Ms. Taken Identity (17 page)

“Thirty-nine minutes and you’re here. I’ll take care of everything. Tickets, hotel for you…”

“But I’m here, right now. Let’s talk.”

“Oh, Mitch,” she says, tickled, like I’ve said the silliest thing. “Some things I prefer to do in person.” If her phone had
one of those spirally cords, she’d be twisting a finger through it now. “Talk about books, of course.”

“Of course.”

Jesus
. But what do I have to lose?

“Sure,” I give in.

“
Wonderful
.”

Tonight, dinner with my best friend’s sister, who thinks I’m Jason. Tomorrow, dinner with the queen of chick-lit, who thinks
my cousin has written a book and who quite possibly wants a boy toy for the night. Sunday, high tea with Prince Charles and
Camilla, who think I’m the poet laureate. When did my life turn into a freaking soap opera?

I pick her up at her place at six, where we hug stiffly, and by the time we reach the parking lot at Chez Henri, I realize
I’ve pulled into hell. There are Beemers and Audis and Infinitis, and I have a Malibu, which means my car is the skinny kid
on the playground with duct tape holding his glasses together. It’s not much better inside. These are beautiful people in
beautiful clothes, and I have the type of outfit you’d wear to paint your bathroom, since I didn’t want to get my good stuff
messy. It never occurred to me that they might have aprons, since I’ve never worn an apron. My goal is to escape the evening
without being mistaken for the janitor.

We take our places in a gleaming kitchen with stainless steel appliances and granite counters, and Marie explains the way
this works: Chef Henri gives us directions, we do what he says, we put our concoctions in the oven, we sip wine as we wait.
Simple enough. Except I’ve never heard of tournedos with champagne sauce, or dauphinois potatoes, or haricots verts au beurre,
so my part is basically staying out of the way and handing Marie what she needs, or cleaning the cutting board, or fetching
a fresh spoon, or sprinkling the minced parsley into the broth. Conversation is tough, too, since I don’t know my wines, and
Marie and the others do, thus I can’t speak properly on the differences between the Salerno Merlot of 2003 and the Valencia
Estate Proprietary Red of 2002. As a result, I keep my comments brief, crisp, al dente
with these gems: “This place sure smells good.” “Do you ever worry about chopping a finger off?” “Anyone else like the taste
of raw green beans?”

Finally, when our creations are baking in the oven and we’re seated out on the restaurant side, I spot my chance to turn the
evening around, or at least get my footing.

“See that guy, over there by the window?” I nod to a man with gleaming white teeth and a chiseled chin. “That’s Raymond Davies.
He used to play wide receiver for the Rams. Now he does sports for Channel Two.” I lean closer, hoping to impress her with
my inside information. “I hear they call him RayRay at the studio.”

As if on cue, RayRay looks over to our table and flashes a touchdown smile. At Marie. She gives him a familiar smile in return.

“Oh, you know him?” I ask.

She picks at her napkin. “Not so well.”

“But a little?”

She shrugs like she’s embarrassed to say it. “We went out a couple times.”

“You did? How?
Why?
”

“He came into the shop a few months ago. We talked, he called, we went out.”

Jesus. So she’s dated the third most eligible bachelor in St. Louis (according to
St. Louis Magazine
), who probably just pulled up in his Mercedes convertible, and has satin sheets in his two-million-dollar condo, which she
could probably describe in great detail. That’s when it smacks me upside the head: I’m out of my league. I’m having dinner
with a hairstylist who never went to a proper college, and with her knowledge of wine and gourmet food and the inside of RayRay’s
pleasure dome, I’m out of my goddamned league.

I’m not sure what my face looks like, but it can’t be good if hers is any indication. She looks
miserable
.

“You don’t want to be here, do you?”

No. I don’t. Not for a second longer. But why should I? So I can feel even punier and more humiliated, if that’s possible?

“What’s that?” I say, raising my voice like I’m speaking over the roar of a jet engine in the next room.

“You heard me, Jason. At least give me the courtesy of an answer.” She looks like she wants to cry. “You don’t want to be
here, do you?”

“No.”

Now she actually does tear up.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“For what? For telling me the truth?” She starts dabbing at her eyes and her lips are quivering. “I knew this was all a mistake.
That’s what I’ve been telling Rosie.”

