“Are you sure?” he asks.
A guttural “Ah-huh” is the only response she can muster. She lets a nervous giggle escape as they shimmy and grope their way into the bedroom. On the bed, her feelings of awkwardness fall away along with the garments that separate their bodies. She watches his broad shoulders as they move over her breasts, his mouth sending hot shivers through her. Deftly his tongue explores her body. When done, he stretches out next to her, gently shifting her hips so that she is perched on top. How could he know that is her favorite position, where everything that starts well ends well. Her hands rest on his smooth bronze chest where his nipples are mounted like two rich succulent chocolates. Like musicians jamming together for the first time it takes a few chords before they find their rhythm. But even as they move in tune, her thoughts remain slightly off-key, as the ancient boudoir prayer drums through her mind; Please, dear God. Let him call me after this!
***
Renny’s head throbs and her mouth feels as if a bag of cotton balls has taken up residence on her tongue. Her clock flashes three forty-five in the dark. She rolls over and sees Georgie asleep beside her.
“Happy fucking birthday to me,” she mouths in the darkness. It’s been four years since Renny slept with someone on the first date. Since when does five shots in a bar add up to a date, is the rhetorical zinger that shoots back at her. Listening to the rhythm of his breathing, Renny tries to recall when the act ended and slumber began, assuming now that they must have passed out before the last curtain call.
Georgie shifts, casting an arm up over his head and Renny aches to curl into the space left vacant between his bicep and side. Instead, she scrutinizes his face. Because of his success, she guesses him to be a few years older than she. And he’s handsome, but not in the traditional pretty boy way. The minute he looked at her in the bar, Renny could tell he reeked of adventure. If there were any chance, Renny knew she would take him home, wanting more than anything to frolic with this untamed bad boy. During their canoodling, their eyes locked and Renny felt as if they melded spiritually. Did he feel it too? Or am I just a needy soul trying to pin eternal meaning on what he’ll probably consider a fling? Renny wishes that just once she could flip her psyche off and not dissect the minutiae of every moment.
Desperately thirsty, Renny slips out of bed and goes into the closet to find something to throw on. If he wakes up, she wants the first thing he sees her in to send the right message. She pulls on an oversized denim shirt that she inherited two boyfriends ago. Hanging loosely on her frame, the shirttails fall above her knees. She assesses her reflection, opening one more button so it drapes just between her breasts. Her sense of daring makes her giggle. “It’s sexy with a country feel. I guess that makes me the country wonder slut,” she whispers, tossing her already rumpled hair before leaving the closet.
Renny tiptoes over his expensive Italian haberdashery on her way to the kitchen. Filling a glass with water she hears him stir from the bed. A moment later he is behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, his nakedness pressed close.
“I missed you.” He reaches for the bottle of aspirin sitting on the counter. “Too much to drink?”
“Those shots were kind of strong. What did you say they were?”
“Vodka and peach schnapps. They’re called a Bad Habit.” His devilish smirk enchants as he pops two aspirin in his mouth. He motions for her glass.
“I remember the peach. Interesting choice of shot.” Renny keeps her voice playful while handing her water over. “Is that what you consider yourself, a bad habit?”
“That’s a rhetorical question.” He leans in and kisses her while his hand slides up under her shirt, finding her breast.
Renny’s thought process crashes.
“Pretty good habit, don’t you think?” He nibbles her ear.
“You think a lot of yourself?” she teases.
“Does the lady still need convincing?”
“You think you’re up for the job, buddy?”
Georgie arches an eyebrow playfully and their kisses intensify. He lifts her up on the counter, the hard ceramic surface sending a jolt of cold through her naked bottom, doused only by the heat that crosses every synapse. She giggles at the christening her kitchen counter is about to receive.
“I would love to take you back to bed,” he whispers his lips grazing the skin between her breasts and making her thankful she left that last button open, “but...”
Oh no, Renny thinks. Not but!
Georgie continues, “It’s close to four, and I have to be at the station by five to get ready for my show.”
Be nonchalant, Renny thinks. Don’t break the mood. Be hard-to-get for once.
He fingers the hair around her face. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” Then beset with a case of verbal diarrhea, Renny’s thoughts pour from her lips unchecked, “I want you to know that this isn’t something that I usually do. Not this, not usually.”
“Sitting on the kitchen counter bare-assed in the middle of the night is kind of weird, but don’t worry, your fetish is safe with me.”
She wonders what to say that won’t make him run out of her apartment, never to be heard from again.
“Oh! I get it,” he nods, “you mean you don’t usually meet a guy in a bar, take him home and do it until you can’t keep your eyes open. Is that the something?”
“Well, yeah. Something, like that.”
He wraps his arms around her. “I’d be a liar if I said I haven’t done this before. And by the way that shirt fits you, I don’t think I’m the first guy to be in your, ah, kitchen.”
She opens her mouth to protest and he puts one finger to her lips and keeps talking. “But if all I was looking for was getting laid, I’d have been out of here a couple hours ago.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I never say anything because I have to.” He takes her hand. “Now, if I don’t get dressed and out of here, the station will be broadcasting dead air from six to ten.” They walk back to the bedroom, where Renny watches him get dressed, swearing that no matter what, she won’t offer him her phone number. He’ll have to ask for it himself.
