Reality Check

by Leslie Carroll

  Jack flew up after work on Thursday so we could spend more time together before the telecast of episode eight. “This is your day, Liz,” he told me Friday morning. “Whatever you want to do, we’ll do.”

  I looked at him kind of sideways. “Are you sure?”

  “Totally.”

  “Then let’s go Alphabet Shopping,” I said.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “I made it up a few years ago, but I’ve never actually done it. Alphabet Shopping is when you go from store to store, A through Z. To make the sport more challenging, you can narrow down the merchandise categories. For example, fine jewelry: Asprey, Bulgari, Cartier . . . did you want something? A nasty cigar for example with a sterling silver thingy to clip the end off? We’ll head to Davidoff.”

  Jack pretended to look queasy. “I know I told you we could do anything you want, but does it have to be jewelry? You’ll bankrupt me.”

  “I didn’t say we were going to buy anything,” I teased. “Just shop for it. There’s a difference.”

  He smiled. “I think it’s more of a technicality.”

  “Besides,” I added, “who said anything about my expecting you to take out your wallet?”

  “You’re on unemployment,” he reminded me.

  “W is for window shopping,” I replied. “Okay then, I’ve got another category. With something for you in every store. Ritzy Italian designers: Armani, Bottega Veneta, Cavalli—those first three alone are within a few blocks from one another on Madison Avenue. I’ve always imagined going into Giorgio Armani, even to pretend I can afford to dress like Sharon Stone or Nora Roberts.”

  “Nora who? I know who Julia Roberts is.” He drew me to him and kissed me on the nose. “Are you sure we can’t just watch TV?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not really. There’s a masters tournament on at four P.M.”

  “I thought you said this was my day.”

  Jack sighed and gave me a little squeeze. “Okay, if that’s what you really want, Liz, let’s hit the pavement.”

  How can you not fall in love with a man who will— however reluctantly—give up watching golf to indulge your shopping fantasies?

  We entered the Armani boutique and I asked Jack whether he minded if I tried something on. He agreed, as long as he got to choose the outfit. I had my eyes on an ultrachic black pants suit. Jack preferred a beaded cocktail dress with a plunging neckline and an asymmetrical hem. We compromised on both. I was tickled pink that he was being such a good sport. He really was a sweetheart.

  When I emerged from the dressing room in the pants suit and a whisper-thin cashmere camisole, Jack drew in his breath. “You look . . . absolutely stunning,” he said. “You could go anywhere in that . . . except one place.” He placed his hands on my hips and pulled me to him so that, from where he sat, my breasts were nuzzling distance from his face. “Bed,” he murmured into my chest. I could feel his warm breath filter through the cashmere to my cleavage.

  “Gee, you really know what to say to a girl to make her get undressed,” I teased, leaning over to nibble on his lip. I spun away and slipped back into the dressing room, returning to him a few minutes later in the cocktail dress. I started to laugh at his expression. “I never thought people’s jaws really dropped. Until now, I assumed it was just a figure of speech.”

  “Looking at you, I’ve figured it all out,” Jack said. “I don’t know why guys put up such a fuss about going shopping with their women. I’ve just decided that it certainly isn’t a waste of an afternoon to accompany my love on an excursion where she gets dressed and undressed and parades her body around in front of me, just for my approval.”

  “God, I love you, Jack.” The words just flew out of my mouth.

  His expression changed and he looked at me somewhat soberly. “Do you realize that’s the first time you ever said that to me?”

  “Wow. You’re right.” I felt myself grow equally serious.

  “How does it make you feel, Liz?”

  “Happy. Scared.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s hard to be the first one to say the word. I mean I just blurted it out; it wasn’t an earnest take-your-hands-in-mine-and-look-deeply-into-your-eyes ‘I love you, Jack.’ But I certainly did say The Word. And yet it’s still scary because, for all I know, you’re not emotionally there yet.”

  Jack clasped my hands in his and looked me squarely in the eye. “Do you love me because I was willing to play your goofy shopping game, or . . . ?”

