withdraw. . . .’”
“Teddy, I was being harsh.”
“No problema.”
Steve must be overgeneralizing. Maybe some men get upset at criticism, but Teddy, off in his own little galaxy, has never paid attention to a thing I’ve said.
That’s his way of coping, snipes my little voice.
“I’ll pay you back soon, I promise,” Teddy is explaining. “With interest.”
“What did you just say?”
“I’d been needing a new demo CD. You know, to get voice-over work. I didn’t have enough cash on hand, so I borrowed your half of the refund.”
No. Please, no. Teddy hasn’t borrowed my six hundred thirty-one dollars and eighty-nine cents—he has embezzled it. Sure, he’ll try to pay it back. He’ll try valiantly, but he’ll never have enough cash of his own to spare. I want nothing more than to scream at him—in a most emasculating way.
Teddy must sense this. “Hey, it’s an investment. And hey! How about that preacher character? Pretty good, don’t you think?”
I pull the phone away from my ear and drop it silently onto the bed, letting Teddy chatter away into the empty room, imagining the walls moving closer and closer together, closing in on me until I’m trapped in here, in New York, forever.
FIFTEEN
The next day, when I go to check my e-mail, my mailbox is stuffed with come-on after come-on, so many that when I start to sort through them my computer crashes, and I have to restart it twice before I can tell what’s going on. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“MEAT ME TONITE!”
“WANNA GET NASTY?”
And on and on and on. Do these hucksters have no shame? Then I look closer and realize this isn’t junk e-mail at all. Not the usual kind. Mixed in with the pitches for discount amphetamines and requests for my bank account number from exiled Nigerian princes are a good fifty notes from Matemarket men. The notes go like this:
TO: NewGirl
FROM: Studmuffin
SUBJ: Yo cutie
Yo, check me out. If you like it we could hook up. Love Alex
and like this:
TO: NewGirl
FROM: IDigHotGirlz
SUBJ: Cum over 2 my place!!!
“Fifty responses? Not bad,” Val says when I call her to complain. “The hot girlz one may not be your type, but how about that one who wants to see you naked?”
“Not naked. N-A-K-K-E-D. I can’t date an illiterate.”
“How many times do I have to explain this to you? Don’t think about dating him.” If Vickie’s signature expression is “I’m going to shove my shoe down your throat,” Val’s is the exasperated eye roll, and I suspect she is executing a flawless example of it right now. “Think, Could I spend one night with him? Could I meet him for one drink and see what happens? Basically, is he decent-looking and breathing? If so, what’s the big risk?”
“Val, spelling is very important. And I don’t want to get involved with anybody even for half an hour. I probably won’t like him, so I’ve just wasted half an hour. If I do like him, all of a sudden we’re going on a second date and a third date, and then we’re in a relationship and then we’re moving in together and then we’re married and then it all falls apart. And I’m hating myself because not only have I made a mess of my life yet again, I did it all for some man who can’t spell ‘naked.’”
“Would you just go out with someone, already? If you don’t like the naked guy, pick another one. I’m not hanging up until you reply to one of those e-mails.”
I scroll through more subject lines: SUBJ: Let’s Party, SUBJ: I HAVE $$$, SUBJ: Blow me baby. I click open one that says simply SUBJ: Hi. The note is from someone named BuzzBuzz and consists of one line: Meet sometime?
Not exactly compelling, but inoffensive. “Fine, Val. I’m replying. What do people write in these things?”
“‘Dear so-and-so, I’m available . . .’ When are you available?”
I stop typing. “Weekdays, weeknights, weekends.”
“Not weekends. Never make a date for a weekend night.”
“So I won’t look desperate.”
“It’s not that. You don’t want to be out with the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. That’s what people from Manhattan call people from New Jersey, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, the Westchester County suburbs, and certain unauthorized areas of Long Island. Every Friday and Saturday night the city is overrun with them. You see them outside clubs and bars those of us who actually live here got sick of weeks ago. Tell him Tuesday or Wednesday. Say your favorite bar is—”
“No bars.”
