“Your script,” I suddenly heard from behind me in a thick French accent, “looks like crap!”
I froze.
“Shitfuck!” Ralph said. “You gave me a heart attack!”
I turned around. It was Tom.
“Sorry,” he said, sheepish.
“Funny,” I said, trying to remain cool. But, I noticed immediately, Tom’s presence made my blood warm as if someone had just turned up the gas. I turned back to the table and finished off a “Happy.” But now my hand was shaking and the tail of the y looked more like an unraveling lasso.
“I didn’t think my French accent was that good,” Tom said.
“Good enough,” Ralph said as he winked at me and walked away. I felt a moment of panic. Don’t leave me alone with him! What will we say?
“So.” Tom leaned on the edge of the table and peered straight down at my handiwork. My palms were wet against the pastry bag, which I was gripping too tightly. This was hopeless. I put it down and made a big deal out of stretching out my back.
“You’re from here, right?” he said.
“Born and bred.”
“That’s cool.”
“You’re from Ohio?”
“Iowa.”
“Right. Sorry. So you must be having major culture shock.”
“It’s pretty intense. Especially because I don’t really know anyone here.”
“That must be hard.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty much skating my wing. Take the subway home to Queens. Come back here in the morning. I spent Saturday wandering around the city but it’s not so fun when you’re by yourself.”
Was he suggesting something? I looked into his bright blue eyes and his little twitch of a mischievous smile. Something so adorable, how the top of his cherry red lips rose like delicate twin peaks. And here he was opening up to me. The poor guy . . . alone in the big city. My services were needed! “Would you like me to show you around some?”
“That’d be great.”
“Okay. So . . . is there a good time for you . . . when you want to do it?”
He shrugged. “Today?”
“Okay.”
“Great. So . . .” He nodded. “Later!” He walked away looking sort of cheerily self-conscious. Was he nervous around me? Was it possible?
Maybe I didn’t need to quit school quite yet.
As we walked up Sixth Avenue, I noticed that even though we’d changed out of our chef’s uniforms, we were still dressed identically, as it happened, in blue jeans and white T-shirts. Though I was wearing a pair of my favorite sneakers—bloodred Pumas with gold laces—and he was in black work boots. I found that very sexy, to be dressed the same, though I wasn’t sure if he did, so I didn’t point it out.
It was a beautiful, sunny day and I wanted him to appreciate how gorgeous the city could be even if I was sick of it, so I led him north to Central Park. When we passed the Plaza Hotel, I confessed my secret wish. “I’d love to stay in a room facing the park and order room service for dinner and then order room service for a midnight snack and then order room service for breakfast . . .”
“With so many great restaurants around?”
“I love being served food on a tray. With mini salt and pepper shakers. And those chrome covers they put on the dishes to keep the food warm. And an individual-sized pot of coffee.”
“And the Saran Wrap on the creamer so it won’t spill when they wheel it down the hall . . .”
“Are you making fun of my fantasy?”
“No way I’d stay in the room. Too much to look at on the streets.”
“I’ve had enough of the streets. Give me a nice, cozy room any day.”
“With servants at your beck and call?”
“Exactly. I just want to be pampered.”
We strolled past the lineup of horse-drawn carriages for tourists. Tom took in a deep breath. “Now that’s a good smell.”
“Horse manure?”
“Yep!”
“You like that?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Reminds me of home.”
I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I was. I grew up in one of those towns with one main street with a grocery store, a diner, a gas station, and a shuttered-up shoe store.”
“Sounds kind of wonderful.”
“Kind of boring. Blink your eyes and you miss it. That’s why this here is totally amazing to me.”
“It’s hard to imagine how it must seem to someone who isn’t from here. Sometimes I wish I could experience it as a tourist,” I said, eyeing an elderly couple stepping up into one of the carriages.
“You want to take a ride?”
“Way too expensive. And better to walk.” We took a path that wound around the lake. “So where are you living in Queens?”
“Astoria. Been there?”
Astoria’s a fairly decent residential area in Queens with a big Greek population and all the fresh feta cheese you could want. I’d been in Queens exactly twice in my life. The first time, it was to visit a strip club where Coco worked. Tom didn’t need to know about that. So I told him about the second time. “Years ago, to visit a friend of my mom’s.” She was dying of AIDS. I decided not to mention that either. Coco had dragged me along, and I didn’t want to go. My most vivid memory was of her friend lying in bed looking like a corpse. “I remember having this incredible baklava, with this thick layer of custard.” I also remembered the stomachache I had because it was so damn filling. We’d gotten it on our walk back to the subway and ate it in the station as we waited for the train, as if we needed a quick fix that life could still be sweet.
“Yeah, that stuff is good. Filo dough. A pain in the ass to work with.”
“So good, though. Dripping with honey . . .”
“So you’ve lived here,” Tom asked, “all your life?”
“Yep.”
“That’s cool. Someday maybe I’ll live in Manhattan.”
“So you plan to stay on after you’re done with school?”
“Yeah, this is the place for me.”
Didn’t he want to whisk me away from the big bad city, move back to Iowa (or was it Ohio?) to Main Street where we could open a bakery café?
