Herself

by Leslie Carroll

  Apparently, the bar’s critics have more to gripe about than the décor.

  “I’ve got to get me a bartender’s certification,” Jamie says emphatically, frowning into his beer. “I can’t wait a minute longer. Excuse me a moment, my darlin’.” I think he’s headed to the loo, but he steps up to the bar, and after a brief exchange punctuated by a hand gesture or two, walks behind it and gives the hapless bartender (who no doubt considered himself an expert at his job until now) a lesson in how to pull a proper pint.

  He returns to the table measurably satisfied. “That’s Will Fogarty,” he says, gesturing with his thumb toward the freckled bartender. “He’s just an actor. No wonder. Nice guy, though. Pulling pints while he’s waiting for his Big Break on Broadway. He said he’d give my name to his boss, in case he got cast in something and took a leave of absence. Wanted to know if I knew an Irish band. Funny, I asked him the same thing. Thinkin’ this place could use some good music. I told him, ‘Give me a few weeks. I’ll find one.’”

  “You’re going on a quest now?”

  “Nah. One’ll fall into my lap like a blessing from above. These things just tend to happen to me.”

  “Cocky!”

  “Honest.”

  A week later, following a number of meetings and the submission of a handful of character references, I get the call from the senator’s office to board her ship of state.

  I debate whether the first order of business should be to escort the woman I plan to restyle as a mama bear on a listening tour of the zoo.

  Eighteen

  September 9

  The last three weeks of summer are Manhattan’s finest in the year. The air is crisp, the sun as mellow as a Golden Delicious. For me, it’s always been a season of renewal and reaffirmation; is it any wonder that it heralds the start of a new year, according to the Jewish calendar? Although Rosh Hashanah doesn’t begin for another four days, starting the season early I introduce Jamie to challah with honey, a hallmark of the annual celebration, and he kisses me with sticky lips.

  Venus has been right so far. He hasn’t even lifted a finger to continue to look for his own place to live, after his initial, and largely feeble, searches. And she was right about my not really wanting him to go, on one level. I had been so eager to live with David, with or without marriage, so my issues about jealously guarding my own space where Jamie was concerned didn’t really hold too much water. After the first couple of weeks, he began working every day from dawn past dusk, at which point, if he smelled okay enough not to stop back home to shower and change clothes, he’d phone me from his mobile and ask if I wanted to join him over at the Pot o’Gold—where he’d occasionally volunteer to step in for Will when the actor had an audition to prepare for. Poring over his script, Will would occupy a barstool and “supervise,” while Jamie would assume the mixology duties. My own role in this equation is undefined. On the nights I sit at the bar and watch Jamie work, I feel like a groupie of sorts—not a great role for an in de pen dent adult woman, especially one who was given the opportunity, by happenstance of an unhappy breakup, to regain her sense of self. For that reason alone, it’s probably healthier in every way for me to stay home and work, since there’s always something to write or research for the senator. But when I sit home alone with only a bunch of electronics for company I find myself missing Jamie and looking forward to hearing his keys in the door.

  That said (or written), I’ve been thinking about my ex lately. Poor David is still being hammered by the tabloid press, while Bob Dobson has been running an endless stream of commercials with the tag line “If David Weyburn won’t even tell us whether he’s a straight arrow, what else isn’t he telling us?” I’m sure RNC hit-man Len Avariss is the architect of this ugly strategy to keep the story before the voters. Bob Dobson lacks sufficient political experience and connections to pull off a smear campaign of this duration. Only the most powerful machine in the country can fan such a tiny flame into a seemingly endless and devastating conflagration. By comparison, the Swift Boat debacle was slow-footed. A silly non-incident that at the very least should have stayed local, has become the focus of late night jokes: WaterGayte they’re calling it now. Leno and Letterman are using David for cannon fodder. Even Jon Stewart has gotten into the act.

