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TWO MEN TO NONE
Friday evening couldn’t have come soon enough. With Tommy not coming to her, Lorraine convinced herself she was going back to Brooklyn for the purposes of keeping up the Sunday night dinner thing.
“What have you guys been doing this week?” She posed the question to Chrissy the night before, in hopes of gaining some insight as to exactly why “Tommy wasn’t coming to visit her.
“Yes, I’m just gonna come out with it. He was dragging around some bimbo by the eyes last night at Petey’s house. Everyone went there when it got too cold to hang out at the schoolyard.
She didn’t want to hear it, but simultaneously had to know every excruciating detail. Before Chrissy even spoke, she’d conjured up the greenish wood paneling in Petey’s basement, the old floral sofa that never looked quite clean despite the strong lemon scent that emanated from every surface of the room. She put Tommy all the way to the left, lazily draping an arm on some doe-eyed girl’s shoulder, like it meant something he knew the poor idiot wanted it to mean. She knew the look on his face: smug, bored...the unattainable.
God, why did he need to do it? Again and again and again. Would there ever be enough evidence to prove to his fragile ego once and for all that he was good enough? It was only getting worse now. He barely had to muster any evidence of trying with the girls anymore. They just came to him—the young ones who’d heard the irresistible stories of their friends’ best sex of their lives, the man they wanted to marry. The moves had a life force of their own; all he had to do was float with the current. At least Lorraine could take comfort in the idea that he was never like that with her. With them it was different. This she always knew.
“Did they leave together?” Lorraine could fill in the ho’s face with a spectrum of Tommy’s past conquests, not unlike those silly sepia photos you could pose for at Colonial Williamsburg with your head poking through a hole above frills of Queen Anne lace. She could even smell Petey’s cigarette, hear Petey’s mom yell down for him to stop smoking in the house. See Petey roll his eyes, tighten his jaw and feel his middle finger with his thumb, but never actually give it to her.
“I really don’t know. I was gone already.”
Lorraine knew this was untrue. There was only so much pain her friend could stand to dole out at once. And through this ancient code of omission they practiced, Chrissy could feel a teensy bit better about things. Lorraine, she knew, would ultimately ruin their plans of living next door, watching their children play in back, drawing chalk figures on the blacktop driveway. She hated to think her friend would never back down. It was her best quality and her worst. She’d told Lorraine as much more times than she cared to remember: she knew Chrissy was right.
Lorraine really wanted to sneak Pooh-Pooh on the train, but even as she searched through duffel bags and carrying cases in the mega-closets Mrs. Romanelli kept of such things, she knew it was a ridiculous idea.
“Roof!” Pooh-Pooh said as she held a bag one-third his length alongside him.
“Yeah, roof to you! I have to go make a fool of myself in front of the man I love, and now I don’t know how I’m gonna do that with you been so freakin’ humungous. All right, all right. We’ll just go for a walk, or I guess with you, a run, and then hopefully we’ll figure something out.”
Lorraine had purchased some of that outrageously priced workout wear from So-Low she’d sworn not two-weeks ago she would never spend $150 on. When she pulled the super-soft stretchy cotton tank, low-rider bootleg pants, and matching zip-up hoodies over her newly muscular body, though, Lorraine could see the difference between these and her old high-school sweats.
She brushed her hair back into a ponytail that curled sweetly at the end, what with all the waves she’d worn in it that day, snapped the leash on Pooh-Pooh, who’d just downed a pound and a half of stinky doggie food that sounded like squishy mayonnaise as he’d gobbled it, and locked the door behind them.
The night was one of the crisper ones of the last few weeks, and the amber hue of the sky just seemed to suit her mood, all intricate and layered, changing as one looked higher, impossible to categorize.
She’d learned to keep up with Pooh-Pooh (he was even stopping at street corners now, if she gently said his name and tugged lightly on his leash) and running seemed like a do-able, if not exactly simple task. She ran, faster, faster around the reservoir twice, Pooh-Pooh galloping at full speed, his tail swaying to and fro, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth in excitement. She was starting to recognize people—the guy on the old banana seat bicycle with the boom box blasting original rap songs, like he was stuck in another time; a girl who worked at Bendel’s; a tall skinny guy who always wore fluorescent green; other dogs—a Chihuahua, a golden retriever, a Britney Spaniel, and their respective runner-owners. Lorraine waved to the hot dog vendors she’d made purchases from. Everyone recognized Pooh-Pooh. The dog was unforgettable.
