Alice Fantastic (12 page)

At 42nd Street, I switched to the F train that brought us down to the Lower East Side. I walked up from the city's murky bowels and into a night that wasn't much brighter. I put Candy down. She sniffed at the pavement and seemed to make a face.

I remembered Ridge Street from long ago when, in my early teens, I'd had a junkie boyfriend whom I'd accompanied to score heroin. Puerto Rican and Dominican boys with firearms stood on corners watching for police cruisers and potential undercover cops while dozens of junkies, thin and smelling of death, lined up, waiting to buy little glassine baggies. Now, with shiny stores and eateries lining every block, it was hard to remember the area's past.

The building was a four-story brick, narrow but sturdy-looking. In the ground floor window stood a discreet placard reading,
Nichols Architecture.
There was a light on even though it was nearly 9 p.m.

I rang the buzzer. Nothing happened.

Candy looked from me to the door, wondering what was taking so long, eager to go in and explore this new place.

I felt like a jackass in a red dress. I considered what to do next. Maybe go to one of the few remaining bodegas and buy some cigarettes, then smoke, and walk my mutt down the once-scary streets, maybe even head up to 7th and B to see if, by some miracle, the horseshoe bar was still there.

Just as I was about to turn around and start walking uptown, there was a humming sound and I realized someone had answered the buzzer. I pushed the door open and walked into the hall, where I found William peering out from his office.

“Nice dress,” he said, not showing the least surprise at my materializing there uninvited.

“Thanks.”

“I was just firing off irate e-mails, come in while I finish up.”

His big pit bull was standing at the door, wagging her tail. Candy approached warily and, when William's dog sniffed at her head, growled slightly. The big dog backed off.

“Sorry, Candy has that little-dog Napoleon-complex thing.”

“Gumdrop doesn't care. She's the easiest-going dog I've ever known,” William said. “Make yourself comfortable.” He motioned at a low, modern gray couch that didn't look designed for comfort.

I sat down. Candy jumped into my lap; Gumdrop came and stood near us, wagging her tail.

William's office was clean and completely devoid of clutter. Sleek, modern wood shelves were lined with manuals and books. A slender, elegant desk held an enormous desktop Mac.

William had gone right back to what he was doing. I realized I'd expected that the mere sight of me would melt him. Not that I am known for making men melt on the spot, but once they're interested in me, it usually takes a bulldozer to drag them away.

I gave William thirty seconds more, then stood up.

“I'm not sure why I dropped in unannounced, you obviously have work to do,” I said, walking toward the door.

He swiveled his chair around to face me. “What?” He looked at me like I was insane.

“We'll see each other some other time.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I need ten seconds, then I'll give you my undivided attention.”

He looked right into me as he said it. I sighed and sat back down. I stared at the bookshelves.

William finally got up from his hi-tech office chair and came to sit next to me on the couch. He touched my face.

“Hello, Alice.”

“Hi, William.”

He leaned closer and kissed me lightly.

I kissed him back, hard.

He put one hand on my chest and pushed me away.

“What's your status?” he asked.

“Status?”

“The live-in companion.”

“He's still living in but he isn't a companion. At least not with any romantic implications. I thought I had made that clear.”

“You did. But I still hesitate to put myself at your mercy.”

“Mercy? There's no mercy involved.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

I laughed.

“Come,” he said, getting to his feet and taking my hands in his.

We went up three flights to the top floor of the small building. William unlocked the door and opened up into a small but surgically tidy apartment furnished similarly to the office.

“Oh,” I said, “it's nice.”

“You say that as if you're surprised.”

“I'm surprised at the tidiness.”

“Why?”

“I don't know many tidy people.” I shrugged and looked at him.

“Well, now you know one.”

He seemed proud of this attribute. But it worried me slightly. The only extremely tidy men I knew were gay or weird.

But William didn't seem gay and, as far as I could tell, was in possession of his faculties. And he really was easy on the eyes. Those broad shoulders, that long neck. The wide-set, light-brown eyes.

I came closer to him and kissed his neck. The skin was so soft.

