High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  “This little tiny table couldn’t possibly be for four people. We practically have to hold our food on our laps as it is.”

  “Look, you’re going to have to move now.”

  “Then we’ll leave,” the old woman said.

  “Fine,” the waitress said.

  The little girl started to cry.

  “Mom, you’re upsetting Chloe. Why can’t we just move to another table?”

  “No!” the old lady said. “We’re leaving.”

  She stood up, knocking over a cup of tea. The little girl was bawling.

  “I don’t think I could live in a loft shaped like a missile,” Storm said. I didn’t think I could ever hate a client as much as Noah Bausch.

  I paid the check, and Storm and I left the restaurant. Out on the street a pretty blond woman started to walk toward us. She was wearing a suit but she looked athletic, as if she had a tennis racket over her shoulder instead of a pocketbook.

  “Jordan,” Storm said, stopping. “Hi!”

  I froze. It couldn’t be Andrew’s Jordan. This one was tall and wore a diamond engagement ring. She looked relaxed and content as if she had just had sex that morning.

  “Storm, it’s great to see you. You look great,” this Jordan said.

  “Oh, you’re sweet,” Storm said, “Jordan, this is Liv, my real estate agent. I’m going to buy a loft if Liv can ever find me anything.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Jordan said, completely ignoring me.

  It was interesting that Storm had introduced me as her real estate agent instead of her friend even though we had been to countless parties together as children. I preferred it, though. I was glad that Storm realized there was some kind of business trying to happen between us. It was impossible to be someone’s friend once you became their real estate agent even for five minutes.

  I thought about Andrew in bed with this woman. It hadn’t occurred to me before that Jordan could be beautiful. Where was the scowl I had imagined, and the frizzy gray hair? Her bag wasn’t leather and her shoes were made of some new stretchy, micro-fiber material. I had to find out if this was the Jordan I had thought about for so many months. I considered asking her last name but then I remembered that Andrew had never told me Jordan’s last name, all he had told me is that she was named after the Hemingway character.

  “Jordan, that’s a nice name,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said, enthusiastically.

  “Were you named for the Hemingway character?”

  “Yes, umm hmm,” she said, nodding her head sort of sympathetically as if I were a ladies’ room attendant. “My father is a Hemingway freak.”

  Andrew had told me that Jordan’s father collected first editions of famous American novels.

  “Where do you two know each other from?” I asked.

  “I know Jordan from New Haven,” Storm said. Storm never said the word “Yale.” She always referred to it as New Haven or simply as Connecticut. It was her way of being modest. Andrew had never told me where Jordan went to school.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you?” Jordan said. She was looking at my bandage.

  “Her boyfriend bit her ear off,” Storm offered.

  “Oh my God, you poor thing,” Jordan said. “My fiancé can get quite overzealous sometimes, too. I’m going to have to tell him to be careful.”

  Storm let out a fake squeal as if she had just then noticed the giant engagement ring. I couldn’t picture Andrew buying anything that big.

  “Same guy?” Storm squeaked.

  “Same guy!” Jordan squeaked back.

  “You’ve been living together for so long, I’m so happy he finally asked you.”

  “What does he do?” I asked.

  “He’s an architect here in New York,” she said slowly.

  I took a deep breath. “Oh, what’s his name?” I asked as casually as possible.

  “His name?” Jordan said, curiously. “It’s Oren.” She said it as if she were embarrassed by it. “Oren Mallis. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no reason,” I said.

  Jordan and Storm continued talking for a few minutes while I tried to relax. Suddenly New York seemed filled with potential Jordans. I finally excused myself and started to walk away. “Don’t worry,” I heard Jordan say, “if she can’t find you anything I know a really great broker from Halstead I can introduce you to.”

  “Oh, would you do that?” Storm said. “That’s so sweet. I’d really appreciate that. I’m really desperate to find something.”

