Usually, when you are waiting for something good to happen, it seems to take forever for the big day to arrive, but that week before my date with Billy Charisma just sped by.
Life may have been fast, but work was slow. Window washing sometimes runs like that: perfectly gorgeous weeks where not too many people call for help, but then Thanksgiving hits and all of a sudden everyone wants their windows sparkling in time for the holidays, despite that the cleaning fluid sometimes freezes in the frigid temperatures if you don’t put antifreeze in the mix. So we had mostly half days, which even allowed us enough time to stop off for a visit to see Elizabeth Hepburn. Having received the Parson Flats I’d had Jimmy Choo’s overnight to her, she was recuperating nicely at home, her happily Choos-clad feet propped up on her 1600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
“These are the best medicine anyone ever invented,” she said, admiringly twinkling at her own toes.
“That was really generous of you to buy Choos for her instead of for yourself,” Stella said as we were leaving. “But did you get a load of that awful Lottie person she employs as her companion?”
I had. If Lottie had been a weapon of war, she’d have been a Sherman tank—big, mean, deadly.
“A great lady like that,” Stella said, “deserves better than that in this life.” Which was saying a lot coming from Stella, who similarly had something of a Sherman tank about her personality.
“Maybe someday,” I said, “she’ll get the better companion she deserves.”
And we’d both noticed, Stella and I, that The Girls From Brazil were subdued all week long.
“What’s up with that?” Stella asked when they were out of hearing range.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Usually they just get nasty with me, but never with each other as they’ve been doing.” I shrugged. “Maybe they’re just upset about the scant work schedule? Maybe they’d rather have fuller days and make more money?”
“Nah,” she said. “That can’t be it.”
If things at work were slow and odd, meaning the strange sullenness Conchita and Rivera were exuding, my more domestic life was fast and odd.
Having blown off our fairly regular Monday-night get-together, Black Jack was not very forthcoming about his reasons why when I called him about it.
“Let’s just say there may be some surprises in your future,” he said.
“What surprises?” I asked.
“Just some surprising stuff,” he said.
“Stuff?” Well, that was very illuminating.
“Never mind that now. How did Atlantic City go for you?” he asked.
“I won! I even got dealt the twin Eights you prophesied!”
“That’s great! And did you split them like I told you to?”
“Of course. But then when I tried to split them when another Eight came up—”
“Crap, you didn’t get my message in time.”
“No, I did not.” He could probably tell from my tone that I was still miffed at being made to look like a piker. Then I shouted, “But I won! So I’ll get over it!”
“That’s great, Baby. So, are you going to retire now? Did you win everything you needed to win?”
“Well, yes and no.” I explained how, yes, I’d won everything I’d needed to win (“You’re my little girl!”), but that, no, I wasn’t going to retire yet, because I’d given a good chunk of my winnings away in aid of buying a little-old-lady fading Hollywood movie star a pair of ridiculously expensive shoes. (“Oh, right. Why didn’t I ever think of that? Of course a gambler should use winnings to finance the wealthy.”)
I tried to explain that, somehow, it wasn’t like it sounded at all.
“Save it, Baby,” he said. “I’m glad you’re doing good works with your winnings. Who knows? Maybe if I were more like you, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Speaking of which, are you really sure you need to go on gambling? Haven’t you had enough already?”
What did he mean?
“What do you mean?” Surely, this couldn’t be my dad talking. This was not the Black Jack Sampson I’d always known and loved. “Actually,” I said, “I was just about to ask you if, since we couldn’t get together on Monday night because you were busy, if maybe we could get together on Thursday night instead so I could practice a little bit more, maybe learn some new strategies.”
I figured that with my date with Billy coming up on Friday, whatever else we might discuss, we would surely be discussing gambling and I wanted to be prepared. I also figured Dad wouldn’t pass up the chance to play a few hands of his favorite game, even if it was with me.
“Sorry, Baby, no can do. I’ve got another meeting on Thursday night.”
“What’s with all these meetings all of a sudden?”
“Sorry, but it’s still a surprise.”
“What surprise?”
But no matter how many times I asked, he wasn’t saying.
“I’ll tell you when the time is right,” he said, “and we’re not there yet.”
And then there was my roommate–best friend: the woman formerly known as Hillary Clinton who could now best be described as Hillary In Love.
“Biff is the smartest man I’ve ever spent time with!” Hillary had said, finally breezing in on Sunday night.
“That’s wonderful,” I’d said, “I’m very happy for you.”
“Biff is the funniest man I’ve ever spent time with!” Hillary had said on Monday night after what was technically their second date.
“What more could a woman want?” I’d said.
“Biff is generous to a fault,” she’d said on Tuesday, just before midnight. “Even though I make as much as he does, he wouldn’t let me pay for dinner…and, afterward, he didn’t even want sex! He said we should wait at least until the technical fourth date!”