  “I love you because you make me glad to be alive and so happy to be around you. I love you because you have a huge heart and an adventurous spirit. I love you because you’re considerate of my feelings, even when I’ll admit that on certain occasions they may not be entirely rational.”

  “Girl logic.”

  “Okay, girl logic,” I laughed. “I love you because I find myself grinning from ear to ear every time I think of you, and one of the reasons I’m grinning is because you put that grin on my face.” I was even grinning as I spoke the words.

  “I love you, Liz Pemberley,” Jack said softly. He brought our joined hands to his lips and kissed my knuckles.

  “Wow,” I breathed. I lifted my chin so our lips could meet in a kiss.

  “You’re very good at that,” Jack said, when we broke the embrace.

  I smiled. “It takes two,” I whispered. I kissed him again, then went back into the dressing room and put my own clothes back on. When I emerged, I started to rush over to hug Jack, who was waiting for me near the center of the store, and found myself momentarily distracted by a familiar head of highlighted blond hair. “Oh, shit,” I hissed, and grabbed Jack’s arm.

  “What the hell is the matter with you, Liz?”

  I pointed at the blond man fingering cashmere blend T-shirts. “It’s Rick Byron. We’ll never sneak past without his noticing us. We’d better hide before he sees us together!” I pulled Jack into an alcove just beyond the menswear and tried the door handle of the closest dressing room. It was locked. “Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered. “This is the last thing we need.” I realized I was still holding the garments I had tried on. There weren’t many people in the store. At any second Rick might turn around and spot us. The dressing room door opened and the gentleman who had occupied it walked past us, giving me a funny look. I hoped he wouldn’t alert the staff to the anxious-looking woman lurking there. I poked my head around the corner to see what Rick was up to. He had an armload of garments and was headed our way.

  “He’s coming toward us,” I whispered to Jack.

  Jack pulled me into the dressing room with him. He had lodged one foot in the doorway as the suspicious previous occupant was leaving. The door closed behind us.

  I looked around and started to giggle. Jack gently placed his palm over my mouth which only made me want to laugh harder, until I ended up with the hiccups. I pointed at our reflections. “Mi-rrors!” I hiccuped. “So-rry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Jack asked.

  “My hi-hiccups. Oops.”

  “Hold your breath and swallow,” Jack said softly in my ear. Then he darted his tongue in there and I was a goner. Not only couldn’t I stop the hiccups, but he had just gotten me extraordinarily aroused. “Get undressed,” he whispered. “Don’t look incredulous. That’s what dressing rooms are for!”

  I stifled another giggle. The hiccups were almost gone. “Are you sure that door’s locked?”

  Jack went over and tested the handle. “It seems to lock from the outside as soon as it closes. But there’s an additional button here.” He depressed it. By the time he returned to the camel-colored upholstered bench, I was down to my bra and panties.

  He looked at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Everything,” he said.

  “You too, then.”

  Jack removed every stitch of clothing and maneuvered the bench to the center of the room. We were surrounded on nearly all sides by illuminated mirrors. “I don’t think I�
��ve ever made love under such flattering lighting,” I joked.

  “Shh.” Seating himself, Jack touched a finger to my lips and with his free hand, pulled me onto his lap. Our lips and tongues met in a deliciously rapturous kiss.

  I was ready for him, enveloping him, taking him inside me. I put my arms around Jack’s neck and held him as close as I could.

  “Look at us,” Jack encouraged me as I rode him, rocking my hips slowly to take him deeper inside me. He cupped my breasts, teasing my nipples, then sucking them; his warm breath felt like a life force rippling through me.

  I watched our images in the mirrors, admiring the way our bodies entwined, the way our rhythms became perfectly synchronized, the speed and intensity of our lovemaking increasing. I arched my back and Jack buried his face in my breasts as we came together, my softness muffling his sexual ecstasy; throwing my head back, I emitted a silent scream of pleasure. For several minutes we remained intertwined on the bench, holding one another. I nuzzled the side of Jack’s neck and kissed away a sweaty rivulet.

