“Where was college?”
I blink. “Ohio State.” I turn the first page. “This spring we’re going to see a return to warm neutrals with these gorgeous blush tones—”
“What did you major in?”
“Fashion and business. Our strong blue and green stories will merge into an intense teal that compliments these copper tones so effortlessly. Think sunset over the Mediterranean; bright turquoise offset by eye-catching metallics and—”
“When did you move to New York?”
I give him a tight, confused smile. “Do you want my résumé or the presentation, Mr. Behzadi?”
“Aziz-am.” He smiles, his words soft as snow. “I don’t want your fucking books.”
Anger cracks through me; at him for being a prick, at myself for looking like a fool. Of course he doesn’t want trend; he’s a designer. I flip the cover shut. “Then you’re wasting both our time.” My chair shoots back as I get to my feet.
“Wait a second. I didn’t say I wouldn’t buy them.” He counts the stack. “Eight, nine, ten? I’ll take them all, Ms. Whitman.”
Does he not understand how this works? “Collectively they’d cost forty grand. You can’t buy them all.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” You can’t afford it.
Obviously, he can.
“Most people just buy one,” I say stupidly.
“Would it be tacky to say I’m not most people?”
My commission would be six thousand dollars.
He watches my face change. “Please,” he says. “Have a seat.”
“Why?”
“Just sit, please.” He reaches forward and touches my arm.
I jerk it away, hard.
“Whoa!” He’s laughing. “Easy.”
“Fuck off.”
“Wow,” he says. “Is this how you conduct all your meetings?”
Is this how you conduct yours?
Mika breezes in without knocking. “I’m going.” She glances at me, curious but nothing more. I don’t move. The two talk logistics—flights to London, fittings in the morning, a rescheduled interview. I stand there, burning. Sweat prickles my underarms. Did Elan just . . . buy me? What does he want from me? I can no longer convince myself it’s not sexual. I should leave with his assistant: the girl my age, the girl whose world I belong to.
“Anything else?” Mika grabs the pile of garment bags.
I need that money. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do in exchange for it.
“Then I’ll see you at the hotel,” she says, starting to close the door. “And take those vitamins I left you.”
“Leave the door open,” he says, and she does.
She’s gone.
Silence.
I am still standing.
Elan scoops up the pills. “Vitamin B,” he says, “and iron. I always get so run-down doing the season. This time last year I had the flu. Ever since then: pills. So many pills.” He swallows them with a glug of water. I’m reminded that he is older: the older man.
Or perhaps, that I am young: the younger woman.
I don’t move.
“Please, Ms. Whitman. Sit. You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m making you nervous?” I almost laugh and cross my arms. “I know karate.”
He looks alarmed. And then he starts to laugh. Really laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“I think . . . me,” he says. “I am so out of practice with this.”
“With what?”
“Meeting a woman.” He leans forward, clasping his hands. His gaze is direct and sincere. “I’m attracted to you. I want to get to know you.”
Disbelief battles outrage. Outrage wins. “So you buy my time?”
He lifts his palms, helpless. “A gift? Which I can take back, if you like.”
My arms are folded tight across my chest, trying to hold my body together. “I’m twenty-five.”
“I’m forty-two.” He sounds relieved, pleased; we’re making progress. “A Taurus, if you believe in any of that, I have a feeling that you don’t. C’mon.” He gestures at the open door. “You can leave any time you like. After all, you know karate.” He smiles a small smile and tilts his head to one side. “And I think, maybe, you are drawn to me?” He purses his lips and whistles.
I stare at the floor, blushing. He heard me. He saw me. “You . . . You didn’t talk to me. At the after-party.”
“You were with your friends all night!” he exclaims. “Walled in. I wasn’t about to interrupt.”
This is true: I suppose I didn’t make myself available. I didn’t want to look desperate.
He was aware of me. Like I was aware of him. Slowly, inch by inch, I sink back into my chair. “I’ll stay. But I’m taking the books when I go.”
