Super in the City (14 page)

Roxana’s face fell when she saw me, and I immediately felt apologetic, as if I were on a mission to invade her privacy.

“Hallo, Zepheer,” she said dejectedly. She offered no frenzied introduction as she had with Senator Smith the night before.

No one really wanted to be on that landing except, creepily, Mini- Dolly, who was still sizing up Gregory. I flashed what I hoped was a reassuring “I’m not spying on you” smile at Roxana and continued down the stairs. Gregory followed me outside.

On the stoop, in the newly warm, sweet air, Gregory gave
me an amused, conspiratorial look that said: “What was
that
about?” Which meant he was emotionally sensitive, tuned in to subtle interpersonal nuances, and had a sense of humor.

I couldn’t wait to get into the alley.

I
COULD IMAGINE LOSING OUT IN ROMANCE TO AN ESTIMABLE
competitor like, say, Roxana, but I never predicted I’d be in competition with a Frigidaire dryer for a man’s attention. Whereas Mini- Dolly had elicited nothing more than a raised eyebrow from Gregory, my parents’ sonorous appliance was completely monopolizing his attention.

We stood in the alley behind my building, a place I had only ever visited a handful of times. I generally tried to avoid the rank, narrow space, which was really no place for a first kiss. Gregory craned his neck to examine the line of exhaust vents at the base of each floor.

I glanced at the shriveled, graying cigarette butts littering the ground like desiccated worms—who were the philistines chucking their crap into our alley?—and felt my skin crawl with an urgent desire to get out of there. My desire to kiss Gregory was rapidly dwindling, and without it, I was just wasting a beautiful Sunday afternoon in an alley with an exterminator.

“Can you tell what’s wrong?” I said, trying to appear helpful while, in fact, I was noticing that Gregory’s butt was a little on the flat side. His thighs, though, pressed against his jeans as he shifted his weight, broadcasting their strength.

“Not from here. If I could get to the top of this, maybe I could get a closer look.” He rattled the handle of a door leading to an enclosed, two- story staircase that ran up the side of the building. “Where do these go to?”

Since high school, I had toyed with the idea of joining the
CIA. Tag always shot down my dream on the grounds that I couldn’t keep a secret and that my powers of observation were non- existent. I rarely noticed a new haircut, a twenty- pound loss of weight, or a reupholstered couch, but I argued that these minutiae weren’t important in cosmic, existential ways. I noticed important things.

The question confronting me now was: could a brand- new, locked, tunnel- like stairway on my property be considered important?

The few visits I’d made into the alley over the years had been kept as brief and myopic as possible—to show the fire inspector around when James was on vacation, to help the Caldwells retrieve a photograph that had blown out of their window—but still, I was certain I would have noticed a staircase. A whole staircase, enclosed in rough, unpainted plywood. A staircase that appeared to have a landing on the second floor and that ended on the third floor.

Except I wasn’t certain. I cursed Tag as my dream of wearing a slinky dress at a cocktail party in the Uffizi and coaxing an international secret out of an Antonio Banderas look- alike with a five- o- clock shadow vanished. Had that staircase really always been there? How could it not have been? A staircase couldn’t just be erected without anyone noticing. Without
me
noticing. Could it?

I took a turn at rattling the cheap, hollow knob, as if I could shake loose a missing memory.

“It goes to the third floor,” I finally said.

“I can see that,” Gregory replied. I pressed my lips together and threw pride to the winds.

“I’ve never seen this staircase before.”

Gregory crossed his arms and looked me in the eye, but not the way I’d imagined fifteen minutes ago.

“I know that sounds retarded—”

“You’re not allowed to say retarded,” he interrupted.

“I refuse to be dictated to by the P.C. lexicon,” I said shortly.

“My sister has learning disabilities,” Gregory said warn-ingly

“Just like you’re really from Iowa.”

“Idaho.”

I glared at him until he finally smiled. “Okay, not from Idaho, no sister,
mentally challenged
or otherwise. Are you telling me you’ve lived in this building—how long… ?”

“My whole life,” I admitted.

“Your whole life, and you never noticed this stairwell?”

“No, I’m saying I think this stairwell is new.” I think, I hope.

“You think?”

“No.” I brushed away my doubt. “It’s new. It’s
new.”

“How new?”