  “It smells like sex in here,” Jack commented, as we began to get dressed.

  I took a bottle of cologne from my purse and started to spritz it around the room.

  Jack started to laugh. “This is supposed to be a men’s dressing room.”

  “So sue me,” I said, replacing the bottle of Trésor in my bag. I sniffed the air. “Well, at least it somewhat masks the unmistakable. Do you think Rick Byron is gone by now?”

  “Either that or he’s been trying to listen in at the keyhole.” Jack poked his head out the door.

  “There isn’t a keyhole . . . is there?”

  Jack looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Figure of speech.” He stepped out of the dressing room. “The coast appears to be clear.” He extended his hand and motioned for me to precede him out of the store.

  I grinned at him when we reached the pavement. “Jack, do you think if we could see each other every day if we wanted to, instead of living in separate cities, that we wouldn’t be so tempted to make up for lost time?”

  “Like what we just did back there?”

  I nodded.

  Jack stopped walking and traced a fingertip along the length of my cheek. “I find myself wanting you all the time, Liz.”

  “Wow,” I breathed. “I feel the same way, you know. . . . I guess you’ve already figured that out. And thank you for being such a sport and indulging my shopping fantasy.”

  Jack squeezed my hand. “The Armanis were spectacular on you . . . but when all is said and done, I think you look even better naked.”

  27/

  Animal Husbandry

  Tensions were high in the studio on Sunday evening. Milo and Double-E weren’t pulling any punches on their mutual dislike and disgust, each calling the other a misogynist. In the hair and makeup room Rosalie wouldn’t shut up about the long-gone Luke, claiming that one thing Jewish girls and Native Americans have in common are reservations. “Haven’t you heard that old joke about us? That’s what we make for dinner,” she turned and said to Jack, by way of explanation. Then she seemed to set her sights on him, which made me a little nervous. “What a catch you’d make,” she said, dilating her pupils. “I mean you’re a chef. A girl would never need to enter the kitchen.”

  “Thanks, Rosalie, but I need a woman who will cook alongside me. Even if it’s only slicing lemons.”

  I cracked up when I heard this, almost doing a spit take with the swig of seltzer I’d just taken. Gladiola whacked me on the back.

  “I wasn’t choking!” I told her.

  “Good. And don’t mess up your makeup either,” she warned good-naturedly. The skunklike streak of orange (which she’d later peroxided to a platinum white), that had been part of her hairdo a few weeks ago was now gone, in favor of a meticulously rendered American flag pattern all over her bleached, cropped hair.

  Candy was glum. Ordinarily, she was the life of the party, making off-color jokes and creating a rambunctious atmosphere, which usually did much to alleviate the competitive tensions we contestants were feeling just prior to the telecast. This evening she was dressed in a leopard print catsuit with matching knee-high boots. Underneath the sleek jumpsuit, which was un-snapped practically to her navel, she wore a black lace bra.

  “That’s real ‘prime time,’ ” I kidded her, when we were alone in our dressing room.

  “You’re confusing me with someone who cares,” she shot back. “Look, Liz, I got a confession to make, and I figured it would help you if I said something about it now, in case you got a strategy about winning or something. ’Cause I don’t care no more.”

  I was intrigued. “What’s your confession?”

  “I’m gonna bail tonight. I been thinkin’ about it ever since Allegra went home.” Candy started to tear up.

  “Hey, hey,” I consoled, offering her a tissue. “You don’t want to spoil your mascara.” I put my arm around her shoulder.

