High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  He did an imitation of my husband coming home and looking at the naked windows. “Heeeyyy,” he said, sounding confused. He stood with his legs spread apart and his hands on his hips and scratched his head. “Something’s different.”

  Then I started laughing. I laughed so hard it was almost painful. Andrew was relentless. Tears poured down my face and I gasped for air. A person only laughs that hard a few times in his whole life. Andrew continued his curtain monologue until I finally begged him to stop.

  I was nervous having sex with Andrew. I hadn’t been with anyone other than my husband since our first date. The closest thing I had come to human contact with another man was when Dale rubbed my shoulders.

  The room spun as if I were drunk. I held on to him and he only stopped kissing my face long enough to bite my earlobes.

  “I don’t have any condoms,” I said.

  “Oh well, we don’t need any,” he said.

  “We can’t have sex without a condom.”

  “Well, that’s okay, I’ve got some.”

  “Oh, so you brought your own?” I said.

  “You think I’m going to break and enter a man’s house, steal his idiotic curtains, bring them home to you, and not stop along the way for condoms?”

  When we finished I held my breath and expected to cry. The first night I had sex with my husband I cried and locked myself in the bathroom for an hour. He wrote funny notes and stuck them under the bathroom door but it just made me cry harder. After sex with Andrew I didn’t feel like crying at all.

  “My earring’s gone,” I said, when I tried to soothe my ear with my fingers.

  “Yes, I know. I swallowed it,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” I loved that he had swallowed it. I wanted to feed him the other one.

  “That diamond could feed a village of starving children for a year,” I said.

  “That’s funny, it didn’t fill me up at all.”

  “Well, you’ll have to search your stool every day until you find it.”

  “Maybe you should search my stool every day.”

  “I don’t think your girlfriend would want me coming over every morning and rooting around in your shit.” I sort of liked the idea of the diamond stud my husband had given me lodged in Andrew’s shit. When he gave them to me at the Rainbow Room I didn’t think they’d end up in another man’s digestive tract.

  “No, I’ll have to move in here until we find it.”

  I struggled out of his arms and got out of bed to look at my ear in the mirror. It was red and swollen but still intact. And the carpet felt like a sandbar under my feet. So soft and warm, safe and forgiving.

  He pulled me back into bed with him and we kissed for a long time, urgent, intense kisses, as if his girlfriend were waiting just outside the door and our days were numbered. But it felt like my husband was out there with her. Andrew was living with someone, but I was getting a divorce. For some reason it felt like the same thing.

  “Won’t your girlfriend wonder why you didn’t come home last night?”

  “She thinks I’m dog-sitting, but I don’t start until tonight. I’m dog-sitting for a week on University Place. You can stay there with me for a whole week.”

  “A whole week,” I said.

  A whole week, in dog years, was seven whole weeks.

  “I love your smell,” he said. “I love our sex.”

  “Our sex,” I repeated, thinking of Mrs. Bausch saying “our dentist.” “I love it, too,” I said. “Except for the biting.”

  “I know, but I can’t help myself.” He climbed on top of me and pulled the covers over us.

  Every man I have ever dated has been a black belt in some form of martial art or another. It is a strange coincidence, to find myself being flipped over onto beds and futons by various men. I don’t seek it out, it just happens. It’s like my friend Violet dating six men in a row named David.

  Unfortunately, Andrew also liked to bite me. His teeth repeatedly clamped down on my ear, on the lobe or sometimes higher up on the skinny part. He clamped, released slightly and clamped again. When I resisted he ground his teeth into me harder and made noises that echoed in my head. Noises like you make for a child when you are pretending to be a monster eating something. Nyum nyum nyum.

  My answering machine went off. It was Dale in a grumpy morning voice saying that she and Harri were going to Venice without me and I was in charge of the office for an entire month. I had only done one rental deal and I was in charge of the office. “Our flight leaves tonight at seven from JFK.” She gave all the flight information. “If you change your mind about coming with us, call me. Or come to the airport. I have a ticket for you.” I wondered if Dale had a scene in her head of me running through the airport screaming, “I love you, Dale, don’t leave without me.”

  “Are you going to go?” Andrew asked.

  “I have to dog-sit,” I reminded him. “I have to supervise and make sure you don’t bite the animals.”

  Andrew rolled on top of me and we had our sex. He put his teeth on my ear but he didn’t bite down. I relaxed. I’m having sex, I thought. I couldn’t remember what I had been worried about.

  In a daze we left my apartment to get something to eat. I suggested crepes at Les Deux Gamins but Andrew wanted pizza. We stood at a high round table eating slices. The crust was so delicious I could barely bring myself to swallow. I had never tasted anything like it. And the oregano on my tongue, and the colors, and the music the chiming bells made from the church on the other side of the street! I had never even really noticed a church there before.

  My ear was so red and swollen I felt like I had an American Beauty rose tucked behind it. It was beating faster than my heart. I was proud of it. I felt like everyone could see our sex.

  Andrew held my hand.

  “What if someone who knows Jordan sees us?” I had never called her by her name before.

