The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (16 page)

Claire gasped loudly, then covered her mouth. “Oh my God. Shit.” The night was blown. All of it. The flirts, the man, the crazy, naughty Claire.

RULE #7
: Do not keep your dead husband’s robe in the bathroom.

“What, babe? What’s wrong?”

Was this why Evan Spence had made a note about the robe? Why had Claire left it hanging on the back of the door, her dead husband’s robe? Why the fuck had she left Charlie’s toiletries neat and in place, instead of moving them to the second bathroom down the hall—the shaving supplies, the cologne? One bathroom for Claire, one for dead Charlie. She’d never thought this was anything that would intersect with Jake, with any Jake, with any hockey player, with anyone. How had Jake seen dead Charlie’s robe? Didn’t he think it was strange to put it on, another man’s robe? Shouldn’t he have avoided it? Did he think she ran a fucking hotel outfitted with men’s cashmere robes?

No, it was Claire who was wrong. Claire had a problem, not Jake.

“Listen, you know what. I’m sorry. I can’t…”

“Can’t what?”

“I need to take you home. Somewhere.”

“I don’t have my keys to go home. Hey, what happened?”

“Then you need to call someone, a friend. Nothing happened. I just … you need to go. I’ll walk you somewhere or go with you. I need you to put your clothes on.”

“Are you okay?”

Claire’s voice was rising like floodwater in a hurricane and she thought she might scream the way a three-year-old screamed—eyes closed, hands on ears, full-throated emotional scream. Claire had that urgent need and hoped she could hold it in until Jake went away.

“I’m fine. I think the alcohol wore off, and I get these headaches and I just want to go to bed.”

She was fighting the urge to tear the robe off of him, to snatch it off and kick him and run. She needed to get him out the door and he was moving too slowly.

“Okay, baby. That’s cool,” Jake said. “I’ll call someone, then.”

“Can you call them outside, please?”

“It’s loud on the street.”

“Then in the hall? Please.”

Jake was putting on pants, buttoning buttons, slipping on shoes. He looked dazed and confused, and a little sad. He very gallantly kissed Claire’s cheek before he left, though. It made a tear of hers run down. “Good night, pretty girl.”

It was the end, for Claire, of hockey.

20

“I brought a man home, to spend the night. To have sex with.”

“And how did that go?”

“He put on Charlie’s robe and I freaked out.”

Spence had an emery board and was very methodically filing his nails. Claire couldn’t take her eyes away.

“Why is that? Why did you freak out?”

“I don’t know. It felt like Charlie was in the room watching us. I felt like I’d been caught.”

“What do you feel today?”

“Um. Annoyed, I guess, a little. Anxious. If I don’t find someone suitable in the next couple of months, my married friends will move on. Sasha wants to have kids now. Mothers don’t have time for single friends.”

“Claire, did it occur to you that each person bears his or her own set of problems? That if you read Socrates, or Hegel, they tell you that the struggle of the ordinary is one of the universal pitfalls of mankind?”

“No.”

“It’s the every day, the getting from breakfast to jobs to appointments to dinner to bed, all the seemingly minor incidents lodged between big moments, that topple us.”

Claire looked at Spence, then looked out the window. He probably got all this crap from Charlie, she thought.

“I just need to get through the first year,” Claire said.

“What makes you so certain some sea change occurs after a year?”

Spence had an eyebrow raised, her cue, she knew, to behave. Be fucked up, but do it right.

“A year is as long as you can stretch it. You know, the Jewish year of mourning … it’s a year. You get a year.”

“I wasn’t aware you were Jewish,” said Dr. Spence.

“It’s carefully unwritten into every conversation about death. It’s the three-six-three paradigm.”

“I’m unfamiliar with it,” Spence said.

“For the first three months, everyone’s around and attentive, there’s great concern, or show of concern, and they conspire to keep you distracted and busy. The next six months are busy, too, though the attention trails off. Widowhood is like any other commodity. It’s not enough to just have it. You have to understand its value.”

Spence managed to glance at his watch without disturbing the eyebrow, which Claire found fascinating, but she was determined to finish her thought.

“And then the last three months it dies. Tumbleweeds blow by. The old couples’ friends stop calling; some new friends trickle in. You start to segue out of one skin and into another. Then you start running into people. ‘Oh yeah you, I remember. You’re still a widow? How’s that working out?’”

