Bundle of Joy? (12 page)

Tomorrow was my all-day bed day. I had no intention of messing with that.

“You know, I do feel kind of sick—I probably shouldn’t.”

“How about Thursday?”

Thursday was daytime TV day, but it seemed like I was forgetting something. Thursday resonated in my head for some reason. I got up to look at my calendar. That’s it: I had two hundred words due on Monday for
NY BY NIGHT
on a new restaurant. It was just a short piece, but I had to go to the place. Usually I went on my own or took Jamie and Raj. Would it be strange to be expensing our first date? Well, maybe it would ensure that he didn’t expect anything.

Who was I kidding? I
wanted
him to expect something.

“Actually, I have to go do a sort of review on a restaurant. Maybe you want to come? It’s a pretty straight-up American place, I think. If you don’t like that kind of food, we could go somewhere else.”

“That’s so cool. You’re a restaurant reviewer. I love to eat.”

“No, I’m a freelance writer. I just got a gig to cover this place for
NY BY NIGHT.
”

“We answer calls at the Prescott Nelson Building all the time. What a cool job. You must be a real smarty-pants.”

I could hear myself telling Jamie that Paul was too blue collar for me and see her rolling her eyes. He seemed like a nice enough guy. It was too soon to judge.

“I just, you know, like to write. So, you want to go?”

“Sure, it sounds terrific. I’ll pick you up.”

“Why don’t we just meet there?” I didn’t really want him to see my apartment, even though he already had. I gave him the address.

“A modern woman,” he said. “I like it. I’ll meet you there.”

After we said goodbye, I lay back in bed. This day had been just too bizarre. I had had an orderly life, and all of a sudden
there were blasts from the past and hot new (perhaps too-blue-collar) strangers. I wasn’t sure I could keep up with this new pace.

My day of rest didn’t go as well as I had hoped it would. For one thing, it’s hard to rest when you can’t stop thinking about the thighs of a really hot man you are going on a date with the following day. The other reason was that I had Maureen Soltero up my butt.

“You need to get back in the game, my dear. I know it’s heartbreaking, but this town is all about movement and if you don’t want to lose out, you got to be in. I have to show the place near Union Square and I have an absolutely charming steal on Mulberry Street. I know you’re not into that neighborhood, but it’s totally in your price range. It just needs a little TLC.”

I didn’t even know why I’d answered the phone. The caller ID was on the living room phone and I was too lazy to check it. Maybe I had been hoping that Jamie would call so I could tell her my Paul news and have her convince me not to cancel, which I kind of thought I should. Maybe I’d answered the phone because I kept expecting Paul to cancel. But all five of the calls I got were from Maureen, imploring me to meet her the following day to scout some places. On the last call I was losing patience.

“I don’t want to live that far downtown.”

“Do you have a boyfriend, Voula?”

“What?” I asked, defensively. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I just wanted to make an analogy about being picky with men and picky with apartments. It works on a lot of my clients in your situation.”

“Are you using a line on me, Maureen? My ‘situation’?” I asked. I didn’t even want to know what she was getting at. “This isn’t a pickup bar. I don’t need analogies or whatever. I’ll go see the stupid apartment.”

“Terrific, I’ll e-mail you the info tomorrow and see you at three.” She hung up before I could change my mind.

That night, Kelly stood at my doorway with a brand-new haircut. She modeled it for me and I whistled.

“If you can’t change your life, change your hair,” she said.

“I should think about that.”

She looked at my sweats and T-shirt. “Are you feeling okay? Have you left the apartment today?”

“Not exactly. It’s a little ritual I like to do sometimes.” As the ritual was being cut short by my date and my apartment search, I didn’t bother to explain.

“It’s too hot in here,” Kelly whined. “Do you want to go check out a Latin band with me? They’re playing at the Knitting Factory. I bet it will be cooler than this oven.”