When they’d finished the second loop, Pooh-Pooh led them to that tiny field he frequented every day. There she saw the Ohmigods and the Silver Hairs and the couple of jocks who made themselves permanent fixtures along with the random people who’d just wandered in. And then, as she slowed to a stop, unhooked Pooh-Pooh and rubbed under his neck, where he liked a medium-to-hard scratching, Lorraine heard her name called from behind a tree not far from where she was standing.
She saw a face a little more than familiar, and so welcome just then. She’d forgotten how welcome.
“Matt! You’re back! So great to see you!” Why? Why was she sounding so desperate? She’d only met the guy once. It probably wasn’t best to appear so lonesome and sad like that. And so she added, “Pooh-Pooh has missed Lena Horne so badly!”
On cue, Pooh-Pooh and Lena ran toward each other and met in a cacophony of barks, a dance of licks and gentle pawing and biting. Tiny tufts of hair lifted in the breeze and hung in a halo of sorts around the couple. Lorraine couldn’t believe she felt jealous of the love between these two dogs. She needed a drink. That would probably help.
“Hey there.” He came and kissed her on the cheek like someone he hadn’t seen in a while. Like someone he might have missed.
The guy was tan. And, Lorraine noticed, it looked great on him. So, apparently, did the posing Ohmigods, who were screaming, “Yoohoo, Matt, yoooooohooooooo!”
He waved at them and sat right with Lorraine, which, presented at least a sharp, happy spike in the line graph of the afternoon’s misery, in the way only triumphing over a bunch of too-pretty Ohmigods could.
“Looks like you’ve got some fans,” Lorraine said coolly, darting her eyes in the direction of the Omigods.
“Hey, no one said it’s easy being this handsome and charming.”
“Did you just say ‘handsome?’” The word stuck her as anachronistic, something Hugh Grant might say in a Jane Austen movie. She smiled with the images playing in her head—Matt in knickers and such.
“You got a problem wit da way I tawk, Miss Brooklyn?” Now Matt was smiling.
Lorraine returned with an elbow to the ribs.
“Don’t shoot!” he screamed, mocking her with his hands over his face.
“Wha’d they feed you down in Florida to make your balls so big?”
He looked shocked, yet amused. He covered his mouth with his palm and then removed it and said, “Ah, you know, the wings of two dead flies, a couple of bat’s ears...”
Lorraine rolled her eyes and felt the slow smile come over her, stretching all the way at her scalp. It felt good. It really did.
“Looks like you’ve got your Pooh-Pooh under control.”
Lorraine: Eye roll number two.
Matt: Extra exaggerated eye roll. “No, really,” he said, stretching his legs out long in front of him. “I saw you run in here. I don’t even think Romanelli ever got Pooh-Pooh so well behaved. That was an expert unleashing. Top notch.”
The dogs were once again trading elicit favors, to the disgust of the general public. Strangely, even that was growing on her. Pooh-Pooh was a ladies’ man. Go figure—she’d fallen for another one. At least this one wasn’t afraid to spend the whole night. He kept plans like a champ, and he was pretty cute, although of course, Lorraine knew looks weren’t everything.
“So how was your trip, really?” Lorraine wanted to get back to Brooklyn, but this was nice, too, sitting here with someone she had instantly warmed to. Really, she felt closer to him than to some of the people in her group that she’d known for twenty years.
“It was nice. Really nice. Only rained a couple of times. Did a lot of fishing, you know—just me and Lena out on the boat, listening to the Allman Brothers.”
“The Allman Brothers? Dude, what are you, some kind of hippie or something? Back where I come from we call people like yourself Stoners.”
“Don’t you technically need to be a pothead to be classified as a Stoner?
“Nah, Tons of my friends are potheads, and they’re still classified as Guidos.”
“Takes one to know one, I guess...” He smiled, hooked his glance in with hers to show he meant it in a familiar, rather than judgmental way.
“I prefer the term ‘Italian-American,” she said, crossing her arms, pretending to be offended.
