Some dogs wound around my ankles or jumped on me as if I were a lover thought to be lost at sea. Others eyed me with princely indifference, only leaving the apartment if I dragged or carried them. That day, the talent agent’s Pekingese growled when I tried to put on its leash and the handbag designer’s Lhasa apsos stopped in the middle of a crosswalk, refusing to continue.
In an elevator after my last walk, a famous actress my mom was obsessed with stepped in just as I was lifting an arm to sniff out any obvious odor. She looked surprised. Then her expression flattened. Perhaps because I equated fame with familiarity, or because I’d never been close to a celebrity before, or because of Janice’s advice to engage when I wanted to retreat, I said, “One of those days.”
In movies she played downtrodden women. What was most remarkable about her now, apart from the fact that she was quite small, was how clean she looked. I was so used to her hardscrabble version that her blown-out hair and simple dress felt almost like drag.
“If it’s any consolation,” the famous actress said, “I can’t smell you from here.”
“You’re my mother’s favorite,” I answered.
Her face fell, with embarrassment or annoyance. In the lobby she left first, greeting the doorman by name. I went to a deli to buy cigarettes and deodorant, jamming them into my bag with the dark clothes I’d packed and my one nice pair of shoes.
Philip and Nicola’s was quiet and cool, the floor a gleaming sea. The sofas anchoring the living room looked both crisp and soft, the light from the ceiling fixtures warm and even. Everything—from the pillows on the sofa to the bowls shining on shelves—seemed intentionally spaced, each a point in some invisible geometry. The house’s quiet seemed by design, too, and when I walked in and said hello, I realized I was whispering. Philip ushered me into the kitchen.
“If people ask, you’re a friend, helping out,” he said.
He stood on one side of the kitchen’s island; Nicola and me on the other.
“So I make people drinks?” I asked.
“Only if you want to,” Philip said.
Nicola nudged my shoulder with his own. He was forty-seven, I’d discovered a few days before, when I dropped off the dogs and found his passport on the dining room table. He looked over at me now, a spray of superficial wrinkles rising around his eyes.
“So when it’s time to eat, I’ll stay in the kitchen?” I asked.
“You’re not the help,” Philip answered.
“I feel like I’m being dense.”
“You’re a friend who helps out,” Nicola said. “You have some drinks. Talk to people as you chop things, tell them you like to cook. A bit of a lie. But a small one.”
He’d told me earlier that week that he was from Milan. His father owned a handbag factory there and thought Nicola being around so many purses had led to his love of men. “As if we’re in it for the purses,” Nicola had said, “and not the cocks,” all with a sense of performance that made me appreciate rather than believe him.
Philip put the duck in the oven and asked me to chop garlic. His brow dropped into a sharp V.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked.
“I have other clothes,” I said, and pulled the black pants and button-down from my bag.
“You’ll look like a waiter,” Philip told me. “Come.”
The next floor of their house was sparsely furnished, paintings centered on its walls. I passed a bathroom with a glossy-looking tub, then walked with Philip into what I guessed was their bedroom. On a mantel sat photographs of them at a younger age, Philip benignly handsome, Nicola stunning. It was strange to see what age had taken from them, what it would steal from me someday, too. We stepped into a closet as large as my living room, where Philip instructed me to take off my shirt. In the cool room, my nipples stood at attention. I worried he’d mistake this as interest then wondered if I could make myself interested, but Philip was busy digging through a drawer. He pulled out a gray T-shirt, its softness exceptional.
“Nicola’s from a while ago,” Philip said, as I put it on. “He doesn’t throw things out, thinks he’ll fit into them again one day.”
Philip’s side of the closet housed white shirts and gray pants, boots in a polished row. He walked me up to the third-floor bathroom.
“You can change in here,” he said. “Shower, too, if you’re so inclined.” He must have sensed my embarrassment, because he added, “It might make you more comfortable.”
I closed the door and climbed into the shower, used soaps that smelled smoky, medicinal. I got so involved in the shower’s assertive water pressure and the products at my disposal that I lost track of time. Remembering where I was, I got out, dressed, and rushed downstairs.
Philip stood alone in the kitchen. He told me I looked much more comfortable, then asked me to chop the garlic again, this time smaller. Nicola came back with flowers and said, “Such a clean farmer, you are.”
“Should I tell people I’m your dog walker?” I asked.
“That shouldn’t come up,” Nicola said.
I showed Philip the newly chopped garlic. He purred out the words “young man” and asked me to make sure the wineglasses didn’t have spots. I polished each one, held them to the light to be certain.