“Okay,” he says. “You were telling me when you moved to New York.”
Haltingly, I piece together my timeline, the broad brushstrokes of my movement through the world. I’m a little less guarded than I usually am: perhaps my hometown is as foreign to him as his is to me. He listens, sipping water, as if this is all very normal. I am actively containing whorls of disbelief. I’d like to think I have a pretty healthy ego, an understanding of my own worth, but maybe I don’t, because I cannot believe that Elan Behzadi is courting me. Steph is going to flip out. I will, for the first time, shock Vivian.
And yet, I’m doubtful. How many young, impressionable things like me has he charmed with Greek pastries and Spanish surrealism? But even if I’m just one of many, it’s still a pretty good story. So enjoy it. I’ll be dining out on it all year.
He asks about college, my friends, my life in Brooklyn. The first-date résumé exchange is usually tedious. Today it feels like an important audition. I use all my best lines; jokes so well crafted you can’t see their seams. I can’t tell if he’s actually interested in me. There’s a wall between us, a wall I imagine is between him and everyone, which I couldn’t begin to dismantle with one conversation. I get the impression he’s also trying to scale it, that perhaps he puts everyone at a distance, even those he wants to put at ease. And yet, he does a good impression of genuine. He’s insightful. Surprisingly so. “So would you say you use work to prove yourself? I know I do,” he adds. “My work life is totally tied to my identity.”
“I suppose so,” I say. “I’ve always been a really hard worker. And I’ve always worked a lot.”
“What would happen if you stopped? Who would you be then?”
“I don’t know. Someone broke, I guess.”
He smiles, and I like this. I like being able to make him smile. “You had to work hard to get out of the Midwest. Like I had to work to get out of Iran.”
That he would compare us is flattering. I know about his background as a designer here in the U.S., but not much about when or how he came to America. I give in and take a piece of baklava. Layers of honey and phyllo and walnuts fill my mouth. My eyes flicker shut as I savor the soft, sweet crunch. When I open them, he’s watching me, satisfied.
I ask, “What’s it like there? Iran.”
He gets to his feet, answering me as he disappears through the open door. “The food is really good, and the traffic is really bad.” The sticky suction of a fridge door opening. “Have you ever had fesenjan?”
“Sounds familiar . . .” It doesn’t.
“It’s sort of a pomegranate walnut stew. It’s amazing. My favorite.”
“What was it like growing up there?”
He returns with a half-full bottle of white wine. “It wasn’t common to be out in public a lot. We spent a lot of time at home or in people’s houses. There was a war on, you know, and the Islamic Revolution made everything sort of . . . stern. There wasn’t any privacy. Or freedom. But it’s different now. When I go back, I see kids hitchhiking. That’s wild to me.” He pours pale wine into both glasses. “What’s your favorite city to visit?”
“New York,” I say. “New York City is the center of the
world.”
He snorts. “No, really.”
This is embarrassing. I glance out the window. I know Elan doesn’t mean the bright lights of Illinois. But apart from my home state, a few years in Indiana, and of course, college, well . . .
“I . . . haven’t traveled much outside the States.”
He accepts this with muted surprise. His interest in me is ebbing away. I am uncultured. Inexperienced. He slides the wine my way.
“I can’t.”
Surprise lifts his dark eyebrows. They’re thick and messy. I have the urge to lean over and smooth them down. “Are you sober?”
I know he means in AA. “Not exactly.”
“I didn’t think so.” He sips his wine, appraising me. “You’re so . . . innocent.”
The word mocks me. “I’m not that innocent.”
“Innocence isn’t bad. You’re lucky. Your life is uncomplicated, even though I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way.”
He’s wrong. He’s so wrong.
As if reading my mind, he adds, softly, “Or am I mistaken?”
The words catapult out of my mouth in a rush. “I’m not drinking because I’m high-risk for breast cancer and alcohol increases that risk. I’m considering getting a preventative mastectomy.”