  I’ve thought about calling David, just to offer my moral support, if nothing else; several times I’ve had the phone in my hand, only to replace it in the cradle. And there’s this, too: shouldn’t I mourn a little more before I move on? Is Jamie Rebound Guy despite my best intentions to avoid dubbing him with that dubious honor? Is my passion masquerading as love because I passionately want it to?

  I decide to go to the Pot o’Gold as often as I can, and probably more often than I should. In the several evenings I’ve spent sitting at the bar watching Jamie in action I notice that he has the tremendous capacity to make friends easily. His gregarious nature and loquaciousness, not to mention his charm, are a magnet for men and women alike. And one night in particular, I find myself feeling very jealous when an exceptionally pretty young American woman and her equally gorgeous friend from Ireland spend the entire night talking to him. I hadn’t felt this way about him—yet, anyway—so this was something of a revelation delivered uncomfortably, in the form of a psychic sucker punch.

  “I wasn’t florting with them, ya know,” he announces, hours later, on our walk back to my apartment.

  “Did I say anything?”

  “Your mouth didn’t need to. Your eyes did the talking for it.”

  “I know you weren’t flirting. Not on purpose, anyway. You were just being you. And people of all stamps and stripes respond to it on their own individual levels. I’m sure those two young women—like a lot of people you’ve met there—will stop in to the Pot o’Gold nearly every night from now on, looking for you.”

  “And if I owned the place, think how much better shape it would be in for that! Do ya know how many people patronize the same pub time after time because they like the bartender? Maybe he’s cute. Maybe he listens to their stories, no matter how pathetic or boring. Maybe he pours longer ones than his competitors. The bottom line is that it’s all good, as you Americans like to say. All good for the bottom line. Why are we talking about hypothetical financials, Tess?”

  “Because it takes us off the uncomfortable topic of my twinges of jealousy. And my dawning acceptance of—” We’ve been holding hands, and I bring us to a halt under the suffused illumination of a street lamp, a goosenecked metal giraffe. Looking into his eyes I admit, “My dawning acceptance of the idea that I’m falling in love with you. But you’re still way ahead of me on this one, so…I’m expecting you to catch me when I finally do.”

  Jamie folds me into his arms and our mouths meet as I press my body into his. It isn’t until a passerby, full of twenty-something swagger, shouts “Get a room!” at us, that I realize we’ve overstayed our welcome in this particular neck of the asphalt jungle.

  “Race you home!” I cry, sprinting down Amsterdam. He catches up with me and grabs me about the waist just as I round the corner of Seventy-eighth Street. Breathless, we arrive at my brownstone, laughing as we sink onto the stoop together. Jamie stretches out on the cool steps, extending his arms like a martyr. I lie back against his arm; winning a free neck massage from the pulsing of his heartbeat through his bicep, while at the edge of the curb the leaves of a young tree whisper to its neighbors on the breeze.

  “It’s gossiping about us,” I pant, pointing at the tree.

  Jamie’s chest rapidly rises and falls. “Have you ever done this before?”

  “Have fun in my own city?” I ponder the question, sifting through decades of assorted memories. “Not lately.”

  “Ahh. It’s all a grand adventure, gorl. People tend to forget that. They’re too busy trying to become, instead of just being. If you’re tryin’ so hard to become something—or someone—you forget what life is all about in the very pursuit of it.” He smiles into the sky. “I told you the I
rish are born philosophizers. Ever see stars in this part of Manhattan?”

  “You mean—?”

  “I mean Lyra and Orion, not Regis and Kelly.”

  I’m ashamed to confess my answer. “I haven’t had time?” I say meekly, offering my response as if I wanted him to vet it for validity.

  He gives a derisive snort. “Well, there’s a couple of them up there pokin’ their faces through the pollution, so you should give them some respect and attention for their efforts.”

  “Did you make a wish?” He nods, still stargazing, and I recite the nursery rhyme in my head before making my own. “Hey there,” I say, turning my head until I can see his profile. “Wanna go inside?”