“Look at you,” Nicola said, and laughed so heartily I could see his cavities and the red bend of his tongue.
Guests began to arrive at eight. “Our friend Gordon,” Philip said, introducing me to a man named Marcus with a movie star face and a stout, toddler body.
“I just opened some red,” I said.
Marcus lifted a glass toward me.
Within twenty minutes, six other guests had arrived. “This is Friend Gordon,” Marcus said to each of them and squeezed my arm. I admired his directness, was put at ease by his flirting. He was on his third glass of wine.
Guests watched as Philip and I chopped and assembled. Steam rose from a pot in a gurgling column.
“You’re a chef?” a woman named Audrey asked.
“Just like cooking,” I answered.
“You live nearby?” she asked next.
“Gowanus,” I said.
“Like the canal?”
“Like the neighborhood.”
“I didn’t know people lived there,” she said, waving a toothpick. “You’re an artist then?”
“No.”
Her torrent of questions left me flustered.
“And how do you know Philip and Nicola?”
“The third degree, Audrey,” Nicola interrupted. “We met him in the neighborhood. He’s a lovely new friend.”
I found out later that the guests were art world bigwigs. But that night I was too busy trying to straddle the line between helpful but not the help, between being polite to Marcus when he rested a hand on my back without further encouraging him.
Just as people moved to the table, a painter named Pavel arrived. He had a thin, insect-like handsomeness that grew strange when he opened his eyes wide. He sat between Audrey and me, a fleck of paint on his forearm. The rest of him was so carefully put together that the paint felt more accessory than accident. He spoke with a slight accent that came out mostly in his emphasis. (In New York, I’d experienced more accents than I ever had before, the ones in Minnesota variations in a hard-voweled series.)
Pavel passed me the beans. One of the guests raved about the duck. “It’s just so special,” the man said. I took some beans, passed them.
“You have paint on your arm,” I said.
“Oh,” Pavel answered, but made no effort to look.
“You’re not from here?” I asked.
“Los Angelees,” he answered.
Audrey asked Pavel about his new work.
“There’s a show planned for autumn,” he said. “I’m with Philip’s gallery now.”
Nicola started in on a story about a painter they all knew who was livid with how a museum in Berlin had hung his work.
“I saw that show,” Audrey said.
“I heard they painted the galleries an army green,” Marcus added.
“More like pea soup,” Audrey corrected.
The guests laughed at jokes I didn’t understand, tossed names back and forth I didn’t know and kept mentioning a place that sounded like an herb. I went to the bathroom, sat on its lidded toilet, and wished I was at the bar with Janice, where no one talked about painters or wall colors or things with price tags in the millions. Coming out of the bathroom, I found Nicola waiting.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were out here,” I said.
Nicola eyed me with pleased amusement.
“All this talk about paintings and art fairs,” he said. “This person’s gallery. That person’s collection. I find it boring, and it’s my job.”
“I’m not bored,” I answered. “Feels more like people sharing inside jokes.”
I sensed Nicola evaluating me. I wanted to be liked by him, even more for him to find me interesting, though I had no idea how to make that happen. Laughter rippled through the dining room. Nicola’s eyes stayed on me.
“I saw a famous actress today,” I said, wishing I hadn’t almost immediately.
Nicola put a hand on my cheek then went into the bathroom.
Back at the table, Marcus—drunkenness showing in the unfocused flatness of his eyes—turned to me and asked, “What do you think about pea soup?”
“I haven’t eaten it in years,” I answered. People laughed as if I’d said some witty thing.
Someone brought up a show everyone was raving about, though this person wasn’t sure if it was amazing or trash. For the next ten minutes, they argued over it. Some agreed that it was spectacular, another person insisted that whenever a certain critic called something a revelation, it was more likely bathroom graffiti. I was amazed not only by the strength of their opinions, but also how easily, how certainly they materialized, when for me, a trip to a diner turned complicated when asked How do you like your eggs? and I wanted to answer that I liked them all ways. I also thought of pea soup, which my father had made for me a few times, insisting I’d like it, though I never did.
At the end of the night, Marcus lingered.
“The first to come and the last to leave,” I said to him.
“You were first, Friend Gordon,” he answered.
Philip sorted through leftovers. He seemed to do everything in their house—organizing, managing logistics, constructing complicated meals—Nicola’s sole role to charm. What had hardened into regular handsomeness in Nicola had been delicate years before. Large Cleopatra eyes, a knife-edged jaw. Moments of that beauty resurfaced when he smiled a certain way or held his head at a particular angle. But it was all about placement now, and I understood the work it took for Nicola to disguise how time had had its way with him.
