Slightly Single (19 page)

I had planned to take the subway back home, but
the thought of being trapped underground is terrifying right now.

I need air.

I need a cigarette.

I step out of the dingy but climate-controlled bus terminal into a putrid steambath of Manhattan night. My hands are shaking as I fish my last cigarette out of the pack and put it into my mouth.

I light it and take a deep drag.

I feel better now.

The streets are jammed. I buy another pack of cigarettes at a newsstand on the street, then shoulder my way through the crowd, lugging my heavy bag.

I’m trying to figure out what the hell happened back there on the bus, and I can’t come up with an answer. It was as though every ounce of logic flew right out of my head.

I try to flag a cab, but it’s impossible to find one.

No way am I going to get on a city bus or the subway now.

There’s nothing for me to do but keep walking, zigzagging my way across the city, down a block or two and over a block or two, toward my East Village neighborhood. I’m on Twenty-ninth and Park when a couple steps out of a cab on the corner, and I flag the driver.

Five minutes and five bucks later, I’m home.

The message light is blinking on my machine. I press the play button, wondering if it’s Will calling.

But it isn’t.

It’s Buckley.

“Hi, Tracey. Since you haven’t called me, I thought I’d call you. Joseph gave me Raphael’s number, and he gave me yours. I hope you don’t mind. I’m done with that freelance job in your building, which is why we haven’t run into each other lately. I was just thinking we should get together for drinks or something. Platonically.”

Well, of course platonically, I think, wanting myself to be irritated, but unable to muster much reaction. What else would he expect?

“Call me,” is all that’s left on Buckley’s message.

And his is the only one I’ve got.

No call from Will.

Well, it’s not like the Fourth of July is one of those occasions where you call to give someone holiday greetings. I mean, it’s not like Christmas or New Year’s or Mother’s Day or Valentine’s day. But still.

He could have called.

I mean…

Buckley
called.

And I’m thinking that maybe I should call him back. Why wouldn’t I? He’s a nice guy, and it would be fun to get together with him.

Especially now that Kate is so busy with Billy in the Hamptons—they’ve been an item ever since the weekend I was out there. Which is presumably why she hasn’t invited me back again.

Meanwhile, Raphael is hot and heavy with some Czechoslovakian ballet dancer he met in a leather bar
in Jersey City. Brenda’s wrapped up in wedding plans, and Latisha’s in a foul mood over the Yankees’ latest losing streak, and Yvonne’s showing Thor around town every free moment.

Where does that leave me?

Fresh from a weekend in Brookside and obsessed with the notion that terrorists are going to blow up a bridge with me on it.

Impulsively, I take out my Palm Pilot and look up Buckley’s number. I dial it before I can stop myself. As it rings, I think that I should hang up, and then I think that he’s probably not home, and if he isn’t, I won’t leave a message because once I give this some thought I’ll realize that it probably wasn’t such a good idea to—

“Hello?”

“Buckley?”

“Tracey!”

He sounds psyched.

Now I’m psyched. It’s nice to be so welcome, even just over the phone.

“Hey, you called back. I seriously doubted that you would.”

“Why wouldn’t I? You, uh, said to.”

He does a surprisingly dead-on imitation of my mother, whom, of course, he’s never met: “If I told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that, too?”

He has no idea of the relevance of that particular comment, and I’m not about to tell him, so I force a laugh, too.

Then he asks me about my holiday weekend, and tells me about his—he went home to Long Island for a family barbecue and spent today at Jones Beach. Apparently it was a gorgeous, sunny day here in the eastern part of the state.

“Lucky you, spending the day on the beach while I was on the bus,” I say.

“Nah, the beach was loaded with freaks,” he says.

“Freaks? As in circus?”

“As in you never saw such a mass gathering of complete and utter losers.” He launches into a hilarious description of fellow beach-goers, doing accents and dialogue. He’s got me laughing so hard, I’m straining my newly developing abs.

“I haven’t laughed this hard since the first Austin Powers. You should be writing stand-up comedy, Buckley, not cover copy and corporate brochures,” I tell him when I finally catch my breath.

“Oh yeah? Don’t say that until you’ve read my corporate brochures. You’ll laugh your ass off.”

I laugh again.

“So you want to have drinks with me sometime, or what?” he asks out of the blue.