Was something maybe wrong with Biff?
And then came the technical fourth date, which I wasn’t privy to the recap of until Thursday morning when she burst in on me somewhere between my Cocoa and my Krispies.
“Omigod!” she said, back pressed against the door and looking like a blond-haired version of a starry-eyed Natalie Wood in just about any movie Natalie Wood had ever made. “Biff Williams has the absolute biggest—”
“I don’t need to know about that!” I said, picking up my bowl and thinking to take it into my room so I could eat in peace.
“He’s just so dreamy,” Hillary said, following me.
“Dreamy?” I asked. “Does anyone ever really say dreamy?” My mom used to say it about my dad, but that was two decades ago. Next thing, she’d be launching into “I Feel Pretty,” in which case I’d be compelled to put on a poodle skirt and play Rita Moreno to her Natalie.
“Oh, but he is dreamy, Delilah, plus he’s got the biggest schlong—”
“I said I don’t need to hear about that,” I said, holding up a defensive cereal spoon.
She appeared crestfallen. “Look, Hill,” I said, “just because I don’t want to hear all about Biff’s schlong, it doesn’t mean I’m not happy for you. Of course I’m happy for you. I’m beyond happy for you.”
And I was happy for her. The fact that she was out with the same guy every night, the fact that they always spent their time at his place rather than ours meaning that for the first time since we’d moved in there I came home to an empty home every night—maybe I should get a cat? None of that bothered me. It didn’t even bother me in the age old tradition of female relationships everywhere, you know, the tradition that firmly states, “I would be so happy for you that now you have someone were it not for the fact that I have no one and now your never being here only serves to highlight my I-have-no-one-ness. Really, once I have someone, too—if I live that long—I’ll be nothing but happy for your happiness. Of course, you may have broken up with Mr. Wonderful by then.”
But it wasn’t necessary for me to experience any of that internal unpleasantness. Because Hillary having someone in this instance made me free to sort of have my own someone, Billy Charisma, and to have him without fear of what she might have to say about him or how I conducted my budding relationship with him because, thankfully, she was otherwise occupied.
So Hillary wasn’t on the scene when I was fine-tuning the plans with Billy.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said. “You just need to give me directions.”
“How about if you give me directions?” I said. “I’d rather drive myself.”
Hillary wasn’t there to point out how combination defensive-offensive I sounded, which was great since I was determined to do this my way. The way I figured it, if I drove myself, there’d be the twin bonuses of being able to bail on the evening if it was a washout, and keeping me from drinking too much, thereby saving me from falling into bed with him on a drunken whim, because I’d need to stay sober enough to drive myself the long way home.
Hillary wasn’t on the scene to negatively critique my wardrobe selections.
Going through the scant nonwork options in my clothing collection, I’d found a basic black dress shoved in the back. And when I say basic, I do mean basic. Made of some kind of stretchy nonwrinkle fabric, it could probably be rolled into a ball for months if need be without sustaining any damage, but it was so nondescript that it would never look like much unless someone like Jackie O or Princess Di wore it, and then only because they contained that inner magic while the dress clearly did not. On my feet, I slipped on the blue-green Momo Flats, figuring the color would make a strong statement and at least my toes would feel magical. Then I borrowed a lipstick Hillary never used anymore, a red that looked too bright on me, but what the hell. I wasn’t trying to impress so much at this point as I was trying to look not awful.
Hillary also wasn’t on the scene to question whether or not I might be making a mistake.
“I don’t think he’s really right for you,” she might have said, echoing something Conchita or Rivera, I forget which, had said at one point.
“There’s something a little bit…dangerous about him,” she might have added, echoing thoughts I’d been regularly having myself. Whatever Billy Charisma might have wanted from me, the mere virtue of the fact that he was totally comfortable in a tux put him out of any league I’d ever been in.
Come to think of it, I didn’t even have a league.
But still, I was going over to his place for a simple dinner he was going to prepare for me. How much danger could I possibly be in?
Hillary wasn’t on the scene to laugh at me as I scarfed down a half serving of Michael Angelo’s Four Cheese Lasagna while standing up—insurance against the possibility that maybe Billy might serve me something odd for dinner like squid or peacock, so that at least my stomach wouldn’t scream with hunger when I demurred about just not having that much of an appetite—or laugh at the fact that I did so with a paper bib tucked inelegantly into the scoop neck of my nondescript, nonawful black dress.
She really would have laughed her ass off at that one.
And Hillary wasn’t on the scene to give me a gal-pal hug or a kiss, wishing me the best of luck with my evening despite her own qualms, as I sailed out the door.
If Hillary kept things up the way they were going with Biff, I really was going to need to get a cat.
