Super in the City (16 page)

We heard some rustling, a few
“merde”s,
the sound of a bag being zipped, and then, to our surprise, the light went out. We remained still in the pitch black, Gregory hard against me, breathing softly near my ear. We listened to Roxana’s curses grow fainter and then heard the distinctive creak and whump that all the apartment doors at 287 West 12th made. We lay motionless for another minute. And then another. I still couldn’t see Gregory’s face, just an inch from mine. I matched my breathing to his, deep, long breaths, and just when I was afraid he had fallen asleep, he put his hand on my cheek and stroked it lightly. He touched his nose to mine and then kissed me.

“I guess we should get out of here,” I whispered, letting my hands travel down his back and come to rest with my fingers hooked inside the waist of his jeans.

“ Uh- huh,” he whispered back, and kissed me again, harder.

“This is insane,” I murmured, finding the button over his fly.

“Completely.”

“But we can’t,” I wailed quietly, clutching at his pants with both hands. “We don’t have anything.”

“Back pocket,” he grunted. I felt around over his (definitely round) ass and almost laughed with relief when I pulled out a condom. And then I grew indignant.

“Wait,” I said accusingly, “did you plan this?”

“Hoped. Only hoped.”

“Since when?”

“Since fifteen minutes ago.”

“This is James’s condom,” I hissed, dropping it as if James himself had just offered it to me.

“It’s not
used,
Zephyr.”

Why did the sound of my name crossing a man’s lips do for me what it took roses and nights at the opera to do for other women? Shouldn’t I have a higher threshold for swooning? I wondered as I hungrily pushed Gregory’s jeans down over his narrow hips.

T
HEY MUST HAVE BEEN HAVING AN AFFAIR,” TAG CONCLUDED
as she stepped on and off the pink landing, studying the silky wallpaper in amazement.

I had kept the secret staircase a secret for nearly forty-eight hours, which I thought was a pretty respectable interval, and the Sterling Girls hadn’t been able to come see it for another day, so it was almost as if I had kept it to myself for three days.

“Frenchie can really pick ‘em,” Mercedes commented lazily, her eyes closed, plucking at an imaginary viola. I wanted to pinch her. Everything she did reminded me that she was getting away with not telling us any details about her night with Dover Carter. I sincerely hoped it was as hard for her to withhold this information from us as it was for me to keep mum about Gregory. She certainly
looked
the picture of self- control. She was sprawled across James’s bed, which we had stripped down to the mattress and scrubbed with Lysol at Lucy’s direction. I had felt a small stab of guilt about showing Lucy the
state of this room, as I correctly suspected that her cleaning compulsion would ignite at the sight of a cheese- encrusted fork nestled into a pair of tightie whities. But I was eager to make inroads on this garbage pit.

My need to kick- start my career as a minor Donald Trump had been stoked on Sunday night, a few hours after Gregory kissed me good- bye. I had returned to my apartment and was wandering around moonily, grinning at myself in mirrors, shivering at the memory of Gregory’s warm face nuzzled into my neck, when my brother called to give me a piece of planet-realigning news.

Gideon, formerly the king of Steamboat Springs’ double black diamonds, was calling to announce that his “film” was now a Film. No more quotes, no more rolled eyes, no more exaggerated sighs. His movie—about a ski bum who becomes a successful CEO by applying his slope credo to the boardroom—was now viewable to people besides him and his roommates. And.
And.
It had been accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival. Gideon was not only leaving me to fill his position as the least accomplished person in the Zuckerman nuclear family, but he was coming back to town. The prodigal son was to return home, redeemed, while the prodigal daughter remained prodigal.

I feigned delight in Gideon’s news, but as soon as I hung up, I sank down on my kitchen footstool, my post- tryst glow evaporating as unbridled professional desperation set in. I stared at a rust stain on the cabinet beneath the sink and wondered how fast I could get James’s apartment cleaned out and rented. If I did that, then at the very least I could refer to myself as “working in real estate” at my college reunion. Now
I’d
be the one with a job in quotes.

I’d give myself an hour to bask in the memory of Gregory and then, I swore, I’d take some garbage bags and rubber
gloves and go back across the hall to embark upon my new career. I headed into the bathroom to run a bath. I’d support myself—Gideon couldn’t claim to do that yet—and I’d be able to sustain a relationship with Gregory. I couldn’t feel sexy for long if I didn’t have a job.

