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Paris Daaahling has the most wonderful pool table. The low lights, the red felt, the curved mahogany—it all makes for one intense game of eight ball.
—Velvet Rope Diaries, New York, New York
4:00 p.m.
I just finished typing and clicked Print. I pulled the documents from the printer my computer was hooked up to and looked around at all the editors and felt part of something great. I mean, look at me! I’m a real journalist, struggling against deadlines, writing drafts, mining the depths of my soul for the right words.
On the way back to my desk, I waved the papers at Theresa, but maybe she didn’t see me because she didn’t wave back. To recover my dignity, I turned the wave into a stretch, and when I turned around to sit, the papers were yanked right from my hand.
“What the?”
JOSEPH! What is up with him?
“Time’s up!” he sang, like a very, very mean game show host.
“What do you mean? I have an hour left!”
“Oh, well, I have to leave early—dentist appointment; you know my grody teeth and all...”
8:00 a.m., Friday, September 23
Dr. Fenwick looked over my notebook for a long while. I saw him snicker though he tried to turn it into a cough both times. He nodded a lot, which I took as a good sign. He also stopped, looked up to consider an idea, and smirked once. It could be exhausting trying to translate the reactions of your shrink.
“So!” he said, swinging one long leg over the other. He was rather tall. His hair was even messier today like he’d been caught in a wind tunnel and couldn’t find the exit. For a long time. “You’ve had a busy week!”
“I sure have.”
“So how is the new job?” he asked. “I saw your column today and it was fantastic. My wife and I were saying it’s a king of soap opera in print. We’re dying to see what happens with David. And I didn’t realize, but it seems like Ray likes you, too. So we’ll have to address that.”
“Ray? That’s just nuts. He doesn’t like me! We’re friends! He’s just protective because he doesn’t want to deal with me watching Lifetime movies in those ugly pajamas! Believe me, it’s not pretty.”
Dr. Fenwick picked up his coffee mug and slid he fingers up and down the side. “Just consider the possibility, Anna. That’s all I’m saying.”
Hmmph. And what did he mean about “too”? Was I here to save my life or to debate whether or not Ray and I are in love with each other—a thing that people have been bothering us about for, I don’t know . . . forever! I didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. After all, I was paying serious cash for these forty-five minutes, so I tried to relax.
“So how did it feel to face your fears? To do everything you were terrified to do in such a short period of time?”
I considered the very, very strange events of the past twenty-four hours, the number of times I’d made a fool of myself and lived to tell. “It’s kind of like stepping inside your favorite movie, but not knowing any of the lines,” I said. “If that makes any sense.”
“Yes, yes,” he agreed, but how was I to know if he really understood? All I had was the knowledge that I was putting myself out there. Beyond that, there are no guarantees. This, he explained to me as I wrote out my check and tried to rebalance my checkbook.
“Maybe stop trying to read the books, Anna, the books about the fires.”
I left the office sluggishly, hesitant to face the day. The thing is, I know Fenwick said he and his wife enjoyed the column, but I was paying him, wasn’t I? I just wasn’t sure I wanted to know what people thought. I’d had my run of living, and though it was far from perfect, I was devastated to think that if I’d failed, I’d have blown the chance I’d been waiting for my whole life.
9:00 a.m.
“Ed wants to see you, child.” Belinda rang my extension first thing. I didn’t know which way this would go since I knew Joe was out to sabotage me. Plus, I hadn’t received any edits from the copy editors except, “Can we change this comma on line 17 to a colon?” I had my doubts this could have been the only problem. There were two possible scenarios: either it was so bad there was no point in trying to fix it, or it was so bad they’d gone ahead and rewritten the entire thing, and that one sentence on line 17 was the only one of mine remaining.
Really, why had I thought anyone would be interested in me and my stupid problems? People want someone glamorous, intriguing, someone they can be jealous of or horrified by or obsessed with—a movie star, society girl, or a business tycoon—not a boring, mediocre-looking girl with bushy hair from Kellmore, Long Island, birthplace of the twelve-foot hero sandwich. Let’s face it, I was on my way to my professional funeral, here.