Before I can respond, he adds, once again, “Platonically.”

“Damn! And here I wanted to date you, Buckley.”

“I
am
a hottie,” he says. “But you, my little minx, have a hottie of your own.”

“I know.” I heave an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll try to keep my hands off.”

“Aren’t
we
saucy!”

We make plans to meet for cold, slushy rum drinks at a restaurant in his neighborhood on Wednesday night after work. He suggests the time and place, and I’m glad that it’s nowhere I’ve ever been with Will.

And it’s great that I don’t feel the least bit threatened anymore by the fact that he kissed me. The ice has been broken between us.

Or maybe it was just my ice, because the thing about Buckley, I’m starting to see, is that he’s always totally relaxed and casual. I don’t think it’s an act, either. Nothing seems to bother him.

Anyway, things are looking up now.

Especially when I step on the scale before changing into my pajamas, and see that I’ve lost four more pounds since I last checked.

I’m actually doing it. Everything I said I would do: losing weight. Reading classics. Saving money.

I even organized my apartment one night last week and threw away two big garbage bags full of packrat debris.

I stand in front of the mirror, still dressed in the rumpled black linen shorts and short-sleeved black T-shirt I wore on the bus trip.

I study the new me.

Not bad.

It’s funny how much difference that extra almost-twenty pounds makes. But when you consider that it’s like carrying four five-pound bags of flour in your hips, butt, thighs and gut, it’s almost shocking that it
doesn’t make a more drastic difference. Don’t get me wrong—I like the new me.

She’s noticeably slimmer than the old me.

But still recognizable.

I sigh, realizing that no matter how far I’ve come, I still have my work cut out for me.

O
n Wednesday night, I’m on my way to the elevators to meet Buckley after work when Jake stops me. He’s been in meetings with the client all day, and we’ve barely seen each other. I hope he doesn’t want me to stick around, because I called Buckley five minutes ago and told him I was on my way to meet him.

“Can I talk to you about something, Tracey?” Jake asks.

“Sure.” I wait for him to elaborate, wondering what’s up.

“Okay, come on back to my office.” He starts walking.

I follow him, taken aback. Why can’t he talk to me right here?

I notice that he doesn’t make conversation when I catch up with him on the way back to his office. It doesn’t help that I can’t think of anything to say. I wonder if I’m in some kind of trouble, but I can’t think of anything I possibly could have done wrong.

Then I realize that since whatever he wants to discuss is obviously discreet, it might be about the product names I gave him a while back.

He never did get back to me about the list.

Maybe he ran them by the client. Maybe they’ve chosen one of my ideas.

“Close the door,” Jake says, walking into his office and sitting behind his desk. “Sit down.”

I close the door. Sit.

“So you remember the day a few weeks ago when you got those chocolates for my mother for her birthday?”

My heart sinks. I guess this isn’t about naming the deodorant.

“Yeah…”

“Remember how I had you package the gift and bring it down to the mailroom later that afternoon?”

“Yeah…”

“I just found out she never got it.”

“She never got it?”

“No. And she’s pissed because she thinks I forgot her birthday.”

I just look at him, unsure what he wants me to say. “But that’s…I mean, I don’t know how she could have never gotten it.”

“I don’t know, either. A hundred dollars’ worth of Belgian chocolate seems to have mysteriously disappeared.”

Is he accusing me of stealing it?

I can’t tell.

But if he is…

“I’m not saying you took it, Tracey….”

He isn’t?

“But I’m wondering if maybe you forgot to bring it to the mailroom.”

I think back to that day. I definitely remember going to the mailroom with his chocolate. Myron was down there, and he took the package from me. He pretended he was about to drop it, catching it right before it hit the floor. He always likes to give me a hard time, teasing me because I work for Jake.

The thing is, nobody in the mailroom likes Jake. Probably because he treats everyone in the mailroom like they’re invisible. Or maybe because I’ve overheard him telling racist jokes—and chances are, they have, too.

It occurs to me now, as I think back to that day, that Myron might have noticed that the last name on the package label was the same as Jake’s.

Meaning, Myron might have figured out that Jake was using the company mailroom to send personal mail to his family.

That wouldn’t go over big with Myron. I mean, he makes a fraction of Jake’s salary, and I happen to know he pays child support to his ex-girlfriend, too.