He looked at me, then, seeming to reach a decision, put his hands on my hips and steered me toward the front of the apartment where the bedroom was. He pushed me down onto the bed, then lay next to me. For a few minutes we stayed like that, looking at each other, wordless. Then he pulled me on top of him. I lifted his sweater and buried my face in his chest. It was hairless and soft without being feminine.

He sat up halfway, pulled my dress over my head, and examined me.

“You look like a wood nymph,” he said as he ran his hand from my stomach down to the tip of my left foot.

“A wood nymph?”

“A slightly otherworldly creature. Delicate but capable of building a shack from sticks.”

“Wood nymphs build shacks? Don't they just live in trees or something?”

“I admit I'm not as well-versed as I should be in the habits of nymphs. I imagine them as capable but lovely creatures.”

“Thank you, I think.”

He bit my neck and put a hand inside my thong. I was ridiculously wet. I fumbled with the buttons on his jeans, letting out a sigh of relief when I'd gotten them undone and reached my hand inside his boxers. His cock was thick. I craved him.

He flipped me onto my stomach, ran his hands down my back and ass and legs. I kept reaching out, trying to grab hold of him, any part of him, but he batted my hands away.

“Shhhh,” he said, “let me explore.”

He bit the backs of my thighs. He put a pillow under my hips, elevating my ass, and entered me from behind. Very slowly. Teasing. Torturing.

Every time I tried reaching back to touch some part of him, he'd slap my hands away; at one point, he pinned them under his own as he slid in and out of me.

Eventually, he relented. He flipped me over, then pulled me on top of him. He'd been tormenting me long enough that within a few moments of straddling him, I came.

I didn't look at him. That would have been too much, but as my body collapsed forward onto his, I buried my face in his neck.

He wasn't done with me. He let me lie on my side, recovering, as he slid in behind me. He fucked me like that for about ten minutes then, finally, let himself come.

He held me tightly.

I closed my eyes.

I woke up and squinted into the darkness of the room. Candy was curled up at the edge of the bed but William was nowhere to be found. And I couldn't see a clock anywhere.

I got up, turned on a very modern and beautiful bed-side lamp, and started rooting around for my strewn panties and dress.

“Hey, what are you doing?” William appeared in the bedroom door.

He was completely naked. His body wasn't perfect, there was a hint of spare tire around his middle, but he was at ease with himself. I wanted him again.

“Why'd you put this back on?” he asked as he tackled me back to the bed and put his hand under the dress and inside my thong.

“It's illegal to walk the streets naked,” I said before completely losing the power of speech as he put his mouth between my legs.

At some point, after sating each other again, after lying entwined and touching each other's faces, I asked what time he thought it was.

“Why? Where do you have to go?” He propped up on his elbow and stared at me almost menacingly.

“Home. To work. I was distracted thinking of you all afternoon and didn't do my work for tomorrow's races.”

“Ah.”

I wasn't sure he believed me.

“So.” I said, “any idea what time it is?”

“About 11.”

“Oh. My powers won't be at their peak.”

“Your powers are most assuredly at their peak,” he said, scooping his hand under the small of my back and squeezing me to him.

We stayed entwined for another half hour before I finally forced myself up and out of the bed. I had convinced myself that I had to get home to work. There was a carryover in the Pick 6. Arthur had text-messaged asking if I wanted to work on it with him. I didn't. But now I told myself I was going to. I told myself that Clayton had nothing to do with my needing to leave this man who turned me upside down.

“See you,” I said as I stood near the door, Candy at my side.

William kissed me. He kissed my mouth, my forehead, my cheeks, my neck.

“Yes,” he said, “you will see me.”

I liked the verging-on-threatening tone.

I walked out onto Ridge Street. It was a dark but warm night. Not a person or cab in sight. Candy squatted in the street and peed, then sniffed at everything as we walked north up to Houston where I hailed a taxi. The driver, a cadaverously thin man whose skin was as gray as his hair, didn't fly into a rage when I told him I was going to Queens. In fact, he barely paused in the intense conversation he was having into the headset of his cell phone.

I wondered, as I often do, who cab drivers find to talk on the phone with them, seemingly endlessly, in the middle of the night.

The apartment was dark when I came in. I saw Clayton lying on the couch, on his side, his back to me. He was wearing his clothes and didn't have anything covering him.