  In my living room the air is practically electrostatic. Jamie, perfectly attuned to the slightest nuance, is following my lead. To his credit, though I would have kicked him out on his butt if he’d pushed things, he never has.

  I slide onto the couch beside him as he removes his Wallabies. He’s the only man I’ve known since the 1970s who still wears them. It’s somehow endearing. This must be love. Or something not too far off.

  And yet it’s hard for me to look him directly in the eye. My God, am I fearing rejection? Instead I tilt my head in the direction of the staircase. “Can I invite you up for a nightcap?”

  Rising from the couch, he looks like he wants to carry me up to my bedroom à la Rhett Butler, but the logistics (the steps spiral) preclude such a grand expression of conquest. Instead, Jamie’s hands never leave my body as we ascend; grabbing my ass, caressing a thigh…and the classic romantic preliminaries (lighting candles, locating CDs to provide just the right level of musical underscoring) fall by the wayside. We don’t need props to set the mood; not to night anyway. We’re already on sensory overload just with the knowing that the pleasurable process of learning each other’s flesh, scent, taste, the texture of touch-me-there skin, is about to begin, the entry into and exploration of heretofore foreign territory a passionate journey that requires no passport.

  There’ll be time for taking our time at other times. We both recognize that without the need to mention it.

  To night isn’t about later; it’s about now. The lidded pot that has been on the simmer for a few weeks, proximity increasing the temperature of its contents, has come to a boil. Shoes are shucked, jeans are shed and pitched into a corner, tops divested of in short shrift, underwear lands who-knows-where, ablutions are discreetly made, throw pillows tossed, coverlets swept back, lights doused; arms embrace, lips meet each other, hands find hair, teeth shoulders, hungry tongues taste nipples, nibble bellies, brush thighs, tease ecstatic secrets from our deepest recesses, bodies mesh and melt together creating a rhythm both unique and timeless as the room grows more redolent of scent and sensation; sweat gathers into tangy pearls that are drunk or kissed away by cushiony lips engorged with euphoria, heavy-lidded murmurs morph into open-eyed cries, involuntary tears, and breathless smiles.

  Mutual satiation is no surprise. And when Jamie finally leaves the landscape of my body and rolls back onto the damp sheets, I turn into his embrace, the rapid rise and fall of my chest expressing the happy dance of my heart.

  And suddenly we both start laughing; and if we know why, or whether it’s even for the same reason, who can say because neither of us will tell. And Jamie props himself up on one elbow and gazes intently into my eyes.

  “I have a question for yiz, Tessa Goldsmith Craig,” he says in a tone both earnest and seductive, and I think uh-oh because he couldn’t possibly be asking me…

  When he pops it, his grin could illuminate the room. “Are you hungry?”

  Nineteen

  The following afternoon, still in the rosy throes of afterglow, I’m sitting at my computer in the midst of working on a speech for the senator, when I receive a call from David.

  “Tessa, it’s me; can you talk now?”

  In David’s verbal shorthand, this question means (a) are you alone; (b) are you in the middle of something you can’t put aside; and (c) I need to speak with you in person. “Are you calling about Dobson’s media blitz?” Even Jamie, who suffers from male-pattern remote control issues can’t land on a channel without hitting a Dobson commercial. “The ‘What would you call an environmental advocate who can’t come clean himself?’ is a particularly egregious swipe. Where are you?…All right…I’ll see you in half an hour,” I say, and end the call. “That was David,” I tell Jamie. “He needs to talk to me about something. From the tone of his voice, it sounded pretty important.”

  Jamie visibly tenses. “And you’re goin’ to go runnin’ off to him?”

  “It’s not like that, Jamie. This is professional. Purely professional. I was the one who decided not to work for him anymore, remember?”

  “Well, it looks like it didn’t take much for you to change your mind.”

  “He’s in trouble.”

  “His timing is shite. Funny how exes are fitted with radar to know when their exes have just been rollin’ around the sheets for the first time with a new lover.”

