stella?” Elodie wrinkled her nose. “Come on.”
“You’ve dated younger guys!”
“Correction. I’ve slept with younger guys. I never said I didn’t enjoy the eighteen to twenty-five demo. They’re so eager and they still kiss.”
“Why do grown men stop kissing?” asked Billie. “It’s like, at thirty-two they just decide it’s beside the point.”
“Anyway, I can do it because I know how to bone and bounce. Do you want a relationship with someone you’re so emotionally and financially beyond? He’ll feel like your intern.”
“You can’t help who you fall in love with,” said Billie.
“Okay, how about the fact that she works with this kid?”
Jenna groaned. “I know how scandalous it is. It keeps me up at night.”
“If you get caught, it’d be so embarrassing. You’re a respected, esteemed editor. You’ve just rebuilt your career. You can’t throw everything away for this boy, just ‘cause he fucks you silly and looks like Michael B. Jordan. And even if he wasn’t on staff with you, he’s Darcy Vale’s child.”
“Darcy is Satan.” Billie was glad that Jenna had found love, but worried over who she’d found it with.
“If she finds out you’re boning her baby boy with reckless abandon, you’ll be finished in New York,” said Elodie.
“When you were up for that job at Harper’s Bazaar,” said Billie, “didn’t she have someone call the editor-in-chief and tell her you were a kleptomaniac?”
“To this day, Glenda Bailey holds onto her purse whenever I’m in the vicinity.” Jenna sighed.
“Back in your seats,” wailed the Australian voice. “Get ready for Miss Eladia’s five-year-old class performing a Masai dance to ‘Titanium.”
“Shoot me,” grumbled Elodie, slipping her sunglasses back over her eyes. “Jenna, while you’re doing this Eric thing, why don’t I find you some age-appropriate men from my OKCupid account? Adults you might have a future with?”
Jenna understood her friends’ concern, but this was annoying. “I’m not using Eric for great sex while I husband-hunt! You think I’d risk everything for an affair? Why is it so hard to believe that I’m in a real relationship with someone eighteen years younger? Men do this constantly.”
“Such a double standard,” Billie pointed out.
“We live in a patriarchal society,” answered Elodie, shrugging. “When a man’s with a younger girl, the power balance works. It seems more natural, because culturally, men are supposed to dominate. Hard to pull off that ‘it’s so big, Daddy’ dynamic when your boyfriend’s half your age.”
Jenna snorted. “Beg to differ with you, sis.”
“Billie, did I mention that they barely leave the house, because she can’t risk running into anyone who knows Darcy?”
“It’s true,” admitted Jenna. “My apartment is like our love bubble.”
“I just worry,” said Billie, “You deserve to be in a normal, non-bizarro world relationship.”
“I know,” said Jenna. “But being with him is…feel-good overload. I can take every maddening minute of the workweek, not getting a seat on the train, being broke, even the impossibility of our situation—because I know I get Eric at the end of the day. Guys, when he comes over, I barely let him leave the room without me. I cling to him like a pygmy marmoset.”
“That’s healthy,” muttered Elodie.
“I don’t know how he does it, because he is so young, but he loves me so perfectly. Like he was born with the Jenna handbook. And I…I can’t get enough.”
Billie was clutching her heart, moved by Jenna’s words. “Then nothing else matters. Figure out the Darcy thing and fight for him. But sweetie,” she said, reaching for Jenna’s hand, “we’re dancing around the obvious. You’re ready to settle down. You’re looking at the children in here with kidnappy desperation. Promise me you’ll talk to Eric about this.”
“I really don’t think…”
“Who knows, maybe he’s mature enough be a young husband and dad! Don’t dismiss the idea before you have a heart-to-heart with him.”
Jenna knew better than to kill her exciting new relationship with a recent college grad by musing on her biological clock. But Billie’s speech had invigorated her. When Billie, Jay and May were together, they looked like belonged to some fabulous little country with their own language and currency. It was the purest thing Jenna had ever seen. If the love was there, why couldn’t she have that with Eric?
