Slightly Settled (7 page)

“Kate, I need to talk to you. I’m at work and I’ve only got a minute. It’s important.” Sometimes you just have to pluck her out of her insulated little Kate universe.

“What happened? Are you okay? Why are you whispering?”

“Because I’m at work and I don’t want anyone to hear.”

“Hear what? Oh my God, are you pregnant?”

“No!” I should have called Buckley instead. He’s a better listener.

But I can’t leave her hanging now, so I quickly tell Kate what happened.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No! We just kissed,” I hiss. “But everyone saw. And he’s my boss’s roommate,” I point out for, like, the third time. “How can I go out with him? I mean…what if I slept over at his house and ran into Mike walking around in his underwear?”

“I don’t know…it might be good for you,” she says.

“Spinach is good for you. Seeing your boss in his underwear is not good for you. Or maybe it’s good for you, but it isn’t for me.”

I shudder at the mental image of a scantily clad Mike.

Okay, he probably doesn’t wear Spider-Man Underoos in real life, but still.

“I don’t mean seeing your boss in his underwear would be good. Nobody said you have to sleep with this guy. In fact, whatever you do, don’t sleep with him. I’m just saying that it might be good for you to go out on a date with him. After the way Will shit all over you, you deserve to have somebody take you out and treat you well.”

Well gee, thank you so much for that, Kate.
The thought of Mike wearing Underoos has been replaced by the oh-so-graphic image of Will shitting all over me.

“But he’s my boss’s roommate.”

I can just see her rolling her light blue eyes. Even I’m getting sick of me saying it.

“So? It’s a date. Just a date. Period. I mean, it’s not like you’re ready for another relationship yet….”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It would be purely rebound, Tracey. You don’t get dumped after spending a few years of your life with somebody and turn around and meet the right person immediately. It takes time. You’ve got to heal.”

“I’m healed.”

Really.

These days, when Will calls me, I never think he’s going to ask me to get back together. Well, hardly ever.

Okay, I didn’t think that the last time he called. At least, not the whole time. Not after he mentioned that he and Esme were going skiing in Vermont over Christmas.

“You’re healing, but you’re not entirely healed, Tracey. You’re not ready to invest wholeheartedly in another relationship,” advises Dr. Phil. I mean, Kate.

“Then why bother going out with this guy at all?”

Her prompt, precise answer: “Because you need a Transition Boy.”

“A what?”

“Someone to ease you back into the real world,” Kate explains. “Someone to help you cross the bridge between your old identity as Will’s girlfriend and your new identity. You know, someone to—”

“Wipe off the shit and make me feel all fresh again.”

There’s a pause. I picture her delicately wrinkling her powdered nose.

“Well, if you really must put it that way, Tracey…”

“Yes, I really must.”

“Well, anyway, you should never turn down the oppor
tunity to get to know somebody new,” Kate declares. “Even if it obviously can’t work out with him, he may have a friend who might interest you, down the road when you’re healed.”

Concluding that Kate is watching too many daytime talk shows, I thank her and hang up, still not sure what I want to do.

I can’t even remember what Jack looks like. Is he really as handsome as I thought the other night? Or did all those drinks cloud my judgment? For all I know, he looks like Dobby the house elf.

Not that it matters.

Of course looks don’t matter. I’m not
that
shallow.

Wait, am I?

Am I
shallow
?

I do spend an awful lot of time thinking about looks. My own, and other people’s.

But who doesn’t?

Okay, my family back home doesn’t.

Buckley doesn’t.

My friends at work don’t.

But just because I’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to look good, and just because I want to make sure the guy I might go out with isn’t a beast…

Well, that doesn’t mean I’m shallow.

Shallow is
Are You Hot?

Shallow is everybody who works at
She
magazine.

Shallow is…

Will.

Shallow is Will; Will is shallow.

He’s also beautiful—but only on the outside. He was
cold and cruel on the inside. That should have taught me something.

I ponder.

I reflect.