  When I got home I found Andrew sitting on the front steps of my building holding a small plastic bag and a large square present of some sort badly wrapped in gold paper. He stood up.

  “I can’t see you anymore,” I said.

  “I’m standing right in front of you, of course you can see me. You’re not blind, are you?”

  Suddenly I couldn’t speak. I had no way to express to him how angry I was that he had bitten my ear off. I was blind. And my ear was bandaged. I was some kind of pathetic self-made Helen Keller. Helen Keller is alive and well and living on MacDougal Street, I thought. I felt like those three monkeys, one covering her eyes, one covering her ears, and one covering her mouth. I was one monkey, trying to cover all three, standing there in front of my own building.

  “I think I have been blind,” I said.

  “Well, then let’s go on a blind date.”

  “Every date with you is a blind date,” I said.

  “I wanted to see how you’re healing. Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

  I shook my head no.

  “Liv, I’m not going to hurt you. You’re really acting like an idiot.” He smiled at me and tried to take my hand.

  “I can’t see you now, Andrew, I have a date,” I said. I so clearly didn’t have a date with that big bandage on the side of my head that I almost had to smile myself.

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s from L.A. He’s in New York every three weeks.”

  “What does he do?”

  I thought about telling him that he was the host of the television show America’s Funniest Home Videos but I thought better of it. “He’s a television personality,” I said. “I’d rather not say.”

  I wished I had said he was a film producer of some sort who had taken a few things all the way to Sundance. It would have sounded more mysterious.

  “I’ll leave before he gets here. Come on, Liv, we have to talk.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going upstairs without you.”

  “I’ll push my way in,” he said.

  “Then I won’t go up.” I sat on the steps and he sat down next to me. “What’s in the box?” I asked.

  “I bought you a present. I’ll show it to you upstairs.”

  I grabbed the present out of his hands, ripped the paper off, and lifted a green-and-white Official New York Jets football helmet out of the box. Least romantic I’m-sorry-I-bit-your-ear-off gift ever.

  “What is this?” I asked as if I had never seen a football helmet before.

  “What do you mean ‘what is this’? I bought it so we can have sex again. You can wear it and then I won’t be able to get at those delectable little ears. You’ll be safe.”

  “I won’t be able to give you head through the mouth guard,” I said.

  “I’ve already thought of that. You can take it off for that and then put it back on when we make love. It’s the perfect solution.”

  I was so mad I didn’t know what to say. “Grrrrrr,” I said, like some kind of angry animal.

  “What was that?” he asked calmly.

  “Grrrrrrr. Grrrrrrr.”

  Liv …”

  “Grrrrrrr. Roar,” I growled at him. I was really acting insane. My animal sounds weren’t even scary. They certainly weren’t sexy, or even funny. They just came out sad.

  “Liv, stop
it. I brought you something else.”

  He pulled out a pint of Häagen-Dazs and two plastic spoons from the bag. He peeled the lid off the ice cream and put it faceup on the step next to him. Then he took a spoonful and handed it to me.

  I took a spoonful of ice cream and handed the container back to him. Vanilla Swiss Almond. We sat in silence, with the helmet between us, passing the pint back and forth and taking spoonfuls. It felt solemn, like a ceremony. I began to calm down. It was as if all I had needed all along was just a small kindness, a treat. I basked in the pleasure of it.

  I had done it in bed with my husband from time to time. Passing the container back and forth, late at night, watching a video.

  There was nothing wrong or dangerous about sharing a little ice cream with this man. There was nothing sarcastic, or hostile, or mean. It was somehow an equalizer. We were a couple like all couples before us, real and imagined, Beatrice and Benedick, Rhett and Scarlett, Beauty and the Beast, Diego and Frieda, Marv Albert and the woman who sued him for biting her.

  Andrew put the empty container back in the plastic bag and handed me a paper napkin.

  “Liv, I promise never to bite you that hard again.”

  “You can never bite me again, period,” I said.

