High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  “These have to go to the bathroom,” I said, shoving the toilet paper at Carla. “We’re going to lunch.” I led Andrew out of the office and practically ran down the stairs to the street. “I suppose you were hoping to eat lunch in my bed,” I said.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I want to take you to my favorite Italian restaurant. The New York Times only gave it two stars but I think it’s much better than that.”

  I followed him a few blocks east to some business-looking place and watched while he fussed over the menu. The waiter took our order. Then Andrew’s beeper went off in his blue duffel bag. He hoisted the bag onto the chair we weren’t using and got the beeper out. “I’m sorry,” he said, standing, “I’m going to have to get this.”

  He went to the other end of the restaurant and down a flight of stairs. His bag was still on the chair, unzipped. I reached into it and got his journal. I opened it and flipped through to find the last entry.

  The waiter came with my artichoke and Andrew’s soup and I closed the book, keeping my place with my finger.

  For a moment I considered just putting it back without reading it. Reading it was a lose/lose proposition. I couldn’t question him about the things he wrote or the cold clinical tone he used. I didn’t want to know his thoughts. I just wanted to sit there and try to feel beautiful. I hated him for writing in that thing.

  Once when I was a little girl I got to my shrink’s office early and had to sit alone in the waiting room. I could hear everything that was being said behind the closed door. Every week after that I got there early so I could hear more. I would stop breathing and lean forward in my chair, trying to quiet my heartbeat. By the time the sad crying woman would come out of the room I was exhausted. I always gave her a consoling look. One time I heard her say, “I hate that morose little girl who waits outside every week. I know it’s wrong to hate a child but I do.” I ruined it by asking the shrink what “morose” meant. The next week the walls were lined with cork.

  I couldn’t stop myself. I opened Andrew’s book.

  Today I called Liv from the study instead of the bedroom. I lit candles.

  That sounded strange, like a game. Like Clue. “Colonel Mustard in the study with the candles.”

  I pulled down my pants before I called her this time. I got hard as soon as she said hello. She rambled on about some story that happened to her friend’s dog and I squirted vaseline lotion onto my cock and stroked myself to one of the best orgasms I have ever had. It was so good I couldn’t keep myself from ejaculating. I couldn’t hold back. It was like a hailstorm. My cock was unbelievably hard. She was actually saying the words “The vet said Bad Doggie” at the moment I shot. She told me some sexy little story without having any idea at all what she was doing. What I was doing. I shot all over my computer screen. I have to buy screen cleaner. As soon as I finished I told her I had to take a call and got off the phone.

  As I read I reached out and peeled off an artichoke leaf and dipped it in the creamy vinaigrette. I brought it to my lips and a drop of the white dressing fell on the page. I wiped it off with my napkin but it still showed, like a come stain. Then I looked up and saw the top of Andrew’s head coming up the stairs. I calmly closed the book and slid it into his bag even though what I wanted was to open the book and say, “Would you mind explaining this part to me? I didn’t know my phone number had been changed to 970-LIVV.” I should have charged $1.99 a minute.

  My stomach felt sour and I was sure I was going to throw up.

  “Sorry I took so long.” He sat back down across from me and picked up his spoon like a weapon. “Why are you blushing?” he asked.

  “I’m not blushing,” I said.

  “Yes you are. You look like you were doing something naughty under the table.”

  “That sounds like something you would do,” I said.

  “I’m not the one blushing,” he said. “Can’t we just try to have a nice conversation for once? What’s your favorite television show?”

  I didn’t say anything. It was definitely I Love Lucy but I wouldn’t even sully Lucille Ball’s name by saying it in front of Andrew. “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “All right, then what’s your favorite color?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me your favorite color.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said.

  “I want to know.” He smiled at me.

  “Yellow,” I whispered. I could hardly speak. My hands were stiff in my lap as if they were still holding the diary. My mind was still reading it.

  “Yellow? Why yellow?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Yellow’s nice,” he said. “What shade?”

  “All shades,” I mumbled. “Mustard. Taxicab. Warning sign. Lemon.” I couldn’t believe we were sitting here having such a ridiculous conversation after what I had just read. I was so confused. “What’s yours?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment, seriously. “Probably yellow,” he said.

  “It’s hard to believe we both like yellow so much,” I said. Then everything struck me as funny and I started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” This was the end, I thought. This had to be the end, like a wadded-up tissue on a bedside table.

  I chewed on a few more artichoke leaves. Then I knew I was going to throw up. I quickly excused myself and ran down the stairs to the ladies’ room. I hung my head over the toilet and heaved over and over again. I wiped my mouth and looked into the bowl anxiously. There was the lead pipe floating in a slow circle.

  When I got back to the table Andrew asked me what took me so long.

  “There was a line,” I said.

  He looked around the empty restaurant. The only other people eating there were two nice-looking businessmen. One was saying, “Jenny’s grandmother is in the hospital so we’re going to Montauk for four or five days to be with her.” He sounded so sincere and solemn as if he really cared about this Jenny and her grandmother. I wanted a man like him.

  “Liv,” Andrew said.