And then I think, the hell with it.

If I’m going to have a Transition Boy, I might as well make sure he’s good-looking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it better to go for the looks now and the other worthy qualities later, when, according to Kate the Relationship Guru, I’ll actually be ready to find Mr. Right?

So the first order of business is to find out whether Jack is really as appealing as he seemed. I honestly doubt that I hallucinated his cuteness factor, but then, I also thought losing a coat-check tag was
Seinfeld
material, so it would be dangerous to rely solely on Saturday night’s drunken judgment.

There’s only one thing to do.

My gaze falls on the camera on my desk.

Mental Note: Get party film developed ASAP.

Manhattan is full of one-hour film developing places.

Those places are full of crap.

At least, the one in my building’s lobby, where I drop off my film during my lunch break, is full of crap.

When I stop back exactly an hour later on my way upstairs, the sari-clad woman behind the counter shakes her head.

“When will it be ready?” I ask.

“Never,” she says in some inscrutable foreign language.

At least, that’s what I later deduce she must have said, because every time I step out of the office for a cigarette and
pop back down into the store to check, she glares and indicates that the pictures aren’t ready yet.

I’m starting to hate her.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think she’s doing this to me on purpose. Maybe she and the guy who develops the pictures are enjoying my restless anticipation; enjoying the power they wield over my romantic future.

At one point, late in the afternoon, I find myself waiting—and shivering—in the drafty lobby for the elevator with Miss Prim aka Susan, the annoyingly buttoned-up account exec from my floor.

She’s with an equally buttoned-up account exec, and I swear I see them nudge each other when I step into the car.

I know you’re thinking this was just my imagination, too, but it wasn’t.

I know this because as the elevator doors slide closed, I hear Susan whisper, “She’s the one.”

She’s the one…what?

The one who got trashed and made out with some strange guy at the bar in front of the entire company, of course.

I shrink against the elevator wall as the car jerks and rises, praying for death.

Why did I leave my sunglasses upstairs on my desk? I stare at the floor numbers, pretending I don’t notice Susan’s companion casting curious sidelong glances in my direction, as if she’s never seen a real live hussy before.

I’m never going to live this down. Never. The only way to live this down would be…

I don’t know, I guess maybe if Jack and I eventually get married, people won’t think what we did at the party was
so bad. They’ll just think we fell madly in love at first sight. Everybody knows that true love is forgiveable; sottish lust is not.

So all I have to do is get Jack to marry me.

Death, I conclude, as the elevator stops at my floor, would be simpler.

My pictures are ready at noon on Tuesday.

I snatch them out of the enemy’s hand—the enemy being the proprietress of the lobby photo kiosk. By now, our relationship has deteriorated to the point of open hostility.

“Twenty-two-fifty,” she snaps, after punching keys on the register.

“Twenty-two-fifty?” I echo, as though she’s just requested the entire contents of my wallet.

Which, sadly, she has.

“Twenty-two-fifty,” she repeats, indicating the sign above her head.

“But that’s the one-hour rate.”

“Yes, and you check one-hour-rate box.” She points to the photo envelope.

“But they weren’t back in one hour.”

Looking bored, she indicates the fine print below the box.

“‘Cannot guarantee photos in one hour,’” I read. “That’s ridiculous! If I didn’t want them back in one hour, I’d have checked the other box.”

The other box being the one where the photos are sent out and returned the next day, with free doubles, for twelve bucks.

“You check this box,” she snarls. “Twenty-two-fifty.”

“But that’s unfair!”

“Fine. I keep pictures,” she says with a shrug, reaching for the envelope.

“No!” I shriek, holding them above my head like one of my sister’s kids playing Keepaway.
Neener neener neener, you ca-an’t have them.

“Twenty-two-fifty, you lady. Or I call police.”

“Here. Fine. Take the twenty-two-fifty.” I throw a twenty and some ones on the counter and stalk across the lobby toward the elevator bank for my floor.