Silence. I can hear my own quick breath.
His eyes flick to my chest, then back to my face. His expression is changing. Opening. “The night we met, at the Hoffman House party . . .”
“I’d just found out. That afternoon.”
“I knew it,” he murmurs.
“Knew what?” I’m incredulous: there is no way he could’ve guessed.
His eyes meet mine. Something strange in them. Something buried. “I just . . . sensed something. In you.” I don’t know what this means. I want him to tell me, but instead he asks, “When?”
“I’m not sure. Summer, maybe. I haven’t decided.”
His gaze drifts back to my chest. Almost imperceptibly, his nostrils flare. No doubt he’s picturing the full truth of what I’ve just confessed: a doctor’s steel blade, lopsided fake tits. I don’t want his imagination there. “But there’s something else I’m doing first . . .” My words linger. I smile coyly. It’s a display, as unmissable as a neck tattoo.
He bites. “What?”
I demur. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
He flicks my arm with his fingertip. It tingles. “Now you have to tell me.”
And so I tell him. I want to seduce him, yes, but more so, I want to impress him; prove myself to him. I’m not dull. I’m adventurous. The temperature in the room rises as I say the words threesome, role-play.
Sex.
I’m half expecting him to pounce on me when I’m done, an act I don’t know if I’ll give into or bat back. But instead, he just smiles, as if thoroughly charmed. “What a sweet list.”
“Sweet?”
“Yes. You’re so vanilla.”
“I’m not vanilla.” There’s an embarrassing hitch of protest in my voice.
He smiles broadly, enough that I can see his back teeth. “I think I did all those things before I was eighteen.”
“Well, good for you.”
His glass is empty. He takes mine. “Why don’t you get out of your comfort zone a little more?”
I’m offended, but not so much that I can’t ask, “And do what?”
“What’s something you couldn’t say in front of your girlfriends? Something less PC?”
I am stripped bare in a dark room, my hands tied above my head. My underwear is stuffed in my mouth. I’m blindfolded. Elan is behind me, stark naked, thrusting into me, again and again and again. Strong hands hold my hips and I moan, groan, scream with pleasure. Shadowed faces watch us. Watch what he does to me, watch how he has me, how he takes me— I inhale sharply, and have to look at the table. My pulse has spiked. My nipples are hard. I’m flushed, almost panting.
“What?” His question is urgent. “What did you just think about?”
I stare back at him. In twenty-four short hours he’s gone from someone I’ve never thought about to a keeper of my secrets, a fanner of their flames.
He is not someone I can trust.
The legs of his chair scrape the floor as he half rises out of his seat toward me. I tense, unsure. An electronic trill halts him. His phone. An alarm. He checks it, swearing under his breath. “I lost track of time. I never do that.” He slips it back in his pocket. “I have to go.” His underarms are damp with sweat.
I got under his skin, too.
He gathers the wine, the pastries, the glasses, heading back toward the kitchen, enough time for me to mouth What the fuck!? to myself before he returns. My hands are sweaty, slipping on the books’ shiny covers. I almost drop the heavy stack, and he’s right next to me, guiding them back to the table. Wine-sweet breath on my neck. “I’ll courier them,” he says. “Tomorrow.”
“You can’t keep them.” Patricia would kill me.
His voice is gentle and easy. “I promise I’ll return your books. Unread.”
I don’t break his gaze. This is the closest we’ve ever been to each other. I could kiss him without taking a step. “How do I know you can keep a promise?”
“You’ll just have to trust me.” He puts his hand on mine. His palm is large and soft. I want those hands on me so badly I almost swoon. I am a half second from grabbing his shirt and pulling him to me. I can practically taste him.
He’s behind me as we walk toward the front door, his presence in every pore. In the second we have to decide how to say goodbye, I thrust my hand at him. He shakes it, nodding with an amused half smile as if this was exactly what he expected of me. “I’m going to London on the weekend, then Milan and Paris.”