Billy’s cottage, were it not a small part of a much larger estate in Westchester, would have been impressive in its own right. Certainly, with its Cape Cod architecture, flower boxes in the windows, and green-and-white porch swing, it was cozier and more finished-looking than anywhere I’d ever lived.
“Baby!” he greeted me at the door.
This was the first time I’d seen him without his tux on and in khaki pants, loafers sans socks and pink oxford shirt, he looked downright…naked.
“Yup,” I said awkwardly, climbing up the three porch steps. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Are you late?” The perfect host, he glanced at his watch, as though needing to verify I was indeed late, rather than doing what I would have done if a date were an hour late, which would have been to make the date feel guilty.
“I got lost,” I said, something about being there with him making me feel slightly out of breath, as though I’d run the whole way over. “Twice,” I added. “But it was only my fault once. The other time, there was a detour.”
“Well, you made it after all.” He smiled. “That’s the important thing.”
He offered his arm and led me inside. A part of me felt as if he was the smoothest thing since black velvet or Cary Grant, and not in a good way; a part of me was eating up every second of the royal treatment.
This was almost better than a new pair of Jimmy Choos. Maybe this was what other women went through life feeling like? Maybe this was what it felt like to be treated like a goddess by a man whose nickname wasn’t anything like “The Weasel” or “The Rat”? I tried to think, if I were to come up with a nickname for Billy, what would it be…
Well, of course it would have to be “The Gambler.”
“Baby? Earth to Baby?” He gently tapped on the side of my head. “Are you in there?”
“Oops, sorry,” I said, blushing. Even though I’d been with him for a few hours at Foxwoods, even though we’d spent the whole day and a good part of the night together in Atlantic City, it had been so long since I’d been on a date proper, I needed to get my proper-date sea legs back on. I was going to need to remember that being in a room with a male human being actually meant interacting with that male human being.
“So, what do you think?” he asked, gesturing around.
I thought that, just like the exterior of his home was nicer than anywhere I’d ever lived since moving out on my own, the interior was, as well.
“I know,” he said ruefully before I could pronounce a verdict, “it looks like a gay interior designer did it, doesn’t it?”
“Well…”
Well, I didn’t say it, I thought, taking in the floral chintz and brocade, as well as the other fabrics I’d never be able to put a name to, not even if you held my Momo Flats–clad feet against the fire, gently roaring in the small fieldstone fireplace. “What can I say?” he said. “That’s the dad in me coming out.”
“You have kids?” I blurted. Sure, if he had kids, I’d need to know at some point, but this was a rude awakening I wasn’t ready for. He could have waited until after feeding me at least.
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I meant ‘the dad’ as in ‘my dad.’ He was a gay interior designer, at least he was after Mother and I moved back to England, and I guess he just rubbed off on me.”
“But I thought you said…” I stumbled. “Wasn’t your dad married to your mom for several years?”
“Oh, yes. And if he wasn’t gay before he met her, he certainly was afterward. I never saw him again after he moved out, but as you can see, he left behind him a legacy of femininely refined taste. I’ve found in the past that some women are put off by all this—” he gestured “—but I’ve lived with it for so long, I can’t imagine being without rose and vine patterns everywhere. Now what can I get you to drink? Champagne? Diet Pepsi?”
“Lime…?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Come.” He crooked his finger at me, invited me into the kitchen, opened the fridge: there were at least two rows of Diet Pepsi Lime in there.
“I remembered,” he said, “your asking the waitress if she had any when we were in Atlantic City and I figured it must be a particular favorite of yours. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t run out.”
That was so thoughtful! See? If Hillary had been around to warn me about him earlier, I could have called her on my cell phone right now to tell her how wrong she’d been.
“So.” He waited patiently. “Which would you prefer, the champagne or the Diet—”
“Oh, the champagne, please,” I said. “But just one glass, maybe two. I’m driving, after all.”
Expertly, he undid the foil wrapping and extracted the cork from a bottle with an orange label.
“I entertained and rejected Perrier-Jouët, Moët, Piper Heidsieck and Roederer,” he said, “in favor of this very lovely Veuve Clicquot. I don’t know about you, but I just love saying Veuve Clicquot.”
“I don’t know about you,” I said, taking the flute, “but I try to avoid saying things I know I’ll mispronounce.”
He laughed as though I was the wittiest woman ever. I can’t say I thought what I said was all that funny, but by the time I was halfway through my first glass of Veuve Clicquot, I was ready to accept his obvious assessment that I was as funny as Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres combined.
“Do I smell something…burning?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. Or maybe it was the bubbles from the champagne.
By now we were seated on the floor, backs propped against the rose-covered couch, and I was thinking that his pink shirt looked awfully nice right next to my black dress. Maybe his pink shirt and my black dress should get closer?