“Your wish is my command. Besides, I wouldn’t want any of your cousins coming around and teaching me any lessons.”
They sat in silence for a little while, taking in the sounds around them—the chattering girls, the random disciplining of dogs, far-off sirens, car horns, and hoof beats.
“Hey, you wanna see a movie tonight?” he asked after a little while.
Lorraine was surprisingly grateful for the invitation. She’d felt so solitary in a me-versus-them way throughout the day that his generosity hit her with a deeper pang than she was prepared for. She tried to think whether she should just accept and forget about Brooklyn. There was the idea, still forming itself, that she might like Matt as more than a friend. But in the past, these small victories over her obsession had never proven to be long-term wins. And since she really respected and liked him as a person, Lorraine tried to ignore her attraction, despite the obvious chemistry that existed between them. But there was that new Will Smith movie she was wanting to see. Plus, a fun weekend in the city was something she knew she should try.
However, try as she might, she couldn’t get the idea of Tommy and some other girl out of her head. She needed to be with him. It was just something she had to do.
“You know,” she said finally, touching his arm lightly, “I would love to, but I really need to find a way to get me and Pooh-Pooh back to Brooklyn tonight.” Feeling surprisingly self-conscious about this fact, Lorraine grasped for a justification. “We’ve got family obligations, and...stuff.” She looked to the ground, rather than at Matt as she said this, probably appearing far-off and maybe lost in thought. And she was. Aside from trying to figure out how the heck she was going to get the two of them home to the Bay, the idea popped into her head that her excuse didn’t sound believable, that given what she’d told Matt about Tommy, he might be able to see right through her.
“Can’t just shove Pooh-Pooh into a duffel bag, huh?”
“The thought had crossed my mind, but no, apparently you can’t.”
The dog looked up at them, as if he knew he was being spoken about and wouldn’t stand for any shenanigans. Then he lay his head back onto Lena’s belly to continue napping.
Lorraine wondered if dogs’ ears rang when someone was talking about them, too.
“Well, I’ve got a solution for you, but you can’t tell anyone in the world that I let you do this because they’ll all think I’ve gone soft.”
“I promise.”
“No, really, you have to perform the Matthew Richards family oath.” He held his face in serious horizontal lines. His tanned hand smacked lightly at the grass.
“Ohhhhh-kayyyyyyyy,” she said, lowering her lids suspiciously.
“Repeat after me.”
“Well, aren’t you gonna tell me what your solution is before I solemnly swear to keep it a secret?”
“You’re a real tough cookie, aren’t you?” He shook his head in mock frustration.
“Ah, well, you know us Guidettes, headstrong as the hairspray keeping our hairstyle up.”
“That’s a good one,” he said.
“All right, all right. First the oath, then I’ll tell you. Raise your hand, and then put it over your chest, like so,” Matt demonstrated, super gently and very teasingly, by placing a hand over Lorraine’s wrist and smoothing her palm down to her chest.
Tingles erupted where the hand touched down. They quickly vibrated south.
“Now”—he cleared his throat—“I solemnly swear...” He winked at Lorraine’s accurate prediction.
She repeated playfully, “Now,” and then cleared her throat. “I solemnly swear,” and then Lorraine winked back at him.
Matt made slivers of his eyes, cocking his head. “Are you taking this seriously?” he wanted to know. And then softening, he reminded her that her hand was crossed over her heart. In case she’d forgotten, he again grazed his hand there.
They were silent for a second in the frisson of that connection, and then he got back to the unserious business of her oath.
“I solemnly swear that I will put the top down.” He paused for her to follow, and she did, although unsure of what she was saying.
Matt continued, “Enjoy to the fullest, the godly power of a 360 horsepower 5.5 liter, 24-valve V8 engine.” He nodded his head for her refrain.
“I’ll break the speed limits, and really try to concentrate on how awesome a Mercedes SLK AMG roadster is while Pooh-Pooh and myself drive to Brooklyn.”
Lorraine’s eyes widened to dollar-coin size. Instead of repeating the last line she shouted, “You’re freakin’ kidding me, right?”
“Lorraine, no, I am not freakin’ kidding you, but I must point out that you haven’t repeated the final portion of the oath.” He said it stone-faced.
