Do This For Me

by Eliza Kennedy

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know!” He whirled around again, hands up, helpless. “I don’t know what’s going on, because you won’t tell me. I care about you, and I want to help, but you’re shutting me out.”

  “Did you ask Victor Fleming if he needed help when he had an affair with his secretary? Did you ask Alex Curry to keep it out of the office the year his wife left him, and he slept with half the summer associates?”

  “Fleming and Curry,” Marty said drily. “Two buffoons in the grip of humiliating midlife crises. That’s who you’re comparing yourself to?”

  I picked up my pencil. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Marty sighed, defeated. He walked to the door.

  “Have it your way. But please. Be more discreet.”

  * * *

  —

  I stewed over our conversation on my way back to the hotel that night. I loved Marty. He was my hero and my teacher and my guide. But on those rare occasions when he acted too much like an overprotective father, I had an unfortunate reaction: I acted too much like a petulant child.

  Keep it out of the office? I’d show him.

  I pulled out my phone.

  —Let’s have dinner on Saturday.

  It took Singer a few seconds to respond.

  —Sorry, who’s this?

  —Raney Moore, of course!

  —Impossible. You’ve stolen her phone. You’ve kidnapped her.

  —Give me a break.

  —Good luck finding anyone to pay a ransom.

  —Forget I asked.

  —Wait! Yes! Yes to dinner!

  —Yes?

  —Yes please.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I stopped by Sarah’s house before my date on Saturday. Jorge had the day off, so I drove the Fury to Brooklyn myself. While I was backing into a space in front of her brownstone, she emerged, wearing a too-big overcoat and a kerchief over her hair. She began sweeping a dusting of late winter snow off the stoop.

  I got out of the car. “How’s life on the gulag?”

  She leaned on her broom. “That’s a fire zone. You’re going to get a ticket.”

  I decided to take my chances. Inside, she tossed her peasant getup in the closet and looked me up and down. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  I was in a pair of jeans and a black sweater. “I didn’t feel like getting dressed up.”

  “You’re not wearing makeup, either. What the hell?”

  “I’m done,” I said. “The clothes, the hair, the sex—it was all a giant waste of time. This is my last hurrah. I don’t even know why I’m doing it.”

  Sarah looked like she was about to say something. She stopped, pressing her lips together. “You can’t go out looking like that. Come on.”

  She stomped up the stairs. I followed. “Where are the kids?”

  “Tad and his new girlfriend took them to Vermont.” She led me into her room.

  “Is that why you’re cranky?”

  “No.” She flipped a light switch and entered the closet. “I am not cranky because the kids are with Tad and,” she made her voice high and mincing, “Audrey, who is thirty and thin and infuriatingly nice and they probably already love her more than they love me.” She yanked a few dresses off their hangers and tossed them onto a chair. “I’m cranky because Clem broke up with me.”

  “Clem?” I vaguely remembered him: glasses, boxers. Young. “I didn’t realize things were serious between you two.”

  “That’s what’s so frustrating! They weren’t. We’ve seen each other now and then over the past few months. Very casual, no big deal. Last time, I just happened to say something innocuous about how I enjoyed spending time with him, and he got this freaked-out look on his face. Like I suggested we start picking out curtains for the nursery or something. The next day he texted me that he thought we should ‘cool things off.’ Try the wrap dress.”

  I held it up in front of the mirror. “I’m not crazy about the collar.”

  “Then try the green one.” Sarah left the closet and threw herself on the bed. “You know the worst part? Doctor Feuerstein accused me of engineering the whole thing.”

  “What?”

  “Get this.” She rose up on one elbow. “I told him what had happened, and he got this absorbed look on his face—”

  “I hate that look!”

  “It’s the worst, right? But so he does it, and he wonders—he never asks, he always fucking wonders—whether I, quote, subconsciously pressure men into commitment, in order to provoke them into rejecting me, all for the purpose of reconfirming my deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.”

  I pulled the green dress over my head. “That’s very complicated.”

  “Right?”

  “Also, you don’t have deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.”

  She flopped onto her back. “Tell my motherfucking shrink that.”

  I turned back to the mirror. “Here’s something deeply inadequate.”

  “Stop slouching.”

  I straightened up. “Ugh. Even worse.”

  “You look great. But if you don’t like it, try the orange one.”

  Why was I there? What was I doing? All at once it seemed pointless, pathetic. Humiliating. “I’m calling this off.” I reached for my jeans and pulled out my phone. “Why am I even going on this date—because Marty lectured me? Singer probably doesn’t even want to. All that flirting was—”

  “Drop the phone, Raney.”

  I looked up from the screen. “Huh?”

  “Drop the phone,” Sarah said, with deadly quiet, “or our friendship is over.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up!” she shouted. “Just shut up for one goddamn second!”

  I dropped the phone.

  She leaped off the bed and got right up close to me. “You are done talking, Raney Moore. You know why? I’ve had enough.” She jabbed a finger in my face. “I. Have had. Enough.”