  “Unless you die before me. Then I can take just a tiny morsel of cheek.”

  He kissed my cheek gently. His lips were sticky.

  I put on the helmet. It covered my eyes.

  He kissed the top of it.

  “I met Jordan today,” I said.

  “Oh?” Andrew said, reining in his distress.

  “She’s getting married.”

  “Don’t kid around about Jordan, Liv.”

  “Who’s kidding?” I said. Then in one fast motion, like a star quarterback or whatever, I jumped up and managed the key in the front door and closed it behind me, before Andrew had a chance to go in for the tackle.

  29.

  RAW SPACE

  He buzzed and buzzed so finally I let him come upstairs. A relationship couldn’t end with the terrible sound of buzzing. We lay in my bed. He had a headache even though I was the one still wearing the helmet.

  I was nervous because it was four in the morning and he couldn’t sleep. He had an eight o’clock breakfast meeting. As a woman, I took it as my personal responsibility to give him a good night’s sleep. It must have been leftover from baby-sitting. Dating is a lot like baby-sitting, or having a pet. I wondered if he slept better with his girlfriend than he did with me.

  “Liv.”

  “Go to sleep, Andrew,” I said gently through the mouth guard.

  “I love lying here with you.”

  “I love it, too.”

  “I sleep so soundly when I’m with you.”

  I lay there silently not knowing what to make of that statement. In all the nights he had slept over he had gotten a total of about five minutes’ sleep.

  “Andrew, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you sleep very well when you’re here,” I said.

  “I do,” he said. “You relax me. I love sleeping with you. I love being with you. I love going out with you. I love fucking you. I love biting you.”

  “I hate when you bite me.”

  “No you don’t, you love it.” He turned over and I ran my fingers over his back. I wished he would just go to sleep.

  “Liv.”

  “Go to sleep, Andrew,” I said.

  “I’m not a good person.”

  I sighed dramatically. Every man I have ever dated has told me that he is not a good person. At some point, as a last-ditch effort to get out of it, as they flail around in their minds trying to figure out a reason why they shouldn’t get too involved, keeping their score cards and their lists of all the things that are wrong with you, they get the brilliant revelation that the solution lies within themselves, and they pull out a phrase like “I’m not a good person.”

  “I know you’re not a good person,” I said. “You’re a man.”

  “I’m serious, Liv.”

  “I think you’re a very good person,” I said. I would say it now, hoping we could both get some sleep, and worry if it was true later.

  I wondered if Hitler had told Eva Braun, “I’m not a good person,” when he was courting her and if she had assured him that he was.

  “I’m not. I’m not worthy of you.” The sun was starting to come up. We were both aware of it. Some things just couldn’t be stopped.

  “Maybe you should tell your girlfriend about us. I think it will make you feel better,” I said.

  “Maybe I should bite your ass.”

  “If you bite me one more time, I’ll call her and tell her about us,” I said.

  He turned over and sat up. Then he straddled me and pinned my shoulders to the bed. “If you ever call her and tell her about us,” he warned, “I swear to God, I will have you killed.”

  I let out a nervous laugh sound.

  “You listen to me. If you ever upset her in any way, I will kill you. I may not do it myself, but I will have it done, and I will enjoy it just the same.”

  “Well, this is a new low point,” I said.

  In fact I considered this the lowest point of my dating career, including my divorce. And including having my ear bitten off. I lay flat on my back as he got up and got dressed. He brushed his teeth in the sink in the kitchen. I didn’t say a word. I had never actually had my life threatened by a man before. There wasn’t a chapter in The Rules entitled “What to Do If Your Boyfriend Threatens to Have You Killed.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned down to kiss my forehead. “I’m going to the office to pick up something I need for the meeting. I’ll call you later.”

  He stood up. “Bye,” he said.

  I got out of bed so I could be careful to lock the door behind him. I watched him walk down the stairs in his low-riding jeans for what I decided would be the last time. I shut the door.

