We navigate down the opulent red staircase, under the unreal chandelier, and out across the plaza to Oscar’s waiting car. I slide into the comfortable black leather backseat and think it must be nice to travel in style all the time.
“Where to now?” his chauffeur asks.
Oscar turns to me. “Invite me in tonight.” It’s neither a question nor a statement. It hangs somewhere in between.
“Okay.” I’d be ready to squeal with excitement if the moment to come clean wasn’t upon me.
“Gramercy,” he instructs the driver. I have to tell him. Now. Angela’s not going to play along with this insanity by vacating her place, and even if she would, I have no way to ask her out of Oscar’s earshot.
“Actually, that’s Angela’s place. I live a few blocks away.”
His head tilts to the side and he looks at me like a puzzled puppy. “But I’ve dropped you there twice.”
I decide to go for the whole truth. “I lied, and I’m sorry. I was so attracted to you that I didn’t want to take any, um, chances.” I feel myself blush bright red. “I was going to tell you on Saturday, but then I saw your apartment and I was, I don’t know, ashamed of mine. It’s not even as nice as Angela’s, which would be slumming for you.”
He raises his hand to my lips. He’s smiling. It’s going to be alright. “I guess I’m flattered, but seriously, you have nothing to worry about. I imagine that it can’t be any worse than my old student digs.”
It’s nice of him to say that but my stomach still crunches with apprehension as we emerge from the car outside my building, and I rifle through my bag for the key, since there’s no doorman to admit us. What if he decides we’re socio-economically incompatible? Then again, he already knows I’m wearing a borrowed dress. He must not care that there’s no way I can keep up with him.
I lead him up the shabby stairwell to the landing I share with Kevin. One of the overhead lights flickers at us sarcastically, and as if on cue, makes a buzzing sound and burns out. Kevin’s home, and I can hear he’s watching The Daily Show. I hope he doesn’t decide to stick his head in the corridor to say hi. Or to continue our tiff from last night.
When I flip on the lights and close my apartment door behind us, Oscar says, “It’s not nearly as bad as you made it out to be.”
I hang up our coats and ask if he wants a drink.
“Nope.” He pulls me in for a kiss. “I just want the highlights tour. Let’s see your bedroom.”
TEN
I have never had sex like this before. During the last couple of years with Brendan, we did it once or twice a month. It was missionary, routine, and I spent a lot of time contemplating the cracks in my ceiling. Even with the inappropriate guys I dated while broken up with Brendan, it was never this good. Maybe Angela’s been onto something all along, with her older men. Though I can’t imagine a guy like Reiner giving me four orgasms in one night. My alarm will go off in forty minutes. We finally drifted off sometime after four, but I don’t feel the least bit tired. Oscar is asleep next to me. He’s got an amazing body. I know he’s a runner, but he has more of a rower’s build, with broad shoulders, defined muscles and a narrow waist. His tux lies in a tangled heap on my floor, along with the gown, which hopefully wasn’t damaged in his hurry to remove it from my person.
Oscar’s briefcase rests on my bureau. The luxe leather sports an unsightly scratch, that I don’t remember noticing before. What a shame. Maybe, if I close Niles Townsend, and scale down to a studio apartment, I could replace the bag for Oscar as a Christmas gift. Although I suppose the more responsible thing would be to buy a more modest present and stick any surplus income into my 401(k).
I slide out from under the covers to slip into the bathroom and remove last night’s mascara and re-apply just enough make-up so as not to horrify Oscar when he rolls awake and sees me. When I slip back under the covers, still naked, he stirs. “Come here,” he murmurs and reaches out an arm to pull me down to his chest. I breathe in his scent and wonder whether I’ve ever felt so content in my life. I feel him getting excited again, pushing against my thigh. He rolls me onto my back and we have another go.
Afterwards, when we’re lying entangled and I’ve silenced my alarm, he says, “This place is actually kind of nice.” As if on cue, someone upstairs flushes and water rushes through the ancient pipes behind the walls, which shake from the onslaught. I laugh and say, “It’s far from perfect, but it’s home for now.”
