“Make a left on Duane,” I told the driver. “A left on Duane,” I said again. “Left on Duane. On Duane, you make a left. Okay, this is Duane. Here’s Duane. Duane. Duane.” I watched the Duane Street sign go by. “You passed Duane,” I screamed. “Stop!”
The driver stopped.
No tip, I decided. I threw a few wadded-up singles at him and flung the door open.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He was Indian. “I saw ‘Dune’ Street. ‘Dune.’ ‘Dune.’ ‘Doon’ Street. I did not see ‘Duane.’” His brow was furrowed and he looked like a philosopher struggling with one of the mysteries of the universe. He looked gentle and kind, like an Indian Santa Claus. My eyes filled with tears. What had I done? He could be a swami, performing his seva. I got out and fumbled with my wallet trying to find a tip but he drove off. I felt like dropping to my knees and praying for forgiveness. No one could read a word like Duane. It was an impossible word. The world was cruel enough without me storming all over New York making things worse. That’s what I had been doing lately, I realized, storming. I felt like it was Storm’s fault.
As soon as we got into the loft Storm saw a problem with it.
“What is it?” I asked in my best real estate tone, ready to deflect any problem like a narcissist’s mirror.
The best way to solve a buyer’s problem was to stand back and let him solve the problem himself. It takes him by surprise and forces him to sell the place to himself. He realizes how much he wants it. He talks himself into it.
I always let the clients argue with themselves. If a client says there’s no supermarket nearby, the worst thing you can do is start saying that there’s a D’Agostino’s not that far away and it has twenty-four-hour delivery, because then they argue right back at you. It’s always better to say, “You’re right, there really is no supermarket nearby.” Then the client says, “Well, there’s a D’Agostino’s and it’s really not that far away and I can always have them deliver.” It gives them the benefit of being right and you the benefit of not being pushy.
“There’s nowhere for my dining room table,” Storm said. Storm’s dining room table had become the bane of my existence. I would have liked to set it on fire. It was an enormous gothic monstrosity that New York had no room for. Dining room tables are one of the biggest problems a New York real estate broker has to deal with.
“You’re right, Storm, there really is no place for you to put that gigantic table.”
I had watched many couples come to terms with the fact that they were going to have to part with their dining room table. I waited patiently for Storm to part with hers.
Storm walked to the front door. “Then let’s get out of here,” she said.
We got out of our seventh cab on West Fourth Street right in front of the Pink Pussycat Boutique, a sex shop in the Village. I had bought a cupless bra there once to wear for my husband. She leaned against the store’s window and a pink neon glow surrounded her.
“I’ve decided on the place I want,” Storm said.
I thought about all the lofts I had shown her. The only one she had liked was the one shaped like a missile.
“That’s fantastic,” I said. “Which one?”
“It’s in the Dakota. You didn’t show it to me.” My heart sank. All that time spent with her for nothing. I had even found myself starting to sound a little like her, saying, “You’re sweet,” and things like that. No commission in the world was worth that.
“Yes, I know I didn’t show it to you. I don’t show apartments in the Dakota.”
“Why not?”
“Well, they tend to be a little bit …” I thought of any number of words I could use. Run-down. Rickety. Decrepit. Disappointing. Slummish. I decided to use the one I thought she would hate the most. “Overpriced.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, concerned.
“Yes I do, but that’s beside the point. The important thing is that you’ll be happy living there.”
“You’re not mad that you won’t be getting any commission?”
“No, Storm, of course I’m not mad. We’re friends. All that matters is that you buy the right place. I have to say I’m a little surprised, though. I thought you had your heart set on a spacious glamorous chic downtown loft, not a decrepit, crumbling, overpriced apartment on the sleepy Upper West Side. I have a fantastic listing in the Apthorp. If I had known that’s what you were looking for I could have shown you dozens of places like that,” I said.