But I’m not about to tell Jake that Myron might have sabotaged his package of chocolates. For one thing, I have no proof. For another, I can’t really blame the guy…even if I’m the one who’s getting blamed in his place.

“I remember taking it to the mailroom,” I tell Jake, because he’s waiting for a reply.

“Did you hand it to someone there, or did you just leave it?”

“I handed it to someone.”

Here comes the inevitable. “Who was it?”

“I have no idea,” I lie. “It was a long time ago.”

“Then how can you be sure you brought it down? Can the package be lost on your desk or in your cubicle?”

“I doubt it.”

“Can you check?”

“Sure.” I shrug, and look at my watch. “First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll—”

“Check now,” Jake says curtly, then adds, in a gentler tone, “Okay?”

What can I say?

“Okay.”

I spend the next fifteen minutes going through the piles of stuff in my cube, looking through my desk and even my file cabinet. I do it because I have no choice. Jake keeps poking his head in, asking, “Find anything yet?”

Finally, I go back to his office and tell him there’s no sign of the package.

He’s pissed.

Maybe not at me—but it sure seems that way. I’m almost tempted to tell him he should talk to Myron about the chocolates, but I don’t.

Finally, I’m on my way to meet Buckley.

I walk across town. It’s another muggy night, the heat of the day trapped in the concrete, radiating back at me as I trudge along the sidewalk. I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers’ sweaty bodies, my hair sticky on my neck and forehead. I’m not really prone to sweating, except on my head. It’s embarrassing. The slightest sign of humidity, and I look like somebody turned a fire hose on me from the neck up.

When I get to the restaurant, which is on the same block as mine and Will’s favorite sushi place, I see that it’s your typical Tex-Mex neighborhood hangout. Happy hour frozen drink specials, complimentary chips and salsa, white votive candles, colored Christmas lights strung above the bar. There’s a jukebox, and right now it’s playing Steely Dan.

The place is hopping. Half of the people jammed into the bar area look like they’ve just come from office jobs, the other half like they’re on their way to the theater. Buckley’s sitting at the far end where it’s less crowded, drinking a foamy white drink in a stemmed glass with pineapple chunks and maraschino cherries on a plastic skewer. An ultra-attractive female in a red summer suit with long, curly,
dry
black hair is perched on the stool by his side, sipping a similar drink.

In fact, I think they’re together until Buckley has to ask her what her name is again as he’s introducing me.

“Sonja, that’s right,” he says. “And this is my friend Tracey. Who’s late.”

“Sorry. I got hung up at work when I thought I was on my way out.” I wipe a trickle of sweat from my temple and put my big black bag on the floor between their stools, wishing Sonja would take her cue and leave.

She is
so
not taking her cue that she takes off her jacket to reveal the naughty little black top she’d concealed under her suit.

I hate her.

“What do you want to drink, Tracey?” Buckley asks, dragging his gaze away from Sonja reaching to drape her jacket on the back of her seat.

“What are you having?” I shove my damp hair away from my face, wishing they’d turn up the air conditioning. It’s cool in here, but I need an arctic blast. Or a blow dryer.

“We’re having something the bartender suggested,” Buckley tells me, offering me his straw for a taste.

“We don’t know what they’re called,” Sonja says with a giggle, “but they’re wicked strong.”

“Wicked strong,” Buckley agrees, then turns to Sonja and asks, “Where are you from? Boston?”

“How did you know?”

“I have wicked good ESP,” he says, and she cracks
up as though that’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever heard.

“We’d better go easy on these cocktails,” she tells Buckley. “I’m getting giddy.”

As I take a sip of Buckley’s rummy, tropical-tasting drink, I can’t help noticing that Sonja’s pretty eager to make herself and Buckley, whom she’s just met, into a
We.
And even though I happen to be half of another
We
—the Will and Tracey
We
—I feel jealousy bubbling up inside of me.

“So you guys just met now, at the bar?” I ask—mostly to remind them that they’re virtual strangers.

“Yeah. Sonja is waiting for someone, too,” Buckley tells me, raising a hand to summon the bartender.

“Really?” Presumably, it’s her boyfriend. Or at least her date.

She nods and says, lest Buckley assume the same thing I did, “Just my roommate. She’s new in town and she’s always after me to go out, so I finally gave in. Figures that now she’s the one who’s late. I knew I could’ve had time to go to the gym first.”