I didn’t quite make it back over to James’s that night—it made more sense, since I was all clean and cozy after my bath, to go to bed and get an early start the next day. But by the next morning, my sexterminator had not yet called me, and I couldn’t complain to any of the Sterling Girls, because I didn’t yet want Lucy to know about Gregory. I was so upset by the double whammy of his non- call and my inability to vent that I knew I wouldn’t be effective across the hall. I accepted a FedEx package that arrived for Cliff and figured I’d done enough as super for the day. I even shook the box and sniffed it—Cliff’s bass case and the late- night schedule were just too convenient not to be a cover for at least a fake jewelry smuggling operation—but reluctantly concluded it might just contain a set of spare bass strings, like the invoice on the front claimed.

By Tuesday, I knew I had to talk to somebody or I’d implode. Gregory’s continued silence, the arrival of my reality-bearing bank statement, and the overwhelming prospect of emptying James’s apartment had all leveled me to a state of cheese consumption and Olivia Goldsmith rereads not experienced since I gave up Hayden. As a dog- eared page
of Flavor of the Month
fluttered loose from the book’s binding, I wondered why I was working so hard to avoid telling Lucy about Gregory. She was going to have to know sooner or later. It’s just that later was so much more preferable than sooner, I thought as I unwrapped the block of cheddar I’d retrieved from the back of the fridge.

The sight of teeth marks reminded me of my conversation with Abigail and the seeds of a plan that were still bouncing
around in the back of my brain. Of course! I jumped up from the couch. I had a great reason to call the SGs. I grabbed the phone and left messages for three of them, enticing them with the promise of a secret staircase and the need to help our Left Coast friend.

They came on Wednesday night, even though it was pouring rain. As I waited for my friends, I peered past the apple tree branches scraping at my window and watched with satisfaction as the city was cleansed of dog piss, leaky garbage bag stains, and Saturday night vomit. It seemed appropriate that I was going to be performing my own indoor ablutions.

Inside James’s apartment, Lucy made us put on rubber gloves and toss everything into trash bags. We got rid of the food items and saved the clothing, since I was still somewhat fuzzy on the subject of property law as it pertained to a convict’s belongings. Lucy hadn’t even let us put clean sheets on the bed, because she said she couldn’t begin to imagine how James defined “clean.”

Tag filled one bag before insisting on seeing the staircase. It was enormously gratifying to watch the expression on each of their faces as I silently opened the closet door and then, with an irresistible flourish, yanked open the door to the staircase.

“I don’t think two consenting and unmarried adults, living alone, need to construct an entire staircase and decorate it in order to have an affair,” I offered now in response to Tag’s hypothesis.

“No, you’re right, you’re right,” Tag muttered, unlocking a pair of furry blue handcuffs. She studied them, then snapped one of the rings around her left wrist.

“Tag!” Lucy and I shrieked as it clicked closed. Even Mercedes opened her eyes in surprise.

“I made sure they unlock,” she said, waving the key in front of us mischievously. She clasped the ring of a sparkling gold
pair of cuffs around her other wrist and let the two empty rings clang together. “This is what marriage felt like.” She shuddered.

“I’m just curious,” Mercedes murmured, closing her eyes again. “Would you rank marriage to Glen higher or lower than getting that carnivorous parasite in your scalp?”

“Oh, nasty.” I grimaced, remembering Tag’s trip to Costa Rica. “When you had to hold that slab of raw meat to your head to coax it out?”

“The botfly larvae.” Tag smiled fondly at the memory, the way other people might have recalled a sunset in Hawaii. “I found thirteen new species on that trip. Marriage to Glen was way worse than some little endoparasite. Not technically carnivorous, by the way.”

“Glen or the botfly?” I asked.

Lucy sighed and patted the laptop sitting between her and Mercedes.

“Are we doing this or not? I have to be at work early tomorrow.”

Mercedes, Tag, and I exchanged glances. It was only six o’clock. Lucy was still unexpectedly prickly from Saturday night at Soho House, when Renee Ricardo had foreseen her undated demise. She was also not taking kindly to any mention of Mercedes’s fairy- tale encounter with Dover Carter, which, I suspected, she felt should have happened to her as compensation for all her defaced ten- dollar bills and sodden Sundays on the Brooklyn Bridge. She was right, of course; it wasn’t at all fair that a movie star should become besotted with Mercedes, who wasn’t even looking for a relationship.