“No bars?” Val sounds incredulous. “Then say you’ll meet him for coffee or something.”
I type.
“Sign it ‘NewGirl.’ Now send.”
I click the Send button. The e-mail vanishes from the screen. “I did it.”
“Finally,” Val says.
After we hang up, I continue my massive delete-fest, which includes tossing, unopened, a “Special Edition” of my mother’s newsletter (SUBJ: Mark Your Calendar! Joy at the New Age Expo!). But also in my e-mail, Kevin has sent an invitation to dinner next week. That’s odd. The only time Kevin has ever taken me to dinner was just before I left L.A., the night during which, over chicken mole in Hollywood, he suggested that we take our years-old friendship “in a more pro-active direction.” Now he wants to speak with me “regarding a third-party proposal with significant future impact.” What does that mean? I wonder, as I write the dinner date into my barren day planner.
Rather than dwell on it, I spend ninety minutes visiting the Web sites of every last marketing research outfit in the Tri-State area, on the slim chance that I might have missed one. In the process I stumble across a firm called the Christmas Company, with a president-chief executive named Sandy Christmas. The name is so strange I pull up her corporate biography, and when her photo appears I’m astounded. Sandy Christmas is Cassandra Krysakowski! Cassandra Krysakowski from PKS, who hired me right out of school as her assistant and left three years ago to form her own company. How could I have forgotten she was in New York? Cassandra loves me!
Sure enough, she takes my phone call immediately, tells me how happy she is to hear I’ve moved to the city, and suggests lunch at Undine’s on Thursday. I write that into my datebook, too, not knowing what thrills me most: that there’s someone in New York who has known me longer than five minutes, that she could easily hire me, or that she’s going to buy me an expense-account meal at the city’s restaurant-of-the-moment. That will be two meals out—in one week! My life is on an upward swing! I turn off the computer and call Val back to see if she wants to celebrate after work. Her voice mail says she’s out in the field for the rest of the afternoon. She doesn’t answer her cell phone, either. Maybe it’s time to start making other friends. I think on it for all of ten seconds and then, before I can change my mind, dart out of my apartment and down one flight to the basement.
“Door’s open, kitten!” Simon yells when I knock.
I step into his apartment. Simon is nowhere to be found. “Be with you in a second!” he calls from behind a doorway. How luxurious—he must have an actual bedroom. I stand in the living room, awaiting further instructions.
“Have a seat!” Simon calls from the beyond.
I recline into his leather Eames chair, put my feet up on the matching ottoman, and stare into the fireplace. It looks exactly like mine, except that instead of the remains of the one Presto Log I burned back in April, Simon has set up a display of religious candles, Mardi Gras beads, flowers, and oranges. It’s so endearing and whimsical I want to run right upstairs and put a plant or something in my own fireplace.
“It’s my hair shrine. I pray in front of it every morning. Damn, sweetheart, that’s one brilliant cut.” Simon emerges from behind the door and comes over to inspect my head. Rocky trots out after him. I make a kiss-kiss noise to lure the pug over for a pat, and then look at Simon. “If someone you’d been sleepin
g with asked you to dinner to discuss a third-party proposal, what do you think he’d be about to ask?”
“Threesome. But we’re talking about you here? Marriage.”
“Not a chance. Kevin is the least commitment-minded person I know. He won’t even leave a toothbrush at my place. That’s the whole point of our relationship—no emotional involvement. Besides, I still have a husband.”
“Maybe he wants to propose a threesome with you and your husband.”
“Simon, stop. Want to go shopping with me?”
“When?”
“Now, I guess. I have a job interview next week and need something nice to wear.” I’ll have to put it on a credit card. It’s stupid, I know, but if—no, make that when—Cassandra, a.k.a. Sandy, offers me a job I’ll be able to pay it off right away.