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  Then I saw his jeans. They were mine. He was wearing my jeans. I stopped walking and stared at them.

  “What?” he said.

  “Are those my jeans?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, those are my jeans. Are you wearing my jeans?”

  “Yes, honey, so what?” he said, tauntingly.

  How could he wear my jeans? He was so much fatter than I was. And he was taller than me, if only slightly. I was mortified. I refused to take another step with a man wearing my jeans. My jeans should have been much, much too small for his barrel shape. It was the most insensitive thing any man had ever done. “Those are my … big jeans,” I said, lamely. “How did you squeeze into them?”

  “I didn’t have to squeeze. They slid right on.”

  “That’s impossible.” I wanted him to take them off and go home to his girlfriend in his underpants.

  “I couldn’t believe they fit,” he said. He laughed. I didn’t see how he could ever be attracted to me again knowing he could wear my jeans. But then he kissed me and rubbed my jeans up against me.

  It was strange to see my jeans with an erection in them. “I’m going to wear them all week,” he said.

  14.

  ALL ABOUT WNDWS

  I turned and started walking toward the office. I had to get to work. With Dale gone, I was in charge of an entire real estate firm. I had so much to do. I sat at Dale’s desk and looked out the window at sparrows flying in and out of the open metal tube of a traffic light— probably the best bird real estate in New York.

  Lorna walked in. “Something stinks,” she said.

  “Actually, Lorna, nothing stinks.”

  “Yes it does. And now that I’m in charge we’re going to have the windows open.” She took a joint out of her knapsack and lit it.

  “Actually, Lorna, Dale put me in charge, and I don’t think you should smoke pot in the office.”

  “Why would she put you in charge? You�
�ve never even done one deal.”

  “Yes I have.”

  “The towering inferno doesn’t count.”

  “That’s beside the point,” I said. “She put me in charge and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t smoke during business hours.” Lorna continued to smoke her joint.

  “I know why she put you in charge,” Lorna said. “Because you’re sleeping with her.” She started to laugh hysterically. I was more taken aback by the sight of Lorna laughing for the first time than by her comment. Dale’s line rang and we both jumped to answer it. I won and Lorna screamed, “Fuck you” at the top of her lungs and stormed out.

  The call was from a woman with an English accent named Juliet Flagg who had seen the sign hanging in the window behind Dale’s desk. Dale had forced me to make the sign myself—”Dale Kilpatrick Real Estate Gallery,” written crookedly on neon-pink oaktag. She wanted me to come over and appraise the sale price of her loft on Liberty Street.

  I took a cab there. Juliet Flagg opened the door wearing a wedding gown that I recognized from the window of Morgane Le Fay, which was right around the corner from the office. She had long red hair parted in the middle. Her hair was jagged on the bottom like the teeth of a jack-o’-lantern.

  I stood in the doorway.

  “Please come in, I don’t have much time,” she said.

  She turned in her dress and I followed her. Sheer white fabric exposed the delicate structure of the bones of the bodice and the texture of the crinoline. It had the perfect balance of soft to hard, like ice cream on a cone.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “It’s the most beautiful gown I’ve ever seen.” I felt disloyal to my father.

  “I’m glad you like it, but I was talking about the loft. I just bought it this morning—the gown, not the loft. That’s when I saw your sign hanging in the window. I had called another estate agent to come give me an appraisal but she sounded a bit strange so I thought I should get two opinions. I’m afraid it’s all been a bit rushed.”

  Suddenly I became competitive. I took out my leather organizer and started to make notes in the section I had labeled “exclusives.” I couldn’t stand the thought of another real estate agent in this loft. “Has the other agent been here yet?”

  “No, but she’ll be here any minute,” Juliet said.

  “You should get out of that,” I said.

  “But she’s already left her office. I can’t get out of it now.”

  “No, the gown. I don’t want you to ruin it,” I said, in the caring tone of a full-service broker. I was determined to get this listing.

  “Get out of it? I just got into it. They had to lace me all up in the store. The wedding starts at two. And that’s in less than an hour. In fact we should really get started.”

  Her loft was in a converted office building. The floors were the original gorgeous mosaic marble and an old-fashioned brass mail chute was built into the wall just as you entered her foyer. You could mail letters right from inside your own apartment. The bathroom was done all in wood like a treehouse and the shower was built into the corner of the room against two glass walls. The walls were clear glass, floor to ceiling. You would shower naked on the twelfth floor looking right down onto traffic.

  “I know it’s a bit odd,” Juliet said, “but that’s an office building across the road so if you make sure to shower before nine or after five, they’re the only ones who can see you.” She pointed to a row of gargoyles on the building across the street. “So, how much do you think I could get for it?”

  I had no idea. It was an apartment even my father would like. It was fantastic. What I did know was that she was making a terrible mistake to sell this loft. She would miss it when she got divorced and was out mailing letters on the street like any commoner. She would long for it desperately when she had to shower alone in four dull tiled walls. Which was I first, a woman or a real estate agent? If I was a woman first I would stop her from making the worst mistake of her life.