I’d only been in Ed’s office once, to take notes for a meeting he’d had with Nasty. I remember him jabbing his finger a lot and saying, “Get us on Entertainment Tonight. I don’t care if you have to sleep with every guy there . . . just do it!” and slamming his fist on the table over and over. I’ve heard stories about people being so scared of Ed they never speak again, the one girl whose hair turned white around her face, the guy who passed out and nearly fell out the window, the secretary who suffered a heart attack. But surely those were rumors—stupid rumors. Let’s face it, nobody’s hair turns white like that. Geez.
Right?
“Have you seen my little princess here?” Ed turned a silver photo frame around for me to see in place of a more traditional greeting, such as “hello,” maybe. The picture was of a fish stick of a girl—probably around two years old, on a beach in one of those ruffle-waisted swimsuits with a hippo doing the backstroke on the front. It looked like she was about to eat a pile of sand from a pink shovel. Her hair was a fluff of gold.
“Oh, she’s too cute!” I said. I bet Ed was a fabulous father. He didn’t seem so scary to me.
“Yeah, takes after her dad,” he said, winking. “Here’s the follow-up photo.” He chuckled, handing over a picture in which she had just eaten the sand. The shovel was dropped at her feet and she was hollering her head off—you could see clear back to her tonsils face red as a beet.
“Now, I want to talk about your column,” he said, folding his hands in the middle of his desk, which was completely clear—just a couple of clearly labeled folders on one corner, marked, “Joseph James, disciplinary,” and “Joseph James, disciplinary 2.” Now those were interesting! I’d have to ask Belinda about them for sure.
He sat quietly for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then he lifted an eyebrow. Smiling huge, he said, “Anna, by some crazy, fucked up miracle, the advertisers loved it. The focus group loved it.”
He was kidding, right? This was a joke . . . pretty mean-spirited, but . . . a joke. Right?
He continued. “I, on the other hand, freaking hated it. I thought it was complete crap! I mean, who the hell cares about you and that stupid guy you live with who’s obviously in love with you and vice versa—and that poor old chap you’ve brought into the ridiculously deranged triangle. It’s like a soap opera for newspapers; like we need another medium for those, right?”
He looked at me like I was supposed to answer this. And, like a moron, I did. “Right.” When he didn’t say anything, I rolled my eyes for effect.
“Still, it’s a more powerful reaction than I’ve seen in a long time. Believe me, I would have thought that ‘Wear Someone Else’s Clothes for a Week’ column would have been critically acclaimed. I really did. But who knows what’s going to make those damned advertisers happy. They’re sucking our blood!”
He seemed to have gone off on some deranged tangent, his arms heavenward, his hand shaking wildly, and I clawed my nails into the chair arms, fearing the validity of the aforementioned rumors.
Suddenly, he appeared to have snapped out of it. “I wouldn’t have expected this sort of thing. I was just envisioning a straight review—maybe a couple of snarky comments, some full-of-it conflated verbiage in the style of the New York Times, you know . . .”
“Right.” It was just that was the only word I could find.
“But you just went and crapped all over that. You turned it upside down, transformed it into something genuinely unreadable, as far as I’m concerned.”
I knew it. I just knew it couldn’t work. I tried! See, I tried and I put myself out there, and Joseph didn’t even let me fix it! Maybe if I fixed it . . . then it would have been better and I’d still . . .
“The thing is, though, it doesn’t matter a piece of crap what I think, does it?”
“Um, no?” My nail cracked excruciatingly, from the pressure of digging it into the chair—way down the nail bed; I could feel the skin tear.
“It’s all about the damned advertisers. No integrity anymore. None! But, hey, if the advertisers want it and those blasted ‘readers’ like it, well then I have no choice but to bring it on as a permanent column. Velvet Rope Diaries,” he said it dreamy like he was seeing the words in print.
Then he pulled out the issue, turned to the column which read just that. It was the first time I’d let myself look at it. I must have been tearing up because Ed handed me a tissue and said, “Hey, hey, hey, there’s no crying in journalism . . . though technically I don’t know if I’d call you an actual journalist, but still, you get the picture.”
The phone rang, bringing our meeting to an end. Belinda Buzzed in. “Rima on line one.” His face fell, instantly flushed. “I’ll have to take this now. You know the way out.”
Outside the office, I asked Belinda, “Who’s Rima?”
She leaned in and whispered, “Ed’s psychic.”
“No, really.”
“Really,” she deadpanned.
