Diary of a Working Girl (20 page)

“Don’t forget what you have at stake here. You’ve got your whole career riding on this assignment and with your head in La-La-Liam-Land, you’ll never do what you have to do.”

I guess not.

Hmmph. Well, I’ll show her, anyway! I’ll have sex with Liam, and it will be great, and then I will just continue on as planned and that will show her.

Doesn’t sound like such an awful plan, now does it?

I

When I go over this conversation in
Diary of a Working Girl
, I realize with even more severity just how right Joanne is.

I am making this assignment very difficult on myself. But what about my happiness? How many times do you get to meet Mr.

Right?

Judging from the throngs of twenty- and thirty-something women heading out to bars on the weekends with blown-out hair, painstakingly applied makeup, and fuck-me eyes, I’m guessing, not very often. What if Mr. Right is Liam? And, look, my first week is only half over and I’ve already got a date with Seth—I’ve put it off, but men love when women play hard to get, don’t they? Isn’t this what everyone is always 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 151

D i a r y o f a Wo r k i n g G i r l 151

telling me I do wrong? For someone who’s never had a lot of prospects before, I think I’m on a pretty good track. And writing in this diary (that’s you!) each day will make the process of actually writing the article simple enough. I think I’ve got a firm hold on the situation. So, it won’t matter too much if I just stop writing about this project for a bit, and switch to oohing and aahing over Liam.

CENSORED!!!!!!

21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 152

E i g h t

Serafina

Tonight Liam is taking me to Serafina. The only other time I’ve been to Serafina, a very rude man in dark sunglasses did not “Give a shit if you write about nightlife, even if it’s for the fucking
New
York Times.
” He handed my business card back to me like it was one of those donation sheets being peddled by a posing blind man in the street. And, therefore, like a man rejected in an offer of marriage, I hung my head low, and pushed my way out through the throngs of would-be entrants to leave the way I came. I hadn’t really wanted to go that time anyway. It was a friend of mine who was dying to get inside and mix with the Hiltons and the Keisselstein-Cords.

I never understand the allure of places like this. Why set your sights on going somewhere that doesn’t want you in the first place, and then insults you by charging sixteen dollars for a cosmo? If you 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 153

D i a r y o f a Wo r k i n g G i r l 153

did get inside, you’d spend the whole night worrying that your fake Gucci would be pointed to and sniggered at anyway.

I’d rather my local pub, where they’re always glad to see me, and would never think of charging me more than five dollars for a drink of anything.

I’ve also been quoted on more than one occasion, commenting on the likes of men who frequent these establishments. “They are just wannabe scenesters and model-chasers. I can’t even stand talking to them. It’s always, ‘And were you in the Hamptons last weekend? And have you been to the Mondrian in L.A.?’ Screw that!” I told Chris one night, after a couple of hours at Lotus. I was only there because I had to review it. I couldn’t care less about actually going.

“So why did you have your hair blown out and your makeup done? And why did I have to travel all over Soho with you to find a new black tank top, even though you already have twenty-five?”

“Because I’m here for work! I do have an image to uphold,” I told him.

So, I have made it very clear that this is not my type of man, and that if one ever
did
ask me on a date, well, I’d rather eat my own hand than spend an evening with someone like that.

Now you’re probably asking why, then, am I actually going on a date with a guy like that (not to mention daydreaming, night dreaming, coffee break–dreaming, subway ride–dreaming about going on a date with a guy like that)?

First of all, he wasn’t wearing sunglasses when I met him, at night, in a bar. Second, he can’t possibly be part of that ridiculous scene—he’s British! And, third, I’ve already gone on a date with him to a thoroughly acceptable spot (Sushi Samba has already been around for at least a year, which means it’s no longer the hottest, 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 154

154

D a n i e l l a B r o d s k y

newest, rope-burn risk any longer) and had a fantastic time, and so I know firsthand he is not like those other guys, dropping their jaws at the sight of pin-straight blond hair and a size twenty-three waist, showing clear as day, between a half shirt and low-rider jeans.

Also, there is that butt. And those lips. And that tongue.