She looked at Spence’s shoes; they were a horrible shade of red-brown. He should be starting his wrap-up.

“Claire.”

“Yes?”

“Did you hear me? I need to reschedule next week. Can we move to Thursday?”

The perfect man will walk through my door one night when the lights are out
, Claire thought. And then she heard her mother’s voice:
Honey, lock your door. It’s New York. People get killed.

The journalist, Alex, hadn’t liked Claire’s seduction scene, but what did he know? Stephen had had the seductive power of a rat. Some girls want candles and wine, and that’s okay. Some like to be whisked out of town. Some are fine getting fucked in a nice room at The Standard. Charlie covered methods of seduction and sexual fantasies at length in
Driving with Her Head in Your Lap
. Generally speaking, in almost every species, from the bonobo to the fruit fly, there’s a template the male follows: show confidence, then empathy, self-deprecation, then go for the kill.

Claire, personally, liked how Robert Redford seduced Katharine Ross. What was wrong with that? “Yes, sure. Thursday is fine,” Claire said. When she got home, Jack Huxley was in her mailbox, on the front page of
Variety
. She’d almost forgotten about him. He had just signed on to a new project, opposite Keira Knightley, who’d been offered the highest amount of money ever paid to a woman in a lead. An enormous picture of the two—she in red, a full-lipped bosomy piece of candy; and he in black with his lottery-winning grin—adorned the small article.

21

When Claire finally got laid, it was a disaster, of sorts. Not completely, but of sorts.

It wasn’t at gunpoint; it wasn’t particularly sweet. There was grunting in place of banter, there were tequila and cigarettes. The whole thing went down fast. It was messy, and in Claire’s postmarital bed, and with only one shoe. But it was over. She went to the movie premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Fifty-Fourth because Richard asked her to. He asked because he wanted Claire to meet the subject of Charlie’s incomprehensible, unfinished book.

It was the season’s holiday blockbuster, opening wide the next month on Thanksgiving Day.
The New Guy
was a rom-com starring Olivia Wilde as Tracy Dow, an improbably stunning single mother, and Jack Huxley as Matt Ryan, a gorgeous but emotionally unavailable man. Tracy is betrothed to the town rogue, Eric Stone—played by newcomer Bradley Hess, his first feature film. Eric Stone is considered a catch—good-looking with money. He behaves well when Tracy’s around but behind her back screws every lonely woman in town.

Matt Ryan is a new mechanic in town. He’s handsome but guarded; strong and silent. There’s heartbreak in his past, which was obviously written into the story to give Jack Huxley’s irresistible wounded look ample time on the big screen.

Tracy, of course, falls for him as Eric reveals his brutish nature, and they have an encounter. She thinks it’s one thing, Matt Ryan thinks it’s another. There’s a comedy of errors—miscues, starts, and stutters. Matt advances, Tracy demurs. He retreats, she takes a chance, he blows it. In the end, of course, Jack Huxley gets the girl.

The story was predictable. Claire expected it to be. But the close-ups were breathtaking. Wilde and Huxley were aesthetically stunning, including one long, beautiful scene of them on a motorcycle winding through colorful New England fall trees. Huxley looked so natural on the bike. Claire wondered if he owned one.

After the premiere there was a cocktail reception, and the drinks came fast and strong. Richard drank scotch while Claire sipped a lemon drop from a tall, skinny glass. The room was visibly restless. Jack Huxley was late.

In his place, Bradley Hess worked the crowd. Disappointment was thick, but Hess was undeterred. He posed with Olivia for the press, he consorted with the cast. He seized his moment, working every photo op in the room. There were a hundred cameras waiting for Jack and they were twitchy, shooting at everything.

Claire was standing with Richard and the movie’s producer, Frank Mennant, at the moment the actual star did enter the room. The sudden flutter of hearts was palpable; you could feel the collective jolt.
People
magazine had just declared him the sexiest man alive. This, Claire thought, might be interesting. He headed toward them, and every eye in the place followed. What had been anxious and anticipatory chatter moments before exploded into a quiet roar of murmurs. Skin prickled and hairlines went taut.

“Jack,” Frank said. He interrupted their conversation to greet his prize. The room tipped toward them like the list of a boat that was taking on water. Jack Huxley transformed their bit of floor into a stage.