As I returned to my desk, I realized I forgot to ask about Joseph’s disciplinary folders. Maybe it was better if I didn’t know.
Afterward, Theresa and I lunched for free at this totally cool steak house that’s members-only for journalists.
“Ed tells all of us that,” Theresa told me. “The old ‘I don’t know if we can call you an actual journalist’ comment; please. He needs to get some new material.”
I had a perfectly cooked New York strip, and Theresa said we wouldn’t have to pay for a thing. Journalists get to do these things for free because everyone wants them to try their goods or services so they will write about them.
“Believe me, they’re saving money by letting us eat here! The profit they’ll make off the publicity is better than any ad you can buy,” she said. Theresa wasn’t going to leave a tip. “They don’t expect you to.”
I told myself I wasn’t going to do anything to piss her off, but at the door, I acted like I had to pee and ran back with twenty bucks for the waiter. There went dinner.
Next, Theresa took me to the “staff salon” for a new haircut. This place gave out free hairstyling cards to everyone on the New York, New York editorial staff.
“Please get a perm! Please!” Theresa said everyone was getting “the new perm,” and that it would give my hair so much body. I kept thinking 1988 and poodle curls. And really, didn’t my hair have too much body already—like wasn’t it a whole other body on top of my body? But Theresa can be bossy as hell. And a little scary.
So I did it. And whoa, she was right. These weren’t poodle curls at all. They were beautiful flowing waves that looked like I’d put hot rollers in. And though it had more movement and shape, it didn’t look like a Christmas tree at all. The effect was rather striking, actually. Richard at Mumble & Mumble was a magician, apparently.
“Oh, you know what, though?” he asked.
“She needs highlights,” Theresa answered.
“Yes exactly, Miss Smartie Pants.”
Richard (pronounced Ree-shard) doled out air kisses and a French accent that sometimes turned Brooklyn. Ree-shard would not be “performing the coloring services.” However, he would bring Christi-a-na up to “consultate” with me before she applied “zee color.”
Christi-a-na was tall. And beautiful. Normally you wouldn’t want to have your hair colored by someone that beautiful, because what might happen is that when she was done and spun you around to check yourself out in the mirror, she very possibly might look a trillion times better than you did.
But that day, it didn’t matter. I felt happy for Christi-a-na that she was so pretty. She had great ideas and I felt I could trust her.
Ree-shard watched as Christi-a-na applied some “caramel” here, a bit of “honey” there, rubbed some ice cold “flash” over my hair to “bring all the tones into harmony.” She applied a handful of foamy styling product and smushed my hair around, and then blow-dried it into a swingy, finished style.
“Oh, that color is divine!” Christi-a-na exclaimed.
Really, it wasn’t such a drastic difference, just more movement, a slightly lighter hue, but that made a huge difference. My cheekbones jutted dramatically, the shorter layers brought attention to my eyes.
Probably after years of not looking great, this was my proper due. I was even more thrilled when, back at the office, Theresa took me to the sample closet. She pulled out skirts, blouses, jackets, cardigans, vests, calf-height boots. I tried everything on right there in the closet—my lifeless chest on display—and she told me what should go with what, hung each outfit into zipped bags, and added long necklaces, dangling earrings, and cuff bracelets to each before she pushed me out the door. “You’re really great at this Theresa,” I said.
“I know.” She smiled. “It’s my job. Just like you’re great at what you do.”
I was never good at accepting compliments, so I barely registered it. “But are you sure I can just have all this?” Already in my hands was ore clothing than I had in my closet from an entire lifetime, never mind how much nicer. It didn’t seem very . . . what’s the word? I have no idea what that word is . . . wait . . . it’s coming . . . oh yeah . . . me. None of this seemed very much like me.
1:30 p.m., Wednesday, September 28
“One matzoh ball and a tuna on rye!” the little man behind the counter called off my lunch order like a newsboy hawking papers.
“A corned beef on kaiser with a big pickle!”
Belinda swirled her eyes and said, “Oh, I better grab my big pickle.”
We brought our orange plastic trays to a seat in back, under a deteriorating ivy plant. I was facing the wall.
