Aftermath of Dreaming (14 page)

I thought it was much simpler than that—I needed to eat.

“You vegetarians never get enough iron or protein. I want you to see a doctor this week.”

“Okay.” I had no intention of spending money on that. I hadn't opted for health insurance at work, and I could just as easily tell myself what a doctor would say—take iron and eat three meals a day.

I was ready for this topic to end, so I leaned forward to kiss him, my hands rubbing his legs down, around, and inside, and he started to move his lips toward me, but broke away.

“I want to show you something.” He went into the bedroom and came back with a folder of large, glossy pictures, which he spread out on the coffee table next to me. I moved to the couch so I could see. “This is where I'll be.”

It was wonderful and horrible to see the locale that would possess him. I pictured him as he was now—barefoot, black T-shirt and jeans, comfortable in his hotel-living mode—superimposed on each photo. I wanted his easily accessible phone to be going, too.

“It's beautiful. How long will you be?”

“I don't know, honey.” Our heads were bent gazing at the landscapes, surely opposing responses to them in our heads.

“Are you excited to go?” I couldn't look at him when I said it. I wanted to be happy for him, but knew my voice would break if I saw his eyes, knowing they'd be leaving.

“Yeah.” He tested the word. “More ready than excited.” Then he
looked at me seriously and touching his finger to my nose said, “I'm excited about your show.”

“I wish you were gonna be here for it.”

“I know, honey, but it's going to be great—you big fucking art star.” And he grinned at me, drawing me into him, my face in his chest, my arms around his back.

“While you're there,” I said, the words muffled a bit by his soft T-shirt. “Will you think about me?”

“Will you think about me?”

I looked up into his eyes. “Every hour every day.”

“Good.” He kissed the top of my forehead, seeming to end the conversation.

“But are you gonna think about me?” My words held down a wail. With all the things he'd have to do in that distant land and so many people needing him, was there still going to be room in his mind for me?

“Will you, Andrew?”

“Yes, Yvette, I'll think about you.” He kissed me on the lips, quick, soft, and sweet, then turned his hands into fists, playfully swatting me while I moved and turned to regain our embrace.

The phone rang. It was past eleven on a Monday night, and the hotel had been slumbering when I walked in at ten, the beguiling stillness of Central Park extending across the street into the lobby.

Andrew listened on the receiver and said, “Send her up.”

“Who's that?” I suddenly worried it was Lily; that he'd forgotten we shouldn't meet.

“A friend of mine. You'll like her; you'll see.”

The elevator his friend took apparently was an express because the ones I took to Andrew's suite seemed to mosey along. Within seconds it seemed, there was a knock at the door.

He was in the foyer with her far too long. I looked at the pictures again. I killed some time hating the clothes I had on. I thought about going to the window to get a better look at the view, but decided I didn't want to give up the couch—Andrew most likely would sit on it, and I wanted to be closer to him than she would be.

Finally, they walked in. Andrew's hand was on the small of her back. I made myself notice it, this same gesture he used with me, to see it and decide it meant nothing about us that he was using it with her. A vision of being dropped off at school by my father on days I'd missed the bus suddenly hit me. Him being in an environment I wasn't used to seeing him in made his withdrawal from me all the more excruciating, so I could barely tolerate watching his Cadillac pull away. Sitting on Andrew's couch and seeing his hand on this other girl's back was like standing under the school's portico, needing to run to class, but forcing myself to watch my father's car recede.

She sat in an armchair. Andrew sat in the opposite one to the left of me, facing her. All we needed was a fourth for a game of bridge. One sweep of his hand cleared the pictures off the coffee table, then he slid them into their folder, and put it down on the floor. At least she didn't get that part of him.

Her name was Susie. Or Suzy, I guess. She was a writer, Andrew didn't say what kind, but I made a mental note to dislike anything written by someone with that first name, since I'd probably never know her last. She clearly was years older than me, six or seven at least, and was extremely pretty. When Andrew told her that she was, as I was certain he did, she probably took it as her due. There was an ease to that blessing gracing her face, uncomplicated to enjoy like hot chocolate.