Exactly how bad were his finances?
Astoria was not a good sign. But maybe there was a supportive relative ready to help finance his dream restaurant. An inheritance waiting to happen. You never knew.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’m looking around for a job. So if you hear of anything . . .”
“While you’re in school?”
“I’m impatient. I want to learn everything now.”
“Won’t it be exhausting working while you’re going to school?”
And wouldn’t that take away from our time to have fun together?
“Yeah, well, tuition is a killer and my parents are stretched to the limit . . .”
It seemed premature for me to say that I didn’t want him to get a job because I was already planning my life around him. So instead, I suggested we take a seat on a bench just outside the Sheep Meadow. The huge lawn was heavily sprinkled with half-naked people soaking up the last rays of sun before fall turned into winter. The high-rises on Fifty-ninth Street loomed over the trees of Central Park. It was a beautiful sight except for the fact that Jack’s apartment was on the sixteenth floor of one of those buildings. I’d looked down on this very spot a few times from his balcony.
“Can you believe sheep used to graze here?” I said idiotically. “And it wasn’t really that long ago. I mean, we’re talking a hundred years, and everything has totally changed. There’s this wonderful museum, the New York Historical Society. I should take you. I once saw these totally amazing photos of the Lower East Side from the 1800s. . . .”
Did he think I was a nerd, talking about taking him to a museum? He was a Healthy American Male. He wanted to get stoned, go to clubs, and have sex with strangers, right? I looked at him. We were sitting quite close to each other.
>
“You know where I really want to go?” he said.
“Where?”
“The restaurant supply stores. Down in the Bowery.”
“Oh, my god!” I put my hand on his arm, then took it away because he glanced down at it. “I love the restaurant supply stores! I have this thing about stainless steel!”
“All those shiny new appliances . . .”
“You want to go this weekend?”
“I’d love to.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Great.”
We sat back. Let the sun shine on our faces. Grew quiet. Now the sides of our arms were touching slightly, but I wasn’t sure if it was by accident. I didn’t move so we wouldn’t lose contact. Would he put his arm around my shoulder? It was a sweet kind of torture to sit there feeling the warmth of his arm, wondering if this proximity meant something. Or was I just a cooking school buddy? Good for ogling napkin dispensers and sauté pans.
He nodded towards a new cut on my left index finger. This time a mushy tomato had made my knife slip.
“It’s nothing.”
“You should get a Band-Aid on that, or it might get infected.”
“I had one, but it fell off.”
“Actually, I think I have one . . .”
He took out his wallet and started to look through.
“That’s okay, really, I have some at home.”
“Where do you live?”
“About ten blocks away.”
“Really?” He pulled out a Band-Aid, somewhat scuffed but still sealed, and asked, “Can I see it?”
“My apartment?”
“Yeah. I haven’t actually been in anyone’s apartment since moving here.”
Good. Then he hadn’t been to Tara’s. “Oh. Well . . .” Would Coco be home? “It’s a real mess.”
“I don’t care.”
He peeled open the Band-Aid. I held out my finger. He wrapped it around the cut and pressed gently but firmly on my skin. A thrill zinged my body.
“So what line of work are your parents in?” he asked.
“My father’s a lawyer. My mother is a dancer. What about yours?”
“My dad’s a plumber.”
“Really?” Coco liked to say sex is all about plumbing—so why does everyone make such a big deal out of it? “And your mother?”
“My mother never worked at a job. I guess she’s what you’d call a homemaker.”
“That sounds so lovely. Did she bake you cookies all the time? And forbid you to get piercings and tattoos? And ground you for staying out past curfew? Did she actually look at your report cards to see what grades you got?”
“Yeah, and worry incessantly that I’d get hit by a car or drown in the lake or have too much fun because she wasn’t having any because she was just spending all her time worrying about her kids and cleaning out the bathroom and watching Oprah.”
“That’s just the kind of mom I always wanted.”
I expected him to contradict me, but he got this tender look on his face. “She’s pretty great. That woman made meals for the family—and I’ve got three brothers—she made us three meals a day every day, and let me tell you, we were big eaters. Matter of fact, I’d say she’s the one I got my cooking skills from.”
“For me it was my grandma.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“We used to bake together every Saturday night.” I didn’t really want to go into it. How I basically grew up with her because Coco was on the road so much. But those Saturday night treats were a happy memory. We’d take whatever we made to the living room, gorge on it while it was still warm, and watch The Facts of Life, T.J. Hooker, Comic Strip Live . . . It was from Grandma that I learned to sift flour, crack eggs with one hand, and melt chocolate in a double boiler. She was the one who waved a dark little glass bottle under my nose and put me under the spell of vanilla, the most potent perfume in the world.
“You were an only child?”
“Uh-huh. Where do you fall age-wise?”
“Youngest.”
I liked the idea of him being a youngest. “Did they always beat up on you?”
“My mom could probably qualify as an emergency room nurse.”
“I bet she entered contests that were in women’s magazines, right? And collected points on Betty Crocker cake mix boxes so you could send away for free things, and clipped coupons. I used to clip coupons. Those little dotted lines used to call out to me—Cut me! Cut me!”