  I shifted my gaze from the married man back to Andrew. “Yes?”

  “I’m ready to leave her,” he said.

  “Jordan?” I asked.

  “Of course Jordan, who else would I be leaving?”

  The waiter cleared away our appetizers. My bristly artichoke heart lay on the plate uneaten. I tried to turn the page of his diary in my mind.

  “You’re kidding,” I said. It was an unromantic thing to say. I had rehearsed this moment so often, heard those words in my ears, “I’m leaving Jordan. I’m ready to leave her.”

  “I’m not kidding. I love you. I want to be with you.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “Liv,” he said, exasperated, “I’m not lying.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “I will tonight.”

  “I know a loft you could rent,” I challenged. “Available immediately.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “York Street.”

  “You mean York Avenue? I don’t want to live on the Upper East Side.”

  “Not York Avenue,” I said. “York Street.”

  “Where the hell’s that?” he asked.

  I suddenly wondered if the York Street loft was too good for Andrew. I had often thought this about my clients, that they weren’t good enough or interesting enough or attractive enough to live in the places I showed them. I wanted someone like the businessman and his wife Jenny to live in the York Street loft.

  If Andrew wasn’t good enough for the York Street loft, I reasoned, with its free washer/dryer and fresh-baked cookie smell and its olive barrel circles on the floor like a wedding ring quilt, then maybe he wasn’t good enough for me.

  “I’d like to see it,” he said. “I’d like to see it right away
. Do you have the keys?” he asked.

  “I can’t show it to you right now because I have another appointment,” I said. Until this moment I had forgotten that I had an appointment with a girl named Storm, the daughter of one of my parents’ Beverly Hills acquaintances. When she called I thought she was acting as a spy for my father and he had found out that I was selling real estate, but it turned out she had found me completely by accident. Her father was living in Texas and wasn’t in touch with my parents so I didn’t feel in danger of being outed. I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell them.

  “I can come along with you and then we can look at the York Street place,” Andrew said.

  I finally agreed to meet him later that afternoon. It would give me some time to think.

  26.

  FLRTHRU ARTIST LOFT—7 SKYLTS

  Storm got out of a black limousine all by herself even before the chauffeur could hold open the door. She was dressed as a bag lady as usual in an old black wool coat and strange little flat elf boots. She had told me on the phone that she had just been left at the altar in front of four hundred people at the Beverly Hills Hotel after giving up her “absolutely adorable bungalow in Beachwood Canyon.” She looked awful.

  “Hi, you look great,” she said.

  “You do, too,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re sweet,” she said. “So, is this it?” she asked, looking up at the building. “It’s not what I imagined.”

  We were standing on West Street and Gansevoort in the heart of the meat-packing district.

  “What did you imagine?” I asked.

  “I really like Park Avenue a lot. Is there anything there?”

  “You said you wanted a loft.”

  “Oh, I do!” she said.

  “There aren’t any lofts on Park Avenue,” I said. “This building has a doorman.” I pointed to a man in a uniform slouched over a Formica desk in the lobby.

  “This is so exciting, let’s see it,” she said.

  I took her up to the second floor and we were greeted by the owner, a middle-aged woman. She showed us the kitchen first. It had a half-fridge and one narrow counter.

  “Where’s the kitchen?” Storm asked.

  “This is it,” the woman said. Storm laughed as if the woman were kidding.

  She took us into room after room. It was a huge square loft, easily three thousand square feet. The price was low for all that space.

  She took us into a bedroom and put her finger to her lips. A gray-haired man was sleeping on the low austere platform bed.

  “We’re night people,” the woman said as we headed toward the door. “The person who buys this place has to be able to sleep through anything.”

  “Why’s that?” Storm asked.

  “Well, of course you get the noise from the West Side Highway but you can put in double-paned windows,” I told Storm quickly.

  “We’ve already got them,” the woman said. “No double-paned windows in the universe are going to help this place.”

  “What do you mean?” Storm asked.

  The woman looked at me helplessly.

  “New York’s a noisy place,” I said. “If you want quiet you have to stay in Beverly Hills.”

  “Look,” the woman said, “I have to be honest with you. Every night at four A.M. the place downstairs gets their delivery.”

  “Delivery of what?” Storm asked.

  “It makes quite a racket.”

  “What gets delivered?” I asked. Now I was curious.

  “Carcasses”.

  “What!” Storm said. She looked like she was going to pass out. “Oh, not people, dear, cows. Cow carcasses. They come in at four off trucks on conveyor belts. It makes a lot of noise, sort of a thud, thud, thud sound. If you’re interested in buying the place we suggest spending the night here one time to see if it’s for you.”

  I pictured Storm rising from her four-poster canopied bed, leaning out the window and getting splashed in the face with cow blood. She’d have to sleep with a butcher’s apron on over her silk negligee.

  “Okay, thank you very much,” I said.

  As we left the building Storm gathered her coat up around her, afraid it might trail on the sidewalk.

  We took her limo to the next loft on our tour. We sat in silence. The limo was sort of cheapo, nothing special.

