Everyone Worth Knowing (18 page)

forgot I was about to be sick. He looked even tanner than I remembered,

which was only highlighted by a skintight white

T-shirt, flowy white pants, and some of the straightest, brightest

teeth I've ever seen in a British mouth. He was like Enrique in
The

Tycoon's Virgin Bride,
his looks utterly begging to be on a dust

jacket.

"Uh, yeah, I guess I was. This, uh, has never really happened

to me before. I'm afraid I don't even remember your name."

He seemed to remember that I was an actual person and not a

bed adornment, and sat down next to me on the pillow.

"I'm Philip. Philip Weston. And don't worry about it—I only

brought you back here because I couldn't get two taxis and didn't

want to maneuver to the East Side. Nothing happened. I'm not

some rapist. I'm an attorney, actually," he said with not a little

pride in a thick, upper-crust English accent.

"Oh, well, thanks so much. I really didn't think I drank that

much, but I don't remember anything after dancing with you."

"Yes, well, it happens. Stressful fucking morning so far, don't

you think? I loathe having my post-yoga calm shattered by rubbish

like this."

"Yeah."
He
didn't just wake up in a stranger's bed, but I wasn't

feeling great about my arguing position.

"My housekeeper was washing my Pratesi sheets in scalding-

hot water. I mean, what bloody good are they if you have to

double-check every move they make? Can you imagine what a disaster

it would've been if I hadn't spotted it?"

Gay. He was definitely gay. He wasn't Enrique, but Enrique's

fey friend Emilio. This was a tremendous relief.

"What would have happened, exactly?" I washed my own

sheets in hot water and dried them on high because it seemed like

the best way to make them softer faster. But then again, I'd bought

them at Macy's and admittedly didn't spend all that much time

thinking about it.

"What would have happened? Are you
serious?"
He strode

across the room and spritzed some Helmut Lang cologne on his

neck. "She would've burned out the thread count, that's what!

Those sheets cost twenty-eight hundred pounds for a king set, and

she would have destroyed them!" He put the bottle down and

began patting what I hoped was aftershave but was more likely

moisturizer into his golden skin. I did a quick calculation: four

thousand dollars.

"Oh. I guess I didn't understand. I, uh, I didn't know sheets

could be that expensive. But I'm sure if I paid that much for them,

I'd be concerned, too."

"Yes, well, I'm sorry you had to endure all that." He pulled the

T-shirt over his head to reveal a completely bare, perfectly sculpted

chest. It was almost a shame he was gay, considering just how

good-looking he was. He closed the bathroom door briefly and

turned the shower on, and then a few minutes later he emerged

wearing only a towel. Pulling a dress shirt and suit from the oakpaneled

walk-in closet, he handed me my clothes in a neatly

folded pile and discreetly left the room while I stripped.

"Will you be all right getting home?" Philip called from what

sounded like a million miles away. "I must be off to work. Early

meeting."

Work. Jesus Christ, I'd completely and entirely forgotten that I

was currently employed, but a quick check of the bedside clock

reassured me that it was only a little after seven. He'd already been

to yoga and back, and we couldn't have possibly gotten home be-

fore three in the morning. I had a brief but intense flashback to the

one and only time I'd gone to yoga. I'd been fumbling through my

first class for thirty minutes when the teacher had announced thirty

seconds into our current pose—the half-moon pose, to be precise—

that it was equivalent to eight hours of sleep. I'd accidentally

snorted and she'd asked me if there was a problem. Luckily I'd

been able to restrain myself from asking what was really on my

mind: namely, why had no one before enlightened us to the miracle

of the half-moon pose? Why, for all these centuries, have humans

wasted a third of their lifetimes sleeping when they could've

just bent at the waist for one half of one minute? Instead, I mumbled

something about it being a "really cool concept" and sneaked

out when she wasn't looking.

Philip's hallway was longer than the entire length of my apartment,

and I had to follow the sound of his voice to find the right

room. Colorful abstracts hung on the walls and the dark-stained

wood floors—real wood, not New York parquet—highlighted the

stark, metal-frame furniture. The entire place looked like a Ligne

Roset floor sample, as though it had been plucked directly from

the showroom and put back together in this guy's apartment. I

counted a total of three full bathrooms, two bedrooms, a living

room, and a study (complete with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases,

two Mac G4 computers, and a wine rack) before I found

him leaning against his granite countertop, feeding blood oranges

into a high-tech juicer. I didn't even own a can opener.

"You do yoga? I don't know any guys who do yoga."
Any

straight guys, that is,
I thought to myself.

