Slightly Settled (11 page)

“But why?”

“Please, Raphael, just do it.”

“Tracey! I can’t just agree to something like that without knowing why.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I need to know.”

“Raphael, you sleep all over Manhattan with God knows who. Why can’t you spend one night at my place?”

“I already spent one night at your place this week.”

“So spend another night.”

“On the floor? No, thank you.”

“You can have the bed this time,” I promise, tossing a pair of jeans onto the darks pile with my left hand and raising my bottle of Rolling Rock to my mouth with the right. I take a swig, then ask, “You’re over your cold, right?”

“Almost. Aside from the phlegm.”

He makes a spasm gesture and coughs, like he’s trying to raise a fur ball.

I wince.

“Come on, Raphael, I need you.”

“This is the second favor you’ve asked for in five minutes, Tracey.”

Yeah, like he really minds helping me find a male stripper for Yvonne’s bachelorette party next week.

“I know, Raphael, but you’re the only one who can help me. I need you to sleep over.”

“Why?”

“I’m, uh, scared to be alone,” I lie. “I heard there’s a prowler in my building.”

A prowler in the building? Who am I, Lucy Ricardo? There are no prowlers in New York these days. Rapists, yes. Packs of wilding kids, yes. Serial killers, yes.

As far as Manhattan goes, prowlers seem as quaintly old-fashioned—not to mention obsolete—as the Automat, the Brooklyn Dodgers and subway tokens.

Raphael asks, “Can I bring Carl?”

“No!” I just spent fifteen minutes listening to Raphael’s uncensored account of Friday night after they left Tequila
Murray’s. Believe me, it was
T. M. I.
In fact, any
I.
when it comes to Raphael and Carl is T. M.

“But if there’s a prowler, Tracey, we might need Carl to protect us.”

“That’s supposed to be
your
job.”

He casts a dubious downward glance. In his tummy-baring sweater halter, wide patent-leather belt and purple crushed-velvet bell-bottoms, he looks, below the neck, like somebody’s kid sister.

“Okay, Raphael, I don’t need you for that kind of protection,” I admit, throwing my last towel into the heap of whites. “I need you to sleep at my place for—well, it’s like insurance. I’m going out with Jack again….”

“The merchant marine?”

“Oh, Lord. Don’t even start with that, Raphael.”

“Just kidding, Tracey,” he says, all innocence.

“Anyway, I want to make sure I’m not tempted to bring him home with me. If you’re there, I can’t.”

“Is he cute?”

“Very.”

“Then bring him home with you anyway. I’ll be waiting. In bed.” He flashes a lascivious grin before swigging from his drink. It’s in a real martini glass, of course, with a cherry garnish. And a paper umbrella.

“Sorry, Raphael,” I tell him, “I don’t think Jack would be into that.”

“Don’t be so sure, Tracey.”

I roll my eyes. Like I said, Raphael thinks every man is secretly gay.

“Oh, Tracey, look who’s here!” he hisses. “It’s One-Sock Sally.”

I narrow my eyes at the woman who comes in the door.

I have no idea what her real name is, but One-Sock Sally, as Raphael and I refer to her, is our archenemy. There are way more working washers than dryers in this place, so a lot of times, you have to wait with a cartload of wet clothes until one opens up.

One-Sock Sally always cleverly beats the system by putting one sock into a dryer and turning it on the second she gets in the door. Sometimes, she even lays claim to two or three, if they’re available. That way, when her clothes are done washing, she just adds them to the sock and never has to wait like the rest of us.

Raphael and I, who every week have to scrimp together enough change to do our laundry in the first place and can’t afford to waste it on an empty dryer, like to pass the time by plotting elaborate revenge schemes on old One Sock.

We glare at her as she marches over to the lone available dryer, puts her sock in and feeds quarters into the slot.

She ignores us. She always does.

“So will you sleep over?” I ask Raphael, as One-Sock Sally begins sorting her laundry on the opposite side of the room.