  “It’s like, it don’t mean anything anymore,” she sniffled. “Being here. I mean now that Allegra is three thousand miles away. I could try to stick it out ’til the show’s over, ’cause God knows, winning the money would be great . . . but to be honest, I’ve told so many stories out of school that I got an anonymous letter a few days ago telling me maybe I should take a nice trip out of town for a while. So what am I still here for? To get measured for a coffin? For some dumb-ass prize money that I probably wouldn’t-a won to begin with? For my design business? Shit, we’ve got the Internet. And I can do my drafting anywhere. I don’t need to be in my Bay Ridge walk-up to do it. So I’m gonna bail. Get myself voted off before I get bumped off. Take the money I’ve gotten up to now and move in with Allegra in Benedict Canyon. That’s near Hollywood, you know,” she informed me. “Now I can even introduce my Stripwear to Frederick’s in person,” she added brightly.

  “So what are you planning to do this evening that will pretty much guarantee that you’ll get kicked off the show?”

  Candy paused in the middle of lining her lower lip. She smiled. “A girl’s gotta retain a little mystery, doesn’t she?”

  As we headed down the hall to the set, Rick stepped out of his dressing room and grabbed my arm, pulling me inside the door. “What’s the matter, Liz? Why aren’t you returning my phone calls?” he asked me.

  “Because I think they’re inappropriate, under the circumstances,” I replied.

  “And which circumstances are those?” He was practically pouting.

  “One, it compromises our mutual and individual integrity while we’re doing the show. Two, it seems to me you’re already involved with someone. If the tabloids are correct, anyway.”

  “Never mind about my personal life. Are you seeing someone?”

  “C’mon Rick. We’ve got a show to do.” I opened the door of his dressing room and started down the hall.

  He practically scampered behind me, speaking under his breath. “You know, I’ve got an incredible crush on you, Liz. But I’m not sure I like you.”

  I turned back to him and smiled. “You’ll get over it.”

  “Which one? Or do you mean both things?”

  “Figure it out,” I answered enigmatically.

  No one much liked Double-E DuPree, but you had to admit that he was a character. On tonight’s episode he talked about seducing his son’s girlfriend and having the woman turn the tables on him by telling him that she’d laid down a bet with DuPree’s son that his dad would try to make time with her—a bet which she told Double-E she’d just won, obviously—leaving him high and dry with the check in a high-class see-and-be-seen kind of restaurant in New Orleans. Double-E chuckled when he added that he and his son hadn’t spoken since then.

  “Gee, Double-E, isn’t life kind of short for that?” Rick Byron asked. “I mean we’re talking about your only son here, dude.”

  Rosalie Rothbaum shared the unfortunate experience of what happened when a date dared her to give him a blowjob on Coney Island’s famous Cyclone roll
ercoaster. “The doctors in the emergency room couldn’t stop laughing.”

  Milo, a perennial crowd favorite, who carried his costumed Chihuahua on his lap at every broadcast, told America about a neighbor who he’d seen nearly every day walking a Russian wolfhound. “They were both exquisite animals,” Milo said of the canine and its owner. “I always made sure to admire his dog. And one day, Serge asked me to come up to his apartment for a cup of tea. He said he had something very important to say to me. And we had the loveliest afternoon. We listened to Brahms and we talked about books— we both love James Michener—and he was resting his arm over my shoulder the whole time. So, finally, I got up the courage to ask what made him ultimately invite me to his place, what was it he wanted to tell me.” There was a long silence. “And he said he needed to be sure that he and I were simpatico before he asked me, because it was very important to him and to Vronksy.”

  “Vronsky?” Rick asked Milo.

  “The wolfhound,” Milo said sadly. “Serge said he was going off to see his lover in St. Louis for two weeks and needed someone he could trust to dog-sit. I was devastated.”

  Rick looked genuinely sympathetic. “So what happened?”

  “Shnook that I am, I said yes. Do you have any idea how much a Russian wolfhound can eat?”

  Jack talked about the trip he took with a former girlfriend to Las Vegas. This was Monica the cultural anthropologist who had done her Ph.D. thesis on the history of fairytales: “Goldilocks and her Forbears.” He’d given her his credit card to “buy something nice for herself.” The “something nice” she bought turned out to be a couple of buckets of hundred-dollar chips, which went right back to the house in games of roulette and blackjack. “She couldn’t just buy a dress and some accessories, like a normal woman,” he bemoaned.