“I forgot to tell you!” exclaimed Billie. “One of Jay’s colleague’s at Fordham, James Diaz, is looking for someone to teach a new Fashion Theory class. You’re always talking about how you miss teaching. And this would get you out of StyleZine and you and Eric would be liberated. Well, he’d still be thirteen, but at least you’d be out of the closet.”
“Really?” Jenna considered this. “It’s too early to leave now, because of my contract—but I’m intrigued.”
“Everyone get ready for Miss Sandra’s five-year-old jazz class, performing an acrobatic lyrical piece to ‘Call Me Maybe!’”
“Oh, that’s May’s class! My baby!” Billie began shooting pics and texting Jay, as her daughter led her class onto the stage in a rainbow-fringed leotard.
“Go May-May!” shouted Jenna.
“Werk, bitch!” hollered Elodie, to horrified stares from the row ahead of them. And then the Supermommy, the Cougar, and Diahann Carroll screamed so loud they were hoarse the next day.
Hours later, around three in the morning, Jenna and her friends were long asleep—but Eric and Tim, were partying. After waking up at 5am to shoot a funky Asian celeb makeup artist for The Perfect Find, and then editing in all day, and then networking at the Young Filmmakers Association’s holiday mixer, Eric should’ve been too exhausted to go out. But he wasn’t; he was exhilarated.
Yes, he woke up at the crack of dawn, but it was to work with his Jenna. Which was heaven. And the networking dinner had been a stale champagne-soaked, rubbery cheese plated geekpalooza, but he got to chill with industry-obsessed kids who spoke his language. Which felt like home. Plus, after the dinner, he sent off his last festival application, to Toronto Film Festival. Eric was on a high and didn’t want the day to end.
Only the city’s most badly behaved twenty-somethings had heard of Cake, a run-down room tucked underneath a turn-of-the-century bakery in Bushwick, which was one of New York’s sneakiest after-hours spots. There was no paparazzi, no VIP, no banquets, and no pictures allowed—only one sad, cigarette-butted Christmas wreath, some ratty velvet chairs, a bar, a stripper pole and opaque weed smoke. The crowd was schizophrenic in the sexiest possible way, a haven of Cool, where starlets, posh baby socialites, rappers, drug dealers, and the prettiest girls from tough neighborhoods easily comingled. Tonight, Zoe Kravitz was deejay-ing, an underage oil magnate’s daughter was swinging on a pole in her bra, and Eric and Tim were floating on a Hennessy haze.
The two of them sat on barstools facing the crowd, bobbing their heads to A$AP Rocky’s “Fucking Problems.” A$AP Rocky was doing the same thing in a corner surrounded by groupies, while a director filmed B-roll shots for the cornrowed rapper’s latest music video.
In front of the bar,
Tim’s now-serious girlfriend Carlita, was lazily dancing while also grilling Eric about her new favorite subject, Jenna.
“…so when she gonna hang out? And does she know Karl Lagerfield and Alexander Wang, like, personally?” Tonight, she was wearing tangerine lipstick and had switched her jet-black weave to a honey-streaked auburn.
“Stop referencing designers you only know from Rick Ross songs,” said Eric, taking two puffs from a blunt and passing it to Tim. He had no idea whose weed it was—someone had passed it down from the other side of the bar.
“You ain’t shit and God knows it.” She busted out a few body rolls. “Why can’t she hook me up with some designer shit? All I want are the Tom Ford shades Amber Rose wore to the VMAs!”
“All you want is Amber Rose,” joked Eric.
“Not true,” lied Carlita. “I ain’t ‘bout that bisexual life no more.”
“To my endless annoyance,” said Tim. “E, Jenna can’t get her anything?”
“And you wonder why I never bring her around you street urchins! You don’t know how to act.”
“Your boy think he fancy ‘cause he bagged a TV star,” she grumbled to Tim.
“E’s always been fancy. Fancy is his default.”
“Keep shitting on me like I’m invisible,” said Eric.