I had explained to Storm a thousand times the concept of “co-broking.” I could have shown her the Dakota apartment by simply calling the broker whose listing it was and making the appointment with her. We would have shared the commission.
“Well, the Dakota is New York’s first luxury apartment building,” she said. I could tell she was parroting the other broker. “I just saw it and it was so sweet and it had a beautiful velvet sofa in the living room and it has an amazing FDR, you know formal dining room.” I hated her so much I wished I had brought my gun. I could take it out and see if she thought getting shot in the head was sweet. I hated her more than I ever hated my husband.
She pulled out a floor plan. The other broker’s business card was stapled to the corner of it. “She’s really sweet,” Storm said, pointing to the broker’s name.
I looked at the drawing of the expensive three-bedroom apartment. It was L-shaped. “Don’t you think it’s shaped a little bit like a gun?” I asked.
“Oh, I like that idea,” she said. “It makes me feel safe.”
Behind her, dildos and vibrators made a funny halo around her head. Two inflatable sheep and several life-size blow-up women hung from the ceiling. Tiny red light bulbs blinked on and off.
“Liv,” she said, “I’ m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be,” I said.
Like being dumped.
The night I left my husband I lay awake in bed thinking about Yoko Ono. I thought about her lying in bed all alone at the Dakota after having her husband ripped from her. Every time I passed the Dakota I thought of her in there. I loved the Dakota. Now I would have to think of Storm in there making pasta with Parmesan cheese she stole from some restaurant. The Dakota was ruined. Now, even John Lennon’s ghost would avoid it like the plague.
“Anyway, Storm, I’m happy for you.”
“You are?” she said. “That’s sweet.”
“But do you know why the Dakota was named the Dakota? Because when it was built it was so far uptown in nowheresville that everyone made fun of it and said you might as well live in Dakota. If you wanted to visit someone there you had to make a day of it,” I added.
I left Storm standing there and got into another cab. It headed up Sixth Avenue, the sun beating down on my face through the window. I closed my eyes. What difference did it make if my eyes were open or closed? I only saw what I wanted to see. I knew everything I was passing by heart anyway. The buildings, the people, the brown high heels, briefcases, streetlights, signs—who really cared? What was the difference, really, if I was blind or if I could see?
“We’re here,” the driver said. “Okay. Here we are. Time to get out. Up and at ‘em.”
I opened my eyes. It was raining. With my eyes closed it had been sunny, I had been better off. I crossed Central Park West so I could get a better look at the Dakota. I sat on a stone bench facing it. I took off my shoes and folded my legs into a half-lotus position. I wanted to say one last goodbye to the Dakota before Storm and her table got there.
I wanted things to be the way they used to be. The way they were before I went into real estate and New York was somehow cheapened for me. When the buildings were my friends, not to be bought and sold like slaves. Before I was forced to see too many insides of too many apartments. TMI, as my husband used to say. Too much information. I suddenly had an urge to call my ex-husband. Hearing his robust, unwavering voice might make me feel a little better.
I wanted him
to walk by. To stand before me flattened and all shot up with holes like a slice of Swiss cheese. His coat smelling the same, like airplane air-conditioning. With his usual William Hurt grimace on his face.
I wanted him to see me as a real estate agent. I wanted him to see me working. Once he had screamed at me, “All you do all day is get manicures. You don’t work!” I went right out and had “F,” “U,” “C,” and “K” painted in bright red glittery polish on four of the nails on my right hand, and “Y,” “O,” “U,” and “!” painted on four of the nails on my left.
No, I would not call him. Losing a thirty-thousand-dollar commission was enough for one day. I didn’t also have to lose my pride.
Night came and I sat on the cold bench shivering. The fat doorman gave me a little wave. I gave him a little wave back.
32.
MONTAGUE ST
I went to the Olive Tree. I saw the cook who liked me. He was standing in his usual place in the open kitchen at the front of the restaurant. I hesitated. “Hello,” I said, coolly.