Oh, boy. She was developing a crush.
You’ve never driven if you’ve never driven a Mercedes. The traffic parted ways, the road was open, the night was clear. Lorraine was convinced it was one powerful vehicle. Pooh-Pooh was strapped in behind her. She figured he was only about two or three, which probably meant he wasn’t old enough to be sitting in the front, much less without some sort of car seat she wasn’t sure existed for our furry friends. He seemed to take to the car instantly. But, she mused, he was used to the privileged life and probably drove in a Mercedes all the time.
As soon as she started driving, the hopeless tone of the day just melted away like blown traffic lights—flickers she barely noticed somewhere far off in the periphery of her mind. In its place, warm thoughts about her city, the family she was about to see (if only for a minute or two before she drove off to see where everyone—everyone meaning Tommy—was for the night), the smile that would spread on her mother’s face. Even if the car didn’t belong to Lorraine, her mother would see her as making the kinds of connections that meant big things for her daughter, the variety of big things that had never crystallized for herself in the ten square miles she inhabited.
Most of all though, this car would resonate with Tommy. It wouldn’t matter how many girls there had been since last weekend. This car would put Lorraine on par with his idea of success, with his ideas of what his life should be like, the people he deserved to be surrounded with. It was a desperate way to think, but she didn’t want to concentrate on that part of it just then. However, it was impossible not to see the parallel—Tommy and her mother. Lorraine realized for the first time, they weren’t all that different. Perhaps that was why Lorraine’s mother looked at Tommy with such disdain.
But none of that would darken the road ahead, the promise of the night. Lorraine always prided herself on seeing the larger scope of things, placing people not in narrow categories, but within the intricate web of happenstance and experience they came nestled in. She could look beyond weakness and mistakes and ignorance—hadn’t she committed the same sins herself during the course of her life? Sure, and here she was, trying to correct some of those, though not sure exactly for whom. Lorraine tried to exercise the same forgiveness toward her own actions—tonight especially, when she was so confused about her intentions.
They looked pretty good, the pair of them—Lorraine freshly showered, her hair glittering with a few highlights she’d painted on herself in the wake of nothingness that had followed her few hours of falsely promising color this week. Matt had noticed them right away. She wasn’t so sure she could expect the same of Tommy, who seemed to perceive changes in a more obscure way. She had on a slinky silk camisole, beneath a deep green velvet blazer—cut so slim it could barely be buttoned, cut to create the illusion of length and a trim waist, according to the salesgirl, Tabby, who had a knack for dressing, not unlike what Lorraine had for hair. And Lorraine knew it was wise to let an expert ply her trade—the results would always be surprisingly dramatic. The girl matched the blazer with a pair of grayed-out black denim with retro studs down the legs.
“Jesus,” said Matt when they’d met at the garage around the corner.
“What?” Lorraine had been surprised to feel heat at her cheeks, and turned her head away.
“You’re hot,” he said. Matt shook his head like a towel on fire, and then plunged into mapping out the intricacies of the clutch and the tiny gearshift, the location of the E-break.
If she hadn’t been sure of her transparency before, there was no mistaking it after he sent her off with a serious look. “If he doesn’t want you, Lorraine, the guy’s an ass.” God, how did he know her so well?
Pooh-Pooh was still looking smart from his weekend of doggy pampering. Everyone in her family said so, when she pulled up to the house and honked the horn. Never had Lorraine seen her mother so ecstatic. The woman was glowing with pride. Lorraine had anticipated the warm feelings of self-satisfaction such long awaited praise would provide, and so she was surprised by her reaction to it. Her mother’s kind words, her unfamiliarly warm hand on her shoulder, actually stung and incited an annoyance Lorraine wasn’t prepared for. The car, in its gleaming silver beauty, with its buttery leather interior, felt like an insult to the depth of experience she’d been having lately—overshadowing the really important things. It also seemed to minimize the impact of Matt’s introduction to her life, presenting him as a rich friend that only served to elevate Lorraine’s status in the minds of her otherwise unimpressible mother and brother. In fact, this shiny car didn’t remind Lorraine of Matt at all. He was old T-shirts and tiny dogs! She wanted to scream it. But what was the point?