Tim palmed Carlita’s ample ass. “Go take a selfie, bae. Hashtag taken. Me and Eric need to have a board meeting.”
“’Kay,” she said, kissing him. “Aaaanyways, Eric, I just think it’s mad shady that you never bring Jenna around. Tim, talk some sense into this fool, I’m out.” Carlita grabbed one of her girls, who was being accosted by a dude with a feather tattooed on his bald head, and headed for the tiny dance floor.
“Carlita’s right,” said Tim. “How can Jenna think she knows you if she’s never really chilled with us?”
“She has chilled with you. You almost died over salad. I think she’s good.”
“That wasn’t real chilling. I had on an ascot. I mean, this. Like, doing shit we always do. My girl’s here—where’s yours? Why can’t she hang with us the way we do with Carlita? Or with our boys in the crib?”
“Because she’s forty years old. She has a 401K. She can’t go to the club with us. Or anywhere near your bedroom. What would she do? Where would she even sit? She’s gonna lay in your bed with Carlita, live-tweeting Love and Hip Hop while we watch basketball and smoke?”
“That’s not how it goes down.” Tim thought about this. “Actually, that’s exactly how it goes down. But what do you and Olivia Pope do that’s so different?”
“You’re not gonna keep calling her Olivia Pope.”
“Answer the question.”
“We don’t do anything. We can’t really leave her house.”
“See? You’re judging me, but you two are shut-ins. Over there like Grey Gardens.”
Eric snickered. “You’ve seen Grey Gardens?”
“You haven’t? That art direction was insane, bruh.”
“Anyway, yeah, we stay home, but it doesn’t involve X boxes and shit. She’s…classy. It’s classy staying home. Staying home, but in French.”
Tim snorted. “Whatever.”
Eric pulled a pack of cherry Now & Laters from his pocket and tore it open, popping two in his mouth. He handed one to Tim. “I haven’t eaten all day. I’m so hungry, I’m not even hungry anymore. I’m so hungry I’m full.”
Eric pointed over to A$AP Rocky, who was posted up in a banquette surrounded by a cadre of writhing, multi-ethnic women. His director, an older white gentleman who looked like he’d rather be spooning with his feminist essayist wife in their Upper West Side loft, was filming while standing on a cocktail table.
“This director is such a fail. Look, that girl with the crazy lashes has mannequin hands,” said Eric.
“Mannequin hands?”
“Yeah, she’s touching him with Barbie hands.. They don’t move, they’re not fluid. It’s like she’s doing a stop-and-frisk.”
James Cameron went up to every extra on the set of Titanic and gave them a name and a backstory, thought Eric. And this is why.
“You stay noticing the most random shit,” said Tim. “She’s wearing wedges. I hate women in wedges. Put on some fucking heels and grow up.”
“You want a girl in silver bra to grow up.”
“She’s bad, though. In an EBT way. You know I love a slightly deranged project chick.”
“Slightly deranged? Your last girl bedazzled her house arrest anklet,” said Eric, shaking his head. “I’ve never met a bougier person more desperate to be street.”
“I’m wearing Purple Label twill pants; I have zero desire to be street. I just need my women to be. The sex is better. Fancy bitches just lay there. The more hood she is—the crazier she is—the better. I wanna consort with a girl who has a toxic relationship with her baby daddy and an undiagnosed perso nality disorder.”
“Carlita’s the queen of that, so Merry Christmas.”
Tim surveyed the room. “Look at all these lovely international floozies, in town for the holidays. And I’m in a relationship. But whatever yo, I’m committed to Carlita. It’s impossible to stay away. I think it’s ‘cause she’s the proud owner of the most flexible legs in the continental U.S. One of the benefits of dating a stripper. It’s like fucking one of those bendy pool noodles.”
“Why would you wanna fuck one of those?”
“Can Jenna put her legs behind her neck?”
Eric crunched on a Now & Later. “No comment. No.”
“No, she can’t? Or no, you don’t wanna talk about it?”
“No, it’s not up for discussion.”
