Hotel Living (16 page)

I look at some framed lace panties on the wall, trying not to think about how many work rules I've broken so far. I have to review the bastard.

Justin, in his boxers, paces around the loft. “Got Viagra or Levitra on you, boss?”

I stay silent, a license we both know I burned some two hours ago. But Justin's antsy. “I've done seven big ones. How the fuck am I gonna fuck her now?”

“Sorry, I didn't ask for any on our way out.”

“That's dick!” Justin says. “Cialis?” he asks with a childlike hope.

I spot a Dartmouth logo on his boxers.

I'M LYING HALF-NAKED ON THE
canopy bed with sand all over my sweaty feet. Tatiana, next to me, tries on my tie as a bra. “I wear only men's clothes,” she explains.

“Things in common.”

She cuts lines on a bed tray while the speakers sing “must have me confused / with some other guy,” mixed with lusty giggles from another iPod. Across the loft, in the bedroom, I see Justin, naked, pushing a shiny dildo into Kate; I realize it's the Oscar. They moan-laugh. Tatiana takes off my tie and puts two bumps on her tits. I do both of them and suck the leftovers. The coke, bitter, slides down my throat. Tatiana wants me to take off my pants, try on her Disneyland/Baghdad T-shirt.

“Why?” I ask.

“I want it stretched,” she says, and snorts a line.

“I don't sleep with girls.”

“I'm . . . I'm twenty.”

“I like guys,” I say.

“I don't believe you. You're depressed.” Then, “My roommate moved out. Move in with me.”

I don't laugh or say no, which is utterly insane. I studied physics and have an MBA, a fucking job. I wire money to my parents on the fifteenth of each month. I ran into decadence before but managed it. So why do I feel like I just landed where I'm supposed to be: with the totally flawed? “I don't want to be alone,” I hear myself saying.

“What is his name?” Tatiana asks, and I hear compassion through cocaine.

September 2006

W
ITH OBVIOUS AND DELIBERATE LABOR,
the cabdriver doles out one-dollar bills to change my twenty.

I'm late. “Keep fifteen,” I say, and he briskly hands me a five that appears out of nowhere.

I jump out into a cool New York evening and onto the square pavement off Sixth and Bleecker. About fifty people are dining at a flock of outdoor tables, fenced in by another twenty who are waiting to be seated. I catch Italian, Spanish, and broken English.

Tatiana, in an oversize white shirt, probably mine, sits in the eye of the storm. She touches the lower arm of a dark-haired guy who's with her. Her long brown hair hides her smile, but I see those large green eyes spotting me. She lets go of his arm.

“My VP has issues,” I say when I reach them. “I'm sorry.” I lean over Tatiana and she lets me kiss her on the lips, but she's all business.

“This is my roommate, Stathis,” she says. “Ray is my trainer. He just came back from Iraq. He was in combat there.”

“Excellent” escapes my mouth, and I immediately wonder what exactly
excellent
means here.

“Hello!” Ray stands up and shakes my hand, which is unheard of below Fourteenth Street. An inch shorter than me, lean but solid, he has a rude boy's face and two days' beard.

“Welcome back,” I say, sitting down across from him, Tatiana on my left. Her eyes are fixed on him, but so are mine.

“I've been back for three months now, but thank you.” He grants me a surprisingly innocent smile.

Desperate for post-Command vodka, I scan the pavement for a waiter. When one comes by, Tatiana calls out eight or nine plates, all in Mediterranean languages and single words: “. . . osso bucco,
controfiletto
,
croquetas
,
gamberoni
, two vodka martinis, and a bottle of Cortese.” Ray orders whiskey. I don't say a word—don't have to. I just sit back and watch Tatiana's cell phone vibrate nonstop, practically crawling around the table.

“I didn't know you worked out,” I tell Tatiana after our waiter leaves. “Which gym do you guys go to?”

“No . . .” She shakes her head. “Ray trains in a private space on Perry Street.”

I look at Ray's biceps under his white T-shirt and try to remember the last time I worked out. Probably before I moved in with Tatiana, a good month ago. I tried doing push-ups at her loft once, but the smell of her bathroom—of puke, permanently—got to me. I'm not entirely sure whether Yolima, our housecleaner, actually exists, or
whether the sheets on my canopy bed have ever been changed.

“How long have you two been training?” I ask.

They check with each other. “We had some cancellations,” Ray says at last.

“We've worked out once. Anything else, Stathis?” Tatiana says, and loosens my tie with one jerk.

She peeks at her watch, which I notice is my watch, the same watch that Erik once borrowed. “It's stressful. I'm afraid I'll lose it,” he told me when he returned it to me the following day. Now I wish he'd kept the stupid Rolex. Maybe I would see him wearing it if we ran into each other, in that happenstance way that people play out in their minds when they go through breakups with no closure. My problem: I don't seem to be able to stomach things and move on. Three months on, all my calls to Erik unanswered, and I still don't hit the gym or choose my own food in restaurants. I don't make decisions, so Tatiana, my new “higher power and concierge”—yes, fuck you, Erik—makes them for me.