In reality, though, it made perfect sense. Mercedes was as self- assured, talented, and stunning as Tag—and looked ravishing in short-sleeved T-shirts over long- sleeved T-shirts, whereas I just looked bundled up—but also exuded a genuine
warmth that Tag often didn’t. Lucy, on the other hand, did not have a clear picture of herself or how she came across to others and therefore was never good at gauging men’s responses to her. She was forever hoping for the wrong things to happen with the wrong people, and it was a topic of constant consternation among the rest of us as to how to handle her innate lack of perception. As the years passed, it became increasingly evident that she could not be taught. Should we guide her toward men who were not quite worthy of her, but would look up to her? Would she sense our condescension? Or should we fervently hope that some fabulous man would come along who would be able to see beyond the insecurities, the grating laugh, and the forced expressions she held on her face a moment too long, to the loyal, funny, up- for- anything Lucy behind those deficiencies?

At the moment, though, my concern for Lucy’s fate was displaced by frustration that she was already too down in the dumps for me to reveal the agonies and ecstasies of my four-hour relationship with Gregory. It also meant that I couldn’t grill Mercedes about her incipient Hollywood romance. All I could do was channel my pent- up irritation into the revenge plan I had dreamt up on Abigail’s behalf, a scheme I had dubbed “JDate Jihad.”

“We’re doing it, we’re doing it,” Tag said soothingly to Lucy, plopping down on the bed beside her and Mercedes, her handcuffs clanking together. “Have you found him yet?”

“Here.” Lucy turned her laptop around to show the rest of us the JDate website. She clicked and enlarged a photo of an underwhelming male specimen.

“You’re sure?” Mercedes asked.

Lucy consulted the slip of paper I’d given her with the account information I’d set up and the screen name of Darren Schwartz printed on it.

“Maybe he’s cuter in person,” I suggested doubtfully. LinguaFrank, as Darren had named himself online, was pasty beneath his freckles, and his features looked as if they’d been pulled downward by a negative force. “He’s some guy’s stepson and he gave a great paper on something.”

My friends glanced up at me dubiously. I shrugged.

“Okay, so what are we writing?” Tag asked.

“That we’re a barely Jewish, stick- thin Asian woman who’s looking for a nice Jewish man—”

“An ugly Jewish man,” Mercedes muttered. Lucy started to make a little protest sound in defense of humankind, but then tiredly waved away her own generous impulse.

“Which of us is going to show up being Asian?” Tag said.

“I only got my stepfather’s name,” Mercedes said, and yawned exaggeratedly. I was again overcome with the desire to lock her in James’s unwholesome closet until she spilled the details of her night with the movie star. She shot me an impish grin.

“We don’t need to show up actually being Asian,” I reminded them irritably. “We just need him to show up
hoping
to meet an Asian hottie, and then one of us goes in and tells him that she left because she took one look at him and decided he was too fat and Jewish- looking. Just like he said to Abigail.”

This was not our maiden voyage to the land of revenge. In college, Tag had blazed the way with an arrogant legacy admit who’d passed off months of her research on the metazoan parasites of Indonesian sharks as his own. She responded to this trespass by using his Social Security number to un- enroll him from all his classes two semesters in a row, right around midterm, leaving him in a mysterious and hellish administrative quagmire that ultimately required him to spend an entire extra year in school.

I sat down beside Lucy and took over the keyboard.

“Dear LinguaFrank,” I typed. “Your profile intrigues me—”

“Intrigues?
Good Lord.” Mercedes sat up and turned the computer to her, and pounded the delete key. “Dear Lingua -Frank, you look really hot—”

“Oh, for fuck sake!” Tag grabbed at the laptop, her manacles clanking. “I’m slim, I’m Asian, I’ve got a Ph.D.” she typed, “and I think, at the very least, we should meet for coffee. I’m attaching a photo. Let me know if you like what you see.”

“And what exactly is LinguaFrank going to see?” I demanded.

Tag Googled “photo Asian” and came up with the website for a company that sold stock photographs. She clicked on a wide- eyed model whose bee- stung lips were the plumpest part of her otherwise skeletal body. Tag looked up and we all nodded with awe. She dragged the image into the message and hit
SEND
with a flourish. She pushed the computer away from her, ready to return to business.