  Her eyes were fierce. Her finger was menacing. I leaned back.

  “I’m sorry about Clem. I shouldn’t have come over. I’m—”

  “Did I say you could talk?”

  I shook my head meekly.

  “Then be quiet! This isn’t about Clem. This isn’t about me. It’s about you, Raney. You, and your total and complete inability to have any fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Don’t do that!” Her finger started jabbing at me again. “Don’t say it with that dour, constipated look on your face! Fun is good, Raney. Fun is fun. And what we’re doing right now? This should be fun. You’re about to go out with a man who’s witty and entertaining and hot. You and I could be lounging around my bedroom, talking and laughing. We could be doing your nails, and swilling chardonnay, as we gossip about where you’re going to go, and what he’s going to say, and how big his dick might be. Instead, you mope in here like a whiny baby, acting like this whole thing is a giant chore.”

  “I have a complicated relationship to pleasure, okay?”

  “Oh, no.” She wagged her finger at me. “You don’t have a complicated relationship to pleasure. You have no relationship to pleasure. You think it’s unimportant. You’re wrong. Pleasure is critical, Raney. It is necessary to life. Watching you these past few months? I’m mystified! You do the right things—you make yourself look gorgeous, you find a beautiful place to live, you ride around in that insane car. You’ve created this fantasy life for yourself, but you don’t enjoy it. My God, woman, the only thing you actually cop to liking is fucking chai!”

  “My goal hasn’t been to enjoy myself—”

  “Of course not!” She stepped back, throwing her arms wide. “You had a plan. Your plan to solve the mystery of Aaron’s infidelity. Or the mystery of you. Or the mystery of sex. Frankly, it’s never been clear to me—but then, I
don’t think it’s been clear to you, either. Because your plan, Raney? Never made any goddamn sense.”

  She was pacing the room now, muttering and gesticulating. I hadn’t seen her this worked up since the last time she’d been in front of a jury.

  “People get cheated on all the time,” she said. “It’s sad, but true. And in response, sometimes they go out and screw around, too. It’s not healthy, it’s not mature, but it’s understandable. You know what they don’t do, Raney? They don’t turn it into an intellectual exercise. They don’t devise a fucking…sex regime. They don’t have objectives and action items and flowcharts.”

  “I never had a flow—”

  “Quiet!” she hollered. “You know why they don’t treat sex that way? Because that’s not how sex works. It’s messy. It’s not goal oriented. It isn’t kale, Raney—you can’t learn to like it. But you sure as hell tried, didn’t you? You spent all this time screwing random guys, executing your sex drills like some weird little sex general. And you still didn’t like it.” She clutched her head. “You’re the most sexually repressed slut I’ve ever met!”

  I pulled off the dress. “I can’t believe you’re shaming me about this.”

  “Don’t,” she warned me. “You know I’m not shaming you. I’m trying to explain that your plan was doomed because you can’t control sex the way you control everything else.”

  “I wasn’t trying to control it! I was trying to—”

  “Understand it,” she said. “Right. Of course, understanding is just another form of control. Of managing the unmanageable. Of beating the thing that had beaten you.”

  “Why are you being so hard on me?”

  She clasped her hands, shaking them at me. “Because I don’t know what the hell else to do! I have been watching and listening and offering advice. I can’t take it anymore, Raney. You don’t see what’s so obvious.”

  I reached for my clothes. “I suppose you do.”

  “Yes!” she said. “I see you, Raney. I see how you look at yourself in the mirror, with your cute body and your pretty face and your amazing clothes. I see you enter that hotel suite and just…drink in the luxuriousness of it all. I see you wanting to be delighted, dying to bask in it, but you won’t let yourself.”

  I pulled my sweater over my head. “You’re being so presumptuous right now.”

  “Because it’s not about that, right? All that good stuff is only a means to an end. Attracting men. Sleeping with men. But why, Raney? That’s what doesn’t compute. Why are you having so much sex with so many men?”

  “I’m not. It’s over. Tonight is my—”

  “Last hurrah.” She nodded. “Nice try dodging the question, but I haven’t forgotten how to pin down a witness. Why the sex spree?”

  I was dressed and ready to go. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tiresome these last few months. I won’t burden you with my problems anymore.”

  She stepped in front of the door. “Tell me why, Raney.”

  “Please move, Sarah.”

  “All that sex,” she said. “All those men. Was it revenge? Was it something else?”

  “I’ve already told you—”

  “Why, Raney? Why did you do it? Why why why why why?”

  “Because I wanted to!” I shouted.

  We were silent for a moment, staring at each other, breathing hard.

  “What did you say?”

  “You were hectoring me! I didn’t mean it.” I started to move around her.

  She held my arm. “You did mean it. You said you wanted to.”

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  But now I was. Why had I said that? What did it mean?

  Sarah could see the wheels turning. She held me tighter. “For God’s sake, don’t think now! Keep talking!”