“If you promise I can definitely have the bed. Your floor was freezing Thursday night, and I need a good night’s sleep. I’m exhausted. Carl and I went out again last night, and—”

“Stop right there.” I hold out my hand like a traffic cop to stave off more tales of unbridled lumberjack passion. “And do me a favor, Raphael. Don’t mention this to Kate.”

“What? Carl? Tracey, I already told her—”

“Not Carl. Jack and me. Don’t tell her I’m going out with him again, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Because she doesn’t think I’m ready for another relationship. She thinks I’m on the rebound.”

“You
are
on the rebound, Tracey.”

“I know I am. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go out with this very nice guy again.”

“Or sleep with him again.”

“Who said I slept with him?”

“Tracey! You can’t fool me. You slept with him Friday night, didn’t you?”

“No!” I avoid eye contact, wheeling my wire cart full of whites toward a vacant machine.

Raphael follows me, carrying his martini glass. “Yes, you did, Tracey! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be worried about bringing him home with you tomorrow. You wouldn’t need me in your bed as insurance.”

“Raphael…” I swear he has some sick kind of sixth sense when it comes to sex.

I sigh. “Okay. I slept with him. But I’m not going to sleep with him again. And I know Kate won’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe you, either. Tracey, you need to be careful. You’re on the rebound.”

“I am being careful.” I fish six quarters out of my pocket and feed them into the machine. “That’s why I need you, Raphael.”

“I’ll sleep over this once, but I can’t always be there in your bed, Tracey. I have my own bed to sleep in, you know.”

“I know, Raphael, and I really appreciate it.”

“Anytime, Tracey. I’m always here for you. Really.”

“Thanks. You’re a good friend, Raphael.”

We share a sappy smile.

It’s a beautiful moment.

Until Raphael hacks up a major phlegm ball and spits it into a dirty T-shirt.

When I get home, I deposit the sack of clean laundry just inside the door and go straight to the cupboard to see what there is to eat. The beers have lowered my willpower, and I’ve got a fierce carb craving.

I’m out of pasta and rice, and the seven-grain bread is covered in a lovely green fuzz, but there are a few new red potatoes left in the bag I bought a few weeks ago. Three of them have disgusting spongey spots and smell like vodka, but the last one is fine as soon as I pull off a few sprouty growths and scrub it under the tap.

I wrap the tiny potato in foil, pop it into the oven to bake and change into workout clothes. I’m bone tired and I’d love to just curl up with my Jane Smiley book, but if I’m going to eat carbs this late in the evening, I’m sure as hell going to work out first.

I’m halfway through the Tae-Bo video when the phone rings. Normally, I’d let the machine get it, but it occurs to me that it might be Jack, calling to own up to the chocolates.

I snatch up the phone with a breathless “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Kate!” Dammit. Not just because it isn’t Jack, but because there’s only ten minutes until
CSI
starts, but Kate likes to talk. And talk. And talk.

“What’s new?” she asks.

“Not much. How about you?”

“Billy’s watching
Monday Night Football
and I’m bored to tears.”

“I thought you like watching football with him.”

She lowers her voice. “That’s just what I say. Guys like girls who like sports.”

Right. Sometimes I forget Kate is a graduate of the Southern Belle Academy of Feminine Wiles. You know, the one whose curriculum includes Intro to Drinking Bourbon Like a Lady and How to Avoid Letting Him See You Without Makeup Before You’ve Got a Ring on Your Finger 101.

“You never answered my e-mail,” Kate says.

“I haven’t checked it all weekend. I’ve been busy.”

“I just wanted to know how your date on Friday night went.”

“Fun. Really fun.”

“You slept with him.”

“Kate! You made me swear I wouldn’t, remember?”

“You slept with him.”

“You were right about him being just a Transition Boy,” I go on, as if she hasn’t spoken. “I mean, I can’t get into a relationship right now.”

“Answer the question, Trace. You slept with him.”

“That’s not a question, Kate.”

“You’re right, it isn’t. Because I know you did.”

Apparently, Kate also went to the Voodoo School of In-Your-Face Sex Clairvoyance with Raphael.

“Okay, Kate, I did sleep with him. And I don’t regret it.”