“You’re planning on moving?”
“I might have to. My ex’s father is my landlord now, and he’s raising the rent.”
“What a prick.”
“You could say that. I should start looking around. Even if I won the lottery tomorrow, it would bother me to write him a check every month. But anyway, that’s not your problem. Do you want some coffee?”
“I’d love some, but I need to get out of here. I can’t exactly show up at work in last night’s penguin suit. What are my chances of getting a cab downstairs?”
I glance at the clock. Not quite 7:30. “Pretty good, if you get out of here within the half hour.” I have a full day myself, seeing as Janice still needs to get into Yale, and obviously Oscar has to get to the office, but I still hate that he’s bolting without breakfast. I tell myself to stop being ridiculous. It doesn’t mean he didn’t have a great time. This is just what adults do. They have responsibilities and careers that they do not blow off for carnal pleasures and coffee and Danish.
Angela calls me when we’re both on the way to work. “So?” she demands.
“The opera was amazing.”
“Obviously. It’s the Met. I only have five minutes. I don’t want a review of the show, I want to hear about the after hours cabaret.”
“We went back to my place and he spent the night.”
“So you ‘fessed up? How’d he take it?”
“Surprisingly well. I think he saw the humor.”
“Or he thought you were a freak, but he still wanted to get in your pants.”
“Hmm. Also possible.”
“So, out with it. I need the details.”
Suddenly I feel uncharacteristically coy. I don’t want to give her the blow by blow while walking with the throngs down Madison Avenue. And I like Oscar. Too much to kiss and tell. Or at least tell all the details. I’m so happy about what I suspect is my first truly promising male-female relationship that I don’t want to mess anything up by saying the wrong thing to a third party. Even if that third party is my best girlfriend in the whole world, from whom I normally withhold nothing. No fact has ever been too tawdry. But this feels different. So I say, “Um, I’ll fill you in later. I dropped the dress at the cleaners. You should have it back tomorrow. Thanks again. I finally understand why women who can afford it spend tens of thousands of dollars on clothes.”
“Well at least part of my job here is done,” Angela laughs. “And don’t worry, I’ll ply you with alcohol and get you to spill the dirt later.”
I don’t know if it’s the adrenalin or some other weird happiness-inducing hormone, but I plow through the work day unaffected by my sleep deprivation. Everything falls into place. I even finish Janice’s Yale essays. I’ll proofread everything tomorrow, and they’ll be ready to send a full twenty-four hours ahead of Carol’s deadline. Instead of obsessing about whether I’ll hear from Oscar, I feel strangely Zen and satisfied with the way things went last night. Maybe this is a sign of maturity. I silently congratulate myself once more. Adults don’t make themselves crazy over whether a guy will call, but I feel an unmistakable surge of excitement when Oscar texts me as I’m shutting down my computer. He says he has a business dinner, but asks if he can stop by later. Wow. He wants to see me two nights in a row. He must really like me. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Easy. Or not. Everyone says guys text for sex and call for dates. Maybe he’s only looking for friendship with benefits, and I’m reading too much into three great dates. I force myself to wait a full thirty-two minutes before writin
g him back, and then spend another ten composing, “Sounds great. Call me when you’re on your way,” which seems like a feeble effort for a person who’s spent the day trying to dazzle Ivy admissions officers with her prose.
Fortunately, I have plans to prevent me from spinning like a top in my apartment for the next few hours. Angela wants to meet at the bar in the Four Seasons, ostensibly because she’s coming from a meeting around the corner. Really it’s because she loves that the waiters recognize her there. As I cross the lobby, I remind myself that I should scale down my tastes to make them more proportionate to my budget. Angela’s already waiting, perched on an overstuffed chair from which she can survey the entire room, martini in hand. She’s flipping through a folder of papers on the table in front of her.