Two hours later, I was downtown in a sweaty standing-room-only club watching five guys in multicolored suits play music like I’d never heard music played before. In spite of the heat, Kelly danced like mad. I stood at the bar watching her shoulder blades move to the rhythm as guys tried to whisper lines in her ear. She was oblivious to them and just kept bouncing. I had never been much of a dancer. Jamie would be the one with the beer over her head, howling with energy whenever we went out. I was with a different friend, but still in the same lame position.

Kelly came over to the bar to get some water. I saw men turn and follow her with their eyes. Sure, she had a great body and was working her new haircut, but there was something else about her that made her desirable: she just didn’t seem to care.

“What do you think?” she asked as she rubbed an ice cube over her neck.

“They’re awesome.”

“Do you want to dance?”

“I’m not much of a dancer.”

“It’s not a contest,” she said. “C’mon.” She took my hand and pulled me onto the floor with her.

I danced for a while. I tried not to think about what I looked like. I just listened to the music and moved along to it. Every once in a while I clapped and gave Kelly a reassuring smile. I
felt like I was the little sister she was stuck with, but Kelly acted genuinely happy to have me out with her.

After two encores, the lights came up in the club. My ears were ringing, my feet hurt and I was dripping with sweat. It was the best time I’d had in forever. I didn’t even feel drunk, even though Kelly had kept handing me beers throughout the performance.

“Another drink?” she asked. Her haircut accentuated her wicked smile.

“Okay, one more,” I agreed.

We sat at the bar and chilled out for a while. She told me that the smoking ban was helping her quit, but that Mr. Audio was making her crave cigarettes all the time.

“But I’m all done with him. I know he doesn’t like women with short hair, so this will keep him away.”

I laughed. “Has he seen it yet?”

She shook her head.

“It looks pretty damn good. I think he might forget about his hair issues.”

“Well, I’m going to be strong. A rock. I need a men break. I’m going to join your convent.” She winked.

“Actually, I have a date tomorrow,” I blurted. I was superstitious about the date. In the same way I worried I shouldn’t talk too much about Jamie’s baby, I worried I shouldn’t even think about this date before it came to fruition.

Kelly pulled back from the table and gasped. “You!” She feigned horror. “What kind of Greek girl are you?”

“A shitty one,” I said, smiling, and put my head in my hands. This had not been the typical blue black buggie cycle. I was having too much fun.

“Hello,” a voice said.

We looked up to see two guys standing behind us.

“We noticed you ladies dancing and wondered if you wanted to go do some more dancing with us. We’re going to Bongo. Care to join us?”

Guys always came up to me when I was out with Jamie, but they were usually after her. These two were looking at both of
us. It was absurd. I didn’t even know what to say. Kelly handled it.

“You know, thanks, but we’re just sort of having a girls night.”

“That’s too bad,” the one with the long hair said. He was cute, but about five years too old for the Ashton Kutcher look. “We have a feminine side.”

“I bet you do,” Kelly said, “but I don’t want to waste your time. I’m done with men and she is in love.”

I felt myself blushing, and the guys laughed. They wished us well in a sort of cynical way and were on their way to find other women to dance with.

“And you were worried about the hair,” I said, smirking.

“And you were worried about being a spinster.”

“Let me tell you something,” I said, pointing in the direction of the door the men had left through. “That stuff never happens to me. It’s just because you were here.”

“C’mon, they were totally looking at you, too.”

“Yeah, as a way to get to you.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Trust me. I don’t date. I don’t know the lingo. It isn’t me.”

“There’s nothing to know, Voula. It’s just that you don’t really put yourself in that situation. And you’re probably better off. Trust me.”

It was confidence. That was it. People responded to her confidence. The same way they did to Jamie’s. No matter what happened to Kelly on the “dating scene,” she didn’t give up. She was resilient. She just stayed herself. I had spent so much time hiding behind my hang-ups that I didn’t realize that none of it needed to be such a big deal.

When I met Maureen the next day in front of the building on Mulberry Street, she didn’t look happy.