Simon swoops me into a hug. “At last! I’m so proud of you! You’re much better than those nasty old sweatpants! Why do you wear those things all the time, anyway?”
“They’ve been matching my mood.” My reply is barely audible because he’s got my face crushed into his left shoulder. I try to free myself without seeming impolite. “Besides, everything in my closet is wrong. Somewhere between Studio City and here it all became a decade out of date.”
Simon nods knowingly. “Manhattan wardrobe spoilage. Happens to everyone who moves here, except for the girls from Paris and Tokyo. The only cure is to toss everything onto the sidewalk and start from scratch.”
“Then you’ll come with me?”
“I would love to, but I must perform an emergency updo downtown.” He opens the door to what in my apartment is the kitchen, but in this case is an enviably spacious closet, and extracts his quilted metal box. He pats it. “I ought to get a red cross stenciled on this thing.” I must look crestfallen, because he adds quickly, “Don’t be a sad kitten. If you want me to drop by tomorrow afternoon you can model everything for me. I’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. For company now, bring the Rock along. He’s great in boutiques. The shopgirls go ape over him.”
Rocky is lying on his back, all four paws in the air.
“Why not?” I tell Simon.
“That’s my girl.”
SIXTEEN
Rocky and I walk Simon to the corner, where he hails a cab. I put his spare keys in my purse, even though I suspect he will be back from his house call long before Rocky and I have expended my pent-up shopping energy. But no sooner do I set off down Columbus than Rocky swoons operatically onto the sidewalk. He’s so exhausted, the pose suggests, he can’t possibly make it another inch.
“He’s thirsty,” a giant, lumpy-faced man grunts from behind me. “You do know that if that animal isn’t properly hydrated, he won’t reach his full intellectual potential, don’t you? You need to carry a collapsible water bowl at all times.” He wipes his hands on his stained shirt and lumbers away. “There oughta be a law.”
“You must be pleased with yourself,” I whisper to Rocky as I haul him up and carry him under my arm, his legs scrabbling in the air, for two blocks until we reach a restaurant with outdoor tables set off from the sidewalk by a row of low planters. Gratefully I set him back down. He’s got to weigh fifteen pounds.
“Adorable boy!” A fresh-faced blond waitress, who could have been teleported directly from an Iowa cornfield, seats me at a prime people-watching table next to the planters. She hands me a menu but speaks only to Rocky. “Are you thirsty? Are you thirsty? Are you? Look, we have our own doggie drinking fountain.”
Running along one side of the building at Rocky’s chest level is a narrow water trough, tiled with a mosaic of dog faces.
“Don’t worry,” the waitress informs Rocky. “We have a special system that circulates and triple-filters the water to get out all the nasties. It’s cleaner than the water in Mommy’s kitchen!”
I watch Rocky slurp at the trough, his curlicue tail twirling in delight, and long for an intelligent human with whom to discuss the new depths of absurdity to which this city seems to sink on a daily basis. That dog water probably is cleaner than the water out of my tap. I’m sure it never comes out looking brown.
Rocky jumps up—the trough must in fact contain the healing waters of Lourdes—and makes a beeline between the planters for a dog passing by on the sidewalk.
I’m learning, though. I’ve already thought to loop his leash around my chair leg. Rocky reaches the end of the line and slingshots back toward me like a furry tetherball.
“Ha!” I shout exultantly.
“Woowoowoowoowoo!” he protests.
“I’d know that bark anywhere,” remarks the man walking the other dog.
I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s too bad Val and Kevin aren’t here to chant, “It’s nothing but a big small town.” Because the other dog is a Jack Russell terrier. And the man is Steve.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Iris and Rocky. Are you two following me? Never mind; don’t answer that. Mind if we join you?” Before I can utter a word, he squeezes through the planter-wall, drags over an empty chair, loops Jack’s leash under its leg, and makes himself at home. So does Jack, after a brief skirmish with Rocky that seems mostly for show.