I had no idea what we were doing. Why was she here and couldn't she now leave? I would just wait her out and reap my reward in Andrew's bed. Surely soon he would make her leave.

Andrew was telling her all about me—my art, at least—including the big fucking art star part, which I found equally embarrassing and a relief, with a bit of a “Ha-ha, he loves me” thrown in. Sitting serenely in her chair as she listened to him, she appeared powerful, yet submissive, like an employee the boss really needs.

“Honey.” Andrew had gotten up and was reaching his hand out to me. Thank God, he's finally making her leave.

“I'll walk you down,” he said.

My face dropped as I stood up. Andrew took my hand, and turned
us toward the hallway to the front door. It was the opposite of that terrible dream where I need to get away, but can't move—I wanted to stay, but was forced to leave.

“Okay, well, nice to meet you,” I said to her, instantly hating that I was so automatically polite. Couldn't manners have sensors on them—bells that would jangle to prevent them from being blurted out when I didn't want them?

She simply smiled back. A hot-chocolate milk-white-teeth smile. I hated her for it.

Andrew moved me along, and his foyer disappeared past us, but waiting for the elevator made us stand still. He started kissing my cheeks and hands, but I pushed him back, turning away. “Stop it.”

“Are you mad?” The elevator opened while he waited for my response. “Sweet-y-vette, are you mad at me?” He tried to kiss me again, as the doors shut.

“Quit it. What is your problem, haven't I told you no?”

He gave me a look that was blankly innocent and unassailable, like a gentleman in a bad fix. “What did you think was going to happen when you came over here?”

“What did I think?”

He nodded, glad I was seeing his point.

“What did I think?” This time my voice was higher and my stomach got involved, forming the sounds with its loud emptiness. The elevator opened into the lobby which held a radiant hush and uniformed employees.

“I thought you loved me.” I knew they could hear me clear out to the street; I screamed it.

Andrew blanched before turning red as the employees bristled to life while in their stand-still mode.

“Come on, we're getting you a cab.” He was walking next to me, forcing me along, and my attempts to get away from him were contained and redirected by one of his hands on each of my arms.

“No,” I shouted. “I can't afford one, and they won't take one of your stupid hundred-dollar bills anyway.”

All of the employees stared when they heard that, then quickly
looked away. Andrew stopped us at the front desk, pulling me close into him and holding me tight with his left hand, while his right reached into his pocket.

“Could you break this into small bills, please?” His words were lovely, efficient, and calm. The desk clerk hurried to do so without looking up. It felt like a very cordial bank robbery.

“Thank you.” Andrew put all of the money into my palm. “And we need a cab.”

Every employee leapt forward, moving through the revolving door in groups, running to the curb.

“I'll call you in the morning, Yvette,” Andrew said, as we emerged from the revolving door.

“For what?”

“What?” Andrew either didn't hear me or was very confused.

“What are you gonna call me for?” We were standing in the carpeted sidewalk area, which was replete with hotel help waving down cabs or looking surreptitiously at us. “I don't understand what you want me for; you don't let me give you a goddamn thing.” I turned into him and began hitting his chest. He pulled me closer, trying to disguise it as a hug, when a cab pulled up. A line of employees made a corridor to its door for us.

“Into the cab, there you go,” Andrew said, while three employees held open the door. “Take her straight home,” he said to the driver. “Don't let her go anywhere else.”

“I'll call you tomorrow,” he said, and leaned down to give me a kiss on the forehead. I refused to look at him, and when he shut the door, the cab jerked from the curb. A few buildings away, I sneaked a look over my shoulder, but Andrew and the many employees were already gone.

 

The next morning, when I picked up the phone, the first thing I heard was, “Thanks to you, I got to sleep early last night.”

Andrew had said it sweetly, but I still wasn't sure. “What does that mean?”