“She had a folder in the kitchen drawer that she’d file ’em in.”
“With a picture of a cow on it?”
“Um, I think a kitten.”
“My coupons always ended up in the garbage. The little grocery on our corner wouldn’t take ’em. We had a Food Emporium a few blocks away, but the aisles were so skinny and the lines were so long you always came home in a bad mood. I still remember the first suburban grocery store I was ever in. A friend of my mom’s had a car, and she offered to drive us to a Pathmark in Jersey City to stock up. I was so excited. Before we went, I sat down at the kitchen table and cut out almost every coupon in the supplement and stuck ’em in my purse and it was like a half hour drive once you got through the tunnel. When we pulled into the parking lot, I felt like I’d discovered the Promised Land.”
“Wide aisles. Better selection. Jumbo sizes.”
“All those things were good. But the most exciting thing was a surprise.”
“And that was?”
I grasped his arm. It was firmer than Ian’s. He had real muscles. “ Double coupons.”
Tom laughed. “You’re funny.”
He glanced down at my hand. Maybe he just didn’t want me to touch him. I took it off. He looked at me very earnestly and swallowed.
“Living in the suburbs is not worth double coupons,” he said. “City people are much more interesting. Like having a dancer for a mother. I can’t even imagine . . .”
That was for sure.
“Where did she perform?”
“Oh . . . different places.”
“She had aspirations,” he said. “She wanted to do something artistic. She had something to think about other than you. And I bet she takes really good care of herself. My mom thinks whole-wheat flour is something fancy people eat, and she never exercises. I bet your mom still looks great, right?”
“Yeah.” He definitely wasn’t coming over. “She looks okay.”
The sun was going down and it was getting chilly. We made our way out of the park to Fifty-ninth Street. I didn’t say anything about the concept of his seeing where I lived, just sort of pretended he’d never asked and herded him in a westerly direction to his subway stop. When we got there, we stopped at the top of the stairs leading down to the station. “Well, here you are!”
“Here I am.”
“Thanks for the Band-Aid.”
“Anytime.”
“See ya.” I watched him descend into the subway, then headed home. When I stopped at the corner for the light, I pressed the Band-Aid against my lips and smelled the plastic. I didn’t like to wear Band-Aids; I always felt like they suffocated my skin. But this one, I was leaving on.
chapter thirteen
w hen they invented “Take Your Daughter to Work Day,” I don’t think they were thinking of moms who worked in strip joints. I’ll never forget the first time I visited Coco at the Platinum Club. I was seven years old, but it’s one of the most vivid memories from my childhood.
The Platinum Club was a new “upscale” place that catered to the more “genteel” customers who resided in or decided to seek their entertainment in Queens. Sometimes Coco stayed with us and slept on the couch, but she also shared a place with another dancer near the club so she wouldn’t have to take a cab across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge in the middle of the night to get home. Grandma was the one who helped me with my homework and tucked me in at night. But one week she was away at some teacher’s convention and the woman who was staying with me had some sort of emergency, so Coc
o ended up taking me with.
I was really excited to finally have the chance to see where she worked and exactly what she did. I knew it had to do with dancing. And taking some of her clothes off in front of men. I was pretty sure she let them see her breasts. I was so used to seeing her breasts at home, I didn’t think that was a big deal. So I felt prepared, even though Coco didn’t seem very happy about having to take me along.
We took the subway and walked a few blocks in a neighborhood that was mostly crummy, small office buildings and warehouses. I thought it was all surprisingly cruddy considering people went there to have fun. From the outside, the building—with THE PLATINUM CLUB written in silver script on a black awning—looked like a big black box. No windows. Really ugly.
But when I followed her inside, it was spectacular as a really good dream. Everything was glass and mirrors. The walls were painted silver. The carpet was gold. Whoever owned this place—they had to be rich! And everyone was so nice to me. The woman at the cash register with the long red fingernails. “Is that your daughter?” she asked my mom. “She’s so cute!” The woman selling cigars and cigarettes. She leaned on a glass case that curved around her like a horseshoe. Her metal bracelets clanked against the surface. The cigars looked like Grandma’s pastels lined up so neatly in the box, except of course they were all brown. That woman didn’t say anything, just smiled. There was something about her honey blond hair—the way she got it to flip up around her shoulders—it made me want to keep looking at her.
It was frustrating, though, because my mother was rushing me through, and my head was doing the twist trying to take it all in. We passed an Asian woman who was sitting in a closet behind a half door that reached her cleavage. What did she do? “Hi, honey,” she said, and laughed. What was so funny? Her incredibly plump lips were dark red and she had acne scars on her cheek.
“Let’s go.” Coco urged me on. “I’ve gotta get changed.”
I glanced to my left through a doorway as my mom pulled my hand. It seemed to be a restaurant with white tablecloths and gold drapes. To the right was a white neon sign with fancy white script that said RESTROOMS. The sign was so inviting, it seemed like there had to be something extra special happening in there, not just peeing. Straight ahead were two men in black tuxedos. They didn’t smile. We went past them through double doors under white neon script that said SHOWROOM. Once inside, I tripped on a step down that had little lights on the edge so you wouldn’t trip.
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