Though her father smiled wide, she couldn’t help thinking all this fuss must make him feel...well, not unlike how it made her feel. All she wanted to say to her mother was, Stop! Shut it, Mom! But you never said that.
“You should have seen everyone at the garage with your picture in the paper! I swear a couple of the guys cried.” He winked at her. “So I says, ‘What’s the big deal—we always knew she was special. Don’t need no paper to tell us that.’”
“Yeah, she’s ‘special’ all right. Short bus special.” This from her brother.
Her dad lowered his eyebrows, raised a right palm, as if this might scare either of them—an empty threat he’d never follow through with.
“A Mercedes!” was all her mom could say, like there wasn’t room for anything else in her head. She pressed her nose up against the leather seat.
“Please pass the bread!” her brother screamed.
Whether it was the trauma of trying to bridge two worlds, or simply the effect of long-awaited change on one Ms. Lorraine Machuchi, she couldn’t be quite sure, but when she arrived at the schoolyard, Pooh-Pooh and the Mercedes revving, Lorraine had never felt so off-kilter. It was like something wasn’t quite right in the city, and something wasn’t quite right here. Plus, things were starting to seem different.
Apparently Petey and Mary were a couple now, from the way they were holding hands and whispering, and as evidenced by Petey’s high school ring, which Mary kept cupping in her fist as she dragged it, chink-chink-chink, across the chain she had it looped through. Climate-wise, it was cooler for sure, and a couple of the girls—Chrissy included—were wearing fleece jackets in variations of pink. Lorraine didn’t like the look. Never before had she dressed in a way so indistinguishable from her peers, and now here she really disliked their biggest trend of the season. She thought the jackets lacked structure, did nothing to complement their figures. Besides, you could tell from the haphazard seams they were poorly tailored. One of the seams on Chrissy’s right sleeve appeared to be unraveling.
There could have been another reason for her disorientation. Amidst all the cries of “Oh my god!” and “Holy shit!” and “Look at Ms. Fancy Pants!” Tommy was painfully absent.
She tried—making her best efforts to smile, hold her back straight and blink away any trace of tears that were brewing—to appear as if she hadn’t a care in the world. There was nothing in particular planned, so the car really became the center of the evening. Within ten minutes everyone was sitting on some part of it, adoring or fearing Pooh-Pooh who was hamming it up something awful—showing his white teeth, playfully bending his ears, wagging his tail, nuzzling into new hands.
Chrissy, who was on the more fearful side, was trying gingerly to pet Pooh-Pooh, but standing so far back, she had to stretch to get her fingertips to make the slightest contact with his fur. He extended his neck to show her that little patch where he loved people to scratch, and she freaked, screaming and jumping back. Big Bobby was nowhere to be seen, either. Chrissy didn’t seem to mind, as he was due to meet up with her at ten-thirty.
“That is the biggest dog I have ever seen,” she said when she’d tugged at the hem of her pink fleece and smoothed the front down to regain composure.
“Look at the cutey-wooty,” Mary crooned, performing her best cutesy speak for the benefit of her new boyfriend. Women understood these things to mean, Look, I am June Cleaver; I am loved by animals and children alike. Can’t you just see my eggs dropping down, blinking their eyelashes, waiting to be fertilized?
Both Chrissy and Lorraine took it as a personal affront when Petey turned around and said, “Maybe we can get a dog like that.”
Why hadn’t anyone said that to them? How did Mary get so lucky? How did she fall for the only guy in the group who actually wanted to commit himself? They’d hung out with him just as long as she had, and hadn’t ever found anything intriguing about him. The randomness of love seemed cruel to them. The sour mood made the two girls fall silent, inspecting the tiny Mercedes icon embossed here and there.
“Whose car?” Chrissy finally asked. She wasn’t ever bowled over by material things.
The idea of Matt and Lena, and the missed movie Matt was probably watching right now, made Lorraine think she’d made the wrong decision. Suddenly she regretted that she was sitting here in this car in front of the schoolyard. She was surprised by how much graffiti was on the wall at the handball courts, how much rust had collected on the chain-link fence, and the number of holes that had been cut in it. Had things always looked this way?
