by Edward Vilga
I ponder this for a moment. It feels like reality.
“It is, of course, true,” Andrew summarizes, “that to take no action has extremely little risk involved. I doubt severely that they’d be so offended as to cause some kind of problem for you based on your rejection of them. But my sense is that this kind of no-strings-attached offer is usually too difficult for anyone to turn down. You should conceive of this as a trip to a sexual Disneyland: plenty of safe adventure, complete with two fun rides, all of it completely independent from a real-life context.”
And as with Disneyland, I want to add, there’s nothing particularly romantic or even human about it—in fact, it’s a little creepy—but still it does sound pretty hard to pass up.
“Thank you,” I say, genuinely grateful for the Über-Wolf mentoring.
“Don’t mention it,” Andrew replies, his vast analytical resources turning back to his favorite subject: himself. “By the way, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned her before, but did I tell you about Kendall Morrison, the associate handling the Cincinnati merger?”
As always, Andrew’s back on his own trail, forever hunting, tormented perhaps, ever ravenous, but very, very much the victor.
When Monique calls me at 5 p.m., again I know this is not about sex.
“How’s the fundraising going?” she asks.
“Less than stellar,” is my understated reply.
I’ve spent the last three days going through the numbers on my Rolodex—okay, actually it’s a shoebox of business cards—along with the handful of numbers I’ve entered into my cell. Unfortunately, 90 percent of my cell numbers are chicks I’ve met while out on the town, who are not going to want to hear from me now, much less invest in my creating another hunting ground.
“Well, you better step up to the plate fast with something,” Monique warns me. “You know Becker insists on an exclusive three-week window to evaluate these deals, and you should thank me for sweet-talking them into another two-week extension. Once that’s over, I can’t help you. Of course, the property could theoretically remain unsold for a year, but given how that area is booming and how low the asking price is, I think someone else will snatch it up.”
“Two weeks. Okay, thanks, I guess.” I can’t disguise the dejection in my voice.
Monique’s voice shifts. I can feel her dismissing her assistant so she can shut the door and give me your basic high school coach, no more bullshit pep talk.
“Listen, I’m not about to suggest that you watch The Secret but you’ve got to fucking change that defeatist attitude right now if you’re gonna pull this off. I never said that someone was going to just hand you the check. I just said that it’s absolutely possible to raise the money if you put your mind to it. Focus on it. Create a Vision Board if you freaking must, but don’t let yourself down.”
I try to sound resurrected as she signs off without ceremony.
Minutes later, the phone rings and it’s my sister. Immediately, I know I’m in for my second mini-lecture of the night.
“Why haven’t you gotten back to me about Dad?”
“What’s up with Pop?” I ask.
“Uh … his sixtieth birthday is tomorrow. Did you not get the invite I mailed?”
Oh yes, that invite I put on the fridge, the one I’ve totally forgotten. I’ve also forgotten that my five-year-old niece left me a message three days ago. Somehow the “adorable quotient” of it all blocked it from my frontal lobe’s to do list. (Or maybe, having Andrea’s Shane postcard in hand, I just erased the entire day’s mail delivery from my memory.)
“I’m sorry, Sis. I have it in front of me. So, tomorrow at five at The Grill. The Old Man actually wants to cook on his birthday?”
“You know Pop. He loves The Grill. So … you’ll be there, right?”
I hesitate. It’s not just that every day counts if I want to raise money—since I’ve run out of ideas, what does it matter? No, it’s more that time at home with Pop is never a stroll through the park. Of course, the highlight of my failures, in his eyes, was blowing all my savings and the investor’s money on my failed first venture, but frankly, ever since I can remember, in one way or another, I’ve been disappointing the dude.
“Listen, he really wants you to come. It means a lot to him.”
It might mean a lot to my mom, and to my sister, and to my grade school nieces and nephews, but other than archiving the event with a complete family portrait that he’ll put on the cash register, I can’t imagine Pop would care. Still, since the majority of my family is pretty awesome, and somehow, every conversation with my Mom helps just a little bit, I agree. If necessary, I will sit through one of Pop’s terse but to-the-point statements that I “really should look into law school for next year. It’s still not too late.”
“Okay. Sure. I’ll take the bus up tomorrow morning,” I promise.
Funny, but sometimes when I tell Manhattanites, “I’m from ‘upstate,’ they look at me as though that’s slang for prison.
I arrive in Goshen, NY, and get off the bus just before the party’s set to start. My sister and her three kids throw their arms around me. For a moment, I’m actually glad I’m back.
Even though it’s only an hour and a half from the city, I realize that I haven’t been here for over a year. I blew off last Christmas and Thanksgiving, telling my folks I had to stay in the city and work, which was only half true. Diane, of The Sweatshop, bless her heart, was willing to let me have a few days off, but I just couldn’t, just didn’t want to return home. Too many concerned questions to answer about my disastrous first venture. Plus, my family never got the manual for good wives of unfaithful political husbands; they will not stand at the podium nodding politely and “forgiving” any and all “indiscretions.” It would be more in character for my father to cuff me across the head and after berating me soundly, tell me to “straighten up and fly right.” Not only am I not living the life he wants for me, I am also failing at the one I have chosen against his wishes.