Only when I’m inside—sharing the elevator with a couple of chatty maintenance men and the ubiquitous bike messenger—do I exhale and open the envelope.

I flip through countless pictures until I come to the one of me and Jack.

We’re smiling, arm-in-arm.

We look like a couple.

And Jack…

Well, Jack looks great.

That settles it.

I’m going out with my boss’s roommate.

Too bad, I think wistfully, staring at the photo, he’s destined to be my Transition Boy.

A
fter work on Friday, I duck into the ladies’ room and change into a little black spandex dress that hugs every inch of my body—that is, every inch that it doesn’t expose.

I’m going to freeze tonight. The wind-chill factor is in the single digits.

I had considered wearing a nice, toasty, boring long skirt and blazer on our date, lest Jack get the impression that I’m a brazen temptress.

But as I headed out the door this morning, something made me grab this sexy dress out of my closet and throw it into my black shoulder bag.

Okay, not something.
Someone
.

Raphael spent the night in my apartment while his is being fumigated.

“Tweed? You can’t wear that, Tracey!” he said in horror, staring at my charcoal wool skirt and jacket, opaque hose
and sensible shoes. “Not unless he’s taking you door-to-door on a Jehovah’s Witness canvass.”

So here I am, wearing a dress that’s so freaking snug I haven’t allowed myself to eat a thing all day in order to avoid an unsightly gut bulge. I wasn’t even hungry, thanks to nerves and, of course, my little pink pills.

And I’m freaking freezing. I’ve been cold all day. All week, really. Cold and jittery and all I want to do is go home and crawl under a warm blanket.

But, instead, I have two hours to kill before I’m supposed to meet Jack.

We’re meeting at Tequila Murray’s, a semikosher Mexican place in the Village. That was my idea. He had originally suggested that we just hook up in the lobby after work.

Yeah, sure. And take the risk that seeing the two of us together might trigger suppressed memories in anyone who managed to forget the spectacle we made of ourselves at the Christmas party? I don’t think so.

As you can see, my morning-after paranoia hasn’t subsided in the least.

In fact, I can’t believe I agreed to this date. But it’s too late to back out, so there’s nothing to do but take the 6 train down to Bleeker with Raphael.

No, he’s not coming on my date with me. He’s got his own date later, with some construction worker he met. According to Raphael, they were cruising each other over satin panties at Victoria’s Secret.

I know. Don’t ask.

It’s two-for-one margarita happy hour at Tequila Murray’s, where Raphael and I grab a table by the window.

“Hey, Raphael, how’s it going?” asks the waitress, depositing a basket of tortilla chips, salsa and guacamole between us.

“Geri! I didn’t know you worked here!”

“Just since last week,” she replies.

Geri and Raphael exchange gleeful small talk about people I don’t know and places I’ve never been while I smile like an idiot. This happens all the time when I’m with Raphael.

Finally, Geri takes our drink order. I’m having a margarita, but Raphael wants something called a Golden Cadillac. Geri winks at him and tells him that technically he’s not supposed to get anything but a margarita two-for-one, but she’ll make an exception for him.

As Geri sashays away, I ask, “Raphael, do you know everybody in Manhattan?” I reach for a chip before remembering. The date. The dress. The gut.

I pull my hand back and sit on it.

“Not
everybody,
Tracey,” he says, dead serious. He sneezes, then adds, “He used to date my friend Jacob.”

“God bless you. He? Who?”

“Thank you. Jacob. You know. From the
Sondheim Review.
” He blows his nose loudly.

Actually, I don’t know Jacob from the
Sondheim Review.
Nor do I have a clue what he’s talking about.

Mustering my patience, I try again. “Who used to date your friend Jacob from the
Sondheim Review?
”

“The waiter.”

Waiter?

I glance over at the bar, where Geri—rather, I suppose, Jerry—is waiting for our drinks. His cleavage is spectacular. So is the bulge beneath the fly of his black toreador pants.

