High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  “Well, what do you want us to do about it?” I asked.

  “What?” He looked scared for a second.

  “Do you want to kiss me?” I looked deep into his eyes.

  “No!” he said.

  “What! No?” I grabbed my coat and my shoes and his gay tie by accident.

  “No, Liv, I don’t want to kiss you until I figure out what we’re going to do.”

  “Do about what?”

  “About Jordan,” he said. His eyes darted guiltily over to his gym bag on the floor for some reason, as if she were inside it, cut up into pieces.

  “Isn’t that a man’s name?”

  “I like it, it’s sexy,” he said, smiling.

  “You have to go,” I said.

  “I’m not going.”

  “I have another client coming.”

  “I’ll wait for you here,” he said.

  Out on the street I realized I hadn’t thought about my husband once in over an hour. Even that brought sadness. Soon our marriage would hold the importance of a one-night stand.

  I leaned against the building and waited for my client, a woman named Jean Small. She had sounded scared on the phone, asking questions as if she were being coached. When I asked her what she did for a living she said that she wanted to open an art gallery. Maybe she could go into business with Dale, I thought. She had just inherited a million dollars. She said it with dread in her voice, as if she had just inherited a crippling disease.

  “That’s great!” I had said on the phone.

  “Well, it’s actually a really big responsibility,” she whimpered.

  I was glad Jean Small was late. I needed time to think about Andrew. A guy wearing jeans and a T-shirt stood a few feet away looking at me. He had a bike messenger’s bag across his chest, a blue cardigan, and dirty enormous sneakers. He was the kind of man I avoided at all costs, squirrelly. Every time he looked at me I looked away with a disgusted expression on my face. Bike messengers are the worst thing in New York. They’re more violent than cops. They’re more hated than real estate agents. The only thing possibly lower is someone who sells memberships at a gym. I wondered why he was just standing there.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” the man said awkwardly.

  “Yes,” I said toughly.

  “I think we might be waiting for each other,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, as nastily as possible. “I’m waiting for a woman.”

  “I’m Jean Small.” He looked in a pocket notebook. “You’re Liv?”

  “Yes,” I said, confused. Then I realized he was a woman after all. She just looked like a man.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, right this way.”

  “I hope this loft is big enough,” Jean said. “I’m looking for a place for the gallery and I need to be able to live there, too. It has to have enough rooms in case I want to have a baby.”

  A baby? I thought in disbelief. Some people have so much confidence, they think they can have a baby anytime they want no matter what they look like. “Oh, this place has plenty of rooms,” I said. “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a … boyfriend?”

  “No. But I might want to have a baby.” She said this with the confidence of Miss America.

  “Of course,” I said. Jean made Dale look like Marilyn Monroe.

  “Now, where are we?” Jean took out the pocket notebook again and turned to a list of addresses. “Since my windfall I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  We entered the loft and faced the tiki hut. “What’s that?” she asked.

  I decided to call a spade a spade. “It’s a tiki hut,” I said. “Isn’t it great?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “It’s a lot of dough to plunk down.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a great loft.”

  She opened the door to the pedicure room. “What are those for?” she asked, pointing to the sinks.

  “Pedicures,” I said, as if every loft had them.

  The next door was the door to the sauna.

  “Well, you’ve probably seen enough,” I said.

  “What’s that room?”

  “That’s a small sauna. Probably best not to go in there.” I paused. “The heat escapes.”

  “Okay,” she said. We turned to leave. “Hi,” I heard Andrew say behind me.

  Jean and I both jumped. We turned around again and found him standing there. He had gone ahead and taken his pants off after all. He had a white towel around his waist with a yin-yang circle printed on it. I wondered where he had found the towels.

  “Welcome to my loft. I’m the owner, Fred Freund.” He put out his hand and Jean shook it.

  “Can you show me the kitchen?” she asked.

  “Sure, follow me.” He wandered around looking for the kitchen. “Here it is,” he said, pointing to a mini-fridge and a microwave on a shelf. “Can I fix you something?”

  “No thanks,” Jean said. “Do you mind if I have another look around?” She walked around opening doors.

  “You better leave,” I said to Andrew, when she was out of sight.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman in this loft,” Andrew said.

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m just kidding. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever shared a sauna with.”

  “Get dressed,” I said.

  “I want to give you a pedicure.”

  “But you don’t want to kiss me.”

  “I do want to kiss you. It just isn’t a good idea right now.”

  “Please get dressed and leave. This is unprofessional,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t be right for me to kiss you,” he said. Then he kissed me. It was shy and careful, eyes open. Very unlike him, I thought. It was not what I expected. His towel tented up in front.

  Jean came back toward us and Andrew took a bag of Orville Redenbacher popcorn from a basket on the shelf and put it in the microwave.

  “Well, thank you,” Jean said. “It’s very interesting but I don’t see how it could possibly work. And it’s a lot of dough.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said.

  “Maybe I could bring an architect by. And my lawyer.”

  “Sure,” I said, guiding her to the door. I couldn’t stand to look at her another second.