“So?” he asks.
“So?” Renny answers.
“I need your number or else I won’t be able to call you later.”
Digging in her night table for a pen and paper, she bites the inside of her cheeks to contain a shit-eating grin from running loose across her face. She writes carefully, making sure in her excitement that she doesn’t accidentally put a wrong number down.
“Great,” he says, taking the paper and the pen. He jots something down on half the sheet and rips it off. “My number, in case you need to call me.” He takes her hand and leads her to the front door. “I’ll call you later.”
“Great.”
He kisses her and she wishes they could stay entwined for the rest of the day. Peering at her sideways he says, “You never said if this is going to become a habit.”
“Possibly.” Dare she hope that this could be a start instead of a finish?
Renny closes the door after their last kiss and dashes back to her room, diving under the covers. She checks the clock. Just after four. Damn! She wishes she could call Sara and Gaby. When they lived together and one of them had a guy over, it was no big deal for them to wake each other up to analyze each moment. But things are different now. Sara probably wouldn’t speak to her for a week if Renny woke her, and Gaby is probably out cold from all the alcohol she consumed.
The phone rings. Who would call now? Renny smiles as the obvious answer comes to mind—its Georgie calling from his cell phone on the way out of her building. “Miss me already?” Renny says picking up the phone.
“You’re my daughter. I always miss you,” her mother answers.
“Ma?”
“Who were you expecting? It’s four in the morning.”
“I know that. Why are you calling me now?” Renny asks.
“I’m y
our mother. I don’t need any other reason.”
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“You’re father’s snoring again. Why aren’t you asleep?”
“My lover just left,” Renny says, opting to see how the truth goes over.
“Very funny, if you’re having trouble sleeping then warm up some milk.” She sighs and continues, “Oh, I almost forgot. Your father is going to Brooklyn in the morning. He can pick you up at work and drive you out.”
“Good, I hate the bus.”
“Don’t forget—”
“My laundry. I know, Ma.”
“Go to sleep before you get wrinkles,” her mother orders and hangs up.
Renny shakes off their phone call and wraps herself in the memory of her night with Georgie as she dives under her covers again and lets out a joyous screech. She hopes none of the neighbors can hear her jubilation through the building’s thin walls.
They’ve heard enough screams for one night.
Chapter Four
Queasiness wakes Gaby from a fitful sleep. “Shit,” she grumbles, glancing at the clock showing four-twenty. “Shit.”
She stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, nausea rising in her throat and bile flooding her mouth. Gaby’s head just makes it over the toilet, heaving out whatever will come. Sitting on the cold tile floor, she leans back against the bathtub exhausted. There’s nothing worse than throwing up.
Gaby grabs the bottle of Valium from the side of the sink and shakes her head to focus. Her last drink was at nine, more than seven hours ago. Blanking her mind of any consequences, she shakes two of the little white suckers out, pops them in her mouth and washes them down with water cupped in her hands. Facing the mirror, she expects to see immediate healing, only to be confronted with the same swollen-eyed reflection that has become so familiar.
Settling onto the couch in the living room, she glances at the mountain of shopping bags looming nearby, their individual logos reading like a roster of expensive stores. There was a time she could afford that kind of shopping, but not now. Lord, she thinks, I have to stop or my next date would be in court to declare bankruptcy, something she narrowly missed having to do when Unmentionables was sued. She turns and looks at the two photographs on the side table, each framing the catalysts behind her downward spiral—her ex-boyfriend, Stan, and her mother.
Stan was one of the lawyers handling her Unmentionables suit. Gaby used him as a strong legal arm to lean on in court and she used other parts of his body in the bedroom.
Her mother got it in her head that Stan was prime husband material, frequently reminding Gaby, “It’s time to settle down, now that you’re finished with that little company.”
“Mama, you make it sound as though I was selling porn instead of lingerie,” Gaby had told her.
“I call them as I see them, daughter,” was always her mother’s reply.
The night the case was settled Gaby dumped Stan, in part because her mother liked him so much. Two days later, Gaby’s mother had a heart attack and died at fifty-eight.
When Gaby flew to North Carolina for the funeral, Stan surprised her at the airport. “I love you, let me come with you,” he said. She did, and from that point on, Gaby clung to him as if her own life depended on it. They moved in together and he took control of everything. Awash in grief, she gratefully let him run her life. When her friends called, he would hang up on them, lying to Gaby that it was, “Just someone selling something.”
They even talked about marriage, but that stopped when she started seeing a shrink.
“He’s not helping you,” Stan had railed, immediately seeing the shrink as a threat. “In fact, I think he’s making you worse. You don’t need a psychiatrist. What you need is to go back to work and rejoin the living. And I hope you’re not talking to him about me!”
