High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  Andrew rang the downstairs buzzer. The top of his cute blurry head appeared on the video security screen.

  “Yes?” I answered. “Who is it?”

  “Bellevue, here to pick up an insane lunatic,” he said.

  “There’s no one insane here,” I said. I heard other people answering their buzzers. He must have rung all of them.

  “It’s Fred Freund,” he said.

  “I don’t know a Fred Freund.”

  He picked up one of the dogs and put her face close to the camera. “Big bad wolf,” he said. I laughed. He was the big bad wolf. I buzzed him in and waited in my towel for the elevator to open.

  “Let me give you a tour,” I said.

  “Just show me the bedroom,” he said.

  “My tour starts here,” I said, opening the door to Juliet’s walk-in closet. “Allow me to present the hamper.” I walked all over the loft with Andrew following me.

  “Guess what’s going to go here,” I said, pointing to the shelves in the dining room.

  “What?”

  “A thousand snow domes,” I said.

  “What the hell is a snow dome?” he said. “You mean snow cone?”

  “You know, a snow globe.” I made a shaking motion with my hands.

  “A souveniry thing.”

  “Like from the airport? Oh my God,” he said. “One would be too many.”

  The dogs lay on the couch. They loved it. They stayed there while Andrew and I climbed the spiral staircase up to the roof deck. The view was incredible. If Andrew had been blind it would have taken me all night to describe it. Andrew yanked my towel off and spread it on the wooden planks for us to lie on. I was naked. “I’m cold,” I said. He took off his turtleneck and I put it on and curled up next to him on the towel. On our backs we looked at satellites and helicopters and the gold angel on the Municipal Building. This was the closest I ever needed to get to camping.

  Then we went back downstairs and got into Juliet’s bed, one dog at the foot and one dog under.

  “You know I don’t think I’ve ever felt more at home,” I said.

  “That’s because we’re together.”

  Actually I was pretty sure it was the loft. It was the first night I hadn’t missed my husband’s apartment.

  “I can’t believe I’m not going to be sleeping with you tomorrow night,” Andrew said.

  “Yeah, what a shame,” I said, nonchalantly. “My earlobes will get some rest.”

  “Soon we’ll be together all the time. I promise,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

  I fell asleep, looking forward to seeing Andrew’s face in the morning when he got into the shower.

  Three weeks later Juliet Flagg came back from her honeymoon and we closed on her loft. The mortgage was in place, the letters of recommendation were in order—both buyers, although young, had gone to Harvard and had their parents as guarantors, and I had provided twelve perfect board packets to the co-op. I put them in shiny green folders I bought myself, because Dale didn’t have any in the office.

  She had ashtrays and knickknacks, a dozen vintage juice glasses, 1950s blenders, Bakelite radios, Tony Robbins motivational tapes, and a roomful of flea-market art, but no envelopes or folders.

  I also had an accepted offer of eight hundred thousand dollars on the architects’ apartment with its Vulcan stove, smooth pocket doors, leather chairs in the shape of giant baseball gloves, and faux forest of trees on wheels hiding the service entrance. They liked a townhouse I had shown them on Harrison, across the street from Independence Plaza, and if that didn’t work, I had a list of fourteen other houses to show them.

  17.

  E-I-K

  That night Andrew called and said he and Jordan had had a terrible fight and he was going to sleep at my place. When he got there he said, “You know it would be really nice if you had some food in this house.”

  “Why?” I asked. I was getting to like not having food in the house. I had the biggest kitchen in the world—New York. I flung open my window and leaned out over MacDougal Street. “There’s all the food you could want, right out there.”

  “I’m just saying it would be nice if you could make me something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a cheese sandwich, for Christ’s sake. We’d also save a lot of money.”

  “Andrew, do you consider yourself cheap?” I asked.

  “No, I consider myself fiscally responsible.”

  I went across the street to the deli and bought a tiny jar of Hell-mann’s, a half-loaf package of Pepperidge Farm white bread, American cheese individually wrapped singles, and one plum tomato. It came to fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. I brought the bag back upstairs and spread the ingredients out on the kitchen table. I tore off a piece of paper towel to use as a plate and I made Andrew his cheese sandwich. I cut the sandwich in half and presented it to him. “Thank you,” he said.

  “So tell me about your fight,” I said. I wondered if he had told Jordan that he was leaving her. If he had told her about me. This would be the start of an all-night talk. We would plan everything now, when he would leave, what he would say to her, what he would take with him and what she would keep. He would bring one dog and leave one dog. He would leave the grandfather clock. And we’d decide where he would put his clothes. I’d clear out some shelves. We’d have to make room for his desk and his drafting table.

  “What fight?” he asked.

  “Your fight with Jordan,” I said.

  “Oh, it was a big one. A new couple just moved in downstairs from us and when I left they were standing in the hall, shaking.”

  “They could hear the fight?”

  Andrew laughed. “The whole building could hear the fight. We screamed at each other.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Haven’t you ever had a fight with anyone?” For some reason that remark wounded me. Did he think I wasn’t capable of a fight? I was sure I had had many fights with neighbors shaking.