“And what are you doing here on our lovely Upper West Side?” The way Steve says it, you’d think it was his neighborhood and I was the one on the wrong side of town.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
He grins and scans the menu the now-vanished-back-to-Iowa waitress has left on the table. “Perhaps I’m stalking you.”
“That’s creepy and rude.” The way I say it reminds me of the way I used to speak to Teddy when he’d do something like drink milk out of the carton. Maybe I did treat Teddy the way Vickie treats Steve. But I can understand what Vickie said about Steve and the dishwasher: How was I supposed to not get upset?
“I was teasing. I’m between appointments and have about an hour to kill. I was going to sit somewhere and read my paper. You know something, Iris? I’ve missed you. And I only just saw you yesterday. So how about a sandwich? My treat.”
I can’t get out of my head the suspicion that Steve is using me for something. Still, I haven’t eaten for hours. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to fuel up for shopping, especially on his dime. And deep down, so deep I never would admit it to anyone, ever, I’m glad he’s shown up like this, on my side of town.
I stand up. “I have errands.” I bend down to unhook Rocky’s leash.
“Want some company?”
Yes, but not yours, Steve. “I’m going shopping.”
“Clothes shopping?”
“I have a job interview.”
“Good for you! When?”
“Next week. I’d better get going.”
“Not to brag, Iris, but I’m a great shopper.”
“How lucky for your wife.”
He ignores my comment. “I don’t even mind sitting on the little pink chair outside the dressing room. You should bring me along.”
This is a first. No man has ever campaigned to accompany me shopping.
“I promise not to ask why you need another black skirt when you already have six in your closet.”
That makes me laugh. “I do have six in my closet.”
“Every woman does,” he says. “Also black shoes. Let me guess. Ten pairs?”
“Eleven. Not one of them suitable for New York City. This friend of mine calls it—”
“Manhattan wardrobe spoilage.”
“How do you know that?”
He opens his wallet and leaves a few bills on our unused table, then gets up and leads me out onto the sidewalk. “Didn’t you get the handbook? I thought they passed it out to every new New Yorker. The one that explains how much to tip the grocery delivery man, and why there’s always scaffolding going up somewhere, and the difference between Ray’s Pizza, Famous Ray’s Pizza, The Original Ray’s Pizza, and Famous Original Ray’s Pizza.”
“And how to get a taxi in the rain?”
“No one knows how to get a
taxi in the rain.”
We go on like that, and before long he’s led me eight blocks up to a spot I know well: Columbus and Eighty-second. As we near the speakeasy/white slavery den/whatever it is at the northeast corner, with its darkened windows and porthole-door, my heart starts to pound. What is he up to?
“I thought we were going shopping.” I try to sound nonchalant.
Steve ties Jack Russell to a parking meter and approaches the porthole. I stick fast to my spot on the sidewalk. This would be an ideal time to bow out, take Rocky, and go do my shopping the proper way, that is, without Vickie’s husband. I grab him back toward the curb. “Whatever this is, I don’t want to go in.”
“What’s the matter? You’ve not heard of Rubicon?”
I’ve heard of Rubicon.
Everyone has heard of Rubicon.
Rubicon stocks only the most obscure, up-and-coming designers—no Ralphs or Calvins, no Pradas or de la Rentas. It’s credited with launching dozens of the now famous and far more expensive labels Vickie undoubtedly has in her closet, and which would be in Val’s except that she wears only vintage and doesn’t have a closet. It’s also located way downtown. Good try, Steve.
I give him my best “gotcha” look. “There is no Rubicon on the Upper West Side.”
He bounces it right back to me. “There wasn’t, until they opened this annex last fall.”
Rubicon Annex! This unmarked door leads to Rubicon Annex? I live just blocks from the only branch of the boutique Kitty calls “Manhattan’s, and therefore the world’s, most selective,” and for which there’s no listed phone number or address? What a coincidence that it’s in the same building Steve manages.
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