But what did Stan expect? He’d cut her off from everything, including her self-esteem, until all that was left was a shell of what she had once been. But Gaby gave in, partly. She ended her leave from the magazine, which kept her so busy that it was three weeks until she could get to her next shrink visit. She came home from that appointment to find that Stan had packed all his things. He told her, “I just never pictured myself with someone who needed therapy.” When the door closed behind him, a black veil dropped over her head.
Now the only man in her life was the shrink. Every Thursday she trekked from her Village apartment to his beige Eastside office. Grabbing a beige tissue and choosing the same beige chair across from the beige couch, she sunk into the soft leather as if it were a hug.
The shrink told her, “All relationships are complex. The object here is for you to understand the complexities of your relationship with your mother.”
Gaby knows it’s just psychobabble for “You’re fucked up.”
Eventually, he said, “You’ll get to visit with your sorrow and leave it behind when you’re done.”
Gaby gets up from the couch and knocks down the pictures of Stan and her mother. Splashing water on her face over the bathroom sink, she wishes she could turn away from the painful memories, but it’s no use. Once they’ve started, they keep coming. It seems that no matter how far the shrink lifts the veil, something inevitably comes along blowing it back in her face.
That morning, for example, Gaby had every intention of going to work. That is until she opened the front door to get the newspaper and there it sat—trauma in a box from her sister Millie. Just a week ago Millie left a message in her chipper voice. “I’ve been going through more of Mama’s things. Watch your mail, I sent you some stuff that I thought you would like to have.”
Good old reliable Millie.
The good daughter, who wore their mother’s apron strings like a blue ribbon award from the state fair. Gaby and Millie were two sisters who grew up in the same dogwood shaded home, only to turn out as different as can be.
That’s because Millie made their mother’s hopes her own. A year after graduating with an Interior Design degree from Meredith College, Millie married her high school sweetheart, Will Mason. Within a few years they produced two children, a son followed by a daughter, of course.
“Thank goodness one of my daughters is giving me grandbabies,” her mother liked to say, casting her younger daughter in the role of the black sheep.
“Since when did leading your own life become a crime?” Gaby groans to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Tears stream down her face. With the effects of the Valium kicking in, she feels as though she is watching a stranger cry.
Damn that box.
Gaby knew she shouldn’t open it, but who could resist opening a package? Inside were two blankets her mother had crocheted.
“Ugly,” Gaby clucked, pulling them from the carton. Her mother had no sense of design when it came to her knitting; she bought whatever yarn was on sale regardless of the color combination. As Gaby held them near, she smelled her mother as if her Chanel #5 was woven into the neatly stitched rows.
Packages, they’ve been a part of her life forever. Camp, college and then the city, her mother loved to ship her stuff, mostly things she didn’t want.
“Thanks, Mama.” Gaby tried to muster enthusiasm for the items, knowing full well she’d be giving most of them away to her friends.
Her mother always pushed her for the desired reaction. “Which one do you like best? Is the pink too pink for you?”
“I don’t know,” Gaby told her. But that wasn’t enough of an answer for her mother. Finally Gaby had to admit, “I wasn’t needing any of it. And you know I hate pink!”
“Well, excuse me,” her mother sniffed. “I had no idea I raised such an ingrate. Honestly, Gabrielle!” She always used Gaby’s full name when she was in a snit. Handcuffed by stubbornness, Gaby wouldn’t apologize and now, since her death, she often wished she’d held her tongue from the get-go.
Sidestepping the pile of shopping bags on her way to the kitchen, Gaby kicks a stray ball of tissue paper, which skitters across the floor. She k
nows her inherited shopping gene has been mutating out of control. She hasn’t been to the office in weeks. Instead, when she does venture out, Gaby wanders from store to store, maxing out her credit cards. In the kitchen she passes a stack of unopened credit card bills, “Last Notice” stamped on most of them. On several occasions, she’s been on the verge of telling her shrink, but the words always get stuck. And the shopping continues.
“Why can’t he just read my mind and save me the trouble?” she gripes, retrieving a frozen eye mask from the freezer. Gaby crawls back to the sofa, hoping it will remedy her swollen lids. She flinches as the cold mask shocks her skin.
The defrosting eye mask sends moisture dripping down the sides of her face and into her ears, a familiar feeling.
One year ago she was on top, with her own company, guys galore and Mama. Now she is just a weepy girl without a mother.
It’s got to get better soon. That’s what everyone says.
Gaby pulls one of the crotchet blankets up to her chin, wondering, when the fuck is soon?
Chapter Five
Sara gently lays Megan in the middle of her bed. It’s the third time in the last few weeks that Megan has awakened crying in the middle of the night. At least tonight she made it to just before five, almost a whole night. She keeps saying that the dolls on her shelves are staring at her. Sara knows it’s just a dream and she should make Megan go back to sleep in her own room, but she can’t bear to let her cry. She climbs carefully into bed trying not to jostle her daughter, who has immediately fallen back asleep.
Listening to the rhythm of Megan’s breathing, Sara moves a stray blond curl out of her face and dabs at the faint moisture left on her cheeks. Bart hated when Megan came into bed with them. Her little body always shifted horizontally and created a human “H,” with Megan’s feet jabbing Bart every time she moved.
Cosmo's Deli Page 4