I sigh. You’d think by now I’d be used to Raphael, human magnet for all manner of bizarre life forms.

“Tracey, I can’t wait to meet Jack,” Raphael announces, munching a chip, then promptly double-dipping in the salsa.

Ew. So much for temptation. I wouldn’t touch the stuff now. Raphael has a horrible head cold. He kept me up most of the night with his sniffles and coughs.

When I suggested that he cancel his date with the construction worker, he looked at me like I’d advised him to join the Franciscan friars.

“Ooh, Tracey, you have to taste this!” he exclaims, crunching. “It’s fresh. Mmmm. It’s so cilantro-y.”

“You’re not going to meet Jack, Raphael,” I say, retrieving my hand and shoving the bowl of fresh and germ-ridden cilantro-y salsa toward the opposite side of the table.

“I’m not going to meet Jack?” He looks crushed. “Why not?”

I look at Raphael, taking in the leopard-spotted hair scrunchy he’s wearing on his wrist as a bracelet, the denim culottes, the red-patent-leather pointy-toed boots.

“Not to be mean or anything, Raphael, but you might scare him.”

“Oh, never mind, Tracey. By the time he gets here, I’ll be long gone. Carl should be here any second now.”

“Carl’s coming
here
?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“No. I thought you were meeting him at Oh, Boy.”

“Change of plans. He’s coming here.” He blows his red nose and moves the scrunchy aside to shove the used tissue up his sleeve. “Oh, look, there he is now. Carl!”

I turn to see a strapping boots-and-flannel-clad giant stepping in off the street, a legend come to life.

I blink.

Holy Paul Bunyan, Batman.

“Isn’t he masculine, Tracey?” Raphael gushes, pretty much swooning into the guacamole.

“All that’s missing is Babe the Big Blue Ox,” I mutter, as Jerry the gender bender sets my drink in front of me.

Carl joins us.

I take a big, hearty sip of my slushy lime drink. Instant head freeze.

I know I should go easy, considering my empty stomach.

Yeah, right.

The next thing you know, I’m sipping the last of my first margarita while my freebie one stands by. Raphael and his strapping gentleman friend are already on their second freebie Golden Cadillacs. Meaning, their fourth drinks in the hour or so we’ve been sitting here.

Actually, Carl isn’t so bad after a stiff drink. The three of us swap New York apartment horror stories, always a scintillating topic.

“So when’s the merchant marine getting here?” Carl wants to know.

Uh-oh.

“Who’s the merchant marine?” I ask Raphael, picturing some bizarre nautical drag queen pulling up a chair.

He blows his stuffy nose into a cocktail napkin and shoves that up his sleeve, too. “I guess he means Jack.”

“My Jack?” I echo incredulously. “He’s not a merchant marine.”

“He’s not?” Carl looks confused.

“No. Who said he was a merchant marine?”

“You did,” Carl slurs.

“I did not! I said he was a media planner.”

“No, you didn’t. You said he was a merchant marine,” Carl accuses in his booming baritone lisp.

I look at Raphael. He nods. His nostrils are as raw and red as the salsa. “I think you did, Tracey.”

“You had four Golden Cadillacs and God knows how many Tavist-D, Raphael. You have no idea what I said.”

He giggles. “You’re right. I don’t.”

“Well, I do,” Carl says, “and you said this guy Jack is a merchant marine.”

Right. Merchant marine, media planner. I get the two mixed up all the time.

Carl informs us, “I’ve never met a merchant marine.”

“That makes two of us,” I retort.

“When’s he coming?”

I shoot a pointed look at Raphael, then hold up my watch and tap it.

He just giggles again and polishes off his foamy white cocktail of yesteryear, foolish drunkard that he is.

“Shouldn’t you be leaving now, guys?” I suggest.

“Not till we meet the merchant marine,” Raphael bellows.

“Yeah, the merchant marine,” resounds his brutish buffoon of a date, plunking his empty glass down on the table so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter in his paw.

