Room for Love (28 page)

“Thanks, baby,” I say. “Thanks so much.” He reaches into the bag again and grins up at me mischievously.

“And another special treat.” My heart pounds. “He pulls out an iPod in a bright pink case.”

I bounce on the bed and hug him and cover him in kisses.

“Honestly, honey, you were the last person in the world who didn't have one. It was a mercy purchase.”

“I love you,” I say. “Thanks.”

When I wake up at around nine the next day, Anthony isn't in bed with me. I figure he's making coffee or has run out for bagels. I wander into the living room and find a note on the counter: “Run to the editing rm, have to get tapes to editor. Back soon. Sushi tonite? I'll call. xo.” I make a cup of mint green tea and watch the last few minutes of
Sliding Doors
in my underwear, with Lucy snoring at my feet. Then I call Alicia.

“So, he gave me an iPod,” I tell her.

“That's way better than an engagement ring.”

I spend the rest of my day finishing up my workaholic piece, which I like even more than the first one. I've dug up all sorts of obscure movies old and new about men who love their work so much that they end up alienating the women in their lives. Sometimes workaholism, I find, is indicative of a deeper rift in the relationship, like in
Far from Heaven,
in which Julianne Moore's husband, played by Dennis Quaid, spends all his time at the office but also happens to be having an affair with a man. Joanne Love, my new best friend, has hilarious things to say about these screen jerks. She thinks most of them need psychoanalysis, but some are just in the wrong relationship. “A man having a love affair with his work will probably be happier with a woman who doesn't demand much of his time. Conversely, a woman who requires solid pampering and a daily orgasm should seek a man who makes her needs a priority.”

By the time I've put the final touches on the piece and e-mailed it off, gone grocery shopping just to get out of the house, and i-chatted with my sister for half an hour about how neurotic our mother is—she's flipping out that Alicia hasn't found a job and offered to pay for her to see a therapist—it's seven o'clock and I still haven't heard from Anthony. I call his cell.

“Whoa, is it that late?” he asks. “I'm sorry, baby. You wouldn't believe the footage we got. It's outstanding.”

“Do you still want to get sushi?”

“I'm not quite done here, but…”

“I could come over there and we could order in,” I suggest.

“Would you mind? You could watch what we've done so far. I think you'll love it.”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

*   *   *

“What are we ordering tonight, guys?” I ask.

It's Saturday night and I'm in the editing suite with Anthony and his editor, Will, a natural-born funny guy who's extremely enthusiastic about the show. I've been there almost every night for the past two weeks. It's the only way I get to spend time with Anthony, so I've stopped fighting it. A couple of times I've even spent the night on the leather couch. We hauled in some old sweats and a down comforter for my personal use. They should probably give me an associate-producer credit at this point, considering how involved in the intricacies of telling this story I have become. I think the guys appreciate my perspective as a woman and an objective viewer, although the first few nights Anthony resisted.

“Thai,” says Anthony.

“No more Thai!” Will protests. “Anything but Thai. Or sushi. Italian, the place with the lobster ravioli and garlic rolls, or the awesome salad place.”

“Awesome salads,” is my vote. “I love the one with cranberries and blue cheese.”

“Lord help me, the one with tuna and olives and parmesan is
delizioso,
” Will says.

“Ooh, there's also that really fattening one with shrimp,” I say. “I can't decide!”

“Whatever, you guys. Salads,” Anthony says. He can't understand Will's and my obsession with food. I persuade the delivery guy to stop by the deli and pick up a six-pack and chocolate chip cookies for us.

“And a pint of strawberry-cheesecake ice cream,” Will adds at the last minute.