He looked at me, startled. “How are you?” he said. His eyes squinted under his backward baseball cap.
I nodded at him and took a seat in the back. His words stayed in my mind. “How are you?” They washed over me. At this moment he probably cared more about me than anybody I knew. Even though I had rejected him so meanly, he still cared how I was. He was noble in his rejection. He was like a great swami graciously forgiving his most ignorant student. The waitress brought me a small plate of tabbouleh.
“This is on Frank,” she said.
I looked over at the cook but he put his head down shyly. I wanted to kneel in front of the table and pray, not sit at it and eat.
That night I dreamed that Woody Allen invited Andrew to his country house but not me. “Men only,” Woody said. I got to watch them through the window, sitting in armchairs in a paneled library, smoking cigars. I woke up so jealous I could hardly breathe. What are you jealous of? I said to myself. It was only a dream.
A bad dream was almost more than I could take most mornings. Every morning I woke up in a state of perpetual shock. I was not in bed with my husband. I was alone. I was not in eight rooms on Fifth Avenue. I was not in our old sleigh bed with the rising egg-yolk sun frying in the sky outside our greenhouse windows. I was alone on MacDougal Street thinking that if I flailed my arms and legs violently enough they might somehow get entangled in his again. He might climb on top of me for morning-hard-on sex. He might bring me a cup of Earl Grey. Every day I sat straight up in bed and rubbed my eyes with my fists like a bad actor indicating morning.
Every morning I woke up and started thinking about something I had done wrong. Once I had left the living room windows open a crack during a snowstorm when my husband had been away on business. He had called to remind me to close them but I hadn’t. I went to sleep and in the morning found the living room filled with snow. The super had to come with a shovel.
I thought of the first dream I had in my MacDougal Street apartment. Jack had come home to me from a long journey. “I’m back,” he said. “How did you like it?” I asked him. “I had a good time except for the crabs. There were too many crabs,” he said. At his feet was a pile of dried dead crabs. I swept them up with a broom.
The phone rang, and I sat up suddenly. It was Violet asking me to have brunch with her. “Did I wake you?” she asked.
“No,” I said, excitedly, and told her my Woody Allen dream. People do not care about your dreams.
“Who cares about Woody Allen?” she said.
“The only thing that keeps me from committing suicide is not wanting to miss the next Woody Allen movie,” I said.
“Well, that doesn’t say much for our friendship,” she said.
When I got up to pee I discovered that I had my period. My monthly egg had not been fertilized, Audrey Bausch would be interested to know. I sat on the toilet and cried.
I took a shower and washed my hair, coaxing the last drop of conditioner from the bottle like a porn star.
I met Violet in a restaurant she suggested in Chelsea. I got there first and sat at a table next to a window. Outside a dog was shitting as his owner stood behind him wearing a bag as a glove. To the owner’s surprise, a green plastic cake decoration in the shape of a four-leaf clover that said, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” slid out of the dog’s ass and stood upright on top of the pile of shit. The owner looked down at if in disbelief. Then he bent down and scooped the whole thing up with the bag.
I laughed and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed it. If I had been in a restaurant in Tokyo I wouldn’t have been more of a minority. Men surrounded me in couples. They all looked so at ease and happy, kissing each other, waving, smiling. I couldn’t think of a worse place to be. Why had Violet wanted to meet in hell? I wondered. I sat there bleeding, aware of the Tampax Super Plus inside me.
“Can I get you anything else?” the waiter asked the couple at the next table, completely ignoring me. He was wearing a pink apron tied around his slim waist. “Hey, I felt that!” he said, putting his hand on his ass. He turned to two couples sitting at a table for four behind him. “Never do that again.”
“John, did you pinch him?” one of the men at the table said.
“I couldn’t help myself,” John said. He was big and fat with a receding hairline and a black mustache.
“I hate being touched,” the waiter said. “Don’t ever touch me. I am so serious about this.” He cleared their dishes and slinked away.