I quietly went about my nighttime ablutions, washing my face and applying liberal doses of night cream. I inspected myself in the mirror and found my pasty skin was glowing a little. The circles under my eyes weren't visible. I looked happy.

That's ridiculous, Alice
, I told myself.

I went into the bedroom and got in bed without even thinking about doing any work on tomorrow's races. I rested my head in a nest of soft pillows and fell right to sleep, Candy curled at my feet.

7. KIMBERLY

“A
re you pregnant?” Joe asked.

“Hardly,” I said, gazing up at him from my position on the bathroom floor where, after vomiting prodigiously, I had crumbled next to the toilet.

“It'd be cute if we had a kid,” Joe said.

“Joe, you can't be serious.”

“Why not?”

“I'm menopausal.”

“I hear some women get pregnant even a year after their last period.”

I stared up at him, dumbfounded.

“Joe,” I said evenly, “my youngest daughter is nearly
thirty
. I'm not pregnant. It's just a flu.”

“You sure?” Joe scrutinized me.

“Quite.”

I thought of my daughter Alice's complaints about all men wanting to get her pregnant. I had always suspected she was exaggerating. The men who'd impregnated me had not intended to do so. But now, my fifty-six-year-old next-door neighbor Joe, with whom I'd been having a lovely fling for eight weeks, sincerely seemed to want me pregnant. I was sure it was a passing phase, a fleeting, whimsical wish, the kind one becomes prone to in advanced middle age.

As I thought all these things, Joe gazed down at me with what I strongly suspected was love. Love? It seemed so foreign after the Battle of Betina. And the Battle of Claire, Betina's predecessor, who had also been young and difficult. In retrospect, these relationships didn't really have as much to do with love as with conquering.

“Kim,” Joe said, reaching for one of my hands and helping me to my feet, “I'm in love with you.”

“Oh, Joe.”

“
Oh, Joe
? What kind of response is that?”

“I'm fifty-three years old and I just vomited. I can't imagine anyone deciding to love me at this particular juncture.”

“I didn't decide it. I just do.”

“Oh, Joe.” I reached up and touched his face.

“You keep saying that.”

“I'm at a loss for words.”

“Do you have any positive feelings for me?”

“Many. Yes. There is even a good chance I love you.”

“A good chance?”

“Can I just brush my teeth and then we'll get out of the bathroom and discuss?”

“I suppose so.” He gave me a wounded look then walked out of the bathroom, softly closing the door as he left.

I turned to the sink and took my toothbrush from the holder. Ours was the kind of relationship where I felt comfortable doing things like leaving a toothbrush. Not that I ever spend the night. When Joe and I want to sleep together all night, we do so next door, at my place, so as not to abandon the dogs. But leaving things at his place has made me feel girlish and I can't say that I've ever in my life felt girlish.

I scrubbed my teeth and ran a hand through my hair that had gotten lank over the last few months. I knew I looked awful so I didn't glance into the mirror.

“Okay,” I said, coming out of the bathroom, “I'm all cleaned up.”

Joe was sitting at the edge of the bed. He was wearing red boxer shorts. His graying brown hair was falling in his face. He looked sweet and sad.

“I don't mean to be cruel,” I said, kneeling down in front of him and putting my hands on his knees.

“You're not cruel, Kim, I suppose you're just honest.”

“I don't trust myself. I thought I loved Betina. And Claire before her. In retrospect, it was something else, a compulsion, but not love. So I'm hesitant.”

Joe looked at me from under the fringe of his hair.

“Anyway, don't you think you're going to start longing for the young blondes you've favored the whole time I've known you?”

“How could you possibly be insecure?”

“That's not insecurity talking. I'm being pragmatic.”

“No,” Joe shook his head, “I like you better than them all.”

“Oh, Joe.”

“Let's take a vacation together.”

“Vacation? I don't take vacations. I have seventeen dogs.”

“Get your daughters to take care of them.”

“Ha. Eloise has flitted off to Toronto to visit her movie star lesbian lover and there's no chance that Alice will do anything for anyone.”

“How can you know that until you ask?”

“I know my daughters. I gave birth to them.”

“Just ask. Ask Alice.”