“Since the last time I was back here.”

“Which was?” He certainly
sounded
like an undercover cop.

To admit to Gregory how infrequently I ventured into the grotty parts of my family estate was to reveal how irresponsible, spoiled, and timid I was. This afternoon had officially lost all prospects of morphing into a date.

“About a year.” As I studied the unimpressive structure, trying to atone for my earlier inattention, I suddenly realized what it was. “It’s a fire escape!” I announced, impressed that James had had the concern and foresight to provide for the tenants’ safety. I felt a stab of inadequacy, knowing I would never have taken such initiative as super.

Gregory frowned. “Then why wouldn’t it go all the way to the roof? And why would it be made of wood?”

I shrugged.

“Well, if there’s a door at the top of this thing, on the third floor, I could climb on top and get closer to the vent on the
fourth floor. Let me have those keys Laurie labeled,” he said, holding out his hand.

“You mean Lucy?”

“Lucy.”

I felt a pang of pity for her. I handed over the key ring, which I’d run upstairs to retrieve after encountering the new lock that James had attached to the alley gate. For my trouble, I’d been rewarded with a snippet of argument between Roxana and Mini- Dolly on the landing above. I made enough noise to show I wasn’t spying, but not so much that I couldn’t hear them.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do? I need this,” Mini-Dolly whined. Unsurprisingly, Mini- Dolly did not have Roxana’s dulcet Franco tones.

“I am surry, but you are nut my prawblem enimore,” Roxana told her quietly.

“You
are.
You
are
gonna be sorry,” Mini- Dolly whispered melodramatically. A door slammed and I scurried out of the building, jumpy with curiosity. What could Mini- Dolly possibly need from Roxana? Why were they even breathing the same oxygen in the first place?

Now, back in the alley, none of the keys were working in the staircase lock, which made me hopeful. If I could get Gregory to forget about the dryer, we could get lattes and walk by the river and maybe just happen to catch the sunset over Hoboken. A sunset, even a Jersey sunset, was a surefire kiss catalyst.

“Let’s see if we can get into the staircase through James’s apartment.” Gregory squinted up at the first landing. “It looks like it goes into his place.” He headed for the gate.

It was bad enough that we were getting intimate with the alley, but the thought of picking around James’s sty of an apartment was too much. What would Roxana do in my situation?

“Wait!”

Gregory turned to look at me.

“You called me last night for a …”
Date
was such a prissy word, I realized at that moment. “To get together. I didn’t mean for you to spend the day on this,” I gestured at the staircase.

Gregory crossed his arms. “But you did,” he said, his eyes wide and innocent. “You said if I fixed your parents’ dryer, you’d take me out to coffee.”

Was he a wiseass or a dolt? Maybe he really did have a simple sister. Maybe slowness ran in the family. What would I do if faced with a conclusive genetic test?

“You’ve done enough for the dryer for today,” I began carefully.

“I’m glad you think so,” he said sarcastically.

And then, fueled by a clean blast of air scented by the apple tree in the front yard, I came to the end of my tolerance for Gregory. No one was worth this much trouble this early on. This wasn’t heavy on the happy; this was saggy with snarky Bloated with badinage. I’d flirt with Cliff, find a sexy tenant, date Dover Carter’s ugly brother if he had one. I’d wasted enough time on Gregory Samson, Uppity Vermin Killer.

“You know what?” I said coldly, emboldened by Roxana’s display of moxie with Mini- Dolly “Enough. I’ve known you for less than a week and I’m already tired of you and your mixed signals and your weird, asocial way of talking, and your rude—”

“Asocial?” he asked. “I thought I was being straightforward.”

“This
is what I’m talking about,” I said, pushing past him for the gate. “This little …”

“Repartee?”

“Yes,
repartee,”
I said, exasperated. “I’m not interested in this!”

“What
are
you interested in?” he said quietly. It wasn’t hostile or accusatory, but I wasn’t going to be fooled.

“What?” I said, shaking my head and reaching for the latch on the gate. “You’re doing it again—stop it! I’m
not
interested in being tired before I even begin.”

He grabbed my hand, and I turned back, startled by his touch.

“So are we beginning something?” he asked hopefully.