  But I had to give her an answer. “Six hundred thousand?” I asked.

  “Don’t you need to know the maintenance?”

  I had forgotten that. “Sure,” I said, casually, as if I was so good at my job I didn’t need to know trivial little details like maintenance. “What is it?”

  “It’s high. Twenty-two hundred a month.”

  “Oh, that is high,” I said.

  “But you haven’t even seen the roof deck yet.”

  A roof deck was an incredible thing. You rarely saw a roof deck without a rainbow flag hanging off it indicating gay pride. Gay men had conquered all the best outdoor space. They had the best taste and the most money.

  “I really do love this place,” Juliet said. She had the passion in her voice that people only got for their apartments. “I hope I’m doing the right thing.”

  I didn’t know if she meant marrying or selling. She looked at me so pitifully, I felt like Dr. Kevorkian selling her apartment. It was like a murder/suicide, giving up a loft like this just to marry a man.

  I could go to their wedding and object. I could make it my mission, as an almost-divorced woman, to object at all weddings. Each morning I could go to City Hall and start objecting. I could object all day. If anyone tried to catch me, I’d throw rice in their faces and run. My disguise would be a tasteful Peter Kellerman hat with a small veil. I’d stop hundreds of weddings every week. Finally the Lone Objector would be apprehended and my husband would have to come bail me out and he’d say something like, “Liv, I always told you if you like objecting so much you should be a lawyer.” I’d be tried before Judge Garrett and he’d say, “First you spell business wrong, then you become a real estate agent, and now this!”

  Juliet looked upset. “I know this is going to sound strange,” she said, “but I just can’t …”

  “I don’t think you should sell,” I blurted.

  “What? No, I was going to ask you to cut my hair in back. I went crazy and cut it myself this morning and I know it looks terrible. And I trust you.” She handed me a pair of scissors.

  Once I dated an Italian man whose grandmother forced me to cut her hair in her kitchen. It was gray and stiff as a board. Her scissors were dull and wouldn’t cut through. I tried to protest but she insisted I continue hacking until it looked like pointed icicles hanging off a roof. When she saw what I had done she said, “I curse you,” and made a jabbing motion with the scissors near my heart.

  “I’m not good at that,” I said.

  “Please, I don’t want to get married with my hair a disaster.”

  “I can’t,” I pleaded. “You could go to Tom at Tortolla Salon, just a few blocks away on Franklin Street. He’ll see you right now if I tell him it’s an emergency.” I remembered Tom telling me that he didn’t like to see women who cut their own hair because they were usually terribly disturbed control freaks.

  “Please try,” she said. “I have to wait here for the other agent.”

  I figured if I didn’t cut her hair the other agent would. “Who’s the other agent?” I asked.

  “A woman named Vashinko, or something like that.”

  “Oh, Valashenko? I know her,” I said. I felt happy for Valashenko that she had passed the test. But I didn’t feel too threatened. There was no way she would be able to cut Juliet’s hair either. “She’s not very good,” I said. I couldn’t believe I could say anything bad about poor Valashenko. I was getting to be as bad as Dale.

  “She’s not?”

  “No, she’s awful,” I said. “I wish you would go to Tom. You should leave right now and go to Tom. I’ll call him for you.”

  She felt nervously at the back of her hair. “Maybe I should,” she said.

  I pulled one of Dale’s exclusive agreements out of my bag. It was typed in all caps and it stated that Dale Kilpatrick Real Estate Gallery had the exclusive right to sell her apartment for a year.

>   “A year?” the woman said. “I was hoping it would be sold by the time I get back from my honeymoon.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be. I’ll go back to the office and run some comps on the computer so I can price it correctly and I’ll begin advertising right away. I’ll just need the keys and a number where I can reach you with offers.”

  She said she was leaving that night after the wedding and she’d be gone for three weeks. “I’ll call you when I get to my hotel,” she said.

  She signed and we rode down in the elevator together. She got into a limo. “I’m nervous,” she said through the rolled-down window. I had the incredible urge to lend her my gun. Something borrowed.

  “You’ll be fine,” I told her.

  “I know. He’s the loft of my life.”

  I laughed. “You mean the love of your life.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said, isn’t it? The love of my life.”

  I gave the driver the address of Tortolla and waved. The limo started to pull out. Suddenly I remembered that it was Monday and Tortolla was closed. I started to panic. “Wait,” I screamed. The limo drove off. “Wait, wait,” I screamed and ran after it. It stopped at a red light and I caught up to it.

  Juliet rolled down her window. “Maybe I can cut it myself,” I said, panting. “I was just thinking you really don’t have time to go all the way to Tom. I can just do it now.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Please, let me.” The driver pulled over.

  Juliet took an alligator manicure set out of her carry-on bag. I helped her out of the limo and stood behind her, clasping the tiny gold scissors in my shaking hand. I took an inch of her beautiful red hair between my fingers the way Tom did. I snipped tentatively and the hair fell. I made delicate little cuts all around. The tiny red hairs sprinkled down on the back of her dress. I brushed at it furiously. “There,” I said.

  She got back in the limo and they drove off.