I spend my nights in restaurants and clubs now, or at Tatiana's loft listening to coked-up nonsense from her boyfriend—of the week—her schoolmates, crashers, BlackBerry'ed drug dealers, cousins, and “coworkers.” I don't even know what exactly she does for a living. Is she an actress? Model? Stylist? Nothing? “Tati's a collector of all trades,” Kate, a permanent standby, joked once, but not really. “She has an appetite for food, clothes,
people
. She has an appe
tite for adopting, like she did with
you
.” Kate laughed at me, or with me, the latest member of Tatiana's surrogate family. “No, seriously,” Kate insisted. “What interests me is how Tatiana sorts through New York. She's an artist. A
life
artist.”

Yellow and green dishes arrive, sparkling in olive oil. Tatiana speed-fires through three plates of shrimp and fettuccine while she rants about movies, Nokia gadgets, and beer. Works for me; I'm happy zoning out.

“You know that, right?” Tatiana suddenly asks me, as if checking to see whether I'm paying attention.

“Er, yes, love beer,” I mumble.

“I'm talking about Stella
McCartney
, Stathis.” She turns to Ray: “There's nothing Stathis doesn't get. It's just that he's a bit preoccupied right now. He's heartbroken. But he'll be better later tonight.”

Why?
“Later?” I ask, but Tatiana ignores me.

“Ray, how long did you say you were overseas?” she asks.

“I was on active duty for two years.”

She goes tenderly for his hand, but at the last second she picks up her vibrating cell phone instead. “My lover!” she yells, answering. “When did you get in? . . . Oh baby, are you jet-lagged? . . . How was the set?” She laughs. “I'm at Da Silvano . . . with Stathis . . . roommate . . . of course . . .
When I think about you I touch myself
. . . Miss you
more
! . . . Okay, I'll see you in a bit.”

“Who was that?” I ask with a full mouth.

“My mother,” Tatiana says, casually. “She just got into town. I think she's depressed. We have to go see her.” She reaches for Ray's hand, and then mine. “
Please
. . .”

I try to read Ray's reaction to the mother-love chitchat, but he just keeps sipping his whiskey.

“Is she staying with us?” I ask.

“No. She's at Soho House,” Tatiana says, and gets up. “I'm sorry, I'll be right back.” She bolts inside the restaurant.

For the next ten minutes, she'll be throwing up two hundred dollars' worth of pasta, which means that I have to play with the army. I look at his thick, bushy hair—probably compensating for years of crew cuts—his on-and-off abashed smile, and I wonder why he enlisted. I wonder whether he's a Republican, and which square state he's from, but I don't care enough to ask—I'll probably see Montana about one and a half times in my life. Plus, his ease reminds me of stupid Erik.

“Is she any good?” I open.

His childlike smile disappears. “She's very flexible,” Ray replies.

Jarhead here gives as good as he gets—I'll show you flex, buddy. “Why'd you join the army?” I demand.

“I wanted to be in the Marine Corps Reserve.”

“What did you do in Iraq?”

“I was a combat rifleman instructor. For the infantry.”

“I don't know what that means,” I lie.

Ray looks right at me. Why do I want to pick a fight? Ain't I exhausted enough?

“Land soldiers,” he says. “You fight on foot. Face-to-face.”

“You must've seen some intense stuff over there.”

“You have no idea.”

I tilt my head, unsatisfied.

“What?” Ray asks.

“Try me,” I say.

“There's savagery that you don't get in your movies.”

My movies? I saw
Occupation: Dreamland
when I lived at the Mercer. I have seen your fucking
life
, redneck. “Do you support the invasion?” I ask, and suck down what's left of my martini.

“To some extent.”

“And which part's that?” I spit back.

“We removed a butcher and his gang.”

“Even if we butcher our way through to get to them?”

“You'd think there are better ways,” Ray says with a shrug. “But you can't do things by halves.”

“War is
failure
,” I say, louder than necessary. “You support a revolution from within. You don't invade, you
never
invade. You wanna be a catalyst, not a bully.” I pause and take a breath. Why am I playing Erik? I don't give a fuck about Iraq, really.

“I like your theory. Tatiana tells me you're Greek. Were you in the army?”

Bitch. He had me there. “Twice. Once in Greece and once here.”

He does his timid smile again, mixed with
I'll-let-you-off-the-hook-now
. What's up with the charity?

“Do you want another drink?” I offer. “She may take a few.”

“Sure. So I guess we are going to meet her mother.”

“I guess so.”