“We can’t discuss Jenna’s legs? They’re not holy.” Tim was confused. This was how they talked about girls, what made her so different? “Why’re you so pussy-whipped, though?”
“I’m man enough to say I’m pussy-whipped,” said Eric. “If she showed up here, snapped her fingers and was like, ‘E, it’s time to go,’ I’d ask no questions and dead ass bounce, son. I am not ashamed.”
Tim shot him a blank stare. “I was not ready for that level of emotional transparency.”
“You need therapy.”
“Man listen, I gotta tell you, I’m floored that your woman was born in the Seventies. E, your girlfriend graduated high school in the early Nineties. Wutang is not old school to this broad.”
“Halle Berry and J. Lo are older than her.”
“And they’re bad. So is Olivia Pope, don’t get me wrong.”
“Jenna.”
Tim made an impatient noise. “You’re acting like Jenna’s the love of your life. And yet you’re keeping her from me. Me. I’m hurt.”
“What motive would I have to do this? Stop being so sensitive, you’re ruining my chill.”
“I know why. You think that if she sees you around me, it’ll expose how juvenile you really are. You can pretend to be all slick in the office, and it’s cool, ‘cause she doesn’t know that we engage in terrible rap battles, and get into actual beef over who’d get to smash Storm if we were X-Men. She doesn’t know we can spend an entire afternoon insulting each other’s families in the most degrading way. Or that we only stopped cyber-bullying Mr. Bing from AP Biology last year.”
“Yo, if you ever tell Jenna any of that, I swear…”
“How’d you get her, anyway? And how are you gonna keep her? You know how old dudes roll in this city. Bentleys and platinum cards. All you have are student loans and a robust sneaker collection. Help me understand.”
“It’ wasn’t about ‘getting’ her. We just…had to be together. Like, we had no choice. I can’t explain it.”
Tim burst out laughing. “What do you think this is, The Notebook? Whatever, do you. But I can’t cosign this Jenna thing until I spend at least an hour of Timmy time with her.”
“You will,” said Eric, taking two deep puffs and passing the blunt to Tim. “Just…I gotta think of a scenario where it feels natural for the three of us to be in
the same room.”
“Carlita has to be there.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Y’all are due to break up soon anyway.”
Tim gnawed on a fingernail. “I’m entertaining the thought of wifing her permanently. She might be the one. She got me to go to church.”
“Church? Word? You burst into flames?”
“I went last Sunday,” he said, ignoring Eric’s comment. “She goes to one of those super-churches. The reverend drove a Bugatti, like your stepdad use to.”
Eric wrinkled his nose at the mention of his ex-stepdad, who he loathed. “All those reverends should be relegated to lives of infinite purposelessness. You’re a spiritual leader, not Young Jeezy.”
“Point is, if Carlita could introduce my amoral ass to her reverend, then you can do the same with Olivia Pope.”
Tim was right. But Eric had no idea how to integrate Jenna into his life. The idea of her, with her balletic hand gestures and prissy curls, sitting between him and Tim at that disreputable club, was both hilarious and impossible.
He couldn’t imagine Jenna in Tim’s bedroom. Or having patience for his New York party scene. Or hanging with his broke film school friends on somebody’s terrible Salvation Army furniture, attacking Kickstarter and drinking away the terror of an elite degree with no prospects. He couldn’t see Jenna anywhere in his life but with him.
That wasn’t normal, was it?
Whatever, he didn’t care. He and Jenna had their own private nirvana and that’s all he needed.
“That director needs my help,” Eric said, taking one last hit of the blunt and ending the conversation. He headed across the room to introduce himself.
CHAPTER 21
Jenna always looked forward to the moment Eric stepped into her apartment. After holding herself back at work, pretending—it was like a sugar addict waiting outside of Krispy Kreme for hours, counting the minutes until it opened, and then having the owner sweep open the door and say, “Have at it! Donut yourself to death!”
But when Jenna buzzed Eric up that Saturday night in late February, he took her breath away. He was standing there with a shiny maroon sleeping bag over one shoulder, and a shopping bag in his hand.