“It means I sent Suzy home is what it means, sweet-y-vette.”

“Oh.” I was thrilled, but didn't want to show it.

Then he told me that he had people waiting for him in his living room, so call him back in an hour or two, and did I love him?

“Yes, Andrew, I love you.”

I rolled out of bed, and pulled on some clothes to go for a run. So I had met one of the other ones—the ones Carrie had assured me existed, and that I had been pretending did not. But suddenly I realized that Suzy didn't matter—none of them did. They were everyone and no one to him. Had nothing to do with me and him. What I meant to him. What I was to him. As I ran through Riverside Park, I realized that even Lily Creed didn't matter. He was with Lily, but still needed me. If what he had with her had been able to fill that space in him, then it wouldn't have been empty and waiting to strongly pull me in when our eyes met at the restaurant, ready for me to fill it for him. Fill it without having sex. Even though we did have sex that first time, it was clearly an aberration. The other women were a backdrop to my relationship with him, not unlike the trees and grass I was running past. My jealousy of them evaporated like the late summer heat finally had.

 

A week or so later, I was at the restaurant working the eleven-to-eight shift. It was a chilly, rainy, early fall day, and the coat room had been hell during lunch. A dense, tangled mass of hats and attachés, wool and cashmere, umbrellas and shopping bags, even a pet carrier case that, thank God, was empty. A day destined to be a labyrinth of garments hiding for minutes on end while the owners waited impatiently for Lydia and me to find their truant coats. But at least we were doing the shift together. We had a good rhythm going, split the tips we procured evenly, and had fun talking about everyone and everything in between the customers coming and going—though I still had never told her about Andrew. Lydia had a full-length Russian sable coat that she wore the minute the thermometer dipped below fifty degrees. She'd hang it on the rack like a customer's coat, and would let me try it on when no one was around. I never asked
where she got it and she never volunteered. I imagined it was the last vestige of a relationship with some European man, a relationship she had hoped would prevent her from being where she had ended up—working the coat-check room of a restaurant in New York. But she was young and there were lots of rich men. “All you need is one,” she'd say to me and laugh as if she didn't mean it, though I knew she did. It made me think how I had gotten a rich man, but it wasn't like that with him.

The worst part of the shift that day came toward the end when a customer went upstairs and summoned the British manager, Mr. Claitor, to intercede. Claitor flew down the stairs, solidly upright like an animated arrow moving through the air, while the angry, uncloaked customer straggled behind, demanding that his sacred twenty-year-old Burberry be found. After much sorting through and crawling about, the cloak was discovered snuggling under a Persian lamb, as if the coats had taken an instant liking to each other and had colluded on their own. Claitor soothed the customer in his U.K. tones, like a male Mary Pop-pins calming a truculent child, as he held open the treasured trench coat. But once the customer was safely out the door, the scolding began. “If this happens again, there will be changes around here,” he said, glancing at the hole in the counter to make it explicitly clear what he meant, as if Lydia and I didn't understand. “Are you doing your job or am I?” He was awful and wonderful in a
Night Porter
sort of way.

Finally at a little after three, I was able to sneak into the phone booth to call Andrew. His regular call to me that morning had been earlier than normal and brief, just telling me to call him that afternoon.

“Yvette, I have to go now.”

“Okay, I'll call you later.”

“No, I'm going now, leaving, for overseas.”

“Oh, no.” The tears were in my voice and on my face so immediately that I wondered if they had heard his words before me.

“I'll try to call you from there, but I may not be able to. Take down my address in L.A. I'll probably be back here, but I want you to have it just in case.” I hated “just in case.” “Just in case” sounded scary and him-without-me. “Ready?”

The phone booth mercifully had a pencil on a cord and neat pieces of paper in a wooden slot by the inverted hanging directory. I had refilled the scrap paper months before. I had liked that the restaurant supplied it, edges so neat, color so white, but now I hated that it was helping in this parting of Andrew and me.