Girl Walks Out of a Bar (17 page)

12

I woke up one Sunday a couple of weeks
later with a horn section blaring in my head. My mouth tasted like wallpaper paste. Water, I needed water. As I rustled the sheets to move, I kicked a leg.
Fuck. What happened last night?

A mop of near-black curls twisted on the pillow next to me. A bare, male arm stretched up toward the headboard as if it were grasping for something. Rolling over to get a look at the face without waking the guy—whoever the hell he was—I saw thick dark eyebrows over deep-set eyes and a mole on the left cheek.
Oh shit! It was the cute guy I'd been seeing around my building. Shit. Shit. Shit. What did I fucking do?

His face was definitely younger than mine.
Jesus, how old is too old for one-night, blackout stands?
He looked peaceful as he slept, but a tornado of memories began to whirl in my brain. Images from the night before appeared in snippets, like tiny pick-up trucks and cows swirling around the storm's eye. The elevator. We ran into each other in the elevator.
Name, name, what's his name? Mark! Yes, Mark!
How satisfying it was to recall the name that quickly. I used to take pride in things like learning to flip a canoe and re-enter it in record time or finishing
the Sunday
New York Times
crossword puzzle in pen. These days all I had to do to earn a mental high-five was remember the name of the half-naked guy in my bed.

I had a flash of us sitting on my bed drinking wine, and I saw two empty glasses on my dresser. Okay, so I'd invited him in for a glass of wine.
But how did we end up in here? Did we at least start in the living room?
My panties were still on. Just my panties.
Okay, we probably didn't have sex
. The rest of my clothes were in a pile on the floor. Not great, but it certainly could be worse. Peeking under the covers, I saw that Mark had underwear on, too.
OK. Breathe, breathe. What the hell else happened here last night?
I dragged my brain like a river that held the missing bodies.

Coke. My nose was numb so it couldn't have been long since I'd used. Did he do it too or did I just sit on the bed like a hardcore drug addict blowing lines in front of a total stranger? My gut told me I'd been doing coke alone.

At least he wasn't a cop. He was always in street clothes when I'd seen him around the building.
But what if he's an undercover cop! No, I'd be arrested by now. Unless he's staking me out to get to my dealer. Is he going to arrest me and threaten a Class C felony drug charge unless I testify against Henry?

Something told me that these weren't the morning thoughts of most women after a night with a new guy.

I needed a drink. Wearing my red and white Indian print robe, I walked into the kitchen. There were two empty wine bottles on the counter. Not terrible, but then again, I was already in a drunken blackout when I met Mark in the elevator.

I opened the refrigerator door and held onto it for support. What to drink, what to drink—white wine from that open bottle or a couple shots of vodka? I grabbed the wine and drank
directly out of the bottle. Speed was important in case Mark wandered into the kitchen. The wine slithered a cold soothing trail down my throat. It also quieted the trumpets in my head, so I took a few more long swigs.

In the living room, I lit a cigarette. As I squinted away from the sun streaming through the window, I turned on the air conditioner to mask the smell of smoke. Had Mark smoked last night? He didn't look like a smoker. He looked like someone I might have known in Hebrew school, one of the over-confident little brats who grew up in the suburbs and then moved to Manhattan to become a big swinging dick.

Despite having just slugged back more wine than most people would drink at a dinner party, I stood there shaking. Strands of hair hung around my face, and even they were shaking. Who has hair that shakes?
I'm a disaster
, I thought. At least it was Sunday.

Feeling like I might be able to fall back to sleep, I brushed my teeth, gargled with Listerine, and tiptoed back to the bedroom. I dropped my robe on top of the clothing pile, pulled on an old US Open t-shirt and a pair of men's boxers, and climbed back into bed, careful not to touch or wake Mark.

A couple of hours later, I regained consciousness and realized that Mark was splayed across me as if he'd fallen from a building. His left arm stretched over my back, and his hand rested near my face like a claw. Ugh. I still didn't want to wake him, but I had to pee. As I slid out from under him, he let out a sleepy moan and rolled over. Like a sewer rat, I scurried into the bathroom before he could fully awaken.

There it was, the mirror. I had two mascara black eyes—Courtney Love by daylight. Soap and water took care of that, but there wasn't much to be done with the rest of me. I had a weird combination of bloat from alcohol, droop from lack of
sleep, and gauntness from lack of food; for the latter, I thanked cocaine. There was no way through the knots and frizz in my hair, so I pulled the mess back into a ponytail. More Listerine made sense.

Mark would probably run screaming once he woke up and got a good look at me in the sunshine. That was fine with me. I had a
Law & Order
marathon to watch and wine to drink. No need for him to linger and ruin my Sunday.