“She's beautiful,” Ray says, playing with his empty glass. “She has, like . . . two Oscars?”

“One. But I think Tati's father has two.”

Ray looks confused. “Tatiana's father is also an actor?” he asks.

“He's a musician, and a director or screenwriter, or something.”

He rolls his eyes. “I know he's a
musician
, ha! I hear they're suing each other. Her parents, I mean.”

“Don't know, maybe.” I turn and pig out on a crazy forkful of pasta. “Ask your client,” I say with linguine hanging from my mouth onto my chin. Red specks hit my tie.

“Copyrights and defama––” Ray stops midsentence, as Tatiana is already behind him, messing with his hair. A quick throw-up, apparently.

“Okay, she's the dumbest person in the world, but she's still my mom.” Tatiana sits and undoes my already loose, sauced tie. She rolls it up and puts it in her bag and starts to fiddle with my collar, caringly. “My godmother is here too, who's
insane
! Stathis, my angel, will you pay for me? I have no cash and I forgot my PIN,” Tatiana says, worriedly, and answers her phone. “Are you wearing your iguana belt?” she asks as she picks up.

A waiter passes, and I hand him my credit card.

Ray goes through his jeans pockets.

“I got this one,” I say.

“No, here.” He slides two twenties across the table.

I don't touch the bills. Tension builds as the cash lies between us. I pretend to eavesdrop on Tatiana's babble while I think of Erik, the times I passed him cash under the table. The vet glances at the forty. I don't wanna take the goddamn bills. I look at the cover of the magazine under Tatiana's bag—an actor in his briefs says, “I learned how to grow up.”

“For drinks,” Tatiana whispers, and stuffs the cash in her bag. Then, on her phone, “No, I'm listening. Samsung for girls, BlackBerry for boys. Got it.”

NEWSSTAND PICTURES OFTEN LIE, BUT
Tatiana is her mother's clone. We find her sitting in the lotus position on a rooftop bed by the Soho House pool, playing with the cross pendant she wears over a T-shirt that says “Don't Talk to Me.” She's surrounded by women whose body language appears to harbor her.

Tatiana jumps into the harem and kisses her mother, basically makes out with her. “This is Teresa, my
mom
!” Tatiana says, and they kiss again on the lips before Tatiana moves on to an old woman who has gold hair and more wrinkles than Yoda, and then to two identical well-built redheads.

“I'm Tatiana's mom,” Teresa says, flirting with her daughter, who's now resting her head on her mother's lap.

I pick a satellite chair.

Ray sits by the old lady. She wears a massive bejeweled skull on her ring finger. Her T-shirt, matching Teresa's, says “Fast Fuck.”

“I'm Tatiana's godmother and I'm from Spain,” the old lady says without a trace of accent. She already looks bored with our invasion as she taps Teresa's hand. “I don't want you to be onstage looking all costumed. It's Madison Square Garden,” she tells her.

“It's a gold jacket,” Teresa says, combing her daughter's hair. “Think Michael Jackson, but the white years.”

“It's embroidered,” the old lady argues. “This is New York. We should go svelte, black. Something oxidized or sci-fashion.”

“I've done ghoulish. It's not me,” Teresa pushes back.

“Hey, movie star,” Tatiana says to her mother, sitting up. “You look sexy no matter what you wear.” She turns to Ray: “I hate her fucking body.”

“You have my body,” her mother tells her, calmly.

“Which marine division?” I hear one of the redheads ask Ray.

“Oh, don't be jealous. You're still our favorite tomboy,” says the godmother, hugging Tatiana.

Tatiana pulls her mother into a three-way hug. “This is God!” Tatiana says, and kisses her godmother. “And this
is Mother Teresa!” She kisses her mom. Mild laughter goes around.

“I had a friend in Mossad,” Ray tells the redhead.

“Show me your tattoo,” God orders him. “Tattoo is the new couture,” she explains to Teresa.

Ray lifts his sleeve all the way to his shoulder. “It's an oceanic whitetip, my favorite shark,” he says, feeling his own arm.

“Why?” Teresa asks him.

“He's a loner. He patrols the oceans. He doesn't care about the reefs. The most independent, unpredictable shark.”

“He?”

“Have you seen one?”

“I swam with one in the Gulf of Aden during military exercises. It's a thick fish with long, rounded fins. I thought a plane was coming toward me. Sharks will circle you from fifty feet away before they come to check you out. He came straight up to us. Fearless.”

“I like your face,” God tells Ray. “Come by the studio to have some portraits taken.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

“Have you killed a man?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Have you seen people die?”

“I have.”

“And how do you feel about all this happening because of Monica?” God asks him.

“Monica?”

“Monica Lewinsky!” she says, and coughs like a barking dog.

“I
like
Monica,” Tatiana shouts.