“The other Realtor is habitually late,” she said as a greeting. “I should have told you three-thirty.”

“It’s okay,” I said. But it wasn’t really. I was sort of dressed up because of my date with Paul. I had to run a bunch of er
rands after seeing this apartment and the one in Union Square and I hadn’t been sure I would have time to go home. It was a hot August day and I wished I could strip off the summer skirt and espadrilles with the slight heel. I could feel myself sweating through the modest button-down shirt I was wearing. I wanted to look good, but not like I’d given it too much thought, lest there be any confusion between me and a casual dater.

“You look very nice, Voula.”

I smiled. “I have a date tonight.”

“How nice. Don’t be too picky.”

It amazed me that she would take such liberties with me. She once questioned my biological clock when we looked at an apartment that was being sold because of a baby.

She added now, “You might want to think about a little lipstick.”

She didn’t know that one of my errands was to stop at Sephora for a new gloss. Lipstick wasn’t really my thing, but a nice lip gloss looked good with my naturally tan skin.

“Maureen,” the seller’s Realtor called out as she came down the block. They “kissed” hello, but Maureen closed her eyes in pain as she pressed her cheek against that of the other Realtor, Sandy Firestein. We shook hands, and as we walked up the stairs Sandy talked up the place in a way that only real estate agents can.

“Now it’s a real charmer,” she said, meaning
too small.

“The building is prewar.”
Old and run-down.

“It needs some TLC.”
A complete shithole.

“The board is very cool.”
Most likely made up of degenerates who will bring the property value down and ruin your quality of life.

“You can’t beat the price for the area.”
The neighborhood is the only plus.

“It was just reduced.”
No one else liked it.

What she didn’t say and what became abundantly clear as we walked up the stairs was that it was a six-floor walk-up. No one had told me this and apparently no one had told Maureen, who was short of breath by the third floor, but that wasn’t going
to stop her from trying to co-broker a deal with this other optimistic jackrabbit.

“You’ll certainly get some exercise going up these stairs,” Maureen said brightly.

“Yeah, that’s one of the great things about it. And what you aren’t paying for in an elevator really makes a difference,” added Sandy.

I was doomed. There was no hope of finding an apartment
or
looking at all presentable on my date. The area behind my knees was sweating.

The apartment was a lot bigger than many of the places I had seen. It had a definite sizable bedroom attached to a good-size living room. This wasn’t a junior one-bedroom; it was for real.

“You don’t find space like this for the price.”

What she didn’t say was that the place was a mess. There was trash everywhere. The cabinets in the kitchen had patches where the wood showed beneath the paint. The bathroom was missing a sink.

“They’re going to replace the sink before you move in,” Sandy shouted. She had been narrating throughout the apartment as if we were looking at two separate places. “All it takes is some vision.”

I knew that Maureen was probably cringing. She knew that I didn’t have vision. She said it to me all the time—“have vision.” My vision was that for the amount of money—hard-earned money—I was going to be spending, I wanted to be able to move into my apartment and not have to do any work on it.

The light in the bathroom flickered and went out. Great. Not even the electricity worked. I went back into the living room. It was dark in there, too. I tripped on a stack of papers that was inexplicably in the center of the room.

“The owner’s out of the country. I’m sure he’ll be taking some of this stuff with him.”

I could see Sandy’s white teeth in the darkness.

“I guess we had a short,” Maureen said.

It seemed only she wanted to deal with the elephant in the room.

Sandy flicked the lights on and off. “Well, you can always come back if we can’t get the lights to work. I’m sure they’ll come on in a minute.”

“I think I’ve seen it, thanks,” I said. I was anticipating the long walk down the six flights of stairs. But when I opened the door, the lights were out in the hallway, too. Luckily, Maureen had a flashlight key chain that seemed to double as a whistle, and Mace.

We walked cautiously down all six flights as a few people in other apartments peered out into the hall. The lights were out in the entire building.

If only the blackout had stopped there.