  I sat on my couch and noticed the end of a white cable wire sticking out from the wall. I had lived here for months and never noticed the wires before. I started pulling. I pulled what seemed like miles of white and beige wires from the moldings, from the tops of doors, from along all the baseboards. It was like waking a thousand sleeping snakes. Staples flew out at me. The motion made me sick to my stomach. It just kept coming, longer and longer until it lay in a tangle on my living room floor. A coil of long intestines. A mountain of entrails. How had I lived there so long with those sickening wires? It would not have been long before they choked me like a boa constrictor.

  I sat there thinking about the last thing I had read in Andrew’s journal. I told Liv that I was thinking of teaching an advanced architecture course at Columbia and she was extremely enthusiastic and said she thought I would be a great teacher and I should definitely do it. When we fucked she seemed especially turned on and called me Professor Lugar when she came. Of course this is a girl who considers watching a Woody Allen movie foreplay. I think I will tell her that I took the job and make up little stories about my students to titillate her. Anyway she’s a good little cheerleader.

  Of everything I had read in his sloppy, tight, psycho handwriting, the sentence “anyway she’s a good little cheerleader” was the worst. I didn’t want to be a cheerleader for Andrew or anyone. I hadn’t called him Professor Lugar when I came. We hadn’t even had sex that day.

  I couldn’t go on like this. I decided to call Jordan and tell her everything. I would call her and ask her to meet me for lunch. I wondered if she would know the minute she saw me that I was having sex with Andrew.

  I remembered hearing a woman on TV talk about how she had gone to the airport to pick up her husband. She stood in the small crowd waiting for the plane to land when she spotted a beautiful woman standing there. That woman is sleeping with my husband, she thought suddenly, even though she had never suspected her husband of infidelity
before. Just then her husband walked over to the other woman and greeted her passionately. “I don’t know why, I just knew that woman had been with him,” she had said.

  I thought about Jordan knowing I was sleeping with Andrew. Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe she would like me and we would drink sake and talk and laugh about him. I could find out if she really did have a lump in her breast. We could comfort each other. Maybe I would like Jordan. Maybe I would understand why Andrew couldn’t leave her.

  I picked up my phone but it no longer worked.

  Maybe it was a sign I should go to the Upper West Side and ring her doorbell. I got dressed and put on velvet shoes instead of leather out of respect for Jordan because she was a vegetarian.

  I walked down the street carrying the Tiffany shopping bag with the beehive honey pot in its light blue box with the white ribbon that I had bought for Andrew’s mother. I could give it to Jordan as a house gift.

  I have balls, I thought, surprising myself. I laughed out loud. I remembered the dream I had in my few minutes of sleep the night before. I was a dog, a brown boxer following a man on a sandy beach. I was a male dog with rather large balls that I think I was embarrassed about. My balls swung back and forth between my hind legs. I could almost still feel them there like ghost balls.

  I stood on the corner of MacDougal Street trying to get a cab. MacDougal Street was dead. There were no cabs or cars. I turned to look down Bleecker Street when I thought I saw Andrew, talking on a cellular phone, turn the corner of the next block. I started to walk, almost run, in his direction to see if it was really him. Why was I doing this? I wondered. It couldn’t have been Andrew, and who cared if it was? He couldn’t really have been serious about having me killed. I stopped to catch my breath in the middle of the sidewalk.

  I started to cross the street when a crazy bike messenger came speeding toward me.

  There is a new sport in New York that the bicycle messengers love to play. They come right at you at full speed as you stand in the middle of the street mesmerized by fear. The messenger locks eyes with you. Just as they are about to hit you head-on they curse at you and swerve, just barely missing you. It is impossible to get out of their way—if you move one way or the other you could be hit. You are so panicked you stand like a statue for several minutes after the incident, until some stranger gives you a shove to help you snap out of it.