“No need to stay and help clean,” Philip said to Marcus.
“Friend Gordon is entertaining me,” Marcus answered.
He wanted to sleep with me. I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea. It reminded me of the park, though at least there it had been a choice, often an excitingly seedy one. As Marcus watched me scrub the stove, I grew more unsure of how to extricate myself. His flirtation had anchored me for most of the night.
“You live around here?” I asked him.
He smiled as he said, “Chelsea,” my question translated as interest.
“You’re a very nice friend, to help clean up,” Marcus added.
“No need to be coy,” Philip said, and went to get Marcus’s bag.
As soon as Philip disappeared, Marcus kissed me. His tongue pried my teeth open; fingers raked through my hair. His other hand pushed under my jeans and underwear, a finger jabbing at my ass with wormy determination.
“I know we asked you to be friendly to the guests,” Philip said, having returned. “Marcus, he’s actually the help.”
I removed Marcus’s hand from my jeans, stacked bowls back where they belonged as if a moment before I wasn’t being fondled. Philip blew out the candles. Smoke slunk upward in lazy coils.
“I can wait for you outside,” Marcus said.
He kissed me again with Philip only a few feet away, and this dinner suddenly felt like a joke I was the butt of. I missed Food Land in the same way I often, when faced with new, daunting disappointments, longed for familiar ones. I cleaned a wineglass, set it to dry. As acquiescence pushed me toward Marcus, along with a sense that I wasn’t getting what I wanted but was at least getting something, what had seemed sturdy about the night turned rickety. I was about to tell Marcus I’d meet him outside, to walk with him to his well-appointed apartment, sex in exchange for soft sheets and drunken interest and the quiet sleep of a rich person’s place, when Philip said, “Go home, Marcus,” in a scolding tone, and Marcus left.
Nicola, who’d watched the end of this conversation from the hall, threw me a look of playful shock.
“I’m tired,” Philip said. He looked toward the stairs rather than at me, disappointed at the stink I’d brought in, the outfit I’d mistaken for sophisticated, the flirtation I’d managed as badly as the Lhasa apsos earlier that day. I missed Food Land again, where no one thought twice about what I was wearing and people had assumed English wasn’t my mother tongue. The stairs cracked as Philip walked up them.
“You are a busy one,” Nicola said. “The muscle queen. Now boring Marcus.”
“Busy wasn’t my plan,” I answered.
Nicola’s amusement annoyed me. He poured each of us a whiskey.
“I think Philip’s mad at me,” I said.
“He’s a grumpy drunk,” Nicola replied. “I also think he’s surprised. I mean, Marcus is low-hanging fruit.”
As Nicola finished his whiskey and moved on to mine, I grew certain they’d call the dog-walking service on Monday and ask for someone new. Part of me wanted that, if only to turn this evening into a story of being wronged. Nicola walked me to the door.
“Just tell Philip you drank more than you’d planned to,” he said. “He has a wealth of empathy for just that thing.”
Nicola kissed me on the mouth. He let that kiss linger, or maybe the lingering was mine, then asked that I make sure the door locked behind me.
Rather than head home, I returned to Prospect Park. Its constellation of streetlamps glowed, the woods on either side of me smudged in shadow. I hoped someone would appear and, with a nod and a few explicit verbs, say what he wanted to do to me, allowing me to give in, one of my favorite feelings.
A man emerged under a streetlamp. He was old. His thin hair and reddish scalp glistened, and bugs stitched the air around him. He nodded. I nodded back, though I was disgusted at the thought of touching him, more horrified knowing that in my first New York months I might have swallowed that disgust and gone with him behind an elm or a maple. The man smiled. There was kindness in that smile that allowed me to imagine the hard pull of his need, the break from it he hoped to find. But going anywhere with him was an end I wasn’t ready for. So when he stepped closer, I said, “Have a good night,” and his expression hardened. He called me terrible names, his catalog of insults as impressive as it was mean. I walked back down the path, past woods where, in the breaks between this man’s raunchy assault, I heard growled inhales of men already occupied. The man stopped shouting. Still, I wanted to get out of the park. Inside my backpack was an envelope from Philip and Nicola, three hundred dollars inside. I sprinted through a meadow in the expensive T-shirt Philip had given or lent me, knowing that, had anyone seen me just then, they would have guessed I was running from trouble, trouble I’d likely caused.