“So what’s up?” I asked. Her hair looked like it had just been set, the rolled back waves of blond stood nearly a half-foot off her head. The sides had been pulled back loosely with two combs. Her unique brand of beauty struck me. There was melancholy to it as if she’d had her heart broken and now wore it stuffed somewhere inside her hairdo. Her lipstick was a little too bright, her blush unblended, like two pink polka dot stickers.
“Ah, you know,” she said, biting into the generous corned beef sandwich half. Poppy seeds hailed onto her paper plate.
“Yeah,” I said. I tried the soup. It was too hot so I stirred it, watched the skinny noodles swish around the big fluffy matzoh ball. “So what’s wrong?” I could tell there was something off with Belinda today. She had a chipped nail, no necklace or earrings on, and that just wasn’t her.
She breathed big, sucked a sip of cream soda. Some of it foamed back up through the straw. “Gerry’s having ‘anxiety attacks.’” She made air quotes. “A man, can you imagine?”
As a matter of fact, I could. “That’s pretty common, Belinda,” I said. I chipped off a bit of matzoh ball with my plastic spoon.
“Is it? I mean, there’s nothing wrong, and he’s sitting there worrying about the most ridiculous things—called in sick to work, didn’t eat dinner last night, woke up at two in the morning . . .”
“Did he see a psychiatrist yet? They can give him some medication.”
“Yeah, he did that . . . but it’s taking a while to get the right dosage. It’s just I want to shake him and say, stop being a moron!”
“That’s difficult, isn’t it? When you can’t empathize with someone because you can’t understand how they’re feeling?”
She nodded vigorously as she politely chewed her corned beef, eventually swallowed. “That’s it exactly. I can’t understand it at all.”
“You know what I’ve always found comforting when I’m feeling really out of it? If people are just there for me. I don’t expect them to understand how I feel because few people have this ‘problem’ of mine, but if I know the person loves me and wants me to know that, well that is all they can do. You can’t fix it, Belinda. You can’t go over to him and yell, ‘Snap out of it!’ It just doesn’t work that way.”
“You’re probably right.” She considered this, bit off some pickle. “Hey, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop trying to make it better and instead try to make him feel warm and safe and cozy. Support him. He’s a good man, Gerry.” Belinda smiled far beyond where we sat. She smiled at some funny thing Gerry did that made her love him, that made her want to do the right thing when it was most difficult.
Seeing her like that made me feel better, too.
5:30 p.m.
“Why don’t we talk a bit about the big day?” Fenwick said.
Was it worth it? Drudging this up over and over, giving it a second life this way?
“Go on,” he said, fingering the hair over his ear. “Why don’t you tell me more detail, about when you were first alerted to the fire, what you think you did. Don’t worry so much over the accuracy, just what you think happened.”
I wouldn’t cry now. I knew that. This was a legend, an unbelievable thing. “Well, I’d been drawing. Sitting there, just drawing. I had my old transistor on, the one my mother had put on my bedside table. I was singing along to a popular song, drawing jelly beans, because I had a little paper bag filled with them, from the tobacco shop. We’d gone there the day before and I’d scooped a rainbow of them into that waxy bag. The man behind the counter had weighed it, folded it neatly over at the top, and handed it down to me. My father paid seventy-five cents. He hadn’t had to look at the change, just felt around in his pocket and knew, palmed it over. For me, these trips with my father to that shop were something to look forward to. The way he lifted me up to scoop the candies, the way he half smiled, his tobacco sweet smell all around.
“I was getting the jelly bean right. I mean, I was really reproducing the shine and shadow and plumpness of it. I loved to draw, but it had to be right.
“I smelled it—the smoke, I mean. And I did all the wrong things. I forgot all the safety lessons from school, from that fireman who’d come to the cafeteria with the coarse facial hair and the big arm muscles and put on his turnout for us, waved around the ax, while we all shrieked and flinched. I forgot to stop, drop, and roll, and I just stood at the top of the staircase trying to remember what to do and thinking, “There’s an easy way to remember to change the batteries in your smoke alarm.” It was getting very hot and very dark, and I barely recognized our house, its cheery beach scene paintings and my mother’s afghans over the chair backs. I didn’t know if I should stay put or go up to the attic or downstairs. I couldn’t remember who was home with me. Finally, an actionable thought came to me and I yelled, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I remembered he was working on that window seat, the one for our family room for reading in the sun. He’d was putting the polyurethane coat on it, and was going to hammer it into the area under the bay window when it was dry; I’d been desperate to curl up and try it out.