  Finally I said, “Storm is an interesting name.” Interesting if you’re the son of a weatherman who grows up to be a weatherman.

  “It was one of the names Margaret Mitchell considered for Scarlett O’Hara,” she said.

  “How interesting,” I said. Scarlett O’Hara, Storm Shapiro. I think Margaret Mitchell made the right choice.

  The next loft was on Greenwich Street near Christopher. There were wall-to-wall windows on two sides and sun poured in on the floor, making it look like someone had spilled light. After the noise from the West Side Highway, it seemed silent. All you could hear was the soft sound of a basketball bouncing somewhere outside.

  Storm relaxed. She moved around easily. She walked over to a long elegant table surrounded by chairs upholstered in velvet. Every chair was a different color.

  “I love these chairs,” she said. “It would be so fun to entertain with them.”

  “You’re not furniture shopping,” I said. “Look at the loft itself.”

  She walked past a half-bathroom. “Oh, look at this powder room, it’s so cute,” she said. She pointed to a tile that said “W.C.” hanging on the door.

  The bedroom had white built-in bookshelves arranged like library stacks along an angled wall.

  “These will look so great with books on them,” she said. “I love this loft, I really, really love it. It’s a lot nicer than the dead cow loft.”

  “Well, I have one more place to show you today,” I said. I wanted to get her out of there before something bad happened.

  “I’m going to put those chairs over there so you see them when you first come in.”

  “I don’t think these chairs are for sale, Storm.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I followed her to the kitchen and she opened the refrigerator. “Oh, Parmesan cheese,” she said. She took out a small plastic container. “I was going to make a stop at the store for some Parmesan later. Do you think I could take this?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “I’m sure the owner won’t mind,” Storm said. I hoped the owner wouldn’t walk in and find us looking in her refrigerator.

  “I think you better just go to the store.”

  Storm started opening cabinets and found a box of baggies. She filled a baggie with some of the Parmesan cheese, knotted it, and put it in her purse.

  “How much is this loft?” Storm asked.

  “Eight hundred thousand. I already sent the financials to your father.” It was hard to believe the daughter of a millionaire had to steal cheese.

  “I don’t think I have to see anything else,” she said.

  I had planned to take her to the loft of the actor Judd Hirsch from the television show Taxi. It was an overpriced loft that had been on the market for years but it was a great loft to show because for one thing it made all other lofts look like a good deal and for another thing there were a million photographs on the walls of Judd Hirsch posing with Danny DeVito so it made me look like broker to the stars.

  “I’ll talk to my father and I’ll call you tomorrow,” Storm said.

  I watched her get into the limousine and drive off. Then I jumped in a cab and went to meet Andrew.

  27.

  DEAL FELL THRU—OWNER ANXIOUS

  Just as Andrew and I were about to walk into the York Street building a model walked across our path like a black cat. Her lips were pink and shiny as if she had just eaten watermelon. She was six feet tall and dressed in Andrew’s and my favorite color with her stomach exposed and bones jutting out
all over the place. She was beautiful but freakish like something that could be hanging in the window of Mayhem, the Halloween shop on my block. I tried to picture myself that tall and skinny but I couldn’t. I tried to picture myself as a skeleton but I imagined my bones thick and soft like Styrofoam.

  “You’re prettier than she is,” Andrew said.

  “No I’m not.”

  “Oh, you are. Your body is so, I don’t know, chewy.”

  Andrew walked around the loft.

  “So this is where you want me to live.”

  “I don’t care where you live.”

  “Where would I walk the dogs?”

  “By the river, I guess. Hudson River Park.”

  He lay down on the bed in the far corner of the loft. It had a flowery green comforter on it. He looked like a dog lying in a field.

  “Let’s see how well we make love here. If the sex is good I’ll know it’s the right loft for me.”

  “That’s what all my customers say.”

  “Come here.”

  I went over to him on the bed and sat on the edge of it. I couldn’t believe how much I wanted to fuck him. He took my arm and started kissing the underside of it. The keys to the loft were clenched in my fist. The first rule in real estate is never put the keys down for any reason. He grabbed some flesh in his teeth and bit down gently.

  There is a photograph of me as a child. I’m about six and I’m holding a tiger cub in my arms. The cub is almost as big as I am. My hand is in its mouth, and I am laughing. On the back of the photo my father wrote, “Liv in love with a tiger, India.” I couldn’t recall ever having held a tiger. I couldn’t remember being in India but my father assures me I was and that it is really me there in the photo, sitting on that bench, holding the baby tiger. “You were brave,” my father told me. “Braver than all the other children.”

  Andrew pulled me down and kissed my neck. He bit my ear.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  He bit down harder and harder. It was much harder than he usually bit. It took me a moment to realize how seriously he was biting me. I started to see white. I screamed but he covered my mouth with his hand. I struggled and felt my ear tear. He bit and sucked until I stopped moving and lay limp underneath him. I imagined I was in India with buildings that looked like ice cream sundaes and monkeys grabbing cans of Coca-Cola right out of the hands of children in the streets. I imagined I was being bitten by a tiger and that I was brave.