  “I think you should move out right away, Andrew. Move in here.”

  “You don’t move out over one fight, Liv.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t aware that this was your first fight. I was under the impression that you were in a troubled unhappy miserable relationship. An adversarial relationship.”

  When I was a child, my shrink said my parents had an adversarial relationship. “What’s that?” I asked her. “Well, Liv,” she said, “if your mom died how do you think your dad would feel?” “Happy?” I asked. “That’s right. And if your daddy died how do you think your mom would feel?” she asked. “Happy?” “That’s right,” she said.

  “It’s not a relationship, Liv,” Andrew said. “It’s a relationshit. I’m just saying you don’t move out because of one fight. I’m afraid it’s not that easy. You need to give me more time. You have to be patient with me, Liv. I need more time than most people. There’s a way to do this and leaving after one fight isn’t it.”

  Andrew finished his sandwich. “Do you want another one?” I asked. He shook his head no. “It was great,” he said.

  Since I didn’t have a working fridge, I had to throw out the rest of the cheese, bread and mayo. I had used the whole tomato.

  I got into bed with him. “I wish things were different,” I said.

  “What things?”

  “I wish I was tall. I wish I didn’t have to think about you sleeping in bed with your girlfriend.”

  “I usually don’t sleep in bed with her. I have a futon on the floor of my study.” Andrew hardly ever told me anything about Jordan. The only thing I knew about her was that she was a vegetarian and wouldn’t even wear leather. When I tried to imagine her all I could picture was a giant frown.

  “Do you think I’m short?” I asked.

  “I like short women.”
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  “So you think of me as a short woman?”

  “No, I don’t think of you as a short woman. I think of you more as a tall midget.”

  “Well, you’re the one who can wear my jeans.”

  “Touché,” he said.

  “Touché?” Touché is not a romantic word. Touché is a word you don’t expect to hear in bed. “It’s a good thing you don’t break up with a person over one word,” I said.

  18.

  PRE-WAR GEM—BING & BING

  The next morning I sat in the office and read the New York Times real estate section. One of the city’s biggest firms, The Corcoran Group, had taken out a full-page ad. The ad featured a photo of Barbara Corcoran herself, very pregnant and wearing a suit with a short skirt. She was smiling radiantly. To me, it was more radical than Demi Moore, naked and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair. The single most successful woman in New York real estate, attractive, rich, pregnant, proud, and well dressed. Nothing was going to stop her from being that way. Nothing was going to stop her in her short blond Cathy Rigby Peter Pan hair. She was a cross between an Olympic gymnast and a boy who wouldn’t grow up, flying over the city’s rooftops every night. A woman like that had to have hair like that. She made it seem like a woman couldn’t sell real estate until she knew what it was like to be real estate for a perfect upcoming Gerber baby. A bird building a nest and buying and selling nests, too. It made me want to get pregnant and be a better real estate agent. She was pure energy, drive, and confidence, Florence Henderson, Helen Reddy, and Doris Day. I wondered if Barbara Corcoran had ever dated a man who lived with another woman. I wondered if Barbara Corcoran ever had to ice her earlobes after sex to reduce their swelling. She probably thought she deserved better than that.

  Just then Dale walked in. It was her first day back from Italy. Once when my father came home from a trip to Italy, I had spelled out “Welcome Home” with uncooked macaroni glued onto construction paper and hung it on the front door. I wondered if I should have made a sign for Dale.

  Dale had gained weight and was wearing a leather jacket and black leather gloves even though it was warm out. I had never noticed how much her face looked like the face of a dog or a wolf. It made me feel compassion for her. She entered a room the way Lorna did, her head first and then her body.

  I quickly put down the newspaper.

  “Buon giorno,” she said. “Did you get my postcards? What’s that?” She grabbed the paper and studied the Corcoran ad. “What kind of a sick fuck would put herself in the paper like that?” she said. “Can you believe this woman? She looks ridiculous. Does she even realize how ridiculous she looks?”

  “I think she looks good,” I said.

  “Are you crazy? No one wants to see Barbara Corcoran pregnant. Who cares?” She pronounced “Corcoran” a little like “cockring.” “You wake up Sunday morning, you want to buy an apartment, you don’t want to look at that. Right now all of New York is axing themselves, Who cares?”

  Right now, I thought, all of New York was axing themselves how to convince the Corcoran Group to list their apartments. “I admire her,” I said.

  “Great. Yesterday I was riding in a gondola on the Grand Canal in total ecstasy and today I have to come here and see that first thing. It’s an assault to my senses. Get this filth out of here.” She threw it back down on my desk. “Get that pornography out of here.”

  My phone rang and I picked it up. “Suck my cock,” a man whispered into the phone.

  “Hi, Andrew,” I said.

  “Hi,” he whispered.

  I laughed. “Can I call you later?”

  “Sure,” he whispered, and hung up.

  Dale walked back over to my desk and got the newspaper. Then she sat at her desk looking at the picture of Barbara Corcoran. “Who was that?”

  “No one, just a friend,” I said.

  “Well, it looks like I got back just in time, before my whole business went to hell. That’s some welcome back you gave me. If you’re such a Barbara Corcoran fan maybe you should just march right over there and take Lorna with you.”