Telling Rosie? “All
what
was a mistake?”

“This. A date. Us. The kiss last Saturday night.”

She’s losing me. “Who said it was a mistake?”

“
You
.”

“Me? I never said that.”

“Oh, come on, Jason. The way you’ve been acting all week at the studio. Barely talking. Trying not to dance with me. Not even
looking my way. Pretending like you’re enjoying yourself. You may as well be wearing a sign that says, ‘Get lost.’”

A spasm of laughter spills out of me, despite myself.

“Marie, that wasn’t because I thought it was a mistake. That was
nerves
. Last Saturday night was one of the best nights of my life. Kissing you was incredible. I haven’t been able to string two
sentences together because I was afraid the wrong things would come out.”

I’m glad she’s not holding anything, because if she were, it’d be on the floor right now, next to her jaw. She just keeps
shaking her head. “But I thought…”

But she doesn’t need to finish what she thought, because I know what she thought: that my awkwardness and inability to speak
or be funny or make eye contact were obvious symptoms of my regret over the kiss; and I know this because I took her inability
to speak or be funny or make eye contact for exactly the same. Suddenly, it’s like McDreamy walked into the room, announcing
that the patient who’s been on life-support for the last five days—
us
—is now doing somersaults and cartwheels in his room, but the next
thirty seconds
are critical. I’m not going to blow it again. I lean over, and in front of RayRay and Chef Henri and whoever the hell else
cares to be watching, I kiss her, full-on, ten seconds’ worth, on the lips.

“What do you say we grab our food to go and get out of here?” I propose.

She leans over and kisses me back. And there’s no way to misinterpret that.

We end up back at her place, and all the things I didn’t notice when I was there to pick her up, since I figured why bother
getting to know the place because I’ll never see it again, now I do: the botanical prints and sky blue tapers and collection
of sea glass on the shelf and the white lights draped over the curtain rods. Overall, not the kind of place you’d see on the
cover of anything called
UberChic Monthly
; but it’s warm and homey and I like it. After we finish dinner, I suggest we take a walk for ice cream.

“In a minute,” she says. “I have a surprise.”

She disappears into her bedroom, which gives me time to page through her
People
. There’s a story about a seventy-year-old woman in Florida who beat off an alligator in her backyard with her cane. “He didn’t
like gettin’ tapped in the snoot,” she declares, and she looks like the feisty type who could manage a fairly brisk tap. But
still, I’ll bet that alligator’s feeling stupid right now, especially when he gets a look at himself in the mirror, and sees
all those teeth, and realizes all she was was an old woman with a wood stick that he could’ve used for a toothpick.

“
Aargh
. This is such a bad idea,” Marie calls out from the bedroom.

“What is?”

“I can’t tell you. Otherwise it won’t be a surprise.”

“But if you’re not going to do it anyway, tell me.”

“I’ll do it,” she says. “But only for a second. Close your eyes.”

I hear her come out of the bedroom, and I can tell where she is by the creaking hardwood and the clicking from her shoes.
Heels?

“God, I feel so stupid.” She exhales. “Okay, you can open.”

The first thing I think when I see her is that while I had my eyes shut and was sitting on the sofa, I actually got up and
walked into another apartment, somewhere in Rome or Milan or Paris, or wherever the models live. Okay, maybe she’s not that
skinny (
thank God!
), since even she would tell you that she’s still trying to lose a few pounds, but when she’s standing there, in a way-up
skirt and velvety top that’s tight everywhere it should be, and her hair’s dark and pulled back like a flamenco dancer, you’d
have a hard time convincing me she doesn’t make her living on a runway or in front of a camera.

“Take a look at you,” I say.

She has her knees pressed together, almost like she’s embarrassed to stand tall. “Would that be good or bad?”

“That’s good. That’s real good.”

I look closer at the skirt. “Hey, that’s the one from Dance Loft. The day we went shopping for my shoes.”

She’s pleased I recognized it. “After Adonis asked us to be in the Showcase, I went out and got it. This is the outfit I plan
to wear.”