  “Maybe you could show me some other places. My accountant says I have to buy something soon for the tax deduction. I guess it’s time to leave my studio apartment,” she said sadly, like Jackie O leaving the White House.

  “Sure, great, I’ll call you,” I said, and shut the door.

  I heard the buzzer from the microwave go off.

  “Andrew!” I called. It sounded like I had been saying his name for years.

  “Yes, honey,” he said sweetly.

  “I really think you should go now.”

  “When will I see you?” he asked.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “But I want to see this loft again.”

  “That other client just bought it.”

  “I’ll only leave if you agree to go out with me.”

  “No, not while you’re living with … someone,” I said.

  “Fine, I’ll go. But we are going to see each other again and you’re just going to have to trust me. I’m going to call you.”

  He got dressed cooperatively and got into the elevator eating popcorn from the bag.

  When I left the building I was almost surprised to find him gone.

  I went back to the office and let myself in with my own key. The phone was ringing and Dale and Lorna were nowhere in sight. I answered. “Liv Kellerman.”

  “Hello,” a man said. “I’m calling about an ad for a three-thousand-square-foot loft on Laight Street. I’d like to see it.”

 
The man’s voice was beautiful. Deep and resonant like an actor’s.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Ving Rhames,” he said.

  “Oh really?” I said, haughtily. It was clearly Andrew. Only he would make up such a ridiculous name. “You sure this isn’t Fred Freund?”

  “Uh, yes,” the man said.

  “Isn’t Ving a sort of strange name?” I said.

  “Uh, I guess so,” the man said. “Could I take a look at that loft?”

  “Ving, Ving, Ving,” I said. “Vingy.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “And what is it you do, Mr. Ving?”

  “It’s Ving Rhames. I’m an actor,” he said, humbly. “My girlfriend and I want to move out from Los Angeles. I’m starting a film in New York next month.”

  “Yes, Ving, I’m sure you are. Did anyone ever tell you you’re a pretty good kisser?”

  “Have we met?”

  “Yes, I believe we have.”

  “Miss, is there some sort of problem?”

  “Yes, Ving, there is a problem. You live with someone.”

  “I live with my girlfriend.”

  “Well, until you leave her, we won’t meet again,” I said, and hung up.

  But I couldn’t help feeling a little bit in love. I left the office and hailed a cab. When I got in the driver punched the meter and the celebrity recording came on. “Hi, this is designer Peter Kellerman.” It was my father’s voice right there in the cab. “Do you know what accessory is an absolute must with any outfit? That’s right! A seat belt! So buckle up for safety and I’ll see you at the Tonys.”

  I couldn’t believe it. The cabdriver would hear from my father more often than I would. Maybe I could get my father to make a special recording just for me. “Hi, Liv, this is your father, designer Peter Kellerman. Don’t forget to brush your teeth before you go to sleep, lock your front door, never go out with a man who lives with his girlfriend, good night, sleep tight, and I’ll see you at the Tonys.”

  “See you at the Tonys, Daddy,” I whispered.

  The next morning I turned to Page Six of the Post. Emmy award—winning actor Ving Rhames was in town apartment hunting. “New York has some insane realtors,” Mr. Rhames said.

  11.

  2 ½ BATHS

  On the day I left my husband he said, “I still think you’re beautiful. This morning, when I woke up, I looked at you under the covers, and I prayed you wouldn’t wake up and start speaking.” I thought about this as I got ready for my date with Andrew Lugar. I put on makeup and regretted it.

  When I was a little girl my father used to put makeup on me. He would prop me up on the butcher-block counter in the kitchen and direct me to open and close my eyes and mouth as he tickled me with soft brushes and lined my eyes and lips with pencils that he kept in a green plastic tackle box. He worked quickly, sometimes letting me choose the length of my lashes or the color my lips would be. “Let me see, let me see,” I would say, looking sideways to try to see my reflection in the chrome teakettle. Finally he would hold up a mirror and I would stare at myself. He would hold the mirror patiently, letting me look for as long as I wanted to. With my lips painted like a gypsy’s, I felt alive. With my cheeks pink as an ice skater’s, I felt fresh and vibrant. I could see myself more clearly, see each feature distinctly—my nose smelled more, my tongue tasted more, my eyes actually looked back. I was not just the pale blurry mass I usually saw, until my mother came home and scrubbed at my face with a washcloth.

  One day my mother said I was too old for him to be putting makeup on me. “That doesn’t even make sense,” I said in preteen scorn, “I’m too old for makeup, that doesn’t even make sense.”

  Maybe I wouldn’t even go out with Andrew. I changed my sheets and made my bed. Then I got into bed and looked at my body under the new comforter I had bought because it was called the Vienna. I lay on my side and imagined what it would feel like to have a man’s body pressed up behind me. I imagined it would feel good.

  I got dressed and ran downstairs when the buzzer rang. But it wasn’t Andrew. It was a Chinese-food delivery boy who had pushed every buzzer in the building and was trying to carry his bicycle and the bags of food with him up the stairs. I sat on my stoop.