This man is a different species from me. A species that drinks champagne on airplanes and doesn’t check the price tag before buying something. I’m in over my head, which makes me think again of my hands literally tied up over my head, and this strangely sexy man having his way with me.
He leans against his doorframe. “When I get back, let’s have dinner.”
Given the fashion week circuits, that’ll be at least a month away. I hide disappointment. “Sounds dishy.” I hit the down button for the elevator.
“I don’t have your number.”
The elevator doors slide open. “You can get it when you send back my books.”
It’s early evening when I step onto the timeless tranquility of Greenwich Street. The darkness is young and fresh, not yet sullied by true night. I feel ten feet tall and I’m laughing aloud, drunk with power. I want to keep this feeling as a pet, stroking it whenever I want. I’m so giddy that I skip four twisty-turny blocks before I realize I’m heading in entirely the wrong direction.
* * * *
The next afternoon, I’m thinking about the first time I saw the ocean. The summer between sophomore and junior year. One of the other interns at Hoffman House organized a group trip to the Rockaways. The other girls were from coastal cities and spent the day complaining about the water being gross and dirty, and how crowded it was. But to me, it was incredible. Everything about it was novel: the boardwalk and the salt air and the fact that thirty-four hundred miles east was the coast of Portugal. When I put my toes in the Atlantic I laughed out loud. But quietly. So no one else would hear.
I didn’t tell a single person it was my first time at the beach.
I’m thinking about this day when a courier arrives for me. A plain white envelope. From Elan Behzadi. Inside, a small cream notecard with his name at the top in dark blue letterpress. In barely legible scrawled handwriting:
Punish me with karate?
Under it, a cell number.
I unfold a check for forty thousand dollars.
14.
* * *
“Wait . . . wait, it’s stuck—”
“You’re stuck?”
“It’s stuck— Ow!” Cooper yelps. “My thumb. My beautiful thumb.”
“Put it down,” I s
ay. “I’m putting it down. One, two . . .”
The brown leather La-Z-Boy thumps into the stairwell, jammed ungracefully in the first-floor landing. Cooper and I exhale, red-faced and sweaty. I’d found him struggling with the chair on the street, on my way to see Steph. There was no way he was getting it inside on his own.
“She’s heavier than she looks.” He says it almost admiringly, as if the chair has impressed him with its hidden substance.
“The La-Z-Boy’s a she?” I ask. “I don’t think so.”
“Gender’s a construct,” Cooper says. He readjusts his glasses: black-rimmed today, which make him look like a hipster Clark Kent. Not entirely unappealing. “Wow, you’re so close-minded.”
“If I recall, I was the one who said we could get it inside, and that sounds like the talk of a revolutionary to me.”
“Astoria’s answer to Che Guevara?”
“Try Katniss Everdeen.” I mime shooting an arrow.
He laughs, once. He is completely engaged, leaning forward on the side of the La-Z-Boy, ready to play along. Someone clears their throat. Mrs. Karpinski, the grouchy upstairs neighbor who never leaves the apartment without a hairnet and a frown, is standing above us on the stairs. We quickly resume our positions.
“One, two, three.” I haul my end up.
“It’s heavy!” Cooper staggers up a step.
“You’re such a weakling,” I puff.
“No, you’re unnaturally strong.”
We shove the elephantine chair foot by foot into the loft, until finally, finally, it’s inside. We are doubled over and panting.
“That was a workout,” Cooper says.
I massage my arms. “Who needs the gym when you can haul furniture from the street?”
“Are you sure it’s okay?” Cooper rubs his jaw. “It’s not going to have bedbugs, is it?”
“Dude. No. No one puts out one piece of furniture if they have bedbugs. And they don’t put a ‘works fine’ sign on it either,” I add, pointing to the folded-up piece of paper in his pocket. “People aren’t dicks.”
“You’re right.” He inhales, puffing out his chest. “My throne has arrived.”
“Technically we are coparents of this throne,” I say.
The Bucket List Page 9