“Good morning,” he cooed with a big smile when I walked back into the bedroom. My God, his teeth were straight and lightbulb white. He reached his arms over his head, stretched the length of his body, and moaned in a way that seemed awfully comfortable for a guy in a total stranger's bed. Where were confusion, shame, and the signature male impulse to get the hell out? With this guy there was no scrambling for his clothes or fumbling his way to the front door. Instead he looked at me with the cozy face of a man who was perfectly happy right where he was. “How are you?” he purred.

“I'm fine,” I answered, still standing in the doorway.
I'm fine
. It was astonishing how many times a day that lie tumbled from my mouth.

Mark pulled the covers away from my side of the bed and patted the mattress. “Come back to bed,” he said.

Was he serious? The place smelled like a hotel suite after a bachelor party, and I looked like the hooker who'd forgotten that her shift was over.

“That's OK,” I said with a shrug. “I'm kind of awake now.”
Should I say I need to run to the drugstore? If I don't come back for a couple of hours, will he take the hint?

“OK,” he said, still smiling. Wow, he was happy in the morning. To my relief, he sat up and started pulling his jeans on. I was dying to ask how old he was and what he did for a living,
but he must have told me that the night before. Anything told to me after five o'clock blew from my mind like jet fuel from an F-14.

As he pulled on his navy blue polo shirt, he said, “I could really use some coffee. Do you want to grab breakfast?” He did another big stretch, arms overhead and back bent. He was shorter than I remembered.

“You know what? I'd love to, but I have to work today and I really should get started. It's already nine-thirty!”

“No problem. I'll get going,” he said, pulling on his Puma sneakers. “I've got stuff to do for school today, too.”

Oh my God. A fucking student? Please let him at least be a PhD candidate who came late to education.

“Oh, what are you working on?” There was a good chance I should have known the answer, but it was more reasonable to forget about a project than the fact that he was a student. Why was I starting a conversation when I needed another drink?

“Just an assignment for one of my finance classes. I'm working with a group, so we're going to meet up later at the Baruch library.”
Yes! Now I know where he goes to school. But why is he still in school? Drop it.

“Sounds good,” I said, moving toward the apartment door and hoping he would follow. How weird that he was now going to return to his fourth-floor apartment and not even leave the building to go home. This was a new achievement—creating an embarrassing scene with a guy without even having to step outside.

When we got to the door, he wrapped both arms around me and gave me a bear hug. “I had so much fun with you last night. I'm really glad we met, finally,” he said with a little laugh.
Oh shit
. Another memory came trickling in. I'd admitted to calling him “the cute guy from the building.”
Somebody please shoot me with a rhino rifle
. He released me from the hug and
stood back with his hands still on my arms. “I want to take you out on a real date,” he said. “Can we do that this week? What night's good for you?” he asked.

What was
wrong
with the guy? He was cute and nice and way too young for me. What could he possibly want with me?

“Sure,” I said. “Tuesday is probably OK.”
Just leave
, I thought, already working on my cancellation excuse.

“Great. Give me your number.” He followed me into the kitchen where I turned my back to hide my shaking hand as I wrote my number on a pad. “Did you just get back from a trip or something?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“You have a ton of mail on your counter. Looks like a couple of months' worth!”
Thanks, Inspector Clouseau
. I barely opened my mail in those days, instead letting it pile up until I “had time” to go through it. Seeing the pile with fresh eyes, it was ridiculous.

“Oh, that's just accumulated crap,” I said. “I pay my bills by phone mostly.”

Mark gave me a curious look, and we both stood there until he realized that I wasn't going to offer any further defense of mail mountain. Then he gave me a quick kiss on the lips and headed to the door. “I'll call you about Tuesday. Thanks again for last night!” he said and bounced down the hall.

I triple-locked the door behind him and went straight for a cabernet. Just holding the bottle gave me comfort. Soon it would be open and I'd be able to start forgetting the little bit I could still remember about last night. With a large glass in hand, I lit a cigarette and turned on CNN, wondering how much coke I had left for today.

Remarkably, Mark didn't go away. He hung around my apartment as often as I'd let him. On those nights, we ordered in Chinese food, sushi, or pizza. We used cheap plates, paper towels for napkins, and my glass coffee table for dining in front of the television.

A sneak look at his driver's license revealed that I was ten years older than he. What was the appeal for this guy, other than the fact that getting to me was as easy as pressing the elevator's “up” button? Sure, I had a great job and a nice apartment, but I was also divorced, smoked like a European, and drank like Ernest Hemingway. Not to mention that while killing a night watching cop shows, I was as likely to blow a line of coke as I was to each a chocolate chip cookie.

Mark drank the way normal people did. On a weeknight, he might have a beer or two. On weekends, maybe a little more, and then he'd cut himself off. And no drugs. Why didn't he ever say anything about the coke?

What I learned was that my apartment had become a kind of refuge for Mark. He had roommates downstairs, an annoying couple who sat around smoking pot all day. Turns out that I looked like a real self-starter just for having a job that didn't require a paper hat.