  “Don’t do this to me now, Jamie. Please. It wasn’t my idea for you to follow me across the Atlantic Ocean.” I realize this was the totally wrong thing to say. David’s campaign crisis has nothing to do with Jamie’s head-over-heels love for me. Jamie is hurting too; I’m caught between two men who, right at this moment, are scared and vulnerable.

  “Are ya throwing that in me face, now?”

  “I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it.” I release an exasperated sigh. I’m in over my head right now. And beginning to get tetchy myself. “Jamie, I am going down to David’s campaign headquarters, not to his bed. I give you my solemn word on that. For God’s sakes, David was the one who dumped me—remember? What ever it is he needs to speak to me about today, I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with my body. I’ll see you later!”

  Within the hour, David and I are sitting behind closed doors at his re-election headquarters.

  David is more agitated than I’ve seen him in some time. “Even with my war chest Dobson’s outspending me three to one. And every one of them an attack ad, since he has neither an original idea nor a record of his own to run on.”

  “I know. It began with him introducing himself to the voters to the rate of two million dollars’ worth of TV time a week, but he’s certainly progressed past his bio as a former college wide receiver and a bootstraps-tugging CEO.”

  “It’s ugly. Very ugly. Have you seen the polls, Tess?”

  “I thought our official position has always been ‘We don’t pay attention to polls; the only polls that count are the numbers on election night.’”

  “Yeah, but our unofficial position is that we dissect the poll numbers like crazy and strategize on how to address them. Tess, I’m only going to say this to you. For the first time in my political career, I’m scared I might not win this one. And…by the way, you said ‘we.’”

  “I what?”

  “You said ‘we.’ And ‘our’—as in ‘our official position’ and ‘we don’t pay attention to polls.’ Tess, I’m asking you—for the third time, I guess—to take your old job back. I’m appealing to you not just for my sake, but for the district and the country’s future well-being.”

  A silence settles between us.

  “Tess…? What do you say? Third time’s a charm, as the saying goes.”

  “And if I deny you a third time, does that make me a Judas?” I fiddle with the rim of my paper coffee cup. “David, I’ll give you advice and counsel—friend-to-friend—but I still don’t think it’s a good idea for us to work together again. Not now. It’s too soon. Besides, I just started a new job. And to be honest with you, I’m not comfortable about jumping her ship to reboard yours.”

  David releases a horribly deflated sigh. “I understand…even though I was hoping you’d see things differently. But I need your consent on something—something it goes against every pore in my body to do.” His jaw twitches slightly, one of his physical cues
that he’s uncomfortable. “Though it violates my privacy and my better judgment, I’m going to call a press conference and cut the albatross loose. Put a stop to ‘Watergayte.’ I’m going to announce that I’m not gay, and that until recently I had a steady girlfriend.”

  “Are you asking me if you can divulge my name?”

  “It’s none of their fucking business.”

  “But if they push you?”

  “I will tell them I had a long-term relationship with a former staffer. Why are you laughing?”

  “This isn’t a laugh; it’s a chuckle. I’m thinking that if you tell them that, you’ll never get another moment’s sleep until you start dating someone else. Don’t you realize that admission will make you America’s most eligible bachelor?”

  “It’s a devil’s bargain, I know. And it’s killing me that I’m even considering making it. But it may be the ugly price I have to pay to put this all behind me and get on to the business of getting re-elected and saving the world from the Bob Dobsons who like to pretend that the separation of church and state is just a quaintly antiquated suggestion. And there are in fact people in my district who think that prayer in the public schools isn’t such a bad thing. After all, in this county the Pledge of Allegiance still contains the words ‘under God.’ But it’s the thin end of the wedge.” He leans across the conference table anxiously. “Tess, right now you’re the only one I’ve shared this with.”

  “You haven’t even floated this balloon with Gus?”

  “Not yet. I wanted your blessing to ‘out’ you, if it came to that.”