“Maybe,” I said. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table and saw it was nearly 6 p.m. I had more dogs to exercise before nightfall.

“I know,” Joe said, “you have to feed those beasts now. And I have work to do too. Can I come over later?”

I looked at him. At his sweet, handsome face. I couldn't believe I was here. Having a heterosexual relationship with an attractive, sane, solvent man who, by all indications, was taken with me.

“Sure,” I said, “come over later.”

I touched his face.

The dogs twirled and barked and jumped. Chico got down on his back and exposed his belly, Carlos yapped, Ira stood off to the side looking at me with those huge, mournful brown eyes. I took a step toward Ira, but Jimmy, the nearly brainless Newfoundland, came crashing between us. Lucy growled at Jimmy, Chico jumped onto the couch, and all hell broke loose. I stood still and relaxed, took a deep breath, then let out a “Shhhh” and, to my amazement, the chaos stopped and all eyes turned to me.

If only my daughters had ever listened to me this way.

For the next two hours I fed and walked the dogs. When night fell, I turned on the backyard lights and took most of the animals out to play ball. I launched one ball after another till the huge yard was filled with flying dogs and tennis balls. At one point, I darted off to the edge of the yard to vomit. Then had to sit down on a rock for a minute until a spell of weakness passed. The dogs looked at me, some with concern, some with annoyance as my bout of unease had gotten in the way of ball-throwing.

At 8 p.m. the phone rang. A potential adopter for Lucy, the Ibizan hound who'd been abandoned at a veterinarian's office in Kingston.

“I love Ibizan hounds,” the woman said.

“Do you have experience with the breed?”

“No, I just love them.”

“They're high-energy dogs. They need to run, yet can't be let offleash in an unfenced area as they have a keen prey drive.”

“Oh, that's okay,” said the woman.

“Which part is okay?”

“All of it.”

“Do you plan to spend two hours a day walking the dog?”

“Two hours?”

“Minimum. Almost all dogs need that much. With some, you can let them run offleash in the woods and they can burn off enough steam in an hour of running. With dogs like Lucy, you have to do a lot of walking. In addition to play time in a fenced yard, of course.”

“Oh.” The woman sounded deflated. They often do. They see pictures of these orphaned dogs on Petfinder, fall in love with a face without consideration for the needs that might accompany it.

“Why do you want to get a dog?” I asked.

“I grew up with dogs. I miss that dog energy.”

“What kind did you grow up with?”

“Beagles.”

“I have a beagle mix. Minnie. She will still need exercise but not as much as Lucy.”

“I was hoping for something bigger. Could I at least meet Lucy?”

I agreed that she could come meet Lucy even though I had no intention of letting her have that particular dog. I would hope to match her up with one of the mellower beasts. Maybe Herman, a very shy sheepdog who just wanted to love somebody and detested excessive exercise. Or Simba, an aging black Lab who had lived his seven years with an elderly gentleman who thought that letting him out in the yard once a day was enough exercise. Simba had started enjoying our long daily walks but would never have rigorous exercise requirements like some of the others.

The woman, a bank teller named Sue who lived in nearby West Saugerties, was intent on coming by that evening. Since I'd already done my chores over at Ava's farm and taken care of most everything else I had on my plate for the day, I agreed.

When Joe came over two hours later, he found me on the couch, benevolently watching Sue, a thirtyish woman with frizzy red hair, as she sat on the floor, surrounded by dogs. I had given the woman my standard lecture on the true needs of dogs, that a dog, any dog, even a tiny lapdog, is an animal first and foremost and, as such, should not be left confined somewhere for hours at a time and then merely sent out to a small yard by way of exercise. Sue swore up and down that she knew a good dog walker who she'd hire to take the new pet out in the middle of the day and that she'd personally give it long walks both before and after work.

She seemed sincere enough and didn't balk when I told her I'd be checking up on the dog for the rest of its life. I had steered her toward Simba and Herman but it was Chico, the tan pit bull, who seemed to have stolen her heart. Chico had his big head in her lap and was looking up at her like she was a hunk of ham.

“Do you want me to come back later?” Joe had asked when I let him in.