As soon as the waiter is dispatched with my drink order, a cosmo with Cointreau and Stoli O, Angela launches right into a presentation so slick I suspect she rehearsed it. “I’ve printed out listings for all the apartments in your price range, and I will clear my Saturday so I can see them with you. For moral support.”
“This is great, Angela, but I haven’t decided that I’m moving.”
“Of course you are. There’s no way you’re giving your hard-earned cash to that fuckwit. Or his family.”
She’s right, but her choice of verbiage stings anyway. It crosses that line that, instead of merely sticking it to Brendan, also makes me feel like an idiot. “You know that ‘fuckwit’ was the man I thought I was going to marry.”
Angela rearranges her expression to try to look apologetic. She fails. “Well, obviously he wasn’t a fuckwit then. Only now. Stop changing the subject. Some of these look promising. And while they’re not rent control like mine, they’re all in my neighborhood.”
I leaf through the pages half-heartedly. Moving seems so daunting, and these places sound positively tiny. I hadn’t focused on the fact that I’d be scaling down this much. Even with more units available because of the downturn, rents have soared since Brendan and I signed our original lease. And this time it’ll be me, alone, on the hook for everything. Maybe I should stop putting it off, post a roommate wanted ad on Craigslist and see if anyone normal responds.
“You know, it’ll be good for you to live by yourself,” Angela says, as if reading my mind. “You might actually like it. And you’re the only person I know who’s never willingly tried it. There should be some kind of ordinance against that.”
“I had a single for two years in college.”
“On-campus student housing so does not count.” She takes the folder from me. “I know you’re frazzled, so I’ve gone ahead and made appointments at the ones that look most worthwhile. If there’s anything else you want to see, we can call and ask if they’ll accommodate.”
I have to admire Angela. She’s a bundle of efficiency. It’s not like she has nothing to do all day. Working in shoes at Vogue is on a whole different level than specializing in footwear anyplace else on the planet. Most designers live and die by the magazine’s blessing, and since shoes have the second highest profit margin of all products in the fashion industry, Angela’s job is way more serious than most people give her credit for.
“So we’re starting bright and early at nine on Saturday,” she says, taking a ladylike sip from her martini. “You’d better tell Oscar you’ll be needing your beauty sleep, since I’m guessing you got, maybe, two hours at the most last night.”
“But it was so totally worth it. I feel like I can’t get enough of him, and I can’t wait to see him again.”
Angela smiles. “I’m glad you’re finally getting a normal, satisfying sex life. You’re glowing, for the first time, in, well, forever. But before you drag Prince Charming off to Bloomingdales to peruse the Villeroy and Boch, why don’t you get to know him better? You know, see what he’s about in the non-Biblical sense.”
“Since when are you all about raining on my parade?”
“I’m not. God knows I think a talented lover is a beautiful thing, but it’s also obvious to me that you crave more than a physical connection. I’m just saying, have fun, but don’t be scared of losing the sex if he’s not right for you in other ways. You can find other great lovers out there. Great apartments, on the other hand, are rare.”
ELEVEN
“I think I should take one of the places I saw today,” I tell Oscar glumly on the phone Saturday afternoon. “Angela and I saw eleven apartments, they’re all a step down from what I have now, but they’ll probably go quickly.” Angela kept reminding me, whenever I pointed out tired Formica, dirty windows or creaky floorboards, that these flats all come without Brendan, which is, undeniably, a huge plus. By our fourth appointment, Angela had almost convinced me that these places weren’t any worse than hers. So I should stop being a bitch already and pick one. She was right, naturally, but it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that I won’t be able to sustain myself in the lifestyle to which I became accustomed while cohabiting with my fiancé. Excuse me. Ex-fiancé.
“You want to know what I think?” Oscar asks.
“Of course.”
“I think you should sleep on it, preferably in my bed.”
“That sounds nice.”
“How soon can you be here?”
“Give me an hour.” I didn’t shave my legs this morning because I didn’t want to be late for Angela. It’s way too soon for Oscar to see me un-primped, and I kind of enjoy the delicious anticipation of knowing I’ll see him soon, but not this very minute.