I
learned from a car radio on the street that the whole city and most of the Northeast was blacked out. A crowd was gathered around it looking for the same kind of information I was.

At first, Maureen and I thought it was just the apartment building; we said goodbye to Sandy at the subway stop and then realized that no trains were running. We feared the worst. Maureen immediately tried to call her nanny but couldn’t get a signal on her cell phone.

I had about two hours at that point until I was supposed to meet Paul in the West Village, so I decided to walk up to Gramercy Park with Maureen to make sure she was going to be all right. We stopped at a street vendor on Broadway so I could buy some flip-flops; my feet were blistered from the trek up the stairs. The sandals didn’t exactly go with my outfit, but I didn’t think I would be able to get the buckles of the espadrilles back on my feet without some serious body rebellion.

“It could be a terrorist attack,” Maureen said tearfully.

I calculated that she had been pregnant during 9/11. She seemed on the verge of an anxiety attack.

“They said it isn’t. I think they would be doing things dif
ferently.” I didn’t believe that it was. I didn’t want to believe that it could be.

“Keep smiling, ladies,” a guy said to us as he motioned a car to stop so we could cross.

This wasn’t a policeman. I could tell by his backpack and the bike I saw resting on a non-working traffic light across the road that he was a messenger who was just doing this to help.

“We will,” I said, smiling more broadly than I usually did for strangers. There were definitely police around and they were sort of grinning too. I wanted to believe there would be some anti-terrorist plan put into effect if it was an attack. Everyone around us appeared equally confused, but not particularly scared. It would have been so like me to be scared, but what I felt was,
I’m wide awake, it’s still daylight, I just wanted to take in the scene.

“Five dollars, five dollars. Cold water. Get your water. The fridge is broke!” People were selling water out of coolers. I was parched, but five dollars was out of my budget.

“It’s worse than a one-bedroom in the village,” I said to Maureen, who finally smiled.

We stopped at a bus stop, but the bus was packed so we kept walking. Throughout our trek, Maureen kept trying to get in touch with her nanny. She was petrified that something was going to happen to her triplets. She started listing outlandish worries.

“What if Leona just ran out to get something while they were napping? What if she locked herself out?”

“What if they fall in the hallway because there’re no lights?”

“What if she can’t find the flashlights? Did I even put batteries in them?”

I had never seen this side of Maureen. She always seemed so confident. Her fears were irrational, but I wondered if that was what happened when you had kids. I wondered how Jamie was handling all of this, and hoped she was okay, but I couldn’t get in touch with her. My cell phone wasn’t working either. I tried from a pay phone, but it seemed her side was out of service.

Finally, we got up to Maureen’s place and I saw that she lived
in one of those great buildings right on the park. Despite her irrational-mother fears, she managed to tell me that hers was a key apartment—she had one of the coveted keys to Gramercy Park. She had won the real estate game. Her doorman told us that the elevator was out of service, so I found myself once again walking up too many flights of stairs.

I guess I had expected Maureen to have an illegal alien working for her, but the woman who opened the door was a few years older than Maureen with a sweet smile and a bun. Her name was Leona, and she put her finger to her lips and pointed.

I peered into Maureen’s giant, tastefully decorated living room at three tots asleep on the couch. Outside people were panicking and worrying, but in there all was right with the world.

Maureen’s face lit up when she saw her three cherubs. She thanked Leona and asked how she was going to get home. Leona lived in Long Island and we had heard that the trains weren’t running.

“My husband drove in today. He’s been driving in since he got the operation,” she said ominously.

Maureen nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off her kids. Leona left for the long walk down the stairs.

“I’ve got some champagne in the fridge,” Maureen said. “It’s still cool. Why don’t we drink it before it gets warm.”

Maureen actually had an eat-in kitchen. I hadn’t seen one of those in a while. All the appliances were stainless steel. It was the kind of kitchen you had if you were a serious chef, although I remembered that when I told Maureen how I’d been afraid to turn the oven on since the fire, she said she hated to cook.