“I ran and ran but he didn’t answer, and then I found the basement door and didn’t think to feel it with my palm, open it slightly, quickly, to make sure there weren’t flames. Instead, I swung it wide open and let in all that oxygen, and the fire lashed out at me, catching miraculously, only my shoelace—the pretty one with the rainbows and fluffy clouds—and I kicked the door shut and ran. I tried to scream the whole way, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ but nothing would come out, there was no air, just the words cyclonic in my head, like one of those terrible dreams, and mucous ran down my face. My tiny shoe fire had spread slowly up my sock.
“Mrs. Sothers removed the shoe and sock right away, stamped them out on her lawn, then called the fire department, pulling me away from the window, not wanting me to see it all, the cracked glass and heavy smoke and the neighbors pointing their garden hoses.”
Fenwick fiddled a little too long at an itch under his eye, his Adam’s apple rose and fell. He puckered his lips and then let them relax. “Did you ever think, Anna, that people like you, people who’ve gone through these unbelievable things, that maybe they have a more developed perspective than the rest of us? That maybe you can use that to help people in some way?”
Me? Help someone? I thought Fenwick must be confused. It was the one thing I hadn’t been able to do; it was my greatest failure. What in the world could I ever do to help people?
7:30 p.m., Thursday, September 29
Tonight was Nina’s birthday party. Ray and I found the best photo of her, at this pie-eating competition we held at our holiday party two years ago, and we had it blown up in poster size, and plastered the entire room with copies. In it, she’s got blueberry filling all over her mouth and a bit on her nose, and above her left eye. We bought her a gift certificate to this really hot spa, Perfect, which claims to make you look five years younger in one afternoon. She’s been talking about the place for two months, so it was pretty obvious that’s what she wanted. But the real tip-off was when she said, “Get me a gift certificate to Perfect for my birthday.”
I decided to wear one of the outfits Theresa gave me—deep blue velvet pants and a matching silk blouse with a huge gold necklace hanging down to my waist. I wore the shoes David gave me because he was coming.
“I don’t think those shoes match,” Ray said. We were standing in the kitchen mixing a pitcher of frozen margaritas.
“What do you mean?” I thought they went well. In fact, I knew they did, because Theresa suggested I wear them with the outfit.
“I just mean I think they’re a little tacky. Like they’re trying too hard to be perfect, to be someone—er, something—they think you need.”
“Oh.” It was a little awkward because it was pretty clear he wasn’t talking about the shoes. I didn’t want him to hate David. I didn’t think there was much substance to Dr. Fenwick’s allegations, especially in light of the fact that Ray was bringing another girl to the party—someone he’d met at happy hour yesterday—but it was still a touchy thing to have strain between Ray and David. What did he mean, trying to be someone they think I need?”
Thank god, I was saved by the bell. Belinda was first to arrive.
“Belinda!”
Her boyfriend, Gerry, was different than what I expected. Severely straight-laced, he was medium height, only a couple inches taller than Belinda, with blue, but not striking, eyes, and he wore a checked button-down collar shirt with khakis, a brown belt, and matching shoes. One was untied. Next to him, Belinda looked even wilder, and I saw why they worked. I felt my warmth toward her swell. Our familiarity, her blond swoops, her daring neck, and hemlines were, just then, an overwhelmingly wonderful thing.
I hugged her as if it were my own birthday. “And this must be the handsome Gerry.” He grimaced like he knew he was anything but, and this made me like him immensely. I hoped they would get through their rough patch.
David showed with a gift for Nina, wrapped in pretty Chinese paper. One by one, lots of my friends arrived—Judy from advertising, Theresa showed in some gorgeous baby doll dress in white lace. I had a habit of getting close to friends quickly. And when I saw her now, it was like meeting an old friend who completed me. It was irresistible to me—the urge to share them with my other friends and pile up our good times to look back at when I needed to. “Theresa, have you met Gerry and David?”
They shook hands. “So this is the dashing David . . .”
“And where exactly am I dashing off to?” David asked.
“To get me a drink?” Theresa said, turning her gold evening bag in her hands.
“What would you like?”
“A martini?”
David winked, and I escorted him to the bar as she struck up a conversation with Gerry.