For a moment, all I hear on her end is football-game noise
in the background—cheering fans, a fast-talking commentator and Billy shouting something.

Then Kate says heavily, “You’re fragile right now, Tracey. It’s too soon to fall for somebody.”

“I didn’t say I fell for him. I said I slept with him.”

“On the first date? That’s—”

“You slept with Billy on the first date.”

“I wasn’t on the rebound.”

“Maybe I’m not either.”

Okay, who am I kidding? I’m so on the rebound I’ve got backboard burns on my ass.

I clear my throat. “Kate, I know you’re just trying to be a good friend, but really, I can take care of myself. I’m just dating this guy. And I won’t sleep with him again. I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

I fill her in about Raphael the human chastity belt.

“Well, that works for now,” Kate says, “but what about next time?”

“Who says there’s going to be a next time?”

“He might keep calling you, Tracey.”

A thrill shoots through me at the thought of it, but I do my best to sound blasé about it. “I doubt that. He’s not really my type.”

“Then why even bother going out with him again?”

“Because…he’s nice. And funny. And smart. He knows all the state capitals.”

“What?”

Forget it. She can’t possibly understand.

“Never mind. I have to go eat my baked potato and watch
CSI.
”

“Lucky you, to have the TV remote all to yourself.”

Yeah, sure. Lucky me.

All alone in the world’s smallest apartment with the world’s smallest baked potato.

Woo-hoo.

T
uesday morning, I get to work early and sneak a hot-chocolate packet and drugstore Christmas mug into Myron’s cubby.

When I get to my desk, there’s a gorgeous, gigantic pink-and-white poinsettia waiting for me. It’s wrapped in cellophane. No card.

I suspect it’s from Jack, but I can’t figure out how to mention it when he calls me to confirm our date.

“Maybe it’s from your Secret Snowflake,” Brenda suggests as we fill our plastic salad containers in the deli at lunchtime. “Maybe the chocolates were, too.”

“They can’t be. There’s a fifteen-dollar limit for the week.” I swear, I’m getting so tired of saying that.

“Well, maybe your Snowflake wants to spoil you. And, anyway, you didn’t get any other anonymous gifts yesterday or today. So if the chocolates and the plant weren’t from your Snowflake, your Snowflake forgot all about you.”

True.

But that makes more sense than a Snowflake who’s already spent at least fifty bucks on me.

I prefer to think that my Snowflake’s got Alzheimer’s and that a smitten Jack is showering me with flowers and candy.

Tuesday night after work, Jack takes me to dinner at the Sea Grill restaurant under Rockefeller Center.

We sip wine and eat scallops and watch the skaters through the plate-glass windows. Afterward, we stroll across the plaza to see the tree.

“When I was a kid, I always wanted to come to New York at Christmastime and see the tree in person,” I tell him, shivering in the cold, still evening air as we come to a stop by the metal railing at the base of the tree.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”

I nod, my breath puffing white as I say, “Sometimes I can’t believe I really live here.”

He puts his arms around me from behind and pulls me close, my back against his chest as we look up at the brilliant-colored lights stretching into the night sky.

We stand there for a long time.

People rush past us: tired office workers carrying briefcases, suburban women loaded down with shopping bags, harried families holding programs from Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular around the corner. Taxis honk and sirens wail and a jackhammer rattles at an all-night construction site.

I try to memorize every detail, knowing I’ll want to relive it all later, when I’m alone.

Jack’s body heat radiates against my back, and he smells
like wine and herbal soap. I can feel his warm breath stirring the hair behind my ear, and his hands are tucked into my coat pockets with mine.

“It’s snowing!” I realize, catching sight of white flakes swirling down in a floodlight’s glow. “Oh, my God! Jack! It’s snowing! It’s perfect!”

He kisses me, and it’s even more perfect.

We stand there, shivering and kissing and snuggling against each other for warmth.

He sings “Winter Wonderland” in my ear, and then he sings “Let It Snow.” He definitely can’t carry a tune, but it’s wonderfully romantic anyway.

Minutes pass—long, cozy, teeth-chattering minutes.