Maureen poured champagne in crystal goblets. Then she found a cooler to fill with the slushy ice left in her freezer. She filled it with cartons of formula. I hadn’t even thought about food spoiling. I wondered if the restaurant I was supposed to profile was open, how I was going to get in touch with Paul, or if he would have to work tonight.

“What time is your date?”

I looked at my watch. “In about an hour. Who knows if he’ll even be there.”

She winked at me. “I think he’ll be there.”

“Why, did you hire him to seduce me?” I joked, and Maureen laughed. “Is this some sort of romantic comedy?”

“You are quite a character.”

This from a woman with triplets who downed her second goblet of Moët like water.

“I wish I was young again. Don’t waste it with silly doubts.”

“Okay,” I said. I finished my champagne. “You know, you have a great apartment.”

“Don’t worry. We’re going to find one for you.” She kissed my forehead.

I decided that it was time for me to go.

I made my way down the dark stairwell, across town and down. The vibe was even more chill. They seemed happy. It was still sweltering, but the sun was lower in the sky. There were people hanging out talking and drinking beer from brown bags. I saw a group of businesswomen in the same multicolored sandals stopping to help an elderly couple.

I caught a look at myself in a store window and saw what a wreck I was. The heat had deflated my look, if I’d ever had one. I prayed that Paul was either standing me up or working. I was not going to make a good impression.

When I got to the restaurant it was closed. It was just six p.m.—a little early for when I liked to eat, but Paul had suggested we meet early. I wondered briefly if he had double-booked the evening and had another date at nine. You might think that’s paranoid, but in her heyday Jamie used to do stuff like that all the time.

There was a gourmet food shop next door and they were handing out organic rice-cream sandwiches. They were never going to be able to keep them frozen. I took two (in case Paul was hungry if he showed up) and leaned against a mailbox. I figured I should give Paul a few minutes. I ate my faux dessert and shifted from foot to foot, watching people pass. Occasionally a fire truck went by and I wondered if Paul had been called in to work.

I tried to turn my cell on to see if he’d phoned, but it kept
“searching” and never found a signal. As a shadow passed over me I felt a reprieve from the sun. I looked up to a fire truck and Paul clad in all his
Ghostbusters
gear, smiling.

“You’re not going to have much luck with that,” he said, climbing down.

“Hi,” I said.

“I didn’t really dress for dinner,” he said.

“That’s okay, the place is closed.”

“Along with every other restaurant in the city.”

“Well, here,” I said, handing him a rice-cream bar as he got off the truck. “In case you’re hungry.”

“Thanks! How’d you know I’m lactose intolerant?” He smirked and took the bar.

I was aware of the entire truck full of firefighters watching us, sizing me up, and if I had known any of this was going to happen I would have planned on going home to change before dinner—really I would have.

“Looks like you have to cancel anyway.”

“I’m beat,” he said. “I was getting ready to leave and come meet you and this happened. We had a false alarm and luckily I convinced DiPaolo to make a detour.”

For some reason I waved at DiPaolo, whom I assumed was driving. I don’t know why I did and I immediately regretted it.

“So listen, I guess we can reschedule for when the lights go on.”

“Yeah, I hope my deadline gets pushed back,” I thought aloud. Did that make it seem as if I wasn’t excited about our date?

“I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

He must have been boiling in that outfit, but he held my gaze for a moment.

“C’mon, Torrisi,” one of the guys called.

“Well, I’m gonna catch hell for not getting a kiss, but seeing as we haven’t even shared a meal I won’t be presumptuous. Unless, of course, you want to count this bar as a meal.” He smiled at my expression. “Didn’t think so. Be careful getting home.”

“I will.”

“Make sure you have enough water, and here—take this.” He handed me a flashlight that he had pulled from some hidden pocket in his space suit.

I took it as if it were a bouquet of roses.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem.”