Three hours, seven (yup, seven) leg-shaking orgasms, and one bottle of pinot noir later, I’m feeling better about my real estate problem. Maybe I should just take the cheapest place I saw today, so I can start saving a few pennies. If things keep going this well with Oscar, I’ll probably be sleeping here most of the time anyway. I silently chide myself for getting carried away, but it’s hard not to with my head on his bare chest and his arm wrapped over me protectively. I want to stay here forever. Unfortunately, my bladder has an alternate agenda. When I come back from the master bathroom, which is bigger than the living/dining spaces in any of the apartments I considered today, Oscar’s switched on the news. His expression has gone from sated to stunned in the five minutes I was gone.
“What? What happened?” In the split second before I see the screen, a dozen different doomsday scenarios play through my head. That’s what being a modern New Yorker is like. But then I see the picture has nothing to do with attacks, terrorism or carnage, and my jaw drops in surprise.
The banner at the bottom of the screen reads, “NYC Councilman, Mayoral Frontrunner Walter O’Malley implicated in global human trafficking and pornography ring. Details soon.”
Kevin must be having heart failure.
“Oh. My. God. My friend manages O’Malley’s campaign.”
“He already knows. If all the news channels have it, the senior staff will have gotten a heads up,” Oscar says. He shakes his head at the screen. “O’Malley doesn’t seem the type. He’s way too image-conscious and clean cut.”
I’m not sure I agree. Aren’t successful men always in the news for monumental acts of stupidity? Mostly because they think they’re too smart to get caught? But I don’t feel like getting into a big discussion about it. Especially since I am still naked and have rearranged myself into what I think is an attractive reclining pose beside him on the bed.
My phone rings in my purse. “Do you mind if I see who that is?”
“Not at all.” He’s riveted to the train wreck on television that is my friend’s career.
I slide back out from under the warm and ridiculously luxurious sheets, still naked, and dig for my phone. Angela.
“You heard?” she asks, skipping a greeting.
“I just saw the headline. Was he buying or selling?”
“Neither. The FBI says he invested in the distribution of the stuff, but the materials in question aren’t exactly of the vanilla flavor.”
“Oh God. Poor Kev.”
&nb
sp; “I know. It gets worse. It sounds like this ring trafficked underage girls from as far away as Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to put them in the pictures and films. As if that’s not disgusting enough, the prosecutors are asking questions about where the funds for the upfront costs came from. If O’Malley was even tangentially involved in importing kiddos for perverts, his political future is so over. And rightly so.”
I glance back over at the TV. They’ve moved on to a report from their Middle East correspondent. “We have the news on now, and it doesn’t say anything about human trafficking.”
“It will any minute. I heard it from my sister. I just hung up with her.” Angela’s sister is married to a special agent in DC. “She never tells me anything about the FBI, but she called to tell me this story was about to break, because she knows how tight I am with Kevin. Even though her husband would flip.”
Oscar switches off the TV and rolls on his side to face me. He reaches out to pull me towards him.
“Angela, I have to go. I’ll call you back in a bit.”
Oscar slides me underneath him, kisses me hard, and reaches his hand between my thighs. I tell myself I can worry about Kevin’s career crisis a little later.
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I roll awake and register Oscar’s absence. Through the wall, I can hear the low murmur of indecipherable phone conversation. I slide out of bed. The door to his study is closed. I knock timidly and try the knob. Locked. He must be deep in conversation because he doesn’t acknowledge my louder second knock. I slink back to bed and try to fall asleep.
By the time he reappears next to me, I’m silently squelching a panic attack about him seeing someone else. The little voice in my head says not to be so ridiculous and typical. Oscar is here with me. If he wanted to sneak around, he’d have plenty of hours in his week to do so with zero risk of getting caught. Besides, everything always seems dire at three in the morning.
As soon as I’ve reassured myself that I’m experiencing a nocturnally induced overreaction, the little voice reminds me smugly that it’s not like Oscar and I are exclusive. So I should stop being presumptuous.
The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken Page 11