And . . .
oy
!

I

The food at Serafina is good enough,and I note with some pleasure, that he knows the difference between Blue Point and Malpêque oysters and orders his filet mignon at the perfect medium rare. Tonight Liam is wearing a shirt so blue, his eyes are running the risk of blinding passersby with their brilliance. They might just be the eighth wonder of the world. We split the most wonderful bottle of some French Le Something 1994 Cabernet, and I am feeling, if possible, even more warm and fuzzy than when I first spotted him at the entrance to the restaurant, just one half-hour earlier.

The dinner goes by without a hitch. I can’t talk about my job, for obvious reasons, and so, I steer the conversation to more rele-vant topics—mainly him, him, and him.

Thankfully, he doesn’t mind talking about himself at all. Normally, I might find this annoying, but his life is so wonderfully fascinating, I find myself wanting to know the color shirt he wore when this happened, what sort of toothpaste he was using at that point, whether he preferred his potatoes mashed or scalloped.

In his first year of grammar school, Liam had a teacher by the name of Mrs. Smithy, who made up a song with everyone’s name in it, followed by their hobby, so that the whole class could get to 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 155

D i a r y o f a Wo r k i n g G i r l 155

know each other. She’d asked every student to tell the class their favorite hobby on the very first day, so she could put the song together, and each child acquiesced with answers like “drawing,”

“painting,” “swimming.”

When she got to Liam, he hadn’t hesitated for the slightest moment when belting out, “kissing girls.” He had an older brother, and apparently, this was all he spoke about. Liam was a “sponge”

back then (I note here that I love that word, and ask politely if he would mind if I use it in an article).

Obviously, the teacher asked him to select another, and to that request, he said, like a cautious attorney, “I’ll have to get back to you.”

To hear him tell it, Mrs. Smithy nearly had her eyes roll back in her head at that response and promptly called his mother up to school to discuss the situation.

After the meeting, Liam overheard his mother telling his father about what had happened. The father was laughing and joked,

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little gigolo, there.” Liam’s mother was shaking her head trying not to laugh when she spotted Liam listening at the room’s entrance. “I’m a gigolo! I’m a gigolo!”

He skipped about chanting the mysterious word.

From that moment on, he had a new nickname. Gigolo’s mother let the teacher know that he also enjoyed the hobby of piano playing, which he hadn’t—yet. So, she signed him up for lessons, the fruits of which, to this day, remain the ability to play the lower key arrangement of “Chopsticks.” Since I am well versed in the upper portion, we are now due for an ensemble the next time we are at his apartment, which is fitted with a piano—all of their family homes are now—just as a joke.

That is one very expensive joke, I comment, and he just waves it 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 156

156

D a n i e l l a B r o d s k y

off, as if to say, “Money is nothing to me.” And while this might normally be taken for a very showy display, I find it endearing and, well, sexy—although I can’t say exactly why.

When the main course comes out, we are covering the ground of his fascinating high school years, during which he became the top rugby player, a sport, which, even after his very thorough explanation, involving a makeshift napkin chart—a real cloth napkin!

(What a loon! He said he would pay for it, obviously)—I still have zero understanding of.

He once had his heart broken “right in two” by a woman five years his elder. She was a neighbor of his—twenty-five, when he was merely twenty. All the while they were having their “affair” (as he called it because it was the biggest secret Gigolo’s ever had), neither of them told a soul; she would remark things like “You’re too young for me,” and “You know this can never last.”

But he would toss those comments to the wind. She was just rationalizing to herself about being with a younger man. Obviously, she really loved him. He couldn’t love this much alone. Besides, she’d told him she did. Sure it would be at the oddest times—after she’d had a particularly bad day, the sole purpose of a 3 A.M. telephone call—but she would let slip those three words, and after so much wanting, craving, when Liam would hear them, they were savored. But later, it would always be the same: He’d ask her about it; she’d deny ever saying it at all. It was very tragic. When I teared at the recounting of it, Liam collected the tears from the corner of my eye with one, soft, sensitive, romantic finger.