“Oh, shit,” he said, swearing uncharacteristically—really, it was as surprising as if Queen Elizabeth said “fuck” at tea—as he leapt to his feet. “And I wanted it to be a surprise.”
I raced after him into the kitchen, champagne glass in hand. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was racing. It just seemed like a good moment to express my solidarity for whatever was going on. Host races, guest races, he races, she races, my kingdom for a horse and then we all move on.
As he grabbed an oven mitt, I entertained the vague notion that at my own home, I didn’t even know if we had an oven mitt, let alone where to find it. Then he was unceremoniously yanking open the oven door, from which tiny wisps of black smoke emerged.
“Shit,” he said again.
“What were those supposed to be?” I hiccupped, trying to adopt a look of grave concern as I studied the two charred rectangles on the baking tray.
“They were supposed to be homemade pizza pockets,” he said in dismay. “I remembered how in Atlantic City, you asked the waitress if she could turn your pizza into a pocket somehow, so I made my own dough from scratch, made my own sauce from scratch, then I grated fresh cheeses over the whole lot and gently folded them into pockets.”
He’d done all that for me? Omigod, he was trying to impress me.
“Oh, well,” he sighed as he threw in the oven mitt, totally missing the look of adoration I was bestowing upon him, “I suppose there’s nothing for it. You toss the salad while I call Domino’s. At least we’ve still got the champagne to drink.”
Throughout the salad, throughout the Domino’s, throughout the second bottle of champagne, Billy remained charming. He even did a romantic reminiscence of the time we’d spent thus far together in casinos, which was very touching until a sore subject came up.
“And what was with that…yo-yo guy, the one we keep running into every time we turn around?”
My back stiffened at his insult to Chris. True, Chris wasn’t the smoothest guy in the world and he did drop his yo-yos an awful lot for someone who was trying to get taken seriously as a semiprofessional at it, but still…
Then I had to laugh, though, as Billy began opening and closing his Craftsman cabinets. “Yo-Yo Man? Yoo-hoo! Yo-Yo Man? Are you stalking us, by some chance? Are you hiding in the flower box with the fresh basil? Oh, Yo-Yo Man!”
Maybe it was the Veuve Clicquot, but it was funny at the time. And, despite feeling a guilty twinge about Chris, I laughed along with Billy. Besides, what did I owe to The Yo-Yo Man, who was really only Furthest Guy, anyway? I was with The Gambler.
“How about—” Billy’s eyes flashed “—a game of cards?”
“I think I’ve had too much to drink,” I said, suddenly realizing how drunk I was.
“Come to think of it—” I burped “—I think I’m too drunk to drive.”
Billy put his arms around me, pulled me close, tilted my chin upward with one hand and looked deep into my eyes.
“Too drunk to play cards,” he tut-tutted, “too drunk to drive. Are you too drunk for this?”
He lowered his face so that his lips were just a breath away from mine and then stopped. Taking the bait, I leapt at the chance, meeting my lips to his.
“No.” He shook his head after a moment. “I guess you’re not too drunk for that.”
I liked that first kiss. I wanted more kisses like that.
Moving closer into his arms, I sought his lips with my own again.
For a time, he kissed me back, but even through my drunken haze I sensed that he was more distant this time, that he was somehow removed.
And then he drew away, studied my face.
“You know, Baby, I really would like to show you my bedroom right now. I’d like to take you in there, remove every stitch of clothing you have on, some of them with my teeth, then I’d like to kiss every inch of your body, fulfill desires you don’t even know you have…”
Take me! Take me in there! My mind half screamed, as I tried to move yet closer into his arms again, practically falling into him. So what if I’d originally insisted on driving myself, my reasoning being it would keep me from drinking too much and falling into bed with him on a drunken whim. But I’d changed my mind about the drinking. I’d changed my mind about the bed. If there’s one thing regularly drilled into women’s minds, it’s that it’s our prerogative to change our minds.
“But I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said sadly, shaking his head.
“Why? Why can’t you do that?”
I wanted him to do that. Oh, how I wanted him to do that.
“Because it wouldn’t be right,” he said, chastely, kissing the tip of my nose. “Because it wouldn’t be fair,” he said, tauntingly kissing my neck.
“So be unfair, be unfair! I won’t tell!”
“No, I’m afraid not. If you really are too drunk to drive, if you’re too drunk to play cards with me, then I can’t possibly take advantage of your condition. Tell you what, you can have my bed, I’ll get blankets and set myself up on the couch.”
What was with guys these days? First Biff wouldn’t sleep with Hillary right away, or at least not until the fourth technical date. Now Billy wouldn’t sleep with me right away. What was wrong with doing it right then? I was old enough! I had my own condoms!
“Really, Baby,” he said, “as hard as it is to wait, I must resist you. We can do it when we get to Vegas. You know—Sin City?”