At this point, Anthony and Will have a rough cut of the first episode, in which the three main characters, Mikey, Delores, and a manic-depressive kid named Stu, are introduced. Anthony was right about how gripping the material is. Per the reality-show formula, we're given just enough backstory to make these three likable, so the audience can't resist suffering along with them. They shot four stories but are keeping only the best three. I feel bad for Bernie, a pale fourteen-year-old with a lisp who got caught shoplifting seven times before the cops hauled him in. Anthony's crew shot over fifty hours of him and none of it will be included, except for some early moments when he appears in court alongside Mikey. While I know my storytelling instincts are right on and my input helpful, I also know I'd be terrible at Anthony's job, because cutting out someone's story would kill me. I'd be so attached to the footage, my version would be twenty hours long. Plus, I'd want to save all the kids. I'd want to hug them and give them money and invite them over to my house for lunch. I'd want to help them study and make sure they get into good colleges. I'd want to adopt them. I'm a completely useless distanced observer of real life. Better stick to celebrities.

“Hey, watch this,” Will says, freezing a shot of Mikey giving his friend the finger. He proceeds to manipulate the Avid so that Mikey's doing a “fuck off” rap, flipping his friend off over and over again, going, “Fuck off, man, fuck off, man, f-f-f-f-fuck off!” Anthony and Will laugh until tears stream down their unshaven faces. I get depressed.

I wake up when Anthony lifts me off the couch at three
A.M
.

“Hey, pretty,” he says.

“Hey back,” I murmur, wiping drool from my cheek.

“We're getting you home to bed tonight, baby. Let's try to spend a whole Sunday together, okay?”

“You sure?” I ask skeptically.

“Yeah, the cut is getting good. We're taking a day off.”

He half carries me into the elevator and then a cab, where I fall back to sleep until he carries me out of the cab and up the stairs to the apartment.

“Yay, we can have clean-house day,” I tell him. “I weigh a ton, don't I?”

“Shhh, sleep,” he says. “My little wisp of a girlfriend.”

I laugh as he strains on each step under my weight, then wriggle out of his arms and walk up the rest of the way.

“Did you see the issue?” I ask him. “I left an advance copy in the editing room. I want you to read my Luke Benton article. It's good.”

“Tomorrow, baby. Let's go to sleep.”

In a hazy space between wakefulness and dreams, I imagine myself walking up our street and turning onto Bedford, deserted in the night, asphalt bare and glistening as if wiped clean by a recent downpour. I wonder at the absence of the usual night owls and grimy old men clutching brown paper bags as I float past eerily lit empty storefronts. My feet lift off the ground and a gust of wind carries me down N. Fifth Street past Driggs and Metropolitan and onto Havemeyer, where my bare feet touch familiar ground. I lie down on the warm threshold of Jake's loft and wrap my arms rapturously around sleep.

The next morning, when I get up, Anthony is already dressed and reading the paper at the kitchen table.

“You're up,” I say.

“I'm heading in to work. Barrett wants to see a cut, so we're gonna get some beers and watch it. He always helps me with my stuff.”

“God, Anthony,” I say. “I thought we were gonna ‘have a weekend.'”

His eyes turn hard for a second and then soften. “Editing is intense right now, I can't stop thinking about it, but it will let up. Once we get the first episode done, we'll settle into the rhythm of the show, and it will be quicker.” I nod, wondering if I'll ever get used to this lifestyle. “Look, I'll leave early tonight, so we can have dinner.”

“Okay,” I say, pulling on the hem of his big T-shirt that I'm wearing, although I don't really feel okay.

“What?” he asks, getting out of his chair and dropping his coffee cup loudly into the sink. “Jacquie, don't give me this guilt shit. I can't feel bad about doing my job. This is my life. If you can't live with it, fine, but don't give me those fucking looks, like I'm hurting your feelings.”

“I know. I just wish we could spend more time together—without Will and Delores and Mikey,” I say, ripping off a fingernail so it bleeds. I zap myself with the rubber band and wince at the pain as he quietly rinses out his cup and puts it on the dish rack. I know I shouldn't, but I say, “This kind of thing happens a lot. I'm just sick of you letting me down. You know, we haven't made any plans to go out of town like you said we would, I still haven't met your parents, and you never really apologized about Chicago.”

“Apologized?” he says. “For what? What the hell was I supposed to apologize for?”