“Warren, don’t forget your meds,” John said. The man sitting next to him took out a plastic baggie filled with dozens of different-colored pills. He swallowed them with three gulps of water.
Violet arrived with a Time Out magazine under her arm. I had a feeling she was going to try to talk me into calling a personal ad.
“I have the greatest idea,” she said. She opened to the personals. “We’re each going to answer one,” she said. I hated my clichéd life.
“No,” I said.
She started to tear out the personal ads, making little piles of them on the table. She saw the empty plastic baggie on the table next to us, which had held the man’s meds. “Can I borrow that?” she asked. She put the personal ad scraps in it and shook. “Pick,” she said.
I reached in and took one. His headline said COME DRIVE WITH ME. SWM, smart, goodlooking (really) ISO beaut, smart, 5’3+, funny, happy SWF for roadtrips and more. Valid Driver’s License req’d.
“Perfect,” she said.
“But, Violet,” I said, “I don’t know how to drive.”
“You picked him,” she said, as if I always had a knack for choosing the wrong men. As if I had attracted the wrong personal ad into my life.
“We’re too old for this,” I said. “We’re too old to pretend we don’t see how flawed all these guys really are. They’re all so … flawed.”
They were as dishonest as real estate ads. You never saw a personal ad that said short, cheap, bald, hates women and sex. You never saw a real estate ad that said dark shithole, rats, roaches, low ceils, high maint.
Violet read all the headlines of the personal ads. Mr. Right. Handsome Physician. Affectionate Animal Lover. Professional Black Male. Prince Charming. She picked him. “Prince Charming wasn’t flawed,” Violet said.
“I’m sure he was flawed,” I said. “Cinderella was just too young and accepting to see it. If Cinderella had dragged herself to the ball at twenty-six she would have seen that he’s a closet fag with a shoe fetish, an entitlement complex, and obsessive-compulsive disorder—going from foot to foot like that, living at home with his parents. Even his name. Prince Charming. So gay. Prince Charming is beginning to make Andrew look good.”
“You have to call Mr. Roadtrip Guy. You picked him,” Violet said.
That night I called his box number and left a message. He called me back. We talked for two hours. He didn’t m
ind that I was only 5’2”. He didn’t mind that I wasn’t happy. I told him my dream about Woody Allen and my dream about my husband and the crabs. I really liked him. We made a plan to meet.
“I guess I should tell you,” I said, “that I don’t know how to drive.”
“You’re kidding,” he said.
I laughed. “No, when we go on our roadtrips you’ll have to do the driving.” I caught a look at myself in the mirror. I was smiling. I had that embarrassingly intense concentrated look you have when you talk to a man you like for the first few times on the phone.
“Well, I’m sorry, Liv, but I’m afraid it’s not going to work out.”
I laughed again.
“I think women who don’t know how to drive are despicable. I think you want a man to take care of you while you sit around and get manicures and pedicures and waxing and massages and do nothing. You want to remain a child. But you’re not a child, are you?”
“No,” I mumbled.
“No, you’re not a child. You’re a divorced twenty-six-year-old woman, if you’re even telling me the truth about that. For all I know you’re really thirty-six.”
His words were so forceful for a moment I wondered if I really was thirty-six, but then I realized that no, I was still twenty-six after all.
“You’re the type of girl who doesn’t want to take care of herself,” he continued. “You just want to sit around the spa getting bikini waxes all day.”
That was the second time he’d mentioned getting waxed. I felt like I’d accidentally called my husband instead of this guy. I was always being accused of a terrible crime—good cuticle maintenance. If a man wanted to accuse you of this there was nothing you could do. All the deals in the world couldn’t change that. The next time I went on a date I’d have to wear my Transitions First Deal ribbon on my lapel. It was especially frustrating considering, with one phone call to my father, I could spend the next two weeks getting massaged at Canyon Ranch instead of showing the Bausches apartments.
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