Of course she goes to the gym.

I picture her, skinny and sweaty, working out in a skimpy leotard. I glance at Buckley’s face and notice that he seems to be picturing the same thing.

He catches my eye and leaps off his stool, as though he’s just realized something. “Here, sit down, Tracey,” he offers.

“No, it’s okay,” I say, hoping he won’t believe me and sit down again. I feel like a third wheel, standing.

He doesn’t believe me. He’s gentleman enough to insist that I take his seat.

Why, I wonder, as I sit, doesn’t Sonja feel like a third wheel?

“So how long have you guys been friends?” she asks.

Oh. That’s why.

Because Buckley made a point of introducing me as his friend. Obviously, he did that because he wanted her to know that I’m not competition.

Which I’m not.

In fact, if I thought he thought there was any chance of something romantic happening between me and him, I wouldn’t even be here in the first place.

Which is why Sonja shouldn’t be irritating me every time she flashes that broad, white-toothed smile at Buckley, or touches his sleeve whenever he makes a funny joke—which he does regularly.

Because let’s face it, the guy is funny. I’m talking Seinfeld funny, with a super-dry sense of humor and a subtly hilarious way of making wry, dead-on observations about life and human nature.

Laughing at Buckley’s jokes puts me into such a good mood that as the night wears on and the liquor goes down easily, I’m starting to find Sonja a tiny bit more tolerable. I mean, basically, she has a right to be into Buckley. He’s fair game. And I have Will.

Besides, it occurs to me that she has no way of knowing that Buckley and I have kissed—not that I’m sure what that has to do with anything. But it seems
relevant as I start to feel the effects of this fruity, frozen whatever-you-call-it.

I’ve drained my first drink, and Buckley and Sonja are halfway through their second, when Sonja’s roommate, Mae, shows up at last. She turns out to be a stunning Asian investment banker, and I’d be jealous of her, too, if she didn’t announce, practically upon meeting me and Buckley, that she has a fiancé back on the West Coast.

“Why are you here if he’s there?” Buckley asks her after ordering two more drinks—one for Mae, and one for me.

“Because I landed a job here first,” Mae says. “We plan to settle in New York. He’s finishing up his doctorate, and then he’ll be here.”

“But not until after Christmas,” Sonja tells us. “I keep telling her she’s nuts to be away from him for so many months. Long-distance relationships never work out.”

Is it my imagination, or does Buckley glance pointedly at me?

“Of course they work out,” I say—almost harshly, I guess, because Sonja blinks and Buckley mocks me, echoing my words with a feral snarl while pretending to wave claws in the air.

“Buckley!” I can’t help smiling, though.

“Don’t mind Tracey,” he tells the others. “Her boyfriend is away for a few months. Summer stock,” he adds in a whisper, with a sympathetic shake of his
head, as though he’s just informed them that Will was a victim of some horrible natural disaster.

“Sorry,” Sonja says, pretending to be sheepish. I say
pretending
because I’m not convinced that there’s anything about her that isn’t fake, from her perfectly manicured long nails to her high, full boobs.

Looks like I’m back to hating her again.

“I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject, Tracey,” she says, all but patting me on the shoulder.

“It’s not a sore subject.”

“I just meant that I’ve never personally had any luck with a long-distance relationship, and I’ve never known anyone who has. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, though.”

“Of course it’s not impossible,” Mae says.

Her, I like.

“I totally trust Jay,” Mae goes on. “And he totally trusts me. Just because we have to be apart for a while doesn’t mean our relationship is at risk.”

“But you two are engaged,” Sonja points out. “And at least he’s not an actor—oh, Tracey, I’m sorry, there I go again. I just meant, from what I hear, it’s hard to have a stable relationship with someone who’s in show business. After all, actors have to kiss other people, and they tend to travel a lot, don’t they?”

“Some do.” I don’t believe her
oops
act for a second. She’s out to make me look like a fool in front of Buckley.

Okay, maybe she’s not
that
vicious.

Maybe it’s the rum that’s making me loathe her.

As I sip my second drink, which is going down very easily, I remember belatedly that I was so busy this afternoon that I never did get a chance to eat lunch. All I’ve had all day is the Raisin Bran with skim milk and a banana that I gobbled down before I left my apartment this morning.