“You invited me down there and then uninvited me and then said we'd go somewhere else, but we haven't, and I just want to know, you know, what the hell we're—”

“Oh no, we're not even going there, Jacquie. Oh no. You knew the deal when you moved in here. This wasn't some marriage, some kind of fucking lifelong commitment. This was, you know, what it was.” He shoves a bowl on the counter and it falls into the sink and breaks. “Oh, fucking great,” he says, looking around, flustered, before grabbing a sweatshirt and strutting out of the apartment. He slams the door behind him.

Lucy, who's been watching our fight like a tennis match, burrows her head under a couch cushion.

“Sorry, Lucy,” I say.

I spend an hour moping about, feeling sorry for myself and wanting to call him, but suddenly a flash of inspiration kicks in and I throw on clothes and run out to the hardware store to get a new mop, terra-cotta flowerpots, lightbulbs, and paint swatches. I've always liked hardware stores because they offer tangible solutions to your problems, whatever they may be. You trip on an electrical cord on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night—they recommend special tape to attach it to the wall. You keep misplacing a pot holder or dropping it into the filthy sink—they sell you a hook. You spill paint on the floor—they suggest Goof Off (who knew such a thing existed?) to get it off. Whatever urgent domestic matter befalls you, the guys at the hardware store know how to fix it. They sell screwdrivers, spackle, hammers, nails, dustpans, plant food, lightbulbs, water filters, key rings, potting soil, duct tape, and Brillo pads, all the little things that make life easier. The owner of the place up the block from Anthony's makes me ache for my old hardware store. He's a cranky old bald man who sits at the register and grunts and points, without ever taking his eyes off the sports section of the
New York Post.
I pay for my wares and joylessly depart for the corner deli, where I order a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, a gallon of OJ, and an enormous latte, which I down on the way back to the apartment and arrive bouncing off walls.

I spend hours scrubbing the floors, bundling old newspapers, gathering copies of Anthony's production reel that I find lurking in corners and putting them neatly into boxes, which I stack in the spare room that still isn't an office. I change burned-out bulbs, repot a pathetic basil plant that's been dying a slow death on the windowsill ever since I moved in, tape color swatches to the bathroom wall, which someone, presumably Anthony, painted with streaks of potential colors ages ago but never followed up on. I think we should go with a warm tone: pink, peach, salmon. Screw all his test strokes; as trendy as it is, green in the bathroom makes you look sickly.

At about three o'clock, ABBA blasting, soil scattered across the kitchen counter, the rest of the place in a state of chaos, I decide to confront a pile of framed photos stacked on the floor. While I'm pounding a nail to hook the first one (foggy beach scene, possibly Montauk), I slam my thumb with the hammer so hard that blackness crowds my vision. As I sit down to regain my balance, the phone rings. It's my mother.

“Hey, honey, what are you doing?” she asks.

“Cleaning up the place. Hanging pictures, repotting plants.”

“I wish you'd do that at your own apartment,” she says, her voice still deceptively sugary. “You own it, after all. It's very disturbing to your father and me that you're not living there.”

“Well, you'll be happy to hear that my subletter is quite the little homemaker and the place looks better than ever.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “That's nice. Where's Anthony?”

“Working,” I say. “Actually, I'm a little pissed because we were supposed to be doing all this together. Now the place looks like a hurricane hit and my thumb is pounding where I banged it with a hammer. I could use his help.”

“Well, he has to earn a living,” she says.

“I understand that. I just wish he were around here some of the time. He treats the place like a hotel. And he's always flaking on me, making plans and then breaking them.”

“You know, Jacqueline, a man has to feel like he can work to take care of his family and not feel criticized. Honestly, you should be more supportive.”

I stomp over to the stereo and turn down “Dancing Queen,” which is giving me a worse headache than my mother. “You know,” I say, “are you saying he's supposed to earn a living while I'm home slaving away?”

“You are exaggerating,” she says.

“Yeah, well, you don't even know Anthony and here you are taking his side. It would be nice if you could see my side for once. Anthony is always working and I'm always alone and now I'm getting all this work done and it feels great, but I do wish he were doing it with me. What is so wrong with that?” I hold up a bouquet of split ends and bite them off one by one. I really need a haircut.