It’s snowing harder. Real snow.

It’s A Wonderful Life
snow.

Heated kisses.

Frozen toes.

“Let’s go,” Jack murmurs in my ear.

Already? I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, with him, kissing by the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

“Come on,” he says, tugging my hand. “We’ll get a cab downtown.”

“Oh…” I smile. I get it. He’s coming home with me.

He’s coming home with me?

“Oh!”

“Tracey? What’s wrong?”

“Um, we can’t go to my apartment.”

“We can’t? Why not?”

“My friend’s sleeping over tonight.”

“The one with the leopard-print thong?”

“It was zebra print, and yes, that’s the one.”

“His apartment is
still
being fumigated?”

“Yes. It was really infested.”

Jack winces.

Mental Note: Any mention of “infestation” kills romance.

We stand for a bit, staring up at the tree through the falling snow.

Then we start kissing again.

When we take a breather, Jack suggests, “We could go to my apartment.”

“Is Mike there?”

“Probably.”

“Doesn’t he ever sleep at Dianne’s?”

“I wish. She lives with her mother.”

“That sucks.”

He laughs. “Tell me about it. She’s always at our place. But I don’t want to talk about her.”

In fact, he doesn’t want to talk at all. I close my eyes in complete and utter rapture while Jack nuzzles my neck.

It’s snowing harder.

I can feel the flakes catching in my eyelashes, feel wet trickles down my cheeks. They’re probably tinted black with mascara. Lovely.

Okay, we can’t stand here all night. A decision must be made.

“Let’s go to my apartment,” Jack whispers.

“I can’t,” I whisper back, wiping at and undoubtedly smearing the wet eye makeup.

“Why not?”

“A lot of reasons. Mainly, Mike.”

“He doesn’t have to know you’re there. We’ll sneak in.”

“He might hear us and think we’re prowlers.”

“Prowlers?” He laughs. “I doubt it. But just in case, we could get you a disguise. I bet you’d look great as a blonde.”

Feeling vaguely insulted, I shake my head. “I can’t. I’d be too freaked out if Mike found out. I should just go home.”

He looks so disappointed, I’m no longer insulted. Clearly, he’s into me, brunette, snow-soaked hair, smudged black eyes and all.

He squeezes my hand. “Are you sure, Tracey?”

“I’m positive. I’m sorry.”

We kiss again.

“Maybe you could kick your friend out of your place?” Jack murmurs.

Yeah, right. After I begged him to stay? Fag-hag divorce grounds, for sure.

“I can’t,” I say, cursing phlegmy Raphael in my bed. “He has nowhere else to go.”

Aside from his newly fumigated and perfectly inhabitable apartment, of course.

I’m such an idiot.

Jack kisses me.

Dammit. I want to be alone with him. But where?

Too bad I don’t still have Raphael’s keys. He had to change all the locks after the nasty breakup with Wade, and he hasn’t gotten around to giving me a new set.

I look longingly at Jack.

The wind blows granular snow into my upturned face.

Jack brushes it off, gently, with the edge of his soft black scarf.

I compare him to Will, who I’m positive would let me be buried up to my eyebrows in a snowdrift before he’d clean me off with
his
cashmere scarf.

Jack kisses me again.

“Are you sure you can’t come home with me, Tracey?” he asks.

“I’m sure,” I say.

He kisses me again.

And again.

And again.

And five minutes later, of course, we’re on a subway to Brooklyn.

“Tracey?”

“Hmm?” I burrow beneath the warm quilt.

“The bathroom’s free.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Tracey…”

Bedsprings creak.

Jack kisses my cheek. He smells soapy and minty, like he just showered and brushed his teeth.

Conscious that I haven’t yet showered or brushed my teeth, I tilt my head and talk into the pillow. “Five more minutes?”

“Not if you want to take a shower and get out of here before Mike wakes up. That’s what you swore you wanted to do last night. His alarm doesn’t go off for another twenty minutes, so—”

That’s all I need to hear.

I catapult out of bed, wrapped in a blanket, still not comfortable enough with my newly slimmed-down body to walk around naked in front of anybody, and certainly not Jack.