Then he was back on the fire truck waving goodbye to me. I stood to finish my rice cream and imagined how much it would suck to be lactose intolerant. Maybe if I pitched that article I would be able to interview him and force him to hang out with me even after the rest of the fire squad had pointed out what a sweaty messy awkward girl I was.

I stopped at Jamie’s on the way home, but she wasn’t around, then I walked up 8th Avenue. As I got close to Penn Station, I noticed the crowd was thicker. I guess people were starting to accept that they were stuck in the city. All over the place groups were just sitting on the street fanning themselves with newspapers. There was really no choice.

As I walked down my block I saw Kelly and Armando out on the street with some of the other people from our building. Someone was pulling a hibachi out of the basement storage area. Kelly waved as I approached them.

“Just in time,” she said, and handed me a bottle of lukewarm white wine I recognized as wine from the restaurant. “The apartment is an oven. We’re going to have a cookout.”

“What?” I asked.

“
Si, bella,
I make barbecue,” Armando said. He smiled at me.

Since the fire, he had been shyer around me, and I still wasn’t sure I trusted him with a flame, but it seemed like a perfect thing to do on such a hot day. My stroll around the city had worked up quite an appetite.

The fire lit the area around us as the sky became hazy. Armando had taken a plethora of meat from the freezer at the restaurant and he fed what seemed like the whole block T-bone steaks, free-range chicken and tender pieces of veal. I helped
myself to some of everything and there was a steady supply of good wine.

“I understand the miracle of the loaves and the fishes,” I said when Armando pulled another bottle of Pinot Grigio from his duffel bag. “I think Armando might be Jesus.”

“I think Voula might be drunk.” Kelly laughed, and she was drunk too. “Hey, didn’t you have a date tonight?”

“It got postponed, but I got this,” I said, pulling out my flashlight.

“A vibrator.” Kelly giggled.

I flashed her the finger and shone the light in her eye.

“You should save that,” our neighbor from across the hall said. He handed me a candle.

I hesitated for a second before taking it. We were safe out here, it seemed. Nothing was going to catch fire.

We all had candles as it got darker, and all the tenants from our building and the one next door were bonding. The guy upstairs who sounded like he had brick sneakers was actually a softspoken industrial artist. The couple across the hall were getting married in the fall, and the woman on the second floor had an adorable contraband beagle puppy.

It was just chill. Other people walked by with candles and stopped and talked to us. A woman in the building next door ran into someone she went to high school with. Kelly chatted with a passing businessman. It was unbelievably hot, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was happy to be hanging out. The past two days had been full of surprises, and even though I was living a strange part of the surprise I felt at peace. For once, there wasn’t some Italian groupie hanging all over Armando and we could talk about all kinds of things. He told us about the blackouts that had happened in his village when he was young. At midnight, Kelly read my palm by the light of her candle, putting on an accent that was a cross between British and Transylvanian.

“I see a man with dark hair coming to take you away,” she said.

“You are so full of shit,” I said.

“He is going to take you away in a big truck.”

“I think you know a little too much about me to be objective, if you are in fact really psychic.”

“He is so close to you,” she said, and I could see in the dark that she was looking past me.

“Oh, is he going to put out my fire with his big hard hose?” I was getting into her silly jokes.

“Your future is certain,” she said quietly, and pointed behind me.

I thought she was kidding. It was too much of a sitcom to think that Paul was behind me and that he had heard me. I turned quickly, almost colliding with him and dropping my candle.

“Whoa,” he said, taking a step back. He had changed out of his uniform into a T-shirt and jeans. “I thought you were going to be more careful with fire. That was the point of the flashlight.”

“I was saving it for later,” I said. Realizing that sounded strange, I added, “You know, in case the lights don’t come back on.”

“They should be back sometime in the middle of the night. A lot of places have gotten the power back already.”

“Oh, good.” I was relieved that he hadn’t heard what I’d said to Kelly.

“But you should still be careful with that.”

I nodded.

“I would hate to have to get out my big hard hose.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I could feel Kelly moving away from my back. When I opened my eyes, Paul was still there, smiling.