“You’re a fabulous host,” I said, feeling flirty.
He was in dark denim jeans and a striped black, white, and blue shirt, which he looked unbelievable in.
“Anna! Emergency in the kitchen!” Ray pulled me from my fantasy, past the crowd, into our tiny galley kitchen.
“What? What is it?” Nothing looked off-kilter to me.
He opened the freezer and pulled out the cocktail franks. “I don’t know how to do these,” he said, grimacing.
“Oookayyyyy,” I said, annoyed. He leaned over me as I placed each one on the tray, and when I turned around, he didn’t move back. “Did you really need me?” I tried to ask, the words catching in my throat. We were very close and I think he was wearing a different cologne or something because our proximity took me off guard.
“I did,” he said, his nose nearly touching my forehead.
“Are you okay, Ray? You’re acting kind of strange.”
“Me? I’m fine.” He straightened his posture, smoothed down his shirt.
I laughed nervously, unlatched his hand from the countertop to pop the hors d’oeuvres into the oven, and walked straight out of the kitchen without looking back. I had no idea what had just happened in there, and I wasn’t going to figure it out just then.
David scooped my waist in his palm, and there it stayed the rest of the evening.
Eventually, Nina arrived, and she brought a troupe of three girls from her office. The guy she met at S—Bernard—was possibly coming later. “Either way,” she said as if she couldn’t care less. But she did. I knew she did. Nina wanted to meet the right man and get married so badly it was frightening. I sometimes felt bad for me she met because they wouldn’t know what was about to hit them. They’d have no idea how she’d picked her caterer, florist, two-piece string ensemble, and wedding dress, and that her guest list was updated quarterly. Still, I couldn’t blame her for her overzealousness.
It was her mother’s fault, really. She was outspoken and liked to say, “I know it’s not my place, but . . .” and continue on with the most outrageous things. “I know it’s not my place, Nina, but I bought you this minimizing bra because whatever you’ve been wearing doesn’t seem to be lifting you up and pulling you in enough.” This, over lunch at Saks Fifth Avenue. Her mom always took us to lunch there. She thought it was proper. One day at our proper lunch, over chicken salad scoops with rye toast on the side, Mrs. Schwartz said, “Nina, you know if you don’t get married by next year, you’ll never have a child before thirty.”
Nina had excused herself to the bathroom, and Mrs. Schwartz tried to figure out my equation, working it out on her fingers, until I, too, excused myself, and found Nina in front of a classically lit makeup mirror, crying on a torn leather chair. “I don’t want to care. I don’t want to care.” She said that over and over, and I said, “I know, I know.” And then she stopped herself and reapplied under-eye concealer and powder, and we returned to Mrs. Schwartz, who said my magic year was this one. Thank heavens for my relaxed mom, I didn’t care one bit. At least I had the one normal spike.
At the party, we ate cocktail franks and pizzas on bite-size bagels and mozzarella balls speared with tiny grape tomatoes until there was nothing left. Then we blindfolded everyone in turn to take a swing at the cheerleader piñata we had filled with chocolate candies and individually wrapped licorice ropes. Whenever someone missed and took out, say, a light bulb or kitchen chair, we laughed like crazy. It was likely the alcohol that made it so funny. In the end, it was Belinda’s Gerry who cracked the cheerleader in half across her stomach and sent the candy raining to the floor. Belinda glowed with delight. I liked him even more.
At one thirty in the morning, it was just Nina, Ray, his date—Cherry or Cheery or Cheesy—and me and David. We were on the couch, drunk enough that we all looked like hell. Nina’s Bernard called. He was on his way.
“Hey, Nina said to me, “Why don’t you get us into one of your super swanky places?”
“What? Now? I’m not cool enough to pull off something like that.”
“What are you talking about? Ray . . . tell her she could definitely do that.”
“I don’t think she’s cool enough,” he deadpanned.
“Yeah, me either,” Cheesy Cherry said.
We all looked at her like she was a moldy piece of cheese.
Ray said, “I was kidding,” to his date.
“About what?” she asked.
Nina and I exchanged looks, and I don’t know what exactly it was that made me do it, but I called this club promoter that I’d spoken with a couple of times earlier that day and asked if he could get six people into this hot place, Blossom. He said he could do better than that. He could get us into the not-yet-opened, exclusive to me for New York, New York spot, Paris Daahling, a wine bar.