It’s not far to Pop’s joint, The Grill (even the name has no imagination), but since it’s suburbia, of course we drive there. As we pull up, I see that, as I suspected, nothing has changed except that there’s a hand-lettered sign on the door saying “Private Party.”
Mom hugs me. Pop’s strategically placed behind the counter, near the grill, surrounded by well-wishers. Smiling, he waves to me, his spatula in one hand. I wave back. We won’t hug unless it’s unavoidable.
Over the next few hours, the place gets packed but not in an insane hot spot way. It’s just full to the brim with folks who come here all the time, and rather than paying $5.95 for a burger, they’re getting one for free along with a complimentary T-shirt with a drawing by one of the grandkids of Pop over the grill. It’s pretty cute actually. And Pop really does look happy.
It’s near midnight when the crowd disperses. These are decent folk and I think they already feel quite decadent being out this late. The crowd boils down to Mom, Pop, and three grandkids who are asleep in a booth. Mom and my sister try to get their coats on without waking them. It’s Pop’s moment alone with me. He approaches with two open beers.
“Here’s to you,” I offer, as we click bottles and sip. “Happy Birthday.”
He sits at the counter, and I join him. We’re physically close, but at the same time, we mostly look straight ahead. It’s only occasionally that we turn our heads and meet the other’s eyes.
“Nice party,” I say.
“Thanks. Good folks here.”
“Yup.”
We both smile at my nephew’s sleepy protests over putting on his jacket.
“How’s work?” he asks.
I pause, as I’m not sure what he’s asking exactly. True, I sent them the Grand Central article via my sister, but I don’t know if he understands what yoga is, much less my whole teaching career. The idea of spas and private yoga teachers and standing on your head is pretty foreign here.
“Yo
u opening a new joint anytime soon?” he asks me.
I turn to look at him. As always, his gaze is eagle-eyed, dead-on.
“I’ve thought about it,” I confess to him.
He nods, taking another sip of his beer. “Good. I think you should.”
“Why?” This is not the line of conversation that decades of sparse small talk and awkward lecturing have led me to expect. My hope was that since he probably presumed I’d fail, given my bounty of shortcomings, we’d skip the lecture and just exchange banal pleasantries until my bus ride home. Or maybe he’d get Mom to slip some MBA program brochures into my duffle bag.
“Well, you always were good at it,” my dad continues. “Remember how you used to work here after school and in the summers? Always thinking of things to make the place better. Like that Breakfast Combo.” I basically suggested that the menu incorporate something that’s standard on diner menus throughout the known universe, but to Pop, as with any change, it was revolutionary.
“You always had a good feel for chatting with folks when you worked the register. And you always remembered what people ordered before—folks like that. Helps turn them into regulars.”
“It wasn’t that hard.”
“I don’t know, son. Not everyone can do that. Me, I’m pretty good at the grill, but I guess I’ve always felt you had a real shot at something more. A man always wants more for his son. You know, something bigger. But anyway, you hang in there if you want this. You’re a smart kid. It’ll work out.”
I’m stunned. This is more praise—frankly, more attention—than my father has paid me in decades.
Especially given my failures, I do admire that the old man has made this place such a staple of the community. Sure, there’s not much competition—there’s no Page Six, Pan-Asian fusion hybrid about to appear on the next street corner—but still, it’s an accomplishment. In a world where 90 percent of restaurants fail in the first year, people actually want to come here, tonight and every night. In this greasy-spoon version of Oedipus, I just want to play in a different league, to step up to the Big Time.
“I’m glad you came,” Pop says, as he clinks bottles with me one more time. His arm floats over my shoulder for a nanosecond before he gets up to close up The Grill.
“Me, too,” I add, as I help him lock up.
Chapter 17
Usually when the Greyhound bus pulls up towards Manhattan, a small-town boy’s elation at returning to the Big Time hits me right away. It still does today, but then there’s a queasy feeling and a gripping sensation in my chest: Where the hell am I going to get $3.8 million? Sunday’s cold April rainstorm does nothing to lighten the mood.
As promised by the Wire Hanger King, on Monday, Phoebe and I have our next lesson solo. The rain pummels the windows, and even with their Park Avenue insulation, you can feel the brutality of the weather and the chill outside.
“This weather is incredible,” I remark.
“I actually enjoy the rain,” Phoebe replies. “When I was a little girl, I used to like to pretend I was in a Brontë novel.”
“Which one?” I ask, knowing yet again that this is not a conversation she could ever have with Phil.
“Wuthering Heights mostly, although sometimes Jane Eyre,” she confides, as though it’s some great big secret that she shares the literary dreams of all shy, bookish schoolgirls (and, I suppose, some schoolboys).
“Cathy and Heathcliff.” I smile knowingly in response. My memories of the novel are murky, beyond a lot of tramping on the moors. I remember the gist of it: the childhood passions gone awry, the faulty marriages, and mostly the loneliness and disappointment. And, of course, there’s the entire conflicted bad-boy romantic fantasy around Heathcliff, although the dude’s far too tortured to be a role model for me. Still, especially these days, I realize that I can relate. I, too, have been taken in by the upper classes without really fitting in—and, I suppose, I know a little something about the pain of loss, as well.