“There’s a new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet,” he
calls after me as I bolt for the hallway and the bathroom I vaguely remember sneaking into last night.

I’m careful not to make a sound as I hurry past the closed door, knowing Mike is asleep behind it. How bizarre is that? Me, creeping naked past my boss’s bedroom door.

Well, not naked, but close enough. The blanket I grabbed is little more than a throw.

It doesn’t occur to me until I’m in the shower-steamy bathroom with the door closed behind me that I’ve brought nothing to wear on my return trip to the bedroom.

Rut-roh.

I’d better hurry. I can’t think of anything worse than running into Mike in the hallway when I’m half-naked.

After checking the door repeatedly to make sure I’m locked in, I drop the blanket, find the new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet and unwrap it. The crinkling cellophane is deafening. So is the tap when I turn it on.

The bathroom is old, with pink-and-black tile and stains in the grout. It’s not that clean, either. When I pick up the soap and see a coarse, curly black hair embedded in it, I’m so horrified that I drop the whole bar into the tub.

I don’t even want to speculate about whose crotch it fell out of.

I wash without soap, and as I do, I think about Jack and last night.

And Jack’s apartment.

It’s a third-floor walk-up in one of those boxy brick apartment buildings that line the streets of the outer boroughs. We pretty much went straight to the bedroom when we got here, but I glimpsed enough of the tiny place to know that it’s your run-of-the-mill bachelor pad. Mis
matched hand-me-down furniture, no rugs, no pictures on the walls, and it smells faintly of old beer and steam heat and Comet.

Jack’s room consists of a full-sized mattress and box spring sitting right on the floor, a tall dark dresser that looks like it came out of his childhood bedroom and some stacked plastic milk crates filled with books and CDs and papers.

So much for my trust-fund theory. Jack is clearly living on his media planner’s salary. Which makes a forty-dollar box of imported chocolate and a shrub-sized poinsettia plant all the more impressive.
If
they really are from him.

Dammit, the tub isn’t draining right, which leaves me standing in a shin-deep pool of soap scum and floating hairs. Oh, ick.

Plus, several of the holes at the top of the vinyl shower curtain are torn right through. So it droops on one end and I don’t realize the floor is getting soaked until I’m done with the shower.

“Shit!” I whisper-scream when I see the flood.

I climb out of the tub and try to sop up the mess without using all three towels that are in the barren linen cabinet, reasoning that I need one and Mike will need one. But it takes two towels to even semi-dry the puddles. I’m left still dripping wet and naked myself, and wondering if I dare use the last dry towel.

What are the chances that there’s a clean, newly laundered, just-folded load sitting just outside the door in a laundry basket?

I know, I didn’t think so, either.

I have no choice but to grab the last dry towel from the
shelf, do my best to blot my hair and the rest of me. My feet are slippery up to my ankles from standing in the soap slick in the tub. They’ll probably be all itchy later. Lovely.

I wrap the towel around myself, and drape the blanket over my shoulders for good measure.

Then I open the door, peer cautiously into the hall and step out of the bathroom.

All is dark and quiet.

Safe.

I take two steps…and skid in my still-damp, slippery feet on the hardwood floor.

I go down with a crash and a screech.

“What the—”

“Tracey?”

Two doors open simultaneously.

Two men rush out of their rooms.

One is Jack.

The other is Mike Middleford, boss of Tracey.

Did I say that I couldn’t think of anything worse than running into Mike in the hallway when I’m half-naked?

I did?

Well, guess what? I just thought of something far freaking worse.

I scramble to rewrap the towel and blanket around myself as Mike gapes, standing there in—you guessed it—his underwear.

They’re not boxers, like Jack has on.

Nor are they a zebra-print thong, à la Raphael.

But, God help me, they’re something in between. I believe the proper term is tighty whities.

Oh, the horror,
cries a news commentator in my head, who
apparently hasn’t seen anything this bad since the Hindenburg crashed and burned.

Tracey: sprawled, nearly naked.

Mike: tighty whities.

Oh, the horror. Oh, the humanity.