“No, no, it's fine, you should see how this adoption process works.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Ah, okay then.” He came in, shook Sue's hand, and sank into the couch. It was late now but Sue showed no sign of wanting to leave.

“Sue,” I said gently, “I have to go to bed.”

“Can I have Chico?”

“We can talk about it. You should go home and sleep on it. He's a wonderful dog but you will encounter pit bull prejudices, neighbors may make a fuss, home insurance will be hard to find.”

“But he's a wonderful dog.”

“Yes. But while it's perfectly legal for lunatics to purchase firearms, pit bulls have been banned in entire cities.” I felt a rage coming on so I decided to nip it in the bud. I told Sue I'd call her in the morning. Chico and I walked her to the door. After I watched her get in her car and pull away, I turned to Joe.

“You know, I think we should take that vacation,” I said.

Joe smiled.

* * *

The next morning, after Joe had left and I had vomited then gotten through the first round of dog chores, I obsessed over the idea of a vacation. I hadn't gone on one since 1989, when Anne, my second lesbian lover and first long-term girlfriend, inherited money from her grandmother and sprang for an extravagant trip to Nevis, a tiny lush Caribbean island where we plucked mangoes from trees and made love on the beach. As much as I had adored Anne, who had dumped me very suddenly after seven years, I wanted to take a vacation with Joe even more.

I was going into the city late that morning to drop off Arturo the Italian greyhound with a nice-sounding man who Eloise had approved as an adopter. The man owned a toy store where Arturo would spend his days at the man's side. I decided I would stop in on Alice and try to convince her to come care for the dogs so I could take this infamous vacation. It was important enough to warrant my calling her to make sure she'd be home.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, sounding less than lively.

“What's wrong, Alice?”

“Clayton is going to prison. He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.”

“Oh.” I didn't know what to make of this. Alice hadn't seemed to think highly of her lover until he'd been arrested. I didn't like the idea of my daughter being so emotionally screwy that she only cared about someone who would soon be unavailable by reason of prison sentence. What's more, I'd heard from Eloise that Alice was seeing someone else.

“I'm sorry to hear that, Alice,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.

“Yeah, thanks. What's up?”

“I was going to drop by and see you later.”

“And you're calling first?”

“Yes. I'm turning over a new leaf. I also wanted to make sure you weren't going to be at the track.”

“Mom, it's Tuesday.”

“And?”

“Tuesday is a dark day.”

“Right,” I said, as if I had any idea what that meant. “So you'll be home?”

“What time?”

“Maybe 1 p.m. or so?”

“That's fine, Mom,” she said in a defeated voice.

“Alice, are you all right?”

“No, Mom, I thought I made that clear. But I'll see you around 1.”

I hung up and took a moment to torment myself over my poor parenting of Alice. I was so young when I had her. Seventeen. And her father, Sam, was just twenty. We moved in with his parents and tried to be a family, but Sam and I never really got along and the more he annoyed me and failed to understand me, the more I disliked him. We split up when Alice was four. Alice and I went to live with my folks for a while and then I left Alice there, with them, in what I thought would be a more stable environment, as I went off to San Francisco. I had told my parents I was going to nursing school but the truth was, I had met Jeff, Eloise's father, a guitar player in a psychedelic band. As Alice attended a rural elementary school in Pennsylvania, I gave birth to Eloise in Oakland, California. For a little while, Jeff and Eloise and I were a happy little family. But Jeff was a junkie and soon I became a junkie too. Eloise's formative years were spent watching her parents shoot up. Jeff died of an overdose when she was three.

I eventually pulled myself together. Eloise and I went back to Pennsylvania where we shared a room with Alice in my parents' house. But Alice was a stranger to us and she and I never developed the bond Eloise and I have. I eventually got clean in Narcotics Anonymous, became employable and trustworthy and even capable of parenting. But it was a little too late for Alice. Though she isn't an out right sociopath, I worry about her coldness and its counterpoint, the sudden flare-ups of emotion.

The dogs started milling around and barking and there was a knock at the door. I looked up at the kitchen clock and saw it was already 9 a.m. I opened the door for Gina, one of my pet supply store coworkers who was going to walk and tend to the dogs for me while I spent the day in the city.