“Where is he?” Carl asks, pressing his face against the window. “When’s he coming? Does he wear his uniform?”

I glare at Raphael.

He grins happily at me.

I step outside to smoke a cigarette, freezing my ass off on the sidewalk.

A few times, I think I spot Will. Once, crossing the street with beautiful blond Esme on his arm, and once, in a passing cab.

Both times, it isn’t him. It isn’t Esme, either.

I try to put Will out of my mind and concentrate on looking up and down the street, wondering where the hell Jack is. He’s late.

Then I see Carl’s face still plastered against the window and I’m thanking my lucky stars Jack is late.

I stub out my cigarette and go back inside to get rid of him.

“Raphael,” I begin, just as he sneezes so loudly he can’t possibly hear me.

Outside, a woman walks by with a poodle. She’s wearing a fur coat and one of those tall, furry Russian-looking hats.

“Hey, great hat!” Carl calls, tapping on the glass. “I want that hat! I’d look good in that hat.”

“You would look good in that hat,” Raphael agrees, sounding hoarse, and coughs. “Does anyone have a Halls?”

“No, he wouldn’t look good in that hat,” I say, too exasperated to dig a cough drop from the bottom of my purse. “He’d look like the Empire State Building with a hairy ape draped over its spire.”

“Hey! Are you making fun of me?” Carl shouts.

“Me? No.” I shoot Raphael a pleading look. He’s too busy rummaging in his purselike shoulder bag to notice.

The bartender comes over. “You need to keep it down over here, okay?”

Carl doesn’t want to keep it down. Carl wants to speak.
Loudly. About merchant marines, and tall furry hats, and some other stuff.

Carl also wants another foamy white cocktail of yesteryear.

The bartender doesn’t want Carl to have another anything with liquor in it.

Carl protests.

The bartender asks Carl to leave.

Carl doesn’t want to leave.

I look at my watch, and then at Raphael, who’s in the midst of another coughing fit.

“This isn’t happening,” I tell him. “Jack’s going to show up any second and find me getting kicked out of the bar.”

“He’s not kicking
you
out, Tracey, just Carl,” Raphael protests as his date loudly accuses the bartender of being homophobic and threatens a lawsuit.

“Raphael, take him and go, will you?” I plead.

“But, Tracey, he
really
wants to stay.”

Yeah. And I
really
want to wring his big old lumberjack neck.

“Do this for me, Raphael.”

“How am I going to get him out of here?”

“I don’t know…a hand truck? Bribery? I don’t care, just do it.”

“Oh, all right. Carl, hon…” Raphael stands on his tiptoes and whispers something in Carl’s ear.

“When?” Carl asks, tilting his head thoughtfully.

“Now,” Raphael promises with a wink.

He throws a couple of twenties on the table and the two of them stroll off into the evening arm in arm, headed for…

I don’t even want to know.

I suck down half of my second drink before I remember that I’m suppose to be nursing it, and I suck down the other half when I realize that Jack’s forty-five minutes late.

Is he standing me up?

I’ve never been stood up. Not even by Will.

“You want another margarita?” Jerry asks. “It’s still happy hour.”

Not for me, it isn’t.

But I order another drink because what else can I do? Leave?

Okay, I guess I can leave, but what if I do and Jack shows up a minute later?

I can’t leave.

Fifteen minutes and a third of the way through the new drink later, he blows in the door, wearing jeans and black boots and a black cable-knit turtleneck sweater under a navy pea coat. His cheeks are red from the cold, and his wavy brown hair is wind-tousled.

“Tracey, I’m so glad you’re still here. I’m so sorry. You’ll never believe what happened.” He collapses into the chair recently abandoned by Carl the merchant-marine-obsessed gay construction worker.

I’m not good at being pissed off, so I smile and say, “Try me.”

He’s so freaking cute, I think as he runs a hand through his hair. I find myself wishing he didn’t live with Mike, because despite my vow not to sleep around, I want to sleep with him. Just once. Tonight.