"Of course. It's smashing strength training, and I love how it

clears your mind as well. Very American, I suppose, but worthwhile

nonetheless. You should try it with me." And before I knew

what was happening, he lifted me up on the counter, pushed

my knees apart so he could come closer, and began kissing my

neck.

Instinctively, I jumped off the counter, which resulted only in

my pushing even farther into him.

"I thought, well, um, aren't you . . ."

Two clear green eyes stared back at me, waiting.

"It's just that, uh, considering last night and the whole, you

know, Pratesi thing and the yoga class . . ."

Still waiting. No help here.

"Aren't you gay?" I held my breath, hoping he wasn't still in the

closet or, worse, out but self-hating.

"Gay?"

"Yeah, as in, liking guys."

"Are you serious?"

"Well, I don't know, it just seemed—"

"Gay? You think I'm a homosexual?"

I felt like I was roaming around on the set of some sort of reality

TV show where everyone was in on the secret but me. Clues,

so many clues, but no real information. I was trying to piece it all

together as quickly as possible, but nothing was quite working out.

"Well, of course, I don't know you at all. It's just that, well, you

dress so nicely and seem to care a lot about your apartment and,

uh, you have Helmut Lang cologne. My friend Michael wouldn't

even know who Helmut Lang is . . ."

He flashed those shiny teeth once more and tousled my hair

like one would a toddler's. "Perhaps you're just spending time with

the wrong blokes? I assure you, I'm very, very straight. I've just

learned to appreciate the finer things. Come now, there's time to

give you a lift home if we hurry." He shrugged on a cashmere

sweater and grabbed his keys.

We didn't say anything at all in the elevator ride to the lobby,

but darling Philip did manage to pin me against the wall and nibble

on my lips, which somehow felt utterly disgusting and heartstoppingly

amazing all at once.

"Mmm, you're delicious. Come here, let me taste you one last

time." But before he could once again use my face as his own personal

Chupa pop, the doors swept open and two uniformed doormen

turned to witness our arrival.

"Bugger off," Philip announced, walking ahead of me and raising

his hand up, palm forward, to the grinning men. "I don't want

to hear it today."

They snickered, obviously accustomed to the routine of Philip

escorting strange women out of his apartment, and silently pulled

open the door. It wasn't until we stepped outside that I had any

idea where we were: Christopher and Greenwich, all the way west,

about a block from the river. The famous Archives building.

"Where do you live?" he asked, pulling a silver helmet out from

underneath the seat of a Vespa, which was resting under a monogrammed

tarp three feet from the building's entrance.

"Murray Hill. Is that okay?"

He laughed, not nicely. "I don't know, you tell me. / sure

wouldn't clamor to live in Murray Hill, but hey, whatever turns

you on."

"I meant," I said tightly, no longer even attempting to keep up

with his psycho-style mood swings, "is it okay for you to drop me

off? I can certainly take a cab."

"Whatever you want, love. No worries for me. My office is midtown

east, so you're right on the way." He occupied himself by

fishing his keys from his pants pocket and securing his Hermes bag

to the back of the bike. Scooter. "Let's just get a move on, okay?

People are needing me right now." He swung his legs over the

bike and deigned to look my way. "So?"

I was momentarily speechless, until he actually snapped his fingers.

"C'mon, sweetheart, decision time here. Ride or not? It's not

so difficult. You sure didn't seem this indecisive last night. . . ."

I've always harbored the classic girl fantasy of having a real

reason to slap some jerk across the face, and the opportunity had

just presented itself in Technicolor. But I was dumbfounded by the

finger snapping and the suggestion that something actually
had

happened last night, so I just turned my back and began walking

down the block.

He called out, sounding almost worried, "You don't have to be

so sensitive, love. I was just kidding around. Absolutely nothing

went down last night. Not you, not me. . . ."I heard him chuckle

at his own cleverness, but 1 just kept walking.

"Fine. Be that way. I don't have time for the drama right now,

but I'll track you down. Seriously, it's not often a woman can resist

my charms, so consider me duly intrigued. Leave your number

with my doorman and I'll give you a call." The Vespa's engine

caught and he sped away, and although I'd just been insulted and

abandoned, I still felt like I'd somehow won . . . if he was telling

the truth, of course, and I actually hadn't slept with him in a

wasted stupor.

The victory lasted all of forty minutes, during which time I

jumped in a cab, raced home, took a washcloth-bath in the bathroom

sink, and applied copious amounts of deodorant to my underarms,

baby powder to my scalp, and scented moisturizer

everywhere else. I raced around the apartment looking for clean

clothes and wondered how I would ever manage to be a good

mother when I couldn't even remember to care for my own dog.

Millington was sulking in the corner under the coffee table, punishing

me for abandoning her the previous evening. She'd also