“But why?” I asked.
“Because I like you. You’re honest. And I’ve got a hunch I’ll get thanked for it by the owner one day.”
Half an hour later, the six of us were at Paris Daahling with some people who were working on the interior design, the construction, and one of the owners—a down-to-earth guy named Pete—who’d always owned pubs but go the idea for “this kind of froufrou place” when he and his friends were playing pool loaded. And he kept joking about it until he realized it was “a damn good idea.”
They had a pool table—a beautiful red one, with fancy carved legs and net pockets for the balls. “Wanna play?” David asked me. On his strong, tall body, his casual attire was so inviting, a fragrant laundry vent on a winter night. I just wanted to snuggle in at his chest. It was difficult not to. We hadn’t slept together yet, and the fact of it pulsated around us.
Before I could answer, Ray cut in and said, “Let’s play teams. Me and Cherry versus you and Anna.”
David chalked his stick in a way that meant business. He chalked a slightly shorter one for me, too. He stood against a wall on one end of the table, tipping his head back every once and again to allow some beer to slip down his throat. His other hand, I was very aware, cupped my waist. I was sitting on a high stool next to him.
“Let’s flip for the break,” Ray said, pulling out a coin.
“Heads,” David called before he was asked.
When Ray tossed the coin into the air, caught, it, and slapped it on the back of his palm, it was in our favor. I was drunk, but could still perceive the displeasure this result caused my roommate.
David stood over the table, shot the cue back and forth a few times for aim, and then smacked the cue ball expertly into the triangle of balls. They scattered in all directions and three stripes went in.
“Nice break,” I said though I could feel the tension thicken and overtake our passion. The words faded out in the fog of it.
He sank three more, and when he missed one, David took it in stride. Parentally, he cheered me on for my turn. “Ah, you’ll win the game for us, baby.” I liked the way he called me baby, or maybe I didn’t. I wasn’t sure. And yet, until then I’d said to Nina, to Ray, over and over, “I just want someone who’ll care for me, who’ll call me baby.”
Ray was horrible at pool. It was one of his traits I liked best. He stood, serious, trying to line up his shot. I knew his technique. He stared at the ball he was aiming for, not at the stick, and he thought there was some magic to that tactic that allowed him to make the shot perfectly. But it didn’t always work. That was because he wound up moving the stick to the right or left at the last second, and as a result, he wouldn’t hit the ball where he meant to. But he didn’t like to hear that.
Cherry was standing off to his side a little, and at that point I downright hated her. Everything she did bothered me—the way she adjusted her shirt as she walked to the table, the way she kissed Ray after each turn like she was some kind of magic luck talisman instead of a one-night stand. She didn’t try to get to know any of us. You could tell she’d be the kind of girlfriend to break up a group, to say something like, “Your friends are mean to me, and I don’t want you to hang out with them.” I wished she’d just go home.
“Shit!” Ray yelled when the six ball he was going for rolled slowly into the nearest bumper and then stopped.
“Hey, that was a good try!” I offered—a cross between cheerleader and den mother—a role I didn’t recognize, a tone I hadn’t noticed before.
“Your turn, hustler,” David said. He was funny. I couldn’t take this rivalry with Ray too seriously. Ray never felt anyone was good enough for me. And, wasn’t I doing the same thing with Cherry? It was all under good intentions, wasn’t it?
“You want some help?” he offered. The truth was I was pretty bad at pool, too, and some help was just what I wanted.
“Sure, I said, smiling. I wanted to kiss him right there and then. Instead, I just leaned in close and pulled him by the hand over to the table.
“Here, why don’t you go for the three ball, over at the end? You can get that right in if you stand here.” He guided me gently by my hips, positioned my stick just at the right angle, stood back, and nodded for me to shoot.
Smack! It went right in. I couldn’t help smiling. It felt great. I could see Ray pouting in the corner. He was against that kind of hands-on help. I knew he preferred people to do things themselves. “Otherwise, you never learn!” he was known to say.
There must have been some truth to that because right away I went for the four ball, and I missed it by a mile.
“Hey it was a great try,” David said sweetly, dishonestly.
Ray looked me right in the eye while he stood back to allow Cherry to screw up her own shot.