“I don’t know!” I yelled, and stomped my foot childishly. “Not at this rate!” I glared at him. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole, if Alice had hit puberty in 21st-century Greenwich Village. Did that make Gregory the Mad Hatter? I wondered wildly. The Cheshire Cat?

And then Gregory did what he was supposed to do in the first place. He pushed me up against the gate gently but firmly, took my face in his hands, studied me for a moment, and then kissed me.

He softly kissed my lower lip. My upper lip. Then each corner of my mouth. I grabbed on to the bars of the gate to steady myself. For once, my entire body—all limbs and all brain matter—was perfectly focused, in unison, on one thing: where the next kiss was going to land.

Just as a moan of unbridled desire was about to escape me, Gregory softly covered my mouth with his. Not sloppy, not rushed. The most flawless kiss I have ever had the magnificent fortune to receive. A paragon of kisses. A kiss that convinced me that all my nerve endings were actually located in my mouth and that this man was able to trigger any extremity and any organ he wanted with a gentle flick of his tongue.

He touched his hips lightly to mine, with just enough pressure that I was obliged to grab his ass—it wasn’t nearly as flat as it looked—and pull him to me so hard that his arm slipped and hit the gate behind me. He groaned in pain, jumping back to rub his elbow.

“Nooo!” I wailed, instantly mourning the premature end of our first kiss.

Gregory made a whooshing sound, inhaling through his teeth, trying to will a quick recovery. He looked at me and we chuckled at each other. Suddenly I had a terrible thought: how would I explain this to Lucy? Lucy, who was going to die. Someday.

Just yesterday, I’d assured her that Gregory was only interested in Mrs. Hannaham’s mouse holes. If anything developed between him and me, it was supposed to have taken much longer than this. It was supposed to have happened because he was investigating James.

“Are you really an exterminator?” I blurted out.

He stopped rubbing his elbow and looked at me irritably. The best kiss I’d ever had was receding into the past at lightning speed.

“Why?”
he said plaintively. “Why is it so hard to believe?”

“No,” I began, “it’s just that—” How do you explain to a man the intricacies of a female friendship? “This would all be easier if you were really an undercover cop.”

Gregory stopped rubbing his elbow. His expression imparted so much doubt about my sanity that I knew for certain, and with a small whack of disappointment to my gut, that he was not a detective.

“Why in God’s name would you ever think I was a cop?” he demanded.

“You don’t believe in God, do you?” I said, worriedly.

“What? Wait.” he pinched his brow between his thumb and forefinger, and it looked like he might now be the one to halt our inchoate relationship. “I’m a confirmed atheist. Why did you think I was a cop?”

“Because, because …” I stopped. I couldn’t remember exactly how my brain had wound its way down that path.

“Because I don’t look like an exterminator,” he said wearily.

“Right!” I remembered. “And because you showed up right after James was arrested.”

“I show up every month, whether or not James is arrested,” Gregory reminded me.

I spread my arms in defeat and put on my best abashed face. Gregory looked at the sky and let out a small snort of laughter. I exhaled slowly.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I like to finish what I start.” He held up one finger. “I started to fix a dryer.” He held up a second finger. “And I started kissing you.”

I bit my lip, titillated by the mere acknowledgment of our intimacy.

“Let’s finish dealing with the dryer. Then let’s go for coffee and I’ll tell you all about my exciting life as an exterminator. And then you can decide whether you want to finish that kiss.”

I
N TENTH GRADE, I HAD MY FIRST BOYFRIEND. HIS NAME WAS
Lance and he was a senior who had memorized every lyric Stephen Sondheim ever penned. His heart was set on attending Carnegie Mellon and he hoped one day to become intimate with the smell of Broadway greasepaint. Our three- month relationship consisted of a series of infrequent and awkward make- out sessions on his mother’s Upper West Side rooftop, under the looming wooden water tower. I spent triple the time of the actual relationship analyzing it with the Sterling Girls.

The best part of dating Lance occurred when he was onstage, playing the lead in Sterling’s spring musical, or jazz-handing his way around the Performing Arts Showcase, or belting out his solo in Thursday afternoon glee club rehearsals. His total absorption and consequent obliviousness to me, together with my knowledge that I got to do things with him (if only of the PG- 13 variety) no one else around me did, were more of a turn- on than any of our inept encounters. It was my first experience with the watch- and- want phenomenon of lust.