  “I wanted to have sex,” I said. “I wanted to see what it was like.”

  As I spoke the words, I knew they were true. They had that unmistakable clarity, that clutch of recognition. Like when a face in a crowd clicks into place, and suddenly an old friend is smiling at you.

  “You love sex,” I said. “So does Aaron. So do lots of people. I think I wanted to try it. When everything fell apart with Aaron, the second time? I had an excuse.”

  I sank down on the bed. So did Sarah. “Why didn’t you say that’s what you were doing?”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t admit it to myself.”

  “So you concocted a plan.”

  “It was one big rationalization.” I shook my head. “A giant cover-up.”

  “The clothes. The makeover.”

  “I thought I had to do all that to make men want to sleep with me. You were right—I loved how I looked. But I couldn’t admit it. I couldn’t admit anything.”

  I fell silent, lost in a torrent of thoughts. Sarah whacked me on the arm. “Do you know what’s happening right now? This is an epiphany!”

  “It is?”

  She whacked me again. “You’re having a motherfucking epiphany!”

  She was about to give me another whack, but I shied away. “Sorry. Keep going. You secretly wanted to have sex.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “With a bunch of random men.”

  “No,” I said.

  “And so then you…” She blinked. “Wait, what?”

  “I didn’t want to sleep with them. Not really.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “Because they didn’t matter. If they rejected me, I wouldn’t care. That’s why I avoided the one person I actually wanted.”

  “Singer,” she said.

  I nodded. “But I couldn’t admit I wanted him. What if I did, and he didn’t want me back?”

  “Why wouldn’t he want you back?”

  “Because I look like a frog,” I said.

  “I don’t…” She squinted, shook her head, uncomprehending. “What?”

  “I’m plain,” I said. “Nobody could want me.”

  “But…” Sarah ran her fingers through her hair. “We’re going to talk about how profoundly wrong that is in just a second, but back up. So what if he didn’t want you back?”

  “Then I wouldn’t get what I wanted,” I said. “I’d lose.”

  “You hate to lose,” Sarah said.

  “Exactly! Better to say I don’t want. Then, if I don’t get the thing I want, I can say, ‘Oh well. I didn’t want it anyway.’ So I decided not to want.”

  I was realizing the truth of the words as I said them. Things I’d never articulated before, never even thought.

  “And you thought you wouldn’t get what you wanted because of…how you look?”

  “I always thought I was ugly, unwantable. So a long time ago, I convinced myself that wanting wasn’t my thing.”

  “Oh, Raney,” she said softly. “You aren’t ugly.”

  “I’ve always said I didn’t care about how I looked. But I cared so much I couldn’t bear it. I locked it away, but it kept bubbling up. I couldn’t help asking Aaron what Deirdre looked like. I pretended not to care when Wally and Jonathan said I’d let myself go. I hired all those people to help me look better for the purpose of making men want me. Because I thought it was about what they wanted, not what I wanted. I act like I’m impervious, like other people’s opinions don’t matter. But all along, they’ve ruled me.”

  “You think?”

  “I know, Sarah! I let other people affect what I wanted because I was ashamed. And competitive. If I couldn’t win, I wouldn’t play.”

  “What was winning, exactly?” she asked.

  I thought about it a moment. “Never being rejected.”

  We were quiet for a while.

  “I am such a mess,” I said.

  Sarah gave me a little nudge. “News flash. You’re human.”

  I unde
rstood everything. What I’d done, why. How I was doomed to fail.

  “It was always two steps forward, one step back. I wanted to have sex, so I threw myself into it. But I was still scared, so I chose men who didn’t pose any risk to me. When I finally asked Singer out, I immediately started undermining myself.”

  “Why? You know he likes you.”

  “What if he changes his mind? What if he gets to know the real me?”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”

  We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Big, helpless, hopeless peals of laughter.

  We laughed and laughed.

  Eventually we calmed down. Sarah caught her breath. “Oh, boy. That was refreshing.”

  “It felt good to say all those things!” I said. “Really, really good!”

  She pulled me into a hug. “You are such a freak!”

  “What do I do now?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’d better be joking.”

  “Right, right, sorry! I know what to do.”

  “Of course you know, idiot!” She pushed me off the bed. “Go do it!”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I got caught in traffic coming back into Manhattan. How had it gotten so late? I raced up the West Side. Amsterdam Avenue was a torment. A few blocks from the restaurant I lost patience and parked in the first spot I found.

  I was almost half an hour late. Would he still be there?

  I spotted Singer from the doorway, at a table in the center of the small, crowded restaurant. Chin propped on one hand, he was twirling a wineglass.

  He saw me and started to rise. “Well well well. Look what the cat—”

  I pushed him back into his chair.

  “I want to have sex with you,” I said.

  His eyes went very wide.

  I was breathless from my dash up the street. “I wanted to sleep with you the moment I met you,” I gasped. “But I couldn’t admit it. So I slept with all sorts of other people instead.”

  “Sorry, you—”