Phoebe looks at me, and God help me, with the miserable weather still brewing like the devil itself outside and this talk of romantic novels, I can’t help quoting a little Rumi to her.
When it’s cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.
And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.
She looks at me with total vulnerability and with absolute devotion. Time freezes. And then she’s kissing me.
Like Cathy embracing Heathcliff on the moors, it’s actually Phoebe who rushes into my arms. And while I look down at her face longingly, it’s she who reaches upward and plants her lips on mine. Not that it matters—we’re equally complicit, immediately kissing each other with complete abandon and freedom. Once ignited, there is no hesitation in the brushfire.
As you may have gathered, I am not one to postpone or deny pleasure. In fact, until recently, about 99.9 percent of my energy was directed toward seeking it out. For a Player like me, making out with a hot woman is pleasurable but par for the course. Each time, everything responds as is anatomically correct, but these days—even I feel a twinge of guilt afterwards—I never feel that nervous flush, the newness and adolescent thrill to it all.
Yet somehow in this moment, I realize that my heart’s pounding right out of my chest. I haven’t felt this kind of intensity when just kissing someone for so long, it takes me by complete surprise. And therefore, I know that this has got to stop. I gently put my hands on Phoebe’s slender forearms and move a few inches away.
It is not guilt, or trying to be good, or—God knows—loyalty to Phil. Rather, it’s the fact that my heart is pounding this way that makes me pull the plug. It’s the non-jadedness of this encounter. Without the usual numbing effects of vodka, dim lighting, club music, and only a vague sense of my quarry’s name, there’s just something a little too honest in this situation. As though this were a heady new drug disorienting me, I’m not willing to just surrender control and go with the whole trip. I pull back gently but in a way that indicates that I mean business.
Phoebe looks intensely wounded. Just as I’m about to cave in, grab her tightly, and escalate things until we’re devouring each other—partially because not to do so seems like it would be an advanced and unusual form of cruelty but mostly because every fiber of my being wants to—something happens. Bizarrely, a look of complete understanding comes over her along with even more devotion, if such a thing is possible.
“No, you’re right,” she says. “Even if there is some kind of physical connection, you’re right that it’s so much wiser not to act on it. What we share is so special it’s best kept as a spiritual friendship. It’s so much better to keep things at your level.”
She’s elevated my motivations so that I’m even more of a poet-saint. The truth is that I’m not sleeping with Phoebe because I’m an emotional dwarf. Never, ever have I rejected a woman when the wanting of each other was so mutual. And today, the first time I do it, it only serves to make her think better of me.
“I … maybe we should stop and call it a day,” I say. I don’t know how it would be possible for us to continue the lesson—particularly with all the hands-on assists—without both of us feeling completely out of sorts.
“Yes, I think so,” she replies with sheepish guilt. “I … I’m sorry,” she apologizes.
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” I reply, for once being honest.
“No, this is my fault. I let my loneliness get me carried away. I shouldn’t have involved you in something like this. You’ve been nothing but a real teacher and a true friend to me, and I took advantage of that unfairly. I’m sorry.”
“No, you shouldn’t say that … I, I …”
I’m about to reveal my entire sordid, guilty life history, letting Phoebe know just how much of an utter wretch I am, but I find myself speechless. Maybe I just don’t want to knock myself off the ridiculous and fraudulent pedestal she’s placed me on, but my priority becomes to
get out of the apartment before I can mess things up any further, most probably by sleeping with her.
“I … I should go, ” I manage, heading toward the door. Phoebe merely nods.
I see myself out. Phoebe doesn’t bother to walk me to the door this time.
She’s letting me make a clean exit. I don’t feel great about leaving her this way, frustrated and alone and embarrassed in the Zen perfection of her yoga room.
But as the door shuts behind me, I’m absolutely sure that, if I stayed, I’d soon feel even worse.
I thought life sucked with just my dream slipping away, but I’m feeling even more like shit from my encounter with Phoebe, and I don’t know what to do about it. I try to take in a movie. I stroll into a Union Square theater and into something involving vampires. But even all the blood and gore doesn’t have the power to transport me away from myself. I walk out before the ending, not caring if the pretty heroine is going to be saved in time or whether the young lead’s going to have to put a stake through her heart. Maybe the vampire melodrama’s just too close to home. Cape or not, I’ve pretty much trashed my Phoebe situation, luring it away from the safe morning light toward the dark side.
Even though it’s barely noon, I grab lunch at the Union Square Café. Although for nine unprecedented years, it’s been voted the most popular restaurant in the city, you can still get a decent seat at the bar. The food rocks and unlike the bistro places I usually gravitate towards, the place has a light, airy feel. I order the Hot Garlic potato chips to distract from the “drinking at 12:15” low to which I’ve now sunk.
When I get out my wallet to pay, I stumble across Serious Cleavage’s card. I hold the card in my hands for a few moments, turning it around and playing with it, almost as though it’s going to offer me more information than just Serious’s digits.