“It belongs to a friend of mine, Matt.” It was a strange idea that Chrissy didn’t know one of her friends and that one of her friends didn’t know Chrissy. They were the Bobbsey Twins, for Christ’s sake.
“Must be a pretty good friend to lend you this car.”
Lorraine couldn’t tell if Chrissy was jealous or snooping around for more information. Either way, she didn’t want to get into it. She didn’t like the way she was feeling, the way she didn’t understand how she was feeling. So she changed the subject. “When did this place get so grody?” She posed the question to her friend, noticing a couple of kids she recognized as her brother’s friends enter through a rather large cut in the fence.
“What the frig are you talkin’ about? It’s exactly the same as it always was. Everything’s the same. Nothing friggin’ changes.” She grew silent again, and judging from the way she checked and then rechecked her watch, Big Bobby was already late.
“Are those the new jeans?” she asked Lorraine after a few minutes.
“Yeah, they just unpacked them yesterday. Aren’t they hot?”
“Totally. How much?”
They always discussed how much. In fact, sometimes they negotiated price allowances and split the cost of clothes so they could share them. There was no reason Lorraine should feel so uncomfortable as she did just then sharing the fact that the jeans had cost $120—twenty bucks more than she swore she’d never spend on jeans last week, one hundred more than the week before. She lived in the City now. She worked at a Fifth Avenue salon. She had to dress the part. She had the money. She’d been hanging on to it forever. It was there for spending. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Lie or tell the truth? She didn’t know which way to go. But she’d never lied to her friend before, at least not when they weren’t both aware of the lies, and she wasn’t about to start then. Chrissy’s ugly fleece depressed her. She lowered her voice to a whisper: “A hundred and twenty.”
“I’m sorry. I surely didn’t hear you correctly. Because I thought you said a hundred and twenty freakin’ dollars. And there’s no way you said that, right?”
Was Chrissy always this judgmental? Was Lorraine that way, too? She tried to appeal to her friend’s more fashion-conscious side.
“Well, honestly, they sell for double that, so it was a steal, really. And they’re like a whole new look in denim, forget for a second the amazing cut—which is the main reason they are so pricey—these studs are hand done. Just look at them! I’ve never seen anything like it. Just like when we were young, but the way they should have looked. You wouldn’t believe the things these jeans can do for your thighs. Fantastic!”
“Whatever, Lorraine. That’s ridiculous. Try to talk yourself into it all you want, but it’s insane and you know it.” Chrissy folded up tight and turned her gaze out the passenger window to a yellow car at the light.
“Chrissy’s temporary bouts of Big Bobby-induced coldness were normally easy for Lorraine to handle. You knew the reason, you ignored the behavior accordingly. But tonight she couldn’t. Tonight the coldness between them only enhanced Lorraine’s confusion about her current status in life.
Why had she come here? She knew the answer. Everyone knew the answer. And here she was sitting in a Mercedes, looking like a million bucks, and the only one having a good time was Pooh-Pooh, who apparently, could get used to anything. Ah, to be a big, dopey dog.
At eleven Lorraine called it a night and drove the Mercedes slowly home, past Tommy’s house, because she just couldn’t help herself. His blue Mustang wasn’t there. She didn’t think it would be, but it still put her in an even sourer mood.
When she arrived home, five twisty shrubs later, everyone was sleeping, except for her brother, who was probably out making the schoolyard look even worse, if he wasn’t ruining some girl’s life by making her fall in love with him and then stringing her along like a cat with a length of bright yarn.
Pooh-Pooh would have probably been a problem if Lorraine hadn’t come home in the Mercedes. Her mother disliked dogs for the mess they came along with. Big rats! She’d once called them that.
The two of them went straight for the kitchen, where Lorraine emptied a can of smelly mush onto a paper plate (God help her if her mother came in and found a dog eating from one of her dishes). She allowed the tap to get nice and cold and then filled the collapsible dog bowl she’d bought for him the other day in Bendel’s chichi travel shop, Flight 001. A designer dog bowl—maybe she had gone over the edge.
But she didn’t think so when she saw him lapping out of it. God, that dog was happy. He had everything in the world and didn’t even know it. All that punctuated his life was attention and food, exercise and excrement. Maybe, she thought, as the dog finished with a major lick reaching the top of his head, then click-clacked toward Lorraine at the chair she’d sat in since she could sit, he isn’t that different from me after all.