“Then I guess no one’ll be looking at me. Or anyone else.” I still can’t get over how great she looks. “Do a little pirouette,
show the whole thing off.”

She does a slow step-around circle, hands pressed against her sides, like she’s shifting her feet through glue.

“No, not like that. A fast one.”

“I can’t.”

“Because…”

She makes a face. “Can’t you guess?”

I can’t. “Ankle bothering you?”

“No, my ankle isn’t bothering me.” She raises her eyebrows, then glances down toward the skirt, ruffles it a bit to show how
easily it flies out, and I realize what she’s trying to tell me is that she’s not wearing whatever it is you’re supposed to
wear underneath the type of skirt that flies out a lot if you plan to do lots of twirling.

“Got it,” I say. “But a few steps, at least?”

“Sure. Slow ones.”

I get up and we start doing something that’s not very much like anything we’ve ever done at the studio—no sweetheart turns
or pretzel or hammerlock—just the two of us swaying, arms on each other’s back, and I’m disappointed, since I’d really love
to throw her around in that outfit, try out some of our new moves. But there’s a Faith Hill ballad on her stereo, maybe a
bit sappy but okay, and we stare at each other, and I want to laugh and she does, too, because it all feels a bit like prom
(“Let’s get our pictures taken under the canopy after this!”); but then those laughy eyes turn deeper for both of us, more
serious, on the edge of something, and I can tell we’re thinking the same thing, that despite all the lessons and Showcase
time and our kisses, we’ve never just held each other this way, allowed our bodies to touch, let skin linger against skin;
and she presses her legs into mine, and my heart begins to thud in my chest, and I’m beginning to see that maybe this is the
better dance after all, since I feel her breath on mine, and we kiss, and she’s running her hands up the back of my shirt,
and I’m running mine down that velvety top toward the back of her skirt, which is silky and smooth and filmy, her bare skin
just beneath, and she starts to make a little moaning noise in the back of her throat and kisses me harder, and now she’s
tugging the shirt from my pants and the breathing has picked up for both of us, and neither one of us can seem to find enough
of the other’s lips, and this whole dance, it’s getting easy to see, is heading for the bedroom, where the final moves will
take place later tonight, or tomorrow, or both.

The only time I ever had sex and didn’t compare it to any other time was the first time I had it. (What could I compare it
to? My hand?) But every other time I’ve done it, I’ve measured up partners, in terms of the way she kisses, how she moves
underneath, if she likes it on top, scratches her nails down my back, likes her wrists pinned down, likes to pin down mine,
or does any of the million and six other things people tend to do during sex.

But not this time. This time there is only…
Yes
.

In the morning she tells me she’d love to close the blinds, unplug the phone, stay in bed all day, put the world on pause
(except for us). But she’s booked with a full day of appointments, starting at nine, and she doesn’t want to disappoint. I’d
expect nothing less. Besides, I have business of my own in Chicago, which I tell her is just for today. But at least we have
time for a shower, together, which results in her leaving late for her first appointment. Sorry, Mrs. Blair.

K
atharine told me she’d have someone waiting at the airport to pick me up. I’m expecting Morgan Freeman from
Driving Miss Daisy
, chauffeur’s cap and all. What I get is Leonardo DiCaprio from
Titanic
. Only he’s taller and blonder and his eyes are a deeper shade of blue. It’s Brent, her assistant.

“Lovely to meet you,” he says. There’s British in his tone. “I had a feeling it was you when I saw you. Katharine gave me
a spot-on description.”

“Thanks for coming.”

He’s wearing a brown leather blazer and jeans with wine-colored loafers. “Any bags to collect?”

“No. Just my carry-on.”

We make our way out to a Jeep Cherokee with buttery leather seats. Brent tells me he’s been Katharine’s assistant for the
last six years and loves the job, and her, and sometimes she goes into Starbucks and gets the coffee for
him
(don’t I know), and never throws cell phones at him, like a certain model named Naomi, or dumps her jacket on his desk, Miranda
Priestly style, and I laugh because I get the reference (
The Devil Wears Prada
, don’t you know). Plus, they shoe shop together. I tell him I have a shoe shopping buddy, too, and her name is Marie, even
though it’s only been for one pair of shoes, for dancing, but nothing’s better, is it?