Frank turned slightly toward Claire. “You’ve met Richard already, of course, and this is my dear friend Claire Byrne,” he said. “Claire, Jack Huxley.” As he spoke, Frank’s mouth crept into a slow smile that put Claire in mind of a cartoon villain.
Here is a movie star. Here is a woman. Now, if she suits him, he will have her.

“This is a pleasure,” Jack Huxley said—theatrically; was there any other way? Here were the movie star lashes, the leading-man gaze in the same close-up shot she’d just seen on-screen.

He held her eyes and kissed her hand, and Claire thought of Red Riding Hood’s wolf. The well-tailored suit, the healthy tan, the white teeth and thick hair and just slightly ruddy hue to his cheek, all the better to screw her with.
Oh brother
, she thought, but couldn’t stop herself from blushing. She said, “Thank you.”

Claire had seen this before, if on a slightly smaller scale. She’d been married to the most-important-man-in-the-room. Women were lined up and presented for these men like drumsticks at a medieval banquet. Sure, Jack Huxley was handsome. Okay, beautiful, exquisite even. Still.

Frank excused himself, gesturing vaguely to some matter across the room. “I need to catch up with someone,” he said, and then he left. Richard followed him to the bar.

“Did you like the film?” Jack Huxley asked Claire. Just like that they were alone and familiar. Jack Huxley knows everyone, everything. Richard watched from across the room, bemused. Claire became anxious. Why had he left her? Why was everyone staring?

“It’ll do great, I’m sure. It’s a perfect holiday flick.”
Oh my God
, Claire thought.
Perfect holiday flick?

Jack smiled, amused. “How do you know Frank?” he asked.

“He’s an old friend. Old, old friend,” Claire said. Frank had known Charlie since he was an Ivy League blowhard with no prospects. “How do
you
know him?” Jack Huxley and this was the best she could come up with?

“We used to date. Bad breakup, but we’re good now.”

Claire relaxed a bit. Mr. Huxley liked to play.

Out of nowhere, someone put a drink in Jack’s hand, and then put one in Claire’s.

“Claire,” he said. “What are you doing with this seamy crowd? You’re not an actress.”

“How do you know I’m not an actress?”

“Because you’re not acting.”

“Well, I’m in a very high-end but obscure line of work. You wouldn’t have heard of me.”

“Here. Give me your drink.”

Puzzled, Claire handed him the drink she’d been given—she wasn’t even clear what it was. Jack replaced it with a small glass.

“Blue agave tequila. It’s smooth, not like what you drank in college on spring break. I shared a bottle with the crew after the premiere of my first film—I was Man in Elevator. I got my first speaking role the next day, so I have a shot after every premiere. I’m superstitious.”

Claire clinked her small glass with his, braced herself, and drank it down. He was right; it was smooth. No bite at all. A fuzzy little warmth traced a path from her lips down to her ankles.

“So,” she said. “Did you forget to have one after
Danger and Darkness
?”

“So you’re one of the eight people who saw it!” Jack Huxley put another small glass in Claire’s hand.

“Now, what’s this obscure line of work you’re in?” Claire had just drunk enough to think,
What the hell.

“Sex toys,” she said. Charlie would have been proud. “I design them.” Richard, she thought, looked concerned, though she couldn’t quite make him out.

“Really?” Jack Huxley said. “That’s interesting. What sorts of toys?”

Claire took another drink and lost more inhibition. “Penetrators, mostly, for men. Anal penetration is an art and in most heterosexual relationships men get the shaft, pun intended, because most straight women are unschooled. They think of toys as something to stimulate the clitoris and vagina, which is very shortsighted.”

“How about that,” Jack Huxley said, smiling. Claire was enjoying the audience. She went on. “Heterosexuals are actually very ignorant about male sexuality. Most design around sexual aids only considers the vagina. There’s a wide range of possibility.”

The actor was still smiling. “Take it easy on those,” he said as Claire downed her second tequila. “They sneak up.”

Because of Charlie, Claire was overeducated in theory, underequipped in the field. She didn’t recognize certain mating tics, signals, signs. She no more knew whether this man, the movie star, wanted to sleep with her than whether he was signaling her to steal third. Had she been clearheaded and aware, perhaps the night would have gone differently.