He was a good dog; that was for sure. He didn’t judge her on how much money she could spend on a pair of jeans, didn’t take his own personal problems out on her, and never made her feel lonely or out of place. She could even fart really loud right in front of him and he wouldn’t make a peep. Pooh-Pooh snuggled up in bed with Lorraine the same way he’d gotten into the habit of back at Mrs. Romanelli’s. They watched a couple of reruns of Friends and, with arms entwined, fell into a deep sleep.
When she first heard the noise, Lorraine thought maybe there was something to that ridiculous Ghost Hunters show. Perhaps her grandmother was coming back to tell her something. It seemed like a pretty suitable time for a haunting from her family’s matriarch, what with living at her best friend’s apartment, being wrapped in the warm, leathery paws of said friend’s huge dog, and living out her grandmother’s dreams the way her mother was constantly reminding her to do.
Also, she’d just appeared to Lorraine in a dream, wearing that flowery housecoat with the red piping that Lorraine always remembered her in toward the end, when all she wanted to do was sit in the patch of sunlight in the back and read Nora Roberts books without being bothered. In the dream, her hair was still thick and wild as a head of broccoli, and similarly styled in the same natural bunches of curls Lorraine had been born with. She’d scared Lorraine many times, waking her in the middle of the night to say that somebody named Stetson had just traveled back from the future to pick her up and she just wanted to say, You can all go to hell—no, wait a minute, we are already here. Hell IS Brooklyn, Sayanora! She’d let Lorraine know this before rushing out to the front yard, at which point the whole family would have to chase her down the block.
In the dream, Lorraine’s grandmother had woken her in the same way, that thick, coarse hair threatening with every one of its coils to scratch or tickle, but she said, “Lorraine, what the fuck are you doing?” (Her grandmother loved to curse. She could tell it shocked people.) “You’re sleeping with a dog in the same bed I left you in a year ago, and you’re still pining over the same boy who’s got you hanging on by a thread. And don’t tell me I don’t understand about love, because goddamn it, I do. I stayed here with your grandfather until the day he died, giving up all my dreams, and don’t you think I didn’t hear you and that spinster Romanelli talking about me like that. Now, get off your ass and make nice with that Mercedes boy.”
So, Lorraine ignored the noise, thinking it was merely her grandmother, who wasn’t done doling out lessons for the night. It wasn’t odd for an Italian grandmother to come back and haunt you in your dreams. And it wasn’t odd for them to haunt you for real, either, if you listened to any of the women at church. But Lorraine hadn’t ever had it happen to her before, so she was starting to get freaked when minutes later, Pooh-Pooh was up and barking like mad at the noise, which was still rattling every few seconds. It sounded like a slow typist at a computer keyboard. But her grandmother didn’t know how to type, or use a computer for that matter.
Finally Lorraine opened her eyes and followed Pooh-Pooh to the window. Squeezing a fuzzy slipper tightly in her right hand (what the hell was she gonna do with that?), she rested her free hand on Pooh-Pooh, who was standing upright with his paws at the window, and looked down to the street herself.
To the delight of her nether regions, it was neither a ghost nor her grandmother. The figure was much more elusive than that—it was Tommy. And he was throwing rocks at her window as if she were some character in a Grimm’s fairy tale. Surely this was not really happening.
She jerked back from the window to catch her breath. When she pulled herself together, she returned to see that Tommy was still dressed for the evening in a three-button open long-sleeved Henley tee. Even from there his eyes gleamed, lit the whole block. It was unbelievable what this boy could do to her.
“I gotta get outta here,” he said. “Come on, take me, Lorraine.”
Oh! To hear him say her name like that! To look up at her with need.
Lorraine did not waste timing thinking what her grandmother’s ghost might have to say about it. She grabbed Pooh-Pooh and her car keys and allowed the man she was mortifyingly in love with to drive her to her new home.
As they passed that view of forever broken New York skyline just before the bridge, Lorraine didn’t try to put her feelings in a category or think too much what it might mean about her relationship to Manhattan, that her heart swelled with pride. They crossed one of the most beautiful, bold bridges in the world over to it.