  It was early. I sat there trying several different positions, leaning back on my elbows, hands on my knees, etc. A few people walked by and looked at me, which made me wonder if I looked wildly inappropriate like the statue in SoHo of the giant woman with eight sets of breasts, so I went across the street to Caffe Reggio and asked Mick, the waiter, if he thought I was wearing too much makeup.

  It was too dark in the café so Mick took me outside to get a better look at my face in natural light. “You look fine,” he declared seriously. He smelled like beer. I decided to check myself one more time in the bathroom.

  The bathroom at Caffe Reggio was tiny and black so you couldn’t see if it was clean or not but you could smell that it wasn’t. It was smaller than an airplane bathroom.

  I thought about how I had sat next to my husband on the airplane while he read an Elmore Leonard novel. He was completely absorbed in it, even laughing out loud from time to time. He read for hours not looking up or speaking. I had never seen him like that.

  He wouldn’t look up. “Does he want any tea or coffee?” the stewardess said to me.

  Finally he finished it and said, “The heroine of this book is so fucking great. I love her.”

  “Well, why didn’t you marry her?” I said.

  “Jesus, Liv, don’t tell me you’re jealous of a fictional character. She’s a character in a book. She doesn’t even exist!” he said, completely exasperated.

  I would have loved to be a tall blond action spy character in a book.

  “That’s ridiculous, I’m not jealous,” I said. I wanted to rip the blond bimbo on the cover into tiny pieces. I hated her. “You’re crazy,” I told him.

  “I’m not even allowed to read,” he kept muttering under his breath. “She won’t even let me read a book.” He turned to the man reading a newspaper in the seat across the aisle from us and said, “You’re lucky you’re allowed to read.” It was bad enough I was jealous. He didn’t have to humiliate me in first class. He left the book in the seat pouch on the plane.

  It was too dark to see myself in the Caffe Reggio bathroom mirror. Without thinking, I leaned on the sink with both hands. I had my hands on the filthiest sink in New York. I removed them from the sink as quickly as possible and knocked something off it with my right hand. I bent down and felt around on the black floor until I found the object. I couldn’t tell what it was. I thought it might be part of the sink itself, a piece of plumbing. I stood up and found my-self holding a gun in both hands.

  Somebody banged on the door and screamed, “Get out of there, fucking junkies.”

  “Just a minute,” I called. I put the gun in my pocketbook and went back to wait for Andrew in front of my building.

  It was exhilarating to walk with the gun. I kept my hand on it as much as possible. I moved carefully. I felt like a mother kangaroo with a full pouch. I didn’t know if it was loaded or cocked or stolen or freshly used or even real for that matter. It was small and black and professional-looking and it felt very very real.

  Andrew was standing on the top step examining the names on the buzzers.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” he said. “Let me look at you.” He walked down the stairs and sort of held me at arm’s length like a grandmother. “You look great. Do you want to get a coffee?”

  Cheap, I thought.

  “How about that place?” He pointed across the street to Caffe Reggio. We went to the café and sat in the front near the door.

  “Hello! What can I get for you?” Mick said, winking and looking Andrew up and down.

  Andrew ordered American coffee and I got a hot chocolate, which I hoped Mick woul
d put whipped cream on even though I didn’t ask for it.

  “Well,” Andrew said.

  “Well,” I said.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said back.

  “Oh?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “I’m exactly the wrong kind of person to have an affair with,” I said firmly. I felt proud of myself for saying it.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “Because I am so crazy about you I can’t think about anything else. I don’t know what to do.” His voice was low and sincere-sounding. “I know this isn’t your problem,” he added.

  There was a noise like cracking in the back of the restaurant. People were looking around for what had caused it. Then the old tin ceiling started to buckle a little and the people sitting at the tables under it suddenly stood and moved to the front. They were two couples and a group of three girls grabbing their coats and coffees and menus and taking tables near me and Andrew. A stream of water started to pour down. It was like being on the Titanic, everyone moving to one side of the ship.

  “Whoa,” Mick said.

  The brown-painted tin ceiling got a little lower and lower and then a giant white object came crashing down like a dirigible falling from the sky. It was an old-fashioned bathtub with a wet, naked girl sitting in it covering her head with her hands. It landed between tables, its four clawed feet breaking off under it. The noise, like a thundering brass band, was still reverberating.

  The girl in the tub was thin with long brown hair up in a barrette. She looked like she was about my age. I had seen her in the café before. The side of her head was cut and bleeding but she didn’t look too hurt.

  For a moment no one did anything. It didn’t even seem that strange. In New York, the eye learns to adjust quickly.

  Mick called 911. “Yes,” he said, sounding official, “we have a bit of a situation here. A falling bathtub sort of a thing.”

  “Does anyone have a … towel?” the girl said.

  “That’s a nice tub,” a man said. I noticed that the claws on the clawed feet had been painted with red nail polish.

  The man gave the girl in the tub a sheepskin coat to cover herself with and Mick gave her a Caffe Reggio T-shirt, which she tried to squirm into.