Even his finger has a deep soul, capable of rich emotions that most men can barely comprehend.

“You can; you can,” I gently persuade after he admits he is unsure if he can go on with this story he has never shared before.

He makes an amazing recovery and bravely forges ahead with 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 157

D i a r y o f a Wo r k i n g G i r l 157

the narrative. After she abruptly cut him out of her life, he insists he hasn’t been able to truly bare his heart to another woman.

The poor thing, I find myself thinking. There is so much pain in the world. I resist the impulse to jump across the table and stroke his face. I declare my one mission in life: If it’s the last thing I do, I will get Liam to bare his heart to me. After all, I am a different kind of woman. I am Ab Fab; I smile at the name’s creator—the boss who belongs to that other world that is threatening my happiness and my sanity. It is striking, though, how sweet everyone is in that

“sinister” place. Ab Fab. That really is funny. “Ab Fab, can you bring the faxes?” I get the urge to share it with Liam, but I don’t want to interrupt the history he is now sharing with me about his childhood summers.

Liam has a family home in Provence, where, and I swear he says this, he “would love to take (me) in the summer, when the weather is so divine, it’s like heaven on earth.”

I am overcome with hatred for that stupid, awful woman who took his heart and couldn’t even appreciate it. At the same time, I am consumed with the desire to show him with every inch of me, that I can love just as she can, only infinitely better. I bet they never even went to his home in Provence. Ha! Score one, Lane Silverman.

Obviously, though, I am not serious. Obviously I cannot fall in love with Mr. Right Now Backfire. Obviously, I cannot see his home in Provence. I don’t even like the country (although you can wear all of those great Liberty print sundresses that never seem right in the city). I am not even close to falling in love with him.

This time, he does order one warm chocolate cake with crème fraîche to go, and asks, would I mind if we share it at my apartment?

His place is out of the question, as his father has surprised him with a visit and is staying there right now. “I suppose we could go, but then we’d have to share our pudding with him.”

21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 158

158

D a n i e l l a B r o d s k y

He is so witty and, oh my God, I can barely wait to see what the hell we are about to do with our dessert, but I am so ashamed of my tiny, dingy apartment that I almost abandon my mission. “Sure we can go to my place,” somehow comes from my mouth anyway. I hear myself say it; I feel myself get into a taxi, and then with the distinct feeling that Omar Tuama, the taxi driver, is enjoying the view from his rearview mirror, I once again feel Liam’s hot breath close to my face, and then his lips and then his tongue, and then, wow!

He doesn’t seem to lift even an eyebrow at my rickety old lobby, with its lack of chair or couch or even table, my close-to-death elevator, or even my tiny apartment. Not that I would care if he did, this being our last time together and all. In fact, he comments that I have done “great things with the space.” He adds “It’s very charming.”

I return the compliment: “You are very charming. And so I will get the spoons,” I say, heading for the kitchen.

“There is no need for spoons,” he says, pulling me back from the kitchen.

And while I may have thought myself well versed in the cannon of things one could do with a warm chocolate cake and crème fraîche, I must now admit I have barely scratched the surface in the past.

Despite what you may think, not a lick of it finds its way onto my sheets. Liam is very skilled in the chocolate and lovemaking department. And, this time, going to sleep, with nothing but my sheets around me, I don’t have to think over the Liam I spent the evening with to keep myself warm. I now actually have the Liam I spent the evening with to keep me warm (although I swear this will definitely, positively be the last time).

And with an arm looped under my side, and another one stroking my middle, his mouth lingers for a while by my neck and 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 159

D i a r y o f a Wo r k i n g G i r l 159

ear. He says right into my skin, “You are such a breathtaking woman.” And the breathtaking woman and the breathtaking man fall asleep.

And, not three hours later, when I wake, turn, and stare at this wonder in my bed, looking adorable and so human snuggled in my faux fur throw, and lean in and start kissing him, gently on the neck, and move to his cheek, and eventually, onto his mouth, he does not once protest and say, “I’m sleeping!” as other Mr.’s Not-the-One have in the past.