They’d driven in silence, alone with their feelings, which were on both parts so big they filled the whole car and the length of the road beyond. Lorraine and Tommy, driving in a Mercedes-Benz, with a dog so enormous in personality it outsized his body by a mile.
The things we do for love. You could fill all the pages in all the journals in all the world with those things, and still not have enough room to fit everything in. You could tear yourself inside out, forget everything you ever were, start over and then start over again, and still that might not get you what you wanted, but it wouldn’t stop you from trying. The world could be watching you and directing, “Wake up! Snap out of it!” and you wouldn’t hear because the look on someone’s face when he was driving was so all-encompassing there was no room in your head for anything else. The reflection of a streetlamp glittering off his eye could hold your attention indefinitely. What else could you do but give into it all?
“Lorraine, look at you.” He was whispering and burying his head in her hair, breathing in loudly. “You smell so good.” It seemed Tommy was living out some kind of dream of his own as he said these things so slow, and so thought out, like they were coming from somewhere familiar and yet untapped.
They were on the bed Lorraine had called her own for a little while now, and which, after her Brooklyn trip, seemed more inviting than she’d remembered leaving it. He stayed there, at the underside of her hair for a while, kissing and crying and holding on to her tighter than she remembered him capable of. From there, he traveled down to her neck, up to her chin, found her mouth, danced around it with breathy, feathery kisses, and then plunged in deep, finding her tongue with apparent pleasure.
At finding her Cosabella thong and matching pink lace bra, Tommy seemed to be living out a fantasy of his own. Rather than pull the outfit from her body as she’d remembered him doing before, he kept it on, stretching the elasticized material out of the way here and there, and finally, teasingly, stretching her panties aside to make room for him. With a groan, they were joined.
Later, when they lay in Lorraine’s bed, Tommy did that finger-combing thing she loved through her hair and finally spoke. “This is the most comfortable bed I’ve ever laid in, Lorraine. My god. Where do you get a bed like this?”
Lorraine didn’t know. It had been a case of sheer luck for this one to fall into her hands—for the whole thing to fall into her hands. And now, finally, she could appreciate the luck of it, enjoy the blessings of it, with less confusion about her feelings.
She excused herself to slip on a miniscule black negligee Tabby had put aside for her, and the garment had the desired effect. Again, they took all they could from each other.
“You’ve done it, Lorraine. You really have.” The following morning, when Tommy said this, wrapped in a silk Chinese throw blanket, the crimson hue contrasted against his tanned arms propped on Mrs. Romanelli’s kitchen table, Lorraine saw everything done, complete. Finally, she thought, the chase is over. Finally, we are where we should be. She didn’t get into the logistics, the who, what, when, and even worse, what might happen when Mrs. Romanelli came back and all of this good fortune slipped through her fingers. There was tomorrow for that.
Out the window they saw with a smile a billboard that resonated with both of them. Especially Lorraine, whose smile was an appreciation for the significance those nails and the girl who they belonged to might have on this city that had so greatly impacted her life.
“Guido Nails,” it said. “Only at Guido’s, Park Avenue.” And there it was a picture of Lorraine’s very own hands, standing high over Park Avenue, with one palm open and one closed, an elegant van Gogh-like blossom in an autumnal burnt orange on the pointer finger, a golden B on the left pinkie. She was reminded of what a fortune-teller had once said to her—your right hand shows your fate, your left hand, what you do with it. And she looked from the hands, so perfect—airbrushed to a milky flawlessness—to Tommy, who thought probably of what he’d seen in the paper. Though her face flushed, she told herself it wasn’t so important why she was here. She was here, right?
____________________________________
Lorraine,
The most beautiful girl in all of Brooklyn.
The girl I’d waited for until the time was right.
I could’ve had a different woman every night
And oftentimes I did, although it was a sin,
I don’t know why I do what I do,
But you always know, right on cue.
Lorraine, I love you.
—Tommy
____________________________________
eBay auction block #8
Description: Poem written on September 21, 2004, at 4:30 A.M., after Tommy spent the night at all the bars
on Third Avenue. The poem was never given to Lorraine.
Opening bid: $50
Winning bid: $4500 by Tommy1@aol.com
Comments: Dude, that is a very touching poem, and I am planning on having it published.