  I imagined Lorna walking into the Corcoran Group offices and saying, “Something stinks.”

  “Or why don’t you stay here and I’ll go to the Corcoran Group,” Dale screamed. “Maybe I’d actually make some money if I worked with professionals.”

  Dale sat at her desk, pouting. She opened all her drawers and shut them. Then she started furiously writing something in a notebook. She tore out the page, ripped it up, and threw the pieces in her wastepaper basket.

  She picked up the phone and called Harri. “Harri, it’s me, pick up the phone,” she said. “Hi, honey,” she said brightly. “No. No, I’m not. The office is filthy. I guess when the maid goes away for a few weeks, the princesses let the whole office fall apart. Yes, I guess certain people think they’re very high and mighty with their exclusives and their mysterious phone calls. Yes, someone has gotten a big head.”

  “Someone has gotten an even bigger stomach,” I mumbled.

  “What did you say? Hold on, Harri. What did you say?”

  I looked up. “What? Nothing.”

  “Harri, I’ll call you back,” she said and hung up. “This was hardly the welcome I had in mind.” She stormed out, her leather gloves in her teeth as she struggled into her too-tight jacket.

  Dale was right about the office, it was a mess. Lorna and I hadn’t cleaned it at all. There were empty soda cans and coffee cups every-where and ashtrays filled with the tiny remains of Lorna’s burnt white joints, smaller than Barbie-doll shoes. We had thrown while-you-were-out slips on Dale’s desk, not even making them into a welcoming pile.

  I got a garbage bag from the storage closet and walked over to Dale’s desk. I bent down and picked up her wastepaper basket. Then I picked out all the torn pieces of paper and sat at her desk arranging them. I matched her long, slanted lettering until I had everything lined up. I taped it together.

  New Rules

  There is going to be a mandatory weekly meeting for all sales associates Mondays at 9:00 A.M. All those late and/or absent will be finde $100. No exeptions ifs ands or butts.

  A new dress code is in affect. NO JEANS!!!

  I, Dale Kilpatrick, am going off sugar and I would appreciate no sugar products to be brought into this office as a matter of curtesy.

  Dale and Liv. Liv and Dale. Dale loves Liv. Liv loves Dale. D.K. and L.K. Liv Liv Liv Liv Liv.

  I wondered if Jerome had written things like that about me on his Braille writing machine. I emptied her basket into a garbage bag and a balled-up while-you-were-out slip rolled onto the floor. I uncrumpled it. It was a message Dale had taken for me before she left for Italy but never given to me. It was from Jerome.

  It was good of you to come,” Jerome said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience to come here to the office. I would have been happy to take you out to lunch.”

  Jerome was always hinting that he wanted to take me to some restaurant in the Village I had never heard of called Ye Waverly Inn. It sounded ridiculous. He probably had a discount coupon.

  “Actually it wasn’t inconvenient at all. I just sold a new exclusive of mine not far from here on Liberty Street.”

  “Liberty Street. That sounds like an ideal place to reside. Do you have any apartments available on Easy Street?”

  He was no longer paying me to laugh at his jokes so I just sat there. “I brought you something,” I said.

  I handed him a souvenir replica of the Empire State Building. Jerome had never seen it. I put it in his hands. “It’s the Empire State Building. It looks like this, only bigger,” I said.

  The man could only see what was placed in his hands.

  “You make me jealous when you say it like that,” he said, feeling the miniature building. He put its point to his temple. “Sharp.
”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. I got the nervous feeling I got every time Jerome tried to get inappropriate.

  “You act like you like this building more than you like any person,” he said.

  “I do.”

  “You’re so arrogant.”

  I liked when Jerome told me about myself. I liked when anyone did, but I especially liked hearing these things from a blind man. It seemed more meaningful. I felt proud to be arrogant. I decided to emphasize this feature from now on. What else am I, besides arrogant? I wanted to ask.

  “I am not arrogant,” I said.

  “Yes, you most certainly are. You’re arrogant but you’re also kind.” He held the building over his head like a trophy, victoriously. “I’d like to go to the top with you someday,” Jerome said.

  “I can see into my ex-husband’s bedroom if I put fifty cents in the telescope machine.”

  “You mean the bedroom you and he used to share?” Jerome asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I bet loads of tourists used to watch you, didn’t they?” he asked.

  “Only when I stood in the window naked,” I said.

  “Does it turn you on to think of someone watching you?”

  “What do you think?” I said, as arrogantly as possible.

  “I think it does,” he said. I was arrogant and kind and I got turned on being watched.

  “If I like being watched and you’re blind I guess we wouldn’t make a very good couple.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. You might find it vewy fweeing.” He was making his r’s into w’s because he was flustered. “Sometimes people who like being watched also like not being seen.”

  I wanted to be seen. I had experienced invisibility. Jerome was wrong. “You’re right,” I said out of kindness. If anyone could make blindness sexy it wasn’t Jerome.

  “Anyway, I guess you’re wondering why I